Battle of Agincourt (1415)

Henry V's exhausted English army of roughly 6,000 men — many sick, outnumbered six-to-one — annihilated a French force of 36,000 on a muddy field in northern France. The English longbowmen fired so rapidly and accurately that French knights in heavy armour were cut down before they reached the English lines. The battle proved that discipline, terrain, and missile weapons could defeat sheer numerical superiority, fundamentally changing medieval warfare doctrine. Shakespeare immortalised it in Henry V with the Saint Crispin's Day speech, making Agincourt one of the most culturally enduring military victories in Western history.