While trauma is a key theme, the series never revels in gratuitous violence.
It is from one of these other myriad historical clashes thatBand of Brothersderives its evocative name.
The speech itself remains one of the most powerful soliloquies in the English language.
When Henry’s force arrived at the battlefield, they were in a pitiful state.
To make matters worse,the French force that had massed to meet them vastly outnumbered the English.
This explains the significance of Henry’s “happy few” reference.
Custom image by Yailin Chacon
However, despite being outnumbered, the English won the battle in the most brutal circumstances imaginable.
The conditions made it impossible for the French soldiers to move quickly, leaving them stranded amid the onslaught.
All the while, the arrows kept falling.
The fighting was as intimate and terrifying as it’s possible to imagine.
The manner of their deaths and the conditions of the battle make Agincourt a genuinely horrifying war story.
With its depiction of warfare in northern France,Band of Brothersis another chapter in this legacy.
LikeHenry V, the point of the show is not to glorify the horror of war.
Rather, it is to celebrate the bravery, companionship, and resilience of those who fought.
Of course,Band of Brothersis not as inherently jingoist or propaganda-heavy as Shakespeare’s explicitly anti-French text.
