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Battle of Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt (Azincourt ) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until England was defeated by France in 1429 during the Siege of Orléans.

After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and the English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English.

King Henry V of England led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of the Armagnac party. This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 per cent of Henry's army. Henry's standard-bearer was William Harrington, he being an official Standard Bearer of England.

The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in the Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crécy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). Perhaps the most notable example of a last stand of a heavily outnumbered force resulting in an outright victory, it continues to fascinate scholars and the general public into the modern day. It forms the backdrop to notable works such as William Shakespeare's play Henry V, written in 1599.

Contemporary accounts
The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, three from eyewitnesses. The general location of the battle is not disputed and the site remains relatively unaltered after 600 years. A paucity of archeological evidence though, has led to a debate as to the exact location of the battlefield.

Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as Azincourt, after the nearest fortified place. Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet. The English eyewitness account comes from the anonymous author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, believed to have been written by a chaplain in the King's household who would have been in the baggage train at the battle. A recent re-appraisal of Henry's strategy of the Agincourt campaign incorporates these three accounts and argues that war was seen as a legal due process for solving the disagreement over claims to the French throne.

Background
Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny). He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the ensuing negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Anjou, Brittany, Flanders, Normandy, and Touraine, as well as Aquitaine. Henry would marry Catherine, Charles VI's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns.

The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed.

Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". Thomas Morstede, Henry V's royal surgeon, had previously been contracted by the king to supply a team of surgeons and makers of surgical instruments to take part in the Agincourt campaign. The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur. The siege took longer than expected. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. Rather than retire directly to England for the winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. He also intended the manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin, who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur.

During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen. This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur.

After Henry V marched to the north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme. They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford. The English finally crossed the Somme south of Péronne, at Béthencourt and Voyennes and resumed marching north.

Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. They shadowed Henry's army while calling a semonce des nobles, calling on local nobles to join the army. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that was how Crécy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. The English had very little food, had marched 260 mi in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery, and were greatly outnumbered by well-equipped French men-at-arms. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive.

Battlefield
The precise location of the battle is not known. It may be in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt). However, the lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps.

English deployment
Early on the 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen) across a 750 yd part of the defile. The army was divided into three groups, with the right wing led by Edward, Duke of York, the centre led by the king himself, and the left wing under the old and experienced Baron Thomas Camoys. The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham, another elderly veteran. It is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. This use of stakes could have been inspired by the Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry.

The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. He told his men that he would rather die in the coming battle than be captured and ransomed.

Henry made a speech emphasising the justness of his cause, and reminding his army of previous great defeats the kings of England had inflicted on the French. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. Whether this was true is open to question and continues to be debated to this day; however, it seems likely that death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed.

French deployment
The French army had 10,000 men-at arms plus some 4,000–5,000 miscellaneous footmen (gens de trait) including archers, crossbowmen (arbalétriers) and shield-bearers (pavisiers), totaling 14,000–15,000 men. Probably each man-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (or varlet), an armed servant, adding up to another 10,000 potential fighting men, though some historians omit them from the number of combatants.

The French were organized into two main groups (or battles), a vanguard up front and a main battle behind, both composed principally of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by more of the same in each wing. There was a special, elite cavalry force whose purpose was to break the formation of the English archers and thus clear the way for the infantry to advance. A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. Many lords and gentlemen demanded – and got – places in the front lines, where they would have a higher chance to acquire glory and valuable ransoms; this resulted in the bulk of the men-at-arms being massed in the front lines and the other troops, for which there was no remaining space, to be placed behind. Although it had been planned for the archers and crossbowmen to be placed with the infantry wings, they were now regarded as unnecessary and placed behind them instead. On account of the lack of space, the French drew up a third battle, the rearguard, which was on horseback and mainly comprised the varlets mounted on the horses belonging to the men fighting on foot ahead.

The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. Albret, Boucicaut and almost all the leading noblemen were assigned stations in the vanguard. The dukes of Alençon and Bar led the main battle. A further 600 dismounted men-at-arms stood in each wing, with the left under the Count of Vendôme and the right under the Count of Richemont. To disperse the enemy archers, a cavalry force of 800–1,200 picked men-at-arms, led by Clignet de Bréban and Louis de Bosredon, was distributed evenly between both flanks of the vanguard (standing slightly forward, like horns). Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack the English rear. The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops.

Terrain
The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. The recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland favoured the English, both because of its narrowness, and because of the thick mud through which the French knights had to walk.

Accounts of the battle describe the French engaging the English men-at-arms before being rushed from the sides by the longbowmen as the mêlée developed. The English account in the Gesta Henrici says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that the living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well."

Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in the third rank could scarcely use their swords," and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage.

Recent heavy rain made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour. The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against the enemy". The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the mêlée. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets.

Opening moves
On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The Duke of Brabant (about 2,000 men), the Duke of Anjou (about 600 men), and the Duke of Brittany (6,000 men, according to Monstrelet), were all marching to join the army.

For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. Military textbooks of the time stated: "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win." On top of this, the French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were perfectly happy to wait for as long as it took. There had even been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes.

Henry's men were already very weary from hunger, illness and retreat. Apparently Henry believed his fleeing army would perform better on the defensive, but had to halt the retreat and somehow engage the French before a defensive battle was possible. This entailed abandoning his chosen position and pulling out, advancing, and then re-installing the long sharpened wooden stakes pointed outwards toward the enemy, which helped protect the longbowmen from cavalry charges. (The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crécy, for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles.)

The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. The French had originally drawn up a battle plan that had archers and crossbowmen in front of their men-at-arms, with a cavalry force at the rear specifically designed to "fall upon the archers, and use their force to break them," but in the event, the French archers and crossbowmen were deployed behind and to the sides of the men-at-arms (where they seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle). The cavalry force, which could have devastated the English line if it had attacked while they moved their stakes, charged only after the initial volley of arrows from the English. It is unclear whether the delay occurred because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault (and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position), or whether the French mounted knights instead did not react quickly enough to the English advance. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses.

French cavalry attack
The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started. The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.

Main French assault
Despite advancing through what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot", the plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the distance to the English lines after the English longbowmen started shooting from extreme longbow range (approximately 300 yd). A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used, although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Modern test and contemporary accounts conclude that arrows could not penetrate the better quality steel armour, which became available to knights and men-at-arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th century, but could penetrate the poorer quality wrought iron armour. Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at 220 yd. He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting the limbs, particularly at close range. In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and a press of comrades while wearing armour weighing 50 –, gathering sticky clay all the way. Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades.

The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and, using hatchets, swords, and the mallets they had used to drive their stakes in, attacked the now disordered, fatigued and wounded French men-at-arms massed in front of them. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants (who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour) combined with the English men-at-arms. The impact of thousands of arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and difficulty breathing in plate armour with the visor down, and the crush of their numbers, meant the French men-at-arms could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line. The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. As the mêlée developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. In such a "press" of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles.

The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. According to contemporary English accounts, Henry fought hand to hand. Upon hearing that his youngest brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet.

Attack on the English baggage train
The only French success was an attack on the lightly protected English baggage train, with Ysembart d'Azincourt (leading a small number of men-at-arms and varlets plus about 600 peasants) seizing some of Henry's personal treasures, including a crown. Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Certainly, d'Azincourt was a local knight but he might have been chosen to lead the attack because of his local knowledge and the lack of availability of a more senior soldier. In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from the rear. Barker, following the Gesta Henrici, believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concluded that the attack happened at the start of the battle.

Henry executes French prisoners
Regardless of when the baggage assault happened, at some point after the initial English victory, Henry became alarmed that the French were regrouping for another attack. The Gesta Henrici places this after the English had overcome the onslaught of the French men-at-arms and the weary English troops were eyeing the French rearguard ("in incomparable number and still fresh"). Le Fèvre and Wavrin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger.

In any event, Henry ordered the slaughter of what were perhaps several thousand French prisoners, sparing only the highest ranked (presumably those most likely to fetch a large ransom under the chivalric system of warfare). According to most chroniclers, Henry's fear was that the prisoners (who, in an unusual turn of events, actually outnumbered their captors) would realise their advantage in numbers, rearm themselves with the weapons strewn about the field and overwhelm the exhausted English forces. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise him for it. In his study of the battle John Keegan argued that the main aim was not to actually kill the French knights but rather to terrorise them into submission and quell any possibility they might resume the fight, which would probably have caused the uncommitted French reserve forces to join the fray, as well. Such an event would have posed a risk to the still-outnumbered English and could have easily turned a stunning victory into a mutually destructive defeat, as the English forces were now largely intermingled with the French and would have suffered grievously from the arrows of their own longbowmen had they needed to resume fighting. Keegan also speculated that due to the relatively low number of archers actually involved in killing the French knights (roughly 200 by his estimate), together with the refusal of the English knights to assist in a duty they saw as distastefully unchivalrous, and combined with the sheer difficulty of killing such a large number of prisoners in such a short space of time, the actual number of French prisoners put to death may not have been substantial before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order.

Aftermath
The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men were killed. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, "read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation". Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes (Alençon, Bar and Brabant), nine counts (Blâmont, Dreux, Fauquembergue, Grandpré, Marle, Nevers, Roucy, Vaucourt, Vaudémont) and one viscount (Puisaye), also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable (Albret), an admiral (the lord of Dampierre), the Master of Crossbowmen (David de Rambures, dead along with three sons), Master of the Royal Household (Guichard Dauphin) and prévôt of the marshals. According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy."

Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.

While numerous English sources give the English casualties in double figures, record evidence identifies at least 112 Englishmen killed in the fighting, while Monstrelet reported 600 English dead. These included the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and the Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam. Jean de Wavrin, a knight on the French side wrote that English fatalities were 1,600 "men of all ranks".

Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd. Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle.

Numbers at Agincourt
Most primary sources which describe the battle have English outnumbered by several times. By contrast, Anne Curry in her 2005 book Agincourt: A New History, argued, based on research into the surviving administrative records, that the French army was 12,000 strong, and the English army 9,000, proportions of four to three. While not necessarily agreeing with the exact numbers Curry uses, Bertrand Schnerb, a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, states the French probably had 12,000–15,000 troops. Juliet Barker, Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of the numbers involved. Ian Mortimer endorsed Curry's methodology, though applied it more liberally, noting how she "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", and concluded that "the most extreme imbalance which is credible" is 15,000 French against 8,000–9,000 English. Barker opined that "if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries".

Barker, Sumption and Rogers all wrote that the English probably had 6,000 men, these being 5,000 archers and 900–1,000 men-at-arms. These numbers are based on the Gesta Henrici Quinti and the chronicle of Jean Le Fèvre, the only two eyewitness accounts on the English camp. Curry and Mortimer questioned the reliability of the Gesta, as there have been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. Both note that the Gesta vastly overestimates the number of French in the battle; its proportions of English archers to men-at-arms at the battle are also different from those of the English army before the siege of Harfleur. Mortimer also considers that the Gesta vastly inflates the English casualties – 5,000 – at Harfleur, and that "despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way". Rogers, on the other hand, finds the number 5,000 plausible, giving several analogous historical events to support his case, and Barker considers that the fragmentary pay records which Curry relies on actually support the lower estimates.

Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Rogers, Mortimer and Sumption all give more or less 10,000 men-at-arms for the French, using as a source the herald of the Duke of Berry, an eyewitness. The number is supported by many other contemporary accounts. Curry, Rogers and Mortimer all agree the French had 4 to 5 thousand missile troops. Sumption, thus, concludes that the French had 14,000 men, basing himself on the monk of St. Denis; Mortimer gives 14 or 15 thousand fighting men. One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. Since the French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. Rogers says each of the 10,000 men-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) and a noncombatant page, counts the former as fighting men, and concludes thus that the French in fact numbered 24,000. Barker, who believes the English were outnumbered by at least four to one, says that the armed servants formed the rearguard in the battle. Mortimer notes the presence of noncombatant pages only, indicating that they would ride the spare horses during the battle and be mistakenly thought of as combatants by the English.

Popular representations
The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. Some notable examples are listed below.

Music
Soon after the victory at Agincourt, a number of popular folk songs were created about the battle, the most famous being the "Agincourt Carol", produced in the first half of the 15th century. Other ballads followed, including "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before the campaign.

Literature
The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare's Henry V, written in 1599. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should appear – chivalric, honest, and just – and how a king must sometimes act – Machiavellian and ruthless. Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of the French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event. This moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry and as a key example of the paradox of kingship.

Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. He contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of the French.

Shakespeare's play presented Henry as leading a truly English force into battle, playing on the importance of the link between the monarch and the common soldiers in the fight. The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict."

The play introduced the famous St Crispin's Day Speech, considered one of Shakespeare's most heroic speeches, which Henry delivers movingly to his soldiers just before the battle, urging his "band of brothers" to stand together in the forthcoming fight. Critic David Margolies describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War, when the British Expeditionary Force's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it.

Shakespeare's portrayal of the casualty loss is ahistorical in that the French are stated to have lost 10,000 and the English 'less than' thirty men, prompting Henry's remark, "O God, thy arm was here".

In 2008, English-American author Bernard Cornwell released a retelling of both the events leading up the battle and the battle itself, titled Azincourt. The story is told predominantly through the eyes of an English longbowman named Nicholas Hook.

Films
Shakespeare's version of the battle of Agincourt has been turned into several minor and two major films. The latter, each titled Henry V, star Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989. Made just prior to the invasion of Normandy, Olivier's rendition gives the battle what Sarah Hatchuel has termed an "exhilarating and heroic" tone, with an artificial, cinematic look to the battle scenes. Branagh's version gives a longer, more realist portrayal of the battle itself, drawing on both historical sources and images from the Vietnam and Falkland Wars.

In his 2007 film adaptation, director Peter Babakitis uses digital effects to exaggerate realist features during the battle scenes, producing a more avant-garde interpretation of the fighting at Agincourt. The battle also forms a central component of the 2019 Netflix film The King, which stars Timothée Chalamet as Henry V and Robert Pattinson as the Dauphin of Viennois. The film takes inspiration from Shakespeare's Henriad plays.

Mock trial
In March 2010, a mock trial of Henry V for the crimes associated with the slaughter of the prisoners was held in Washington, D.C., drawing from both the historical record and Shakespeare's play. Participating as judges were Justices Samuel Alito and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The trial ranged widely over whether there was just cause for war and not simply the prisoner issue. Although an audience vote was "too close to call", Henry was unanimously found guilty by the court on the basis of "evolving standards of civil society".

Agincourt today
There is a modern museum in Azincourt village dedicated to the battle. The museum lists the names of combatants of both sides who died in the battle.

General sources

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title: Battle of Agincourt


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Burgundian

Burgundian can refer to any of the following:

 * Someone or something from Burgundy.
 * Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, who first appear in history in South East Europe. Later Burgundians colonised the area of Gaul that is now known as Burgundy (French Bourgogne)
 * The Old Burgundian language (Germanic), an East Germanic language spoken by the Burgundians
 * The Modern Burgundian language (Oïl), an Oïl language also known as Bourguignon spoken in the region of Burgundy, France.
 * Frainc-Comtou dialect, sometimes regarded as part of the Burgundian group of languages
 * Burgundian (party), a political faction in early 15th century during the Hundred Years' War
 * Kingdom of the Burgundians (411–534), an early medieval state founded by the Burgundians
 * Burgundian Netherlands (1384–1482), the parts of the Duchy of Burgundy that correspond to the Low Countries

title: Burgundian


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Bronze Age

The Bronze Age was a historical period lasting from approximately 3300 to 1200 BC. It was characterized by the use of bronze, the use of writing in some areas, and other features of early urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, between the Stone and Iron Ages. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition.

The Bronze Age is generally considered to have ended with the Late Bronze Age collapse, a time of widespread societal collapse between c. 1200 and 1150 BC. This collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean, including North Africa and Southeast Europe, as well as the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, and it brought a sharp economic decline to regional powers, most notably ushering in the Greek Dark Ages.

An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere.

Bronze Age cultures were the first to develop writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia, which used cuneiform script, and Egypt, which used hieroglyphs, developed the earliest practical writing systems.

Metal use
Bronze Age civilizations gained a technological advantage due to bronze's harder and more durable properties than other metals available at the time. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, 1250 C, in addition to the greater difficulty of working with it, placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tin's lower melting point of 232 C and copper's moderate melting point of 1085 C placed both these metals within the capabilities of Neolithic pottery kilns, which date back to 6,000 BC and were able to produce temperatures of at least 900 C. Copper and tin ores are rare since there were no tin bronzes in West Asia before trading in bronze began in the 3rd millennium BC. The Bronze Age is characterized by the widespread use of bronze (even if only by elites in the early years), though the introduction and development of bronze technology were not universally synchronous. Tin bronze technology requires systematic techniques: tin must be mined (mainly as the tin ore cassiterite) and smelted separately, then added to hot copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of extensive use of metals and of development of trade networks. A 2013 report suggests that the earliest tin-alloy bronze was a foil dated to the mid-5th millennium BC from a Vinča culture site in Pločnik, Serbia, although this culture is not conventionally considered part of the Bronze Age; however, the dating of the foil has been disputed.

Near East
West Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, beginning with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East practiced intensive year-round agriculture; developed writing systems; invented the potter's wheel, created centralized governments (usually in the form of hereditary monarchies), written law codes, city-states and nation-states and empires; embarked on advanced architectural projects; and introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practiced organized warfare, medicine, and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy, mathematics, and astrology.

The following dates are approximate. For details, consult linked articles.

Near East Bronze Age divisions
The Bronze Age in the Near East can be conveniently divided into Early, Middle and Late periods. The dates and phases below are applicable solely to the Near East, not universally. However, some archaeologists propose a "high chronology", which extends periods such as the Intermediate Bronze Age by 300 to 500–600 years, based on material analysis of southern Levantine cities such as Hazor, Jericho, and Beit She'an.

 * Early Bronze Age (EBA): 3300–2100 BC
 * 3300–3000: EBA I
 * 3000–2700: EBA II
 * 2700–2200: EBA III
 * 2200–2100: EBA IV
 * Middle Bronze Age (MBA) or Intermediate Bronze Age (IBA): 2100–1550 BC
 * 2100–2000: MBA I
 * 2000–1750: MBA II A
 * 1750–1650: MBA II B
 * 1650–1550: MBA II C
 * Late Bronze Age (LBA): 1550–1200 BC
 * 1550–1400: LBA I
 * 1400–1300: LBA II A
 * 1300–1200: LBA II B (Bronze Age collapse)

Anatolia

The Hittite Empire was established during the 18th century BC in Hattusa, northern Anatolia. At its height in the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom encompassed central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant, which is conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples. The kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived into the 8th century BC.

Arzawa in Western Anatolia, during the second half of the second millennium BC, likely extended along southern Anatolia in a belt from near the Turkish Lakes Region to the Aegean coast. Arzawa was the western neighbor of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms, at times a rival and, at other times, a vassal.

The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia defeated by the Hittites under the earlier Tudhaliya I, around 1400 BC. Arzawa has been associated with the much more obscure Assuwa generally located to its north. It probably bordered it, and may even have been an alternative term for it (at least during some periods).

Early Bronze dynasties

In Ancient Egypt, the Bronze Age began in the Protodynastic Period, c. 3150 BC. The archaic Early Bronze Age of Egypt, known as the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, immediately followed the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt, c.  3100 BC. It is generally taken to include the First and Second Dynasties, lasting from the Protodynastic Period until about 2686 BC, or the beginning of the Old Kingdom. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Abydos to Memphis with a unified Egypt ruled by an Egyptian god-king. Abydos remained the major holy land in the south. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as art, architecture, and religion, took shape in the Early Dynastic Period. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age was the largest city of the time. The Old Kingdom of the regional Bronze Age is the name given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egyptian civilization attained its first continuous peak of complexity and achievement—the first of three "Kingdom" periods which marked the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley (the others being the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom).

The First Intermediate Period of Egypt, often described as a "dark period" in ancient Egyptian history, spanned about 100 years after the end of the Old Kingdom from about 2181 to 2055 BC. Very little monumental evidence survives from this period, especially from the early part of it. The First Intermediate Period was a dynamic time when the rule of Egypt was roughly divided between two areas: Heracleopolis in Lower Egypt and Thebes in Upper Egypt. These two kingdoms eventually came into conflict, and the Theban kings conquered the north, reunifying Egypt under a single ruler during the second part of the Eleventh Dynasty.

Nubia
The Bronze Age in Nubia started as early as 2300 BC. Egyptians introduced copper smelting to the Nubian city of Meroë in modern-day Sudan around 2600 BC. A furnace for bronze casting found in Kerma dated back to 2300–1900 BC.

Middle Bronze dynasties
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt lasted from 2055 to 1650 BC. During this period, the Osiris funerary cult rose to dominate Egyptian popular religion. The period comprises two phases: the 11th Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes, and the 12th and 13th Dynasties, centered on el-Lisht. The unified kingdom was previously considered to comprise the 11th and 12th Dynasties, but historians now consider at least part of the 13th Dynasty to have belonged to the Middle Kingdom.

During the Second Intermediate Period, Ancient Egypt fell into disarray a second time between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the start of the New Kingdom, best known for the Hyksos, whose reign comprised the 15th and 16th dynasties. The Hyksos first appeared in Egypt during the 11th Dynasty, began their climb to power in the 13th Dynasty, and emerged from the Second Intermediate Period in control of Avaris and the Delta. By the 15th Dynasty, they ruled lower Egypt, and they were expelled at the end of the 17th Dynasty.

Late Bronze dynasties
The New Kingdom of Egypt, also referred to as the Egyptian Empire, lasted from the 16th to the 11th century BC. The New Kingdom followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt's most prosperous time and marked the peak of Egypt's power. The later New Kingdom, i.e. the 19th and 20th Dynasties (1292–1069 BC), is also known as the Ramesside period, after the eleven pharaohs who took the name of Ramesses.

Iranian plateau

Elam was a pre-Iranian ancient civilization located east of Mesopotamia. In the Old Elamite period (Middle Bronze Age), Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian Plateau, centered in Anshan. From the mid-2nd millennium BC, Elam was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a crucial role in both the Gutian Empire and the Iranian Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it.

The Oxus civilization was a Bronze Age Central Asian culture dated to c. 2300–1700 BC and centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus). In the Early Bronze Age, the culture of the Kopet Dag oases and Altyndepe developed a proto-urban society. This corresponds to level IV at Namazga-Tepe. Altyndepe was a major centre even then. Pottery was wheel-turned. Grapes were grown. The height of this urban development was reached in the Middle Bronze Age c. 2300 BC, corresponding to level V at Namazga-Depe. This Bronze Age culture is called the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC).

The Kulli culture, similar to that of the Indus Valley civilisation, was located in southern Balochistan (Gedrosia) c.  2500–2000 BC. The economy was agricultural. Dams were found in several places, providing evidence for a highly developed water management system.

Konar Sandal is associated with the hypothesized "Jiroft culture", a 3rd-millennium-BC culture postulated based on a collection of artefacts confiscated in 2001.

Levant

In modern scholarship, the chronology of the Bronze Age Levant is divided into: The term Neo-Syria is used to designate the early Iron Age.
 * Early/Proto Syrian; corresponding to the Early Bronze Age.
 * Old Syrian; corresponding to the Middle Bronze Age.
 * Middle Syrian; corresponding to the Late Bronze Age.

The old Syrian period was dominated by the Eblaite first kingdom, Nagar and the Mariote second kingdom. The Akkadians conquered large areas of the Levant and were followed by the Amorite kingdoms, c. 2000–1600 BC, which arose in Mari, Yamhad, Qatna, and Assyria. From the 15th century BC onward, the term Amurru is usually applied to the region extending north of Canaan as far as Kadesh on the Orontes River.

The earliest-known contact of Ugarit with Egypt (and the first exact dating of Ugaritic civilization) comes from a carnelian bead identified with the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senusret I, dating back to 1971–1926 BC. A stela and a statuette of the Egyptian pharaohs Senusret III and Amenemhet III have also been found. However, it is unclear when they got to Ugarit. In the Amarna letters, messages from Ugarit c. 1350 BC written by Ammittamru I, Niqmaddu II, and his queen have been discovered. From the 16th to the 13th century BC, Ugarit remained in constant contact with Egypt and Cyprus (Alashiya).

Mitanni was a loosely organized state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from c. 1500–1300 BC. Founded by an Indo-Aryan ruling class that governed a predominantly Hurrian population, Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of Kassite Babylon created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia. At its beginning, Mitanni's major rival was Egypt under the Thutmosids. However, with the ascent of the Hittite empire, Mitanni and Egypt allied to protect their mutual interests from the threat of Hittite domination. At the height of its power during the 14th century BC, Mitanni had outposts centered on its capital, Washukanni, which archaeologists have located on the headwaters of the Khabur River. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to the Hittites and later Assyrian attacks, eventually being reduced to a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.

The Israelites were an ancient Semitic-speaking people of the Ancient Near East who inhabited part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods (15th to 6th centuries BC),    and lived in the region in smaller numbers after the fall of the monarchy. The name "Israel" first appears c. 1209 BC, at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the very beginning of the Iron Age, on the Merneptah Stele raised by the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah.

The Arameans were a Northwest Semitic semi-nomadic pastoral people who originated in what is now modern Syria (Biblical Aram) during the Late Bronze and early Iron Age. Large groups migrated to Mesopotamia, where they intermingled with the native Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) population. The Aramaeans never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East. After the Bronze Age collapse, their political influence was confined to Syro-Hittite states, which were entirely absorbed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire by the 8th century BC.

Mesopotamia
The Mesopotamian Bronze Age began about 3500 BC and ended with the Kassite period (c. 1500 BC – c.  1155 BC). The usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used in the context of Mesopotamia. Instead, a division primarily based on art and historical characteristics is more common.

The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people. Ur, Kish, Isin, Larsa, and Nippur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon, Calah, and Assur in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) became the dominant power in the region. After its fall, the Sumerians enjoyed a renaissance with the Neo-Sumerian Empire. Assyria, along with the Old Assyrian Empire (c. 1800–1600 BC), became a regional power under the Amorite king Shamshi-Adad I. The earliest mention of Babylon (then a small administrative town) appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC. The Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it briefly took over the other city-states and formed the short-lived First Babylonian Empire during what is also called the Old Babylonian Period.

Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia all used the written East Semitic Akkadian language for official use and as a spoken language. By that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use in Assyria and Babylonia, and would remain so until the 1st century AD. The Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in later Assyrian and Babylonian culture. Despite this, Babylonia, unlike the more militarily powerful Assyria, was founded by non-native Amorites and often ruled by other non-indigenous peoples such as the Kassites, Aramaeans and Chaldeans, as well as by its Assyrian neighbours.

Agropastoralism
For many decades, scholars made superficial reference to Central Asia as the "pastoral realm" or alternatively, the "nomadic world", in what researchers have come to call the "Central Asian void": a 5,000-year span that was neglected in studies of the origins of agriculture. Foothill regions and glacial melt streams supported Bronze Age agropastoralists who developed complex east–west trade routes between Central Asia and China that introduced wheat and barley to China and millet to Central Asia.

Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus civilization, was a Bronze Age civilization in Central Asia, dated to c. 2400–1600 BC, located in present-day northern Afghanistan, eastern Turkmenistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River). Its sites were discovered and named by the Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi (1976). Bactria was the Greek name for the area of Bactra (modern Balkh), in what is now northern Afghanistan, and Margiana was the Greek name for the Persian satrapy of Marguš, the capital of which was Merv, in modern-day southeastern Turkmenistan.

A wealth of information indicates that the BMAC had close international relations with the Indus Valley, the Iranian Plateau, and possibly even indirectly with Mesopotamia; all civilizations were very familiar with lost wax casting.

According to a 2019 study, the BMAC was not a primary contributor to later South-Asian genetics.

Seima-Turbino phenomenon
The Altai Mountains in what is now southern Russia and central Mongolia have been identified as the point of origin of a cultural enigma termed the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon. It is conjectured that changes in climate in this region around 2000 BC and the ensuing ecological, economic, and political changes triggered a rapid and massive migration westward into northeast Europe, eastward into China, and southward into Vietnam and Thailand across a frontier of some 4000 mi. This migration took place in just five to six generations and led to peoples from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east employing the same metalworking technology and, in some areas, horse breeding and riding. However, recent genetic testings of sites in south Siberia and Kazakhstan (Andronovo horizon) would rather support spreading of the bronze technology via Indo-European migrations eastwards, as this technology had been well known for quite a while in western regions.

It is further conjectured that the same migrations spread the Uralic group of languages across Europe and Asia: some 39 languages of this group still exist, including Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian.

China

In China, the earliest bronze artefacts have been found in the Majiayao culture site (between 3100 and 2700 BC).

The term "Bronze Age" has been transferred to the archaeology of China from that of Western Eurasia, and there is no consensus or universally used convention delimiting the "Bronze Age" in the context of Chinese prehistory. "Early Bronze Age" in China is sometimes taken as equivalent to the "Shang dynasty" period (16th to 11th centuries BC), and the "Later Bronze Age" as equivalent to the "Zhou dynasty" period (11th to 3rd centuries BC, from the 5th century, also called "Iron Age"), although there is an argument to be made that the "Bronze Age" proper never ended in China, as there is no recognizable transition to an "Iron Age". Significantly, together with the jade art that precedes it, bronze was seen as a "fine" material for ritual art when compared with iron or stone.

Bronze metallurgy in China originated in what is referred to as the Erlitou period, which some historians argue places it within the Shang dynasty. Others believe the Erlitou sites belong to the preceding Xia dynasty. The U.S. National Gallery of Art defines the Chinese Bronze Age as the "period between about 2000 BC and 771 BC", a period that begins with the Erlitou culture and ends abruptly with the disintegration of Western Zhou rule.

There is reason to believe that bronze work developed inside of China apart from outside influence. However, the discovery of Europoid mummies in Xinjiang has caused some archaeologists such as Johan Gunnar Andersson, Jan Romgard, and An Zhimin to suggest a possible route of transmission from the West eastwards. According to An Zhimin, "It can be imagined that initially, bronze and iron technology took its rise in West Asia, first influenced the Xinjiang region, and then reached the Yellow River valley, providing external impetus for the rise of the Shang and Zhou civilizations." According to Jan Romgard, "bronze and iron tools seem to have traveled from west to east as well as the use of wheeled wagons and the domestication of the horse." There are also possible links to Seima-Turbino culture, "a transcultural complex across northern Eurasia," the Eurasian steppe, and the Urals. However, the oldest bronze objects found in China so far were discovered at the Majiayao site in Gansu rather than at Xinjiang.

The Shang dynasty (also known as the Yin dynasty) of the Yellow River Valley rose to power after the Xia dynasty around 1600 BC. While some direct information about the Shang dynasty comes from Shang-era inscriptions on bronze artefacts, most comes from oracle bones—turtle shells, cattle scapulae, or other bones—which bear glyphs that form the first significant corpus of recorded Chinese characters.

The production of Erlitou in Henan represents the earliest large-scale metallurgy industry in the Central Plains of China. The influence of the Saima-Turbino metalworking tradition from the north is supported by a series of recent discoveries in China of many unique perforated spearheads with downward hooks and small loops on the same or opposite side of the socket, which could be associated with the Seima-Turbino visual vocabulary of southern Siberia. The metallurgical centres of northwestern China, especially Qijia in Gansu and Kexingzhuang culture in Shaanxi, played an intermediary role in this process.

Iron has been found from the Zhou dynasty, but its use was minimal. Chinese literature dating to the 6th century BC attests to knowledge of iron smelting, yet bronze continues to occupy the seat of significance in the archaeological and historical record for some time after this. Historian W.C. White argues that iron did not supplant bronze "at any period before the end of the Zhou dynasty (256 BC)" and that bronze vessels make up the majority of metal vessels through the Later Han period, or to 221 BC.

The Chinese bronze artefacts generally are either utilitarian, like spear points or adze heads, or "ritual bronzes", which are more elaborate versions in precious materials of everyday vessels, as well as tools and weapons. Examples are the numerous large sacrificial tripods known as dings in Chinese; there are many other distinct shapes. Surviving identified Chinese ritual bronzes tend to be highly decorated, often with the taotie motif, which involves highly stylised animal faces. These appear in three main motif types: those of demons, symbolic animals, and abstract symbols. Many large bronzes also bear cast inscriptions that are the great bulk of the surviving body of early Chinese writing and have helped historians and archaeologists piece together the history of China, especially during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC).

The bronzes of the Western Zhou dynasty document large portions of history not found in the extant texts that were often composed by persons of varying rank and possibly even social class. Further, the medium of cast bronze lends the record they preserve a permanence not enjoyed by manuscripts. These inscriptions can commonly be subdivided into four parts: a reference to the date and place, the naming of the event commemorated, the list of gifts given to the artisan in exchange for the bronze, and a dedication. The relative points of reference these vessels provide have enabled historians to place most of the vessels within a certain time frame of the Western Zhou period, allowing them to trace the evolution of the vessels and the events they record.

Japan

The Japanese archipelago saw the introduction of bronze during the beginning of the Early Yayoi period (≈300 BC), which saw the introduction of metalworking and agricultural practices brought in by settlers arriving from the continent. Bronze and iron smelting techniques spread to the Japanese archipelago through contact with other ancient East Asian civilizations, particularly immigration and trade from the ancient Korean peninsula, and ancient mainland China. Iron was mainly used for agricultural and other tools, whereas ritual and ceremonial artefacts were mainly made of bronze.

Korea

On the Korean peninsula, the Bronze Age began around 1000–800 BC. Initially centred around Liaoning and southern Manchuria, Korean Bronze Age culture exhibits unique typology and styles, especially in ritual objects.

The Mumun pottery period is named after the Korean name for undecorated or plain cooking and storage vessels that form a large part of the pottery assemblage over the entire length of the period, but especially 850–550 BC. The Mumun period is known for the origins of intensive agriculture and complex societies in both the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago.

The Middle Mumun pottery period culture of the southern Korean Peninsula gradually adopted bronze production (c. 700–600? BC) after a period when Liaoning-style bronze daggers and other bronze artefacts were exchanged as far as the interior part of the Southern Peninsula (c.  900–700 BC). The bronze daggers lent prestige and authority to the personages who wielded and were buried with them in high-status megalithic burials at south-coastal centres such as the Igeum-dong site. Bronze was an important element in ceremonies and for mortuary offerings until 100 BC.

South Asia
(Dates are approximate, consult linked articles for details)

Indus Valley
The Bronze Age on the Indian subcontinent began around 3300 BC with the beginning of the Indus Valley Civilization. Inhabitants of the Indus Valley, the Harappans, developed new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The Late Harappan culture, which dates from 1900 to 1400 BC, overlapped the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age; thus it is difficult to date this transition accurately. It has been claimed that a 6,000-year-old copper amulet manufactured in Mehrgarh in the shape of a wheel spoke is the earliest example of lost-wax casting in the world.

The civilization's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The large cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 people, and the civilization itself during its florescence may have contained between one and five million people.

Southeast Asia
The Vilabouly Complex in Laos is a significant archaeological site for dating the origin of bronze metallurgy in Southeast Asia.

Thailand
In Ban Chiang, Thailand, (Southeast Asia) bronze artefacts have been discovered dating to 2100 BC. However, according to the radiocarbon dating on the human and pig bones in Ban Chiang, some scholars propose that the initial Bronze Age in Ban Chiang was in the late 2nd millennium. In Nyaunggan, Burma, bronze tools have been excavated along with ceramics and stone artefacts. Dating is still currently broad (3500–500 BC). Ban Non Wat, excavated by Charles Higham, was a rich site with over 640 graves excavated that gleaned many complex bronze items that may have had social value connected to them.

Ban Chiang, however, is the most thoroughly documented site and has the clearest evidence of metallurgy when in Southeast Asia. With a rough date range from the late 3rd millennium BC to the first millennium AD, this site alone has artefacts such as burial pottery (dating from 2100 to 1700 BC) and fragments of bronze and copper-base bangles. This technology suggested on-site casting from the very beginning. The on-site casting supports the theory that bronze was first introduced in Southeast Asia from a different country. Some scholars believe that copper-based metallurgy was disseminated from northwest and central China south and southwest via areas such as Guangdong province and Yunnan province and finally into southeast Asia around 1000 BC. Archaeology also suggests that Bronze Age metallurgy may not have been as significant a catalyst in social stratification and warfare in Southeast Asia as in other regions, and that social distribution shifted away from chiefdom-states to a heterarchical network. Data analyses of sites such as Ban Lum Khao, Ban Na Di, Non-Nok Tha, Khok Phanom Di, and Nong Nor have consistently led researchers to conclude that there was no entrenched hierarchy.

Vietnam
Dating back to the Neolithic Age, the first bronze drums, called the Dong Son drums, were uncovered in and around the Red River Delta regions of Northern Vietnam and Southern China. These relate to the Dong Son culture of Vietnam.

Archaeological research in Northern Vietnam indicates an increase in rates of infectious disease following the advent of metallurgy; skeletal fragments in sites dating to the early and mid-Bronze Age evidence a greater proportion of lesions than in sites of earlier periods. There are a few possible implications of this. One is the increased contact with bacterial and/or fungal pathogens due to increased population density and land clearing/cultivation. The other one is decreased levels of immunocompetence in the Metal Age due to changes in diet caused by agriculture. The last is that there may have been an emergence of infectious diseases that evolved into a more virulent form in the metal period.

Europe
A few examples of named Bronze Age cultures in Europe in roughly relative order. (Dates are approximate, consult linked articles for details)

 *  The chosen cultures overlapped in time and the indicated periods do not fully correspond to their estimated extents.

Southeast Europe

Radivojevic et al. (2013) reported the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site securely dated to c. 4650 BC as well as 14 other artefacts from Serbia and Bulgaria dated to before 4000 BC, showing that early tin bronze was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East. The production of complex tin bronzes lasted for about 500 years in the Balkans. The authors reported that evidence for the production of such complex bronzes disappears at the end of the 5th millennium, coinciding with the "collapse of large cultural complexes in north-eastern Bulgaria and Thrace in the late fifth millennium BC". Tin bronzes using cassiterite tin were reintroduced to the area some 1500 years later.

The oldest golden artefacts in the world (4600 – 4200 BC) were found in the Necropolis of Varna. These artefacts are on display in the Varna Archaeological Museum

The Dabene Treasure was unearthed from 2004 to 2007 near Karlovo, Plovdiv Province, central Bulgaria. The whole treasure consists of 20,000 gold jewellery items from 18 to 23 carats. The most important of them was a dagger made of gold and platinum with an unusual edge. The treasure was dated to the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Scientists suggest that the Karlovo valley used to be a major crafts centre that exported golden jewellery all over Europe. It is considered one of the largest prehistoric golden treasures in the world.

Aegean

The Aegean Bronze Age began around 3200 BC, when civilizations first established a far-ranging trade network. This network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with tin to produce bronze. Bronze objects were then exported far and wide and supported the trade. Isotopic analysis of tin in some Mediterranean bronze artefacts suggests that they may have originated from Great Britain.

Knowledge of navigation was well-developed by this time and reached a peak of skill not exceeded (except perhaps by Polynesian sailors) until 1730 when the invention of the chronometer enabled the precise determination of longitude.

The Minoan civilization based in Knossos on the island of Crete appears to have coordinated and defended its Bronze Age trade. Ancient empires valued luxury goods in contrast to staple foods, leading to famine.

Aegean collapse

Bronze Age collapse theories have described aspects of the end of the Bronze Age in this region. At the end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean region, the Mycenaean administration of the regional trade empire followed the decline of Minoan primacy. Several Minoan client states lost much of their population to famine and pestilence. This would indicate that the trade network may have failed, preventing the trade that would previously have relieved such famines and prevented illness caused by malnutrition. It is also known that in this era, the breadbasket of the Minoan empire—the area north of the Black Sea—also suddenly lost much of its population and thus probably some capacity to cultivate crops. Drought and famine in Anatolia may have also led to the Aegean collapse by disrupting trade networks, therefore preventing the Aegean from accessing bronze and luxury goods.

The Aegean collapse has been attributed to the exhaustion of the Cypriot forests causing the end of the bronze trade. These forests are known to have existed in later times, and experiments have shown that charcoal production on the scale necessary for the bronze production of the late Bronze Age would have exhausted them in less than fifty years.

The Aegean collapse has also been attributed to the fact that as iron tools became more common, the main justification for the tin trade ended, and that trade network ceased to function as it did formerly. The colonies of the Minoan empire then suffered drought, famine, war, or some combination of the three, and had no access to the distant resources of an empire by which they could easily recover.

The Thera eruption occurred c. 1600 BC, 110 km north of Crete. Speculation includes that a tsunami from Thera (more commonly known today as Santorini) destroyed Cretan cities. A tsunami may have destroyed the Cretan navy in its home harbour, which then lost crucial naval battles; so that in the LMIB/LMII event (c. 1450 BC) the cities of Crete burned and the Mycenaean civilization took Knossos over. If the eruption occurred in the late 17th century BC (as most chronologists now believe) then its immediate effects belong to the Middle to Late Bronze Age transition, and not to the end of the Late Bronze Age, but it could have triggered the instability that led to the collapse first of Knossos and then of Bronze Age society overall. One such theory highlights the role of Cretan expertise in administering the empire, post-Thera. If this expertise was concentrated in Crete, then the Mycenaeans may have made political and commercial mistakes in administering the Cretan empire.

Archaeological findings, including some on the island of Thera, suggest that the centre of the Minoan civilization at the time of the eruption was actually on Thera rather than on Crete. According to this theory, the catastrophic loss of the political, administrative and economic centre due to the eruption, as well as the damage wrought by the tsunami to the coastal towns and villages of Crete precipitated the decline of the Minoans. A weakened political entity with a reduced economic and military capability and fabled riches would have then been more vulnerable to conquest. Indeed, the Santorini eruption is usually dated to c. 1630 BC, while the Mycenaean Greeks first enter the historical record a few decades later, c.  1600 BC. The later Mycenaean assaults on Crete (c.  1450 BC) and Troy (c.  1250 BC) would have been a continuation of the steady encroachment of the Greeks upon the weakened Minoan world.

Central Europe
In Central Europe, the early Bronze Age Unetice culture (2300–1600 BC) includes numerous smaller groups like the Straubing, Adlerberg and Hatvan cultures. Some very rich burials, such as the one located at Leubingen with grave gifts crafted from gold, point to an increase of social stratification already present in the Unetice culture. All in all, cemeteries of this period are small and rare. The Unetice culture was followed by the middle Bronze Age (1600–1200 BC) tumulus culture, characterized by inhumation burials in tumuli (barrows). In the eastern Hungarian Körös tributaries, the early Bronze Age first saw the introduction of the Mako culture, followed by the Otomani and Gyulavarsand cultures.

The late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (1300–700 BC) was characterized by cremation burials. It included the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland (1300–500 BC) that continues into the Iron Age. The Central European Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (700–450 BC).

Important sites include:
 * Biskupin (Poland)
 * Nebra (Germany)
 * Vráble (Slovakia)
 * Zug-Sumpf, Zug, Switzerland

German prehistorian Paul Reinecke described Bronze A1 (Bz A1) period (2300–2000 BC: triangular daggers, flat axes, stone wrist-guards, flint arrowheads) and Bronze A2 (Bz A2) period (1950–1700 BC: daggers with metal hilt, flanged axes, halberds, pins with perforated spherical heads, solid bracelets) and phases Hallstatt A and B (Ha A and B).

Southern Europe
The Apennine culture (also called Italian Bronze Age) is a technology complex of central and southern Italy spanning the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age proper. The Camuni were an ancient people of uncertain origin (according to Pliny the Elder, they were Euganei; according to Strabo, they were Rhaetians) who lived in Val Camonica—in what is now northern Lombardy—during the Iron Age, although groups of hunters, shepherds, and farmers are known to have lived in the area since the Neolithic.

Located in Sardinia and Corsica, the Nuragic civilization lasted from the early Bronze Age (18th century BC) to the 2nd century AD, when the islands were already Romanized. They take their name from the characteristic Nuragic towers, which evolved from the pre-existing megalithic culture, which built dolmens and menhirs.

The towers are unanimously considered the best-preserved and largest megalithic remains in Europe. Their purpose is still debated: some scholars consider them monumental tombs, others as Houses of the Giants, other as fortresses, ovens for metal fusion, prisons, or, finally, temples for a solar cult. Around the end of the 3rd millennium BC, Sardinia exported to Sicily a culture that built small dolmens, trilithic or polygonal shaped, that served as tombs, as in the Sicilian dolmen of "Cava dei Servi". From this region, they reached Malta and other countries of Mediterranean basin.

The Terramare was an early Indo-European civilization in the area of what is now Pianura Padana (in northern Italy) before the arrival of the Celts, and in other parts of Europe. They lived in square villages of wooden stilt houses. These villages were built on land, but generally near a stream, with roads that crossed each other at right angles. The whole complex was of the nature of a fortified settlement. The Terramare culture was widespread in the Pianura Padana, especially along the Panaro river, between Modena and Bologna, and in the rest of Europe. The civilization developed in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, between the 17th and the 13th centuries BC.

The Castellieri culture developed in Istria during the Middle Bronze Age. It lasted for more than a millennium, from the 15th century BC until the Roman conquest in the 3rd century BC. It takes its name from the fortified boroughs (Castellieri, Friulian: cjastelir) that characterized the culture.

The Canegrate culture developed from the mid-Bronze Age (13th century BC) until the Iron Age in the Pianura Padana, in what are now western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont, and Ticino. It takes its name from the township of Canegrate, where, in the 20th century, some fifty tombs with ceramics and metal objects were found. The Canegrate culture migrated from the northwest part of the Alps and descended to Pianura Padana from the Swiss Alps passes and the Ticino.

The Golasecca culture developed starting from the late Bronze Age in the Po plain. It takes its name from Golasecca, a locality next to the Ticino, where, in the early 19th century, abbot excavated its first findings (some fifty tombs with ceramics and metal objects). Remains of the Golasecca culture span an area of about 20000 km2 south to the Alps, between the Po, Sesia, and Serio rivers, dating from the 9th to the 4th century BC.

Great Britain

In Great Britain, the Bronze Age is considered to have been the period from around 2100 to 750 BC. Migration brought new people to the islands from the continent. Tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicates that at least some of the migrants came from the area of modern Switzerland. Another example site is Must Farm near Whittlesey, host to the most complete Bronze Age wheel ever to be found. The Beaker culture displayed different behaviours from earlier Neolithic people, and cultural change was significant. Integration is thought to have been peaceful, as many of the early henge sites were seemingly adopted by the newcomers. The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Britain at this time. Additionally, the climate was deteriorating; where once the weather was warm and dry it became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, forcing the population away from easily defended sites in the hills and into the fertile valleys. Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands and appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel-Rimbury culture began to emerge in the second half of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1400–1100 BC) to exploit these conditions. Devon and Cornwall were major sources of tin for much of western Europe and copper was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in northern Wales. Social groups appear to have been tribal but with growing complexity and hierarchies becoming apparent.

The burials, which until this period had usually been communal, became more individual. For example, whereas in the Neolithic a large chambered cairn or long barrow housed the dead, Early Bronze Age people buried their dead in individual barrows (commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as tumuli), or sometimes in cists covered with cairns.

The greatest quantities of bronze objects in England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire, with the most important finds recovered in Isleham (more than 6500 pieces). Alloying of copper with zinc or tin to make brass or bronze was practised soon after the discovery of copper itself. One copper mine at Great Orme in North Wales, reached a depth of 70 metres. At Alderley Edge in Cheshire, carbon dating has established mining at around 2280 to 1890 BC (95% probability). The earliest identified metalworking site (Sigwells, Somerset) came much later, dated by globular urn-style pottery to approximately the 12th century BC. The identifiable sherds from over 500 mould fragments included a perfect fit of the hilt of a sword in the Wilburton style held in Somerset County Museum.

Atlantic Bronze Age

The Atlantic Bronze Age as cultural geographic region is a cultural complex (c. 2100-/800/700 cal. BC) that includes different cultures in the contex of the Atlantic Iberian Peninsula (Portugal, Andalucía, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, País Vasco, Navarra and Castilla and León), the Atlantic France, Britain and Ireland, while the Atlantic Bronze Age as cultural complex of the final phase of the Bronze Age period is dated between c. 1350 and 700 BC. It is marked by economic and cultural exchange. Commercial contacts extend to Denmark and the Mediterranean. The Atlantic Bronze Age was defined by many distinct regional centres of metal production, unified by a regular maritime exchange of products.

Ireland
The Bronze Age in Ireland commenced around 2000 BC when copper was alloyed with tin and used to manufacture Ballybeg type flat axes and associated metalwork. The preceding period is known as the Copper Age and is characterised by the production of flat axes, daggers, halberds and awls in copper. The period is divided into three phases: Early Bronze Age (2000–1500 BC), Middle Bronze Age (1500–1200 BC), and Late Bronze Age (1200–c. 500 BC). Ireland is known for a relatively large number of Early Bronze Age burials. The country's stone circles and stone rows were built during this period.

One of the characteristic types of artefacts of the Early Bronze Age in Ireland is the flat axe. There are five main types of flat axes: Lough Ravel crannog (c. 2200 BC), Ballybeg (c.  2000 BC), Killaha (c.  2000 BC), Ballyvalley (c.  2000–1600 BC), Derryniggin (c.  1600 BC), and a number of metal ingots in the shape of axes.

Northern Europe
The Bronze Age in Northern Europe spans the entire 2nd millennium BC, (Unetice culture, Urnfield culture, Tumulus culture, Terramare culture and Lusatian culture) lasting until c. 600 BC. The Northern Bronze Age was both a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, c.  1700–500 BC, with sites as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of written sources. It was followed by the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

Even though Northern European Bronze Age cultures came relatively late, and came into existence via trade, sites present rich and well-preserved objects made of wool, wood and imported Central European bronze and gold. Many rock carvings depict ships, and the large stone burial monuments known as stone ships suggest that shipping played an important role. Thousands of rock carvings depict ships, most probably representing sewn plank-built canoes for warfare, fishing, and trade. These may have a history as far back as the neolithic period and continue into the Pre-Roman Iron Age, as shown by the Hjortspring boat. There are many mounds and rock carving sites from the period. Numerous artefacts of bronze and gold are found. No written language existed in the Nordic countries during the Bronze Age. The rock carvings have been dated through comparison with depicted artefacts.

Eastern Europe
The Yamnaya culture (c.3300–2600 BC) was a Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe, and is associated with early Indo-Europeans. It was followed on the steppe by the Catacomb culture (c. 2800–2200 BC) and the Poltavka culture (c.2800–2200 BC). The closely-related Corded Ware culture in the forest-steppe region to the north (c. 3000–2350 BC) spread eastwards with the Fatyanovo culture (c.2900–2050 BC), which subsequently developed into the Abashevo culture (c.2200–1850 BC) and the Sintashta culture (c. 2200–1750 BC). The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials and there is earlier evidence for chariot use in the Abashevo culture. The Sintashta culture expanded further eastwards into central Asia becoming the Andronovo culture, whilst the Srubnaya culture (c.1900–1200 BC) continued the use of chariots in eastern Europe.

Caucasus
Arsenical bronze artefacts of the Maykop culture in the North Caucasus have been dated to around the 4th millennium BC. This innovation resulted in the circulation of arsenical bronze technology through southern and eastern Europe.

Sub-Saharan Africa
Iron and copper smelting appeared around the same time in most parts of Africa. As such, most African civilizations outside Egypt did not experience a distinct Bronze Age. Evidence for iron smelting appears earlier or at the same time as copper smelting in Nigeria c. 900–800 BC, Rwanda and Burundi c. 700–500 BC and Tanzania c. 300 BC.

There is a longstanding debate about whether both copper and iron metallurgy were independently developed in sub-Saharan Africa or introduced from the outside across the Sahara Desert from North Africa or the Indian Ocean. Evidence for theories of independent development and outside introduction are scarce and the subject of active scholarly debate. Scholars have suggested that both the relative dearth of archeological research in sub-Saharan Africa as well as long-standing prejudices have limited or biased our understanding of pre-historic metallurgy on the continent. One scholar characterized the state of historical knowledge: "To say that the history of metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa is complicated is perhaps an understatement."

West Africa
Copper smelting took place in West Africa prior to the appearance of iron smelting in the region. Evidence for copper smelting furnaces was found near Agadez, Niger that has been dated as early as 2200 BC. However, evidence for copper production in this region before 1000 BC is debated. Evidence of copper mining and smelting has been found at Akjoujt, Mauretania that suggests small scale production c. 800 to 400 BC.

Americas
The Moche civilization of South America independently discovered and developed bronze smelting. Bronze technology was developed further by the Incas and widely used both for utilitarian objects and for sculpture. A later appearance of limited bronze smelting in western Mexico suggests either contact of that region with Andean cultures or separate discovery of the technology. The Calchaquí people of northwestern Argentina had bronze technology.

Trade
Trade and industry played a major role in the development of Bronze Age civilizations. With artefacts of the Indus Valley civilization found in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, it is clear that these civilizations were not only in touch with one another, but also trading. Early long-distance trade was limited almost exclusively to luxury goods like spices, textiles, and precious metals. Not only did this make cities with ample amounts of these products extremely rich, but it also led to an intermingling of cultures for the first time in history.

Trade routes were not just on land. The first and most extensive trade routes were along rivers such as the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, which led to the growth of cities on the banks of these rivers. The later domestication of camels also helped encourage trade routes overland, linking the Indus Valley with the Mediterranean. This further led to towns sprouting up everywhere there was a pit-stop or caravan-to-ship port.

title: Bronze Age