Maison DemanHistoire familiale

Family history · Hundred Years’ War

Agincourt 1415 — Two men of De La Hamaide in the battle

Two men bearing the same name vanished in the disaster. Some family trees call them father and son; the surviving evidence requires a more careful story.

Agincourt · Pas-de-Calais25 October 1415Prepared 8 September 2026
BJohn IV’s death documentedCThierri’s death and parentage compiledOpenFather-son link unprovenOpenDe La Hamaide–Jacquet link to document

Audio version · English

Listen to the story

The battle and the fate of two men of De La Hamaide.

On 25 October 1415, in a waterlogged field in northern France, King Henry V of England’s army inflicted one of the Hundred Years’ War’s most famous disasters upon French chivalry. Among the dead appears a name that also belongs to our family history: De La Hamaide.

Medieval illumination of the Battle of Agincourt
The Battle of Agincourt. Illumination from the Vigils of Charles VII, c. 1484, BnF Français 5054 — public domain.

John IV, a knight of Hainault

John IV of De La Hamaide, lord of La Hamaide, Condé and Ronse, was a knight, councillor and chamberlain to the Duke of Burgundy. Medieval lists of the dead place him among the leading lords of Hainault killed at Agincourt. An official French heritage record also remembers his death in the battle.

Thierri, the other De La Hamaide fate

Genealogies also name Thierri, bastard of De La Hamaide, born around 1383, husband of Marie de Bassy and associated with the Chéreng branch. They report that he died at Agincourt on the same day. This is less securely established than John’s death: in our file it rests on genealogical compilations and local history rather than a recovered original record.

The Battle of Agincourt in a chronicle by Monstrelet
Agincourt in a copy of Enguerrand de Monstrelet’s Chronicle, c. 1495 — Leiden University Library, CC BY 4.0.

Mud, arrows and close combat

After days of rain, the French men-at-arms advanced over heavy ground confined between two woods. English archers harried their progress, ranks were crushed together and the battle became a deadly mêlée. We know John IV died there, but no source we found describes his final moments or Thierri’s. To give either man last words or a precise death would be to invent what the evidence does not preserve.

Two men, one memory

Even without forcing their relationship, the image remains powerful: two men of De La Hamaide are associated with the same fatal day. John IV belonged to the senior line, while Thierri begins, in the preserved reconstruction, a bastard line leading towards Chéreng. Agincourt has not yielded all its secrets, but it left a lasting wound in the history of De La Hamaide.