During the reign of his father, the young Prince Henry gained military experience fighting the Welsh during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr, and against the powerful Percy family of Northumberland.

In 1415, Henry followed in the wake of his great-grandfather, Edward III, by renewing the Hundred Years' War with France, beginning the Lancastrian phase of the conflict (1415–1453).

His first military campaign included capturing the port of Harfleur and a famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt, which inspired a proto-nationalistic fervour in England.

According to Charles Ross, he was widely praised for his personal piety, bravery, and military genius; Henry was admired even by contemporary French chroniclers.

Nonetheless, Adrian Hastings believes his militaristic pursuits during the Hundred Years' War fostered a strong sense of English nationalism and set the stage for the rise of England (later Great Britain) to prominence as a dominant global power.

[12] During this time, due to taking a liking to both literature and music, he learned to read and write in the vernacular; this made him the first English King that was educated in this regard.

He led his own army into Wales against Owain Glyndŵr and joined forces with his father to fight Henry "Hotspur" Percy at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403.

From January 1410, helped by his uncles Henry and Thomas Beaufort, legitimised sons of John of Gaunt, he had practical control of the government.

He let past differences be forgotten—the late Richard II was honourably re-interred; the young Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, was taken into favour; the heirs of those who had suffered under the last reign were restored gradually to their titles and estates.

The exception was the Southampton Plot in favour of Mortimer,[11] involving Henry, Baron Scrope, and Richard, Earl of Cambridge (grandfather of the future King Edward IV), in July 1415.

A writer of the next generation was the first to allege that Henry was encouraged by ecclesiastical statesmen to enter into the French war as a means of diverting attention from home troubles.

Old commercial disputes and the support the French had lent to Owain Glyndŵr were used as an excuse for war, while the disordered state of France afforded no security for peace.

[11] King Charles VI of France was prone to mental illness; at times he thought he was made of glass, and his eldest surviving son, Louis, Duke of Guyenne, was an unpromising prospect.

Henry may have regarded the assertion of his own claims as part of his royal duty, but a permanent settlement of the national debate was essential to the success of his foreign policy.

Thus the throne went to a distant male relative of a cadet branch of the House of Capet, Philip VI of France, resulting in the Hundred Years' War beginning in 1337.

Despite his men-at-arms' being exhausted, outnumbered and malnourished, Henry led his men into battle, decisively defeating the French, who suffered severe losses.

Cambridge historian Brett Tingley suggests that Henry ordered them killed out of concern that the prisoners might turn on their captors when the English were busy repelling a third wave of enemy troops, thus jeopardising a hard-fought victory.

The brewing nationalistic sentiment among the English people was so great that contemporary writers describe firsthand how Henry was welcomed with triumphal pageantry into London upon his return.

[25] Following the Battle of Agincourt, King Sigismund of Hungary (later Holy Roman Emperor) made a visit to Henry in hopes of making peace between England and France.

In March 1416 a raiding force of soldiers under the Earl of Dorset, Thomas Beaufort, was attacked and narrowly escaped defeat at the Battle of Valmont after a counterattack by the garrison of Harfleur.

To relieve the town, Henry sent his brother, John, Duke of Bedford, who raised a fleet and set sail from Beachy Head on 14 August.

Diplomacy successfully detached Emperor Sigismund from supporting France, and the Treaty of Canterbury — also signed in August 1416 — confirmed a short-lived alliance between England and the Holy Roman Empire.

This siege has cast an even darker shadow on the reputation of the king adding to the loss of honor following his order to slay the French prisoners at Agincourt.

The leaders of Rouen, who were unable to support and feed the women and children of the town, forced them out through the gates believing that Henry would allow them to pass through his army unmolested.

The intrigues of the French parties culminated in the assassination of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, by the Dauphin Charles's partisans at Montereau-Fault-Yonne on 10 September.

[42] Henry V is remembered by both his countrymen and his foes as a capable military commander during the war against France and is one of the most renowned monarchs in English and British history.

His victories against the French during 1417–1422 led to many romanticized depictions of Henry V as a figure of nationalism and patriotism, both in literature and in the works of Shakespeare, and in the film industry in modern times.

Henry also faced a coup orchestrated by a relative and prominent noble, Edmund Mortimer, in the Southampton Plot, and in 1415 dealt with a Yorkist conspiracy to overthrow him.

Henry V was often a figure of literary imagination and romantic interpretations, often used as a traditional character of a morally great king in the works of many writers, playwrights and dramatists.

King Henry V is a character in the video game Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War and also in the Age of Empires II: The Conquerors in which he was featured as a paladin.