YOU can trace your ancestors back into medieval warfare with a glimpse across the battlefields of Agincourt.

A new database launched by the University of Reading with a Southampton academic is the first time thousands of records have come together in one place.

An early version of the database was so popular it crashed the host server when it first went online in 2006. Now new geographical information and 3,500 French soldiers have been added to the list.

Professor Adrian Bell, from Reading University, led the project with his former teacher Anne Curry.

"We had £500,000 funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council," he said.

"We employed two researchers and a phd student and all they did for three years was enter in the data.

"You have to get down the archive and type it in, it's a lengthy process.

"When you claimed to pay a soldier you had to justify it to the exchequer. We've got the names of people that were paid to fight, which isn't everyone that was at the battle.

"Without our site, searching for this information would require many visits to the National Archives of both England and France, the British Library and Bibliothèque nationale and all of the Archives Départementales in Normandy."

The database contains more than a quarter of a million soldiers from the English Army, making possibly the largest medieval database on the planet.

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