A Military Historian’s Break From Tradition to Get the History Right

Historian Michael Livingston details groundbreaking work in “The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook”

Detail, engraved depiction of the Battle of Crécy, one of the most important battles of the Hundred Years' War, fought on Aug. 26, 1346. Archive Photos/Stringer/Getty Images

As with any story, over time, the facts can become distorted, turning the truth into a fantasy. In everyday conversation, we call it gossip or hearsay. Perhaps there are remnants of the truth, but the entirety of the story is far from an honest retelling. History, even academic history, can suffer from the same errant problems.

Michael Livingston, secretary general for the U.S. Commission on Military History and a professor at The Citadel, one of the nation’s six senior military academies, is known for setting historical records straight, even records that have stood or been accepted for centuries. His book “Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England,” about the Battle of Brunanburh, placed him on the map of historiography as a voice of intellectual and historical reason, as well as a strong backstop against historical hearsay.

From Agincourt to Crécy

His work on Brunanburh, a battle that took place in 937 and ultimately unified England, was one of controversy, as there were conflicting camps on exactly where the battle happened. But it was a theory about the Battle of Agincourt that caused his most recent discovery and controversy. This battle is one of the three most famous from the Hundred Years’ War between England and France and is arguably most known for being one of the settings in William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” It’s on the eve of this battle that King Henry V gives the fictional, yet memorable St. Crispin’s Day speech.