The Auld Alliance on the battlefield
The Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 is remembered as one of England's greatest victories — Henry V's outnumbered army destroying the flower of French chivalry. What is less well known is that Scots fought and died at Agincourt, not alongside the English but against them, fighting for France under the banner of the Auld Alliance.
The Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, first formalised in 1295, was the longest alliance in European history. Its logic was simple: Scotland and France shared a common enemy in England. When one was attacked, the other would create a diversion. Scottish soldiers had fought alongside the French since the Wars of Independence, and French troops had served in Scotland. By 1415, Scots serving in France were a well-established tradition.
At Agincourt, Scottish knights and men-at-arms served in the French army alongside the great lords of France. They advanced through the mud of the narrow field between the woods of Tramecourt and Agincourt, into the devastating hail of English arrows. The longbow — the weapon that had already brought Scotland to grief at Dupplin Moor, Halidon Hill, and Homildon Hill — proved equally lethal against the Franco-Scottish army. The heavily armoured knights, struggling through churned mud, were cut down in their hundreds before they could close with the English line.
The defeat at Agincourt did not end Scottish involvement in France — quite the opposite. In the years that followed, Scottish soldiers poured across the Channel to fight for the French Dauphin. At the Battle of Baugé in 1421, a Scottish army handed the English their first major defeat, killing the Duke of Clarence. Scottish soldiers, fighting under the Auld Alliance, would continue to serve France for over a century, earning a reputation as some of the finest soldiers in Europe.