Friday, March 21, 2008
Today In History: A black day for France.
On this date in 1413, Henry V became the King of England. Almost immediately he put into operation his new plan for foreign policy, which he called the "Kill The French" Plan. It was a very successful plan: Within just a few short years he had totally pwned the King of France and married his daughter.
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Well, we'll gloss over the decade + of internal english political machinations that he engaged in, a masterful internal PR campaign, a wickedly effective diplomatic campaign ( stirring up Burgundians and the like) and the years of prep work that went into making sure there were enough horses, arrows, boots *and trained men* to allow England to take on a country with something like 5x the population and GDP.
And it was STILL a near-run thing.
Henry was a phenomena.
And the then the stupid bastard had to die young which allowed the French to oil their way out of that agreement.
On the other hand had a stable English + French Imperium survived the world would be a very different place. We'd all be speaking a form of French, for a start. (Like all of the AngloNorman nobility of Henry's time and the "english" bureaucracy.)
Argh!
Every time you post one of these things I end up losing 3-4 hours surfing around in Wikipedia.
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