[Iain Ritchie]

At the time of Azincourt, did the english and french differ much in armour styles?
Was a certain style adopted by one side and not the other, or was it just a mish mash of styles?

Thank you for your input.

[Nathan Quarantillo]

well actually, at Agincourt, most of the English were longbowmen, and didn't have plate armour. but neither England or France were major producers of armour, and for the most part were copying Italian or German styles of plate. so no side would have any big distinctions in their armour. It had been so for centuries. Telling sides apart is the concern of heraldry.

[Rob Kelly]

Just a heads-up, "Azincourt" is as proper a spelling as "Agincourt."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azincourt
http://www.americansinfrance.net/attractions/Agincourt.cfm

[Nathan Quarantillo]

Azincourt. Is that the original french spelling or something of that manner? I just had never encountered that spelling before, so I assumed it was a typo.

[Fabrice Cognot]

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

At the time of Agincourt, many of the less well heeled and many of the older men-at-arms on both sides were wearing bacinets with aventails, pairs-of-plates, and hourglass gauntlets. The English seemed to have had a preference for wearing sabatons, but the French often went without, even when they could easily have afforded them. It is when it comes to those with the most up to date equipment that the greatest differences would be noted. The English cutting-edge stuff is very uniform, an alwhite armour with a bacinet with a plate gorget over the aventail that makes the whole thing look very like a grand bacinet but allows the helm to move independently of the gorget (a sort of ancestor of the true grand bacinet, I believe, and where the grand bacinet came from, when someone got the idea of riveting the gorget to the helm for tournament use), single piece breastplates with long faulds, spaudlers, and often gauntlets with wrist articulations. The French cutting edge stuff, on the other hand, is heavily impacted by Italian armour, as most of their best plate makers are ethnic Italians. They would often have cuirasses like the Churburg 18 (Mann) with deep faulds attached by diminutive lower breastplates or plackarts (if you want to call them that), sometimes with early asymmetrical pauldrons, true grand bacinets (which allow the wearer's heads to move about inside the helm, which does not contact the wearer's head), sometimes a bacinet with a gorget resembling the English one in function (but not nearly as nicely shaped) only with the shape being a basic cylinder with flanges at the bottom, and some possibly (I know this was done later, but need to pin down examples this early) warhats of their distinctive style (think of the engraved hat of Charles VI in the Louvre) with a bevor, very much like the Spanish. The poleyns of their legharness would most likely be constructed like the Chartres child's armour or with that odd underlapped lame with the knee bubble forged into it that does the same thing, unlike the English, which would have knees articulated in the way we are all used to.

The first pic is of English origin, the second French (it is dated about 1421, but it gets the point across. Harmand's book, Jeanne d'Arc; ses Costumes son Armure has a good section on armour that still holds up well).