As horrifying as the incident is, Keegan at least finds it unlikely that the prisoners were actually massacred wholesale. When you look at the actual mechanics of how such a thing would work, especially with the rest of the French army still on the field and watching, a slaughter of 6000 prisoners becomes really implausible.

For space I won’t quote Keegan’s reasoning, but here’s an excerpt from his conclusion:

> “What seems altogether more likely, therefore, is that Henry’s order, rather than bring about the prisoners’ massacre, was intended by its threat to terrorize them into abject inactivity ... Some would have been killed in the process, and quite deliberately, but we need not reckon their number in thousands, perhaps not even in hundreds.”