Jean de Waurin or Wavrin was a medieval French chronicler and compiler, also a soldier and politician. He belonged to a noble family of Artois, and witnessed the Battle of Agincourt from the French side, but later fought on the Anglo-Burgundian side in the later stages of the Hundred Years' War. As a historian, he put together the first chronicle intended as a complete history of England, very extensive but largely undigested and uncritical. Written in French, in its second version it extends from 688 to 1471, though the added later period covering the Wars of the Roses shows a strong bias towards Burgundy's Yorkist allies. Strictly his subject is Great Britain, but essentially only England is covered, with a good deal on French and Burgundian events as well.
Coronation of Richard II of England, aged ten, in 1377. From the Recueil des croniques of Jean de Wavrin. British Library, London.
Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella, illustration from the chronicle of Jean de Wavrin.
The Battle of Agincourt was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until England was defeated by France in 1429 during the Siege of Orléans.
The Battle of Agincourt, 15th-century miniature, Enguerrand de Monstrelet
Monumental brass of an English knight wearing armour at the time of Agincourt (Sir Maurice Russell (d. 1416), Dyrham Church, Gloucestershire)
1833 reconstruction of the banners flown by the armies at Agincourt
Miniature from Vigiles du roi Charles VII. The battle of Azincourt 1415.