Agincourt
Most are not familiar with the battle of Agincourt, and the vast majority of those who recognize the name link it to Shakespeare’s play, Henry V and the Saint Crispin’s Day speech:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Great piece of psy-ops, that speech, and it has been perverted by a host of people since it was written. Every time you need people to do something incredibly stupid that will probably end in their death, haul out Saint Crispin’s Day.
Actually if you study military history, this was a significant battle in the transformation of military strategy. It is noted as the beginning of the end for the heavily armored knight in battle.
One of the reasons that Henry won the battle was the effectiveness of the Welsh longbow in the hands of skilled archers. They were able to reduce the number of knights, usually by taking out their horses, and neutralize them [with the help of copious amounts of mud at the scene of the battle].
It was actually the production of more powerful crossbows and finally firearms that finished the heavy cavalry, but the decline began at Agincourt, if for no other reason than so many knights died.
Lebanon is beginning to look like an “Agincourt moment”. The light infantry of Hezbollah has held against air supremacy and armor, the gospel of the large armies.
The IDF has talked about AT-13 Metis and AT-14 Kornet-E anti-tank missile systems, but I’m going to guess that someone has developed a better anti-tank round for the RPG-29, because the Metis and Kornet systems don’t mesh with Hezbollah tactics. I think the after action debriefs are going to show multiple hits by Hezbollah, at short range, and targeting the weak points of the Israeli Merkava tank.
The better round for the RPG-29 may be the “longbow” that diminishes the effectiveness of the modern cavalry, and will require a review of tactics.
Olmert and the Shrubbery may not want to admit that Hezbollah won, but the Israelis coming off the line don’t share that view. If you’ve just gotten your butt kicked, you don’t want to listen to your commanders talk about what wimps the enemy is. If the enemy is such a pushover, what does that make you?
Has anyone told Ehud that reducing the enemy’s materiel by letting him fire 3000 rockets into Israel is not a winning concept?
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Lebanon is beginning to look like an “Agincourt moment”. The light infantry of Hezbollah has held against air supremacy and armor, the gospel of the large armies.
I wonder what their Agincourt Carol would sound like. There’s not a lot of 15th-century music that haunts me, but the most famous setting of that text certainly does.
Henry’s army didn’t suffer the losses that Hezbollah did, but there was an even greater disparity between the two sides.
It will be a grim song indeed, but it will be song among Arabs as this will be considered a great victory and will be used to provoke even more death and destruction.