Battle of Agincourt (detail) by Graham Turner. Source: Studio 88
Today is St Crispin’s Day. Crispin was a Gaulish Christian martyred in the third century. He was also patron saint of shoe makers. The cobblers celebrated their favourite martyr by spending most of his feast day getting drunk. Apparently:-
The twenty fifth of October,
Cursed be the cobbler who goes to bed sober.
Now shoemakers will have a Frisken,
All in honour of St Crispin.
The feast day was made famous and turned into a long-lived public holiday by the spectacular victory of a disease-ridden and heavily outnumbered army of bedraggled English and Welsh soldiers over the flower of French chivalry at the battle of Agincourt on this day in 1415. King Henry V had resurrected the old English claim to the French throne and invaded France to “take back” his kingdom. The expedition was heading for total failure until the complacent French nobles, who made up the bulk of France’s army, attacked Henry’s struggling force near Agincourt, only to be devastated by a combination of the deadly English longbows and their own military incompetence. The victory led to Henry being acknowledged as heir to the French throne at the subsequent peace treaty. The unlikely victory, popularised in Shakespeare’s play Henry V, became a source of great national pride and St Crispin’s Day was celebrated with church bells and bonfires until well into the nineteenth century, eventually being absorbed by the universal Bonfire Night.