Background on the Name "Agincourt"

 

In 1415, Henry V of England declared war on France to reclaim the province of Burgundy, which had previously been deeded to England through marriage years before.  Eventually, the expedition took him to the town of Agincourt (pronounced "ah-jin-cour") in France, where Charles VI marshaled his vastly superior force of arms against him.

 

Henry, recognizing that his small army of a few thousand soldiers was outnumbered and exhausted, used strategy and technology to achieve an extraordinary victory.  Winston Churchill has described this victory as Britain's greatest hour of glory.

 

Henry lined up his small force on the far side of a very sodden marsh and baited the French to charge his lines.  Filled with the previous evenings premature celebration of a not-to-be-had French victory, the French arrogantly charged nearly a mile across the bog, weighted down by an average of more than 40 pounds of armor, which for men who stood on average only 5'6" tall, was a great burden. Much of the  bog was underwater and the mud made progress very difficult.  Horses and men exhausted themselves in the effort.

 

While they were crossing, Henry had his archers, using long bows that could shoot nearly 100 yards farther than the French bows with stout oak arrows that pierced the French armor, pummel the French with literally thousands of arrows.  By the time the French got within fighting range, they had lost several thousand out of their 8-10,000 men and horses.  When the French finally reached the English lines, the English were comparatively fresh and fell upon the French with a vengeance, slaughtering hundreds under the sword. 

 

In the end, Henry lost a few hundred men while the French losses, depending on the account you believe, were at least 5,000 and as high as 7,500 including more than 500 "nobles".  The French gave up all of Burgundy and Charles VI gave the hand of his daughter to Henry in marriage.  The irony is that Henry died only a few years later of dysentery while in France and his son, Henry VI, lost Burgundy again to the French through a series of inept machinations gone-wrong. 

 

I chose the name Agincourt for our company because the core of our services is to employ effective strategy and leading-edge technology to accomplish great objectives for our clients.  Our name serves as a reminder that great objectives can be achieved in the face of overwhelming odds when leaders harvest the greatest value from the creative and effective blending of strategy and technology.