EnviroSpin Watch

"Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Men of Monmouth win second Battle of Agincourt - French windfarm scythed down".....

The people of Monmouth and the Welsh longbowmen have done it again: the Battle of Agincourt (Azincourt) has been won for a second time, just as Henry V (r.1413 - 1422) did nearly 600 years ago. The Monmouth-born king famously used the devastating power of his outnumbered archers to destroy a huge French army in 1415. But instead of the French Army, the opponent this time round was a dire windfarm development near to the ancient and renowned battlefield: 'One in the eye for French developers' (The Western Mail, January 4):

"Almost six hundred years ago, Agincourt was the place where Gwent bowmen turned the tide of war against the French with their superior weaponry and skills.

Traditional longbowmen were caught up in the new Battle of Agincourt, but this time it was linked to French bureaucracy, not bloodshed....."

So, once more it was: Go lads, get 'em! "Cry 'God for Harry! NO WINDFARMS and Saint George!'"

"O for pity,--we shall much disgrace,
With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
Right ill dispos'd in brawl ridiculous,
The name of Agincourt."

The first Battle of Agincourt was, of course, famously fought on St. Crispian's Day, October 25, 1415, as part of the Hundred Years' War between the small army of King Henry V of England (Hurrah!) and that of Charles VI of France (Boo!), the latter under the command of The Constable, Charles d'Albret, and French noblemen of the Armagnac party.

Before the battle, Henry V gave a soul-stirring speech to rally his troops - a speech triumphantly adapted by Shakespeare in King Henry V (and somewhat less resoundingly by nearly every battle-theatre commander since). The English prevailed against the heavily-armoured French cavalry (Hats in the air!), which floundered in the cloying mud and which was scythed down under a hail of arrows.

The battle was fought out in a little defile formed by the wood of Agincourt and that of Tramecourt.

But today, a second rash assault afflicted these quiet and noble fields. So here, with consumate apologies to the Bard, I have re-written the wondrously dark speech made on the night before that first great battle.....

"Now entertain conjecture of a time
When whirring turbines and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From pile to pile, though the foul womb of night,
The hum of bladed beating's noisy sounds,
That the fix'd sentinels almost receive
The sleepless thumping of each other's watch.
Blade answers blade, and through these, sharpened, slice
Birds, small and large, slash-slaughtered in a trice;
Turbine faces turbine, in high and boastful whines
Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the land
The despoilers, accomplishing the towers,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation."

Thus, for a second time our famed longbowmen went into the breach. And it seems that they still had "stomach for the fight" to halt these "four or five most vile and ragged foils" from ruining so famous and so evocative a landscape.

Bravo lads! Medals all round.

Wind farms are the curse of the age, the spawn of 'global warming' hysteria.

Philip, stiffening his sinews (with age, sadly). "Some wine, wench - 'Hi! Falstaff? Bardolph?' Oh dear! They're dead!" [Images in the public domain: from Wikipedia. The lovely picture of the Battle of Agincourt is a C15th miniature]