After my seeming. The tide of blood in me WHEN Henry V. had been little more than a year upon the throne, he was prompted by his own love of war, by the spirit of the English people, and by the wretched condition of the French, to demand the crown of France, as the representative of Isabella, the wife of the second Edward, in whose right Edward III. had founded his pretensions. But Henry's claims were even more absurd than Edward's : for, supposing the claims of Edward to have been admissible, the right to the crown of France would then rest not with Henry, but with Edward Mortimer, the Earl of March. Henry's project of conquest, however, was warmly encouraged by the church, and by both houses of Parliament. At a council, which met at Westminster, on the 16th of April, 1415, Henry announced his firm purpose of making a voyage, in his own proper person, to recover his dominions in France. Both bishops and lay-lords enthusiastically applauded this resolution, and assured him of their hearty co-operation. Some attempts at negotiation were made by France, to avert the coming storm, but they did not emanate from any established government; for nothing was reigning in that unhappy country but anarchy, crime, and confusion among all classes. At Winchester, as Henry was on his way to Southampton to embark, he was met by the Archbishop of Bourges, who had been despatched by the Duke of Berri, in the vain hope of preventing, for a short time, the threatened danger. But Henry told this prelate that the crown of France was his right, and that he would win it by the sword. The archbishop, who was a brave man, replied, that his master, King Charles, had made the most liberal offers, not out of fear, but from his compassion and love of peace. "If thou makest thy attempt," he continued, "he will call upon the blessed Virgin and all the saints, and then, with their aid, and the support of faithful subjects and allies, thou wilt be driven into the sea, or thou wilt be taken captive or slain." "We shall see," replied the king; and, dismissing the archbishop with many rich presents, he continued his way to Southampton. The sudden intelligence of a conspiracy against his life checked his progress, and he was detained in England for some time. At last Henry embarked and set sail from Southampton. His flcet amounted to twelve or fourteen hundred sail of vessels, from twenty to three hundred tons burthen; his army to six thousand five hundred horse, and about twenty-four thousand foot, of all kinds. On the 13th of August he anchored in the mouth of the Seine, three miles from Harfleur, a very strong fortress on the left bank of that river. On the following day he began to land troops and stores. He was never interrupted, although the operation took up three whole days; and the place of debarkation presented many difficulties. A proclamation was issued forbidding, under pain of death, all excesses against the peaceful inhabitants; and it is remarked, by contemporary (French as well as English) historians, that Henry enforced the uniform good treatment of the people of the districts through which he afterwards passed; and that, too, even when his own army were suffering the greatest privations. On the 17th he laid siege to Harfleur, which was very strongly garrisoned. The loss sustained by Henry's army was very great, not so much from the sword, or the awkward artillery of those times, as from a frightful dysentery, brought on by the damp and unwholesome situation of the place. He lost many of his great captains, and the men died by hundreds. But the garrison, despairing of relief, and suffering dreadfully from the same dysentery, capitulated after a siege of thirtysix days. The sick and wounded were then shipped for England, and Henry remained a few days in the captured town. With the small force which now remained to the King of England it seemed madness to undertake any great enterprise. It is said that a council of war recommended that he should re-embark; but Henry scorned the notion of returning to England with no honour gained, save the taking of a single town. "No," said he, 66 we must first see, by God's help, a little more of this good land of France, which is all our own." With the reductions made by the siege, by sickness, and by leaving a garrison at Harfleur, the army did not exceed nine thousand men. They were drawn out and prepared to march through the hostile provinces of Normandy, Picardy, and Artois to Calais. The march began on the 6th of October when a great force under the king and dauphin were at Rouen, and another, under the Constable of France, in Picardy, whither troops were pouring in all directions. Henry met with no great resistance in his passage through Normandy. On the 12th he reached the memorable ford of Blanche-Taque, where he hoped to pass like Edward III.; but the French, taught by experience, had resolved to defend the line of the Somme, and had fortified both banks, by driving strong palisades across the ford, and placing archers behind them. Henry made several attempts to force a passage at other points, but he was foiled; every ford was fortified, and columns of horse and foot manœuvred on the right bank, keeping in line with him as he moved up the left. A good part of his army began to feel dispirited; but at last, on the morning of the 19th, Henry had the good fortune to find a ford between Betencourt and Voyenne, which had not been staked by the people of St. Quentin. He dashed across the ford, the van-guard firmly established itself on the right bank; and then the rest of the army and the baggage got across with safety. At this the French Constable, much disheartened, fell back upon St. Pol, in Artois. King Henry quietly followed, by the same road. His small force was still more reduced by sickness, while that of the French kept increasing every day, and in a short time the whole of the royal army of France was in Artois. "They sent," says Stow, "three heralds to the King of England, to give understanding that he should not escape without battle; unto whom the king answered, "All things be done at the pleasure of God. I will keep the right way towards Calais; if our adversaries do attempt to disturb us in our journey, we think they shall not do it without their own great danger and peril." And Henry was as good as his word; he went straight on, never going out of his way, nor moving faster nor slower than he had intended. On the 24th he crossed the deep river of Ternois, and soon after came in sight of part of the enemy. He expected an attack and formed in order of battle; but the columns he saw withdrew to Azincourt. Henry then marched on to Maisoncelles, a large village, only a few bow-shots from the enemy's outposts. Provisions were brought in, the men refreshed themselves, and had some rest. rose, officers were sent out to ascertain the position of the French. All night long the English played upon their trumpets, and other martial instruments, so that the whole neighbourhood was filled with the sound of their music. Although they were very tired, and cold, and hungry, they kept up a cheerful spirit; but many of them confessed their sins, took the sacrament, and made their wills. When the moon The night was passed in a very different manner by the French army. They were very confident and very boisterous. The Constable of France struck the royal banner into the ground on the Calais road; and the other princes, knights, and barons planted their banners around it with loud acclamations. The Constable ordered them to pass the night every troop near its own standard. It was rainy and cold, but they lit large fires all along their line; and, as they warmed themselves, the soldiers passed the wine-cup round, made great boastings, and calculated the proper ransoms of the king and great barons of England, whom they made quite sure of taking prisoners on the morrow. The pages and valets of the army rode about looking for hay and straw to lay on the damp ground; horses slipped and floundered about in the clayey soil and there was a continual movement and noise, and a very evident want of discipline: horsemen were heard afar off calling to one another, but by some awkward chance there were no musical instruments to enliven their hearts. It was remarked that very few of their horses neighed during the night, which, adds Monstrelet, was considered as a very bad omen. But there were some who were not quite so confident of the result. The Duke of Berri, who had fought at Poictiers sixty years ago, and who remembered how certain the French had then been of victory, opposed the plan of giving battle altogether, and prevented the project of placing Charles in person at the head of his forces. "It is better," said the old man, "" to lose the battle than the king and the battle." At the dawn of the morning, "after prayers and supplications of the king, his priests and people, done with great devotion," Henry placed his men in battle array. He formed them into three divisions and two wings; but the divisions stood so close together that they appeared as one. The archers were placed in advance of the men-at-arms in the form of a wedge. "The night before," says old Stow, "by the advice and counsel (as it is said) of the Duke of York, the king had given commandment through his host, that every man should purvey him a stake sharp at both ends, which the Englishmen fixed in the ground before them in the field, to defend them from the oppression of horsemen." These stakes formed together an excellent rampart, in the nature of cheveux de frise, and they could be moved and fixed again in case of a change of position. The upper end of the stakes, which projected against the enemy, was tipped with iron this was a new precaution, and had never been used in war before by Christians. Henry had given orders that the baggage, the priests, the tents, and horses -for this fight, like Crecy and Poictiers, was to be fought on foot-should be placed in the rear. When these dispositions were made Henry mounted a small gray horse and rode along the lines. The brave and cheerful aspect of Henry's countenance on that morning, his martial bearing and his kingly costume, as they are described by our old chroniclers, afford a fine study for the painter. He wore on his head a bright helmet, whereupon was set a crown of gold, replete with pearl and precious stones, marvellous rich ;" and on his surcoat the arms of Eng land and France were embroidered. But what struck the English more than the gold and sparkling gems was the bright lively blue eye of the hero, whose countenance, like that of Edward the Third on the like occasion, was serenely cheerful. As he rode from rank to rank, he said a few inspiriting words to each. He told them that he had made up his mind to conquer or to die there-that England should never have to pay a ransom for him. He told the archers that the French had sworn an oath to cut off the three fingers of their right hand to unfit them for their craft; and he reminded them of the atrocities committed at Soissons, where two hundred brave Englishmen (prisoners of war) had been hanged like dogs. "We have not come," said the heroic king, "into our kingdom of France like mortal enemies; we have not burnt towns and villages; we have not outraged women and maidens like our adversaries at Soissons. They are full of sin and have no fear of God." As the king passed by one of the divisions, he heard a brave officer, Walter Hungerford, expressing a wish that some of the gallant knights and stout archers who were living in idleness in merry England could be present on the field. "No!" cried King Henry, "I would not have a single man more. If God gives us the victory, the fewer we are, the more honour; and if we lose, the less will be the loss to our country. But we will not lose; fight as you were wont to do, and before night the pride of our numberless enemies shall be humbled to the dust." The disparity of numbers was indeed appalling; the French, at the most moderate calculation, being as six to one. "God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds." But they had gained little from experience. Their leaders had crowded the immense host in fields between two woods, where there was not room to deploy or to manœuvre with any facility. They could hardly have chosen a worse position. The rain had made some of the fields impassable to horses bearing the weight of men in heavy armour. This, which was so great a difficulty to the French and which made their cavalry almost useless, presented no obstacle at all to the English foot, who were lightly accoutred, and could plant their stakes the easier into the ground from its softness. A close parallel has been drawn between the battles of Crecy and Azincourt; but in some respects they were different. The French, warned and tutored it may be by the old Duke of Berri, did not begin the action, but waited to be attacked, every man sitting down on the ground near to his own banner. King Henry had calculated on the sure and inextricable confusion of the first movement of so great a force on such close and difficult ground; and he patiently awaited their attack. During this time he distributed a little food and some wine among his men, who sat down on the ground and quietly ate their breakfasts; even as their forefathers had done on the field of Crecy. While the small and compact force of Henry was governed by one master will, the loose large multitude of the French was distracted by the conflicting opinions of many and presumptuous men. The Constable by right of his office was commander-in-chief; but there were with him many princes and others, and the Duke of Orleans, the Count of Nevers, and a host of young gentlemen who had just put on their knightly spurs, and had never earned them; and these were either impatient of the Constable's control or held contrary opinions to him, while the young and untried knights were all anxious to begin the battle and wanted to charge the English at once without any preconcerted plan. But the more cautious Constable, it appears, would fain have waited the arrival of fresh reinforcements under the Marshal de Loigny and the Duke of Brittany, who were on their march and expected in the course of a day or two. It seemed disgraceful, with such odds, to wait for more, but the Constable prevailed. As the morning wore away the Constable sent Messire Guichard Dauphin and the Sire de Helly to the English camp, with an offer of a free passage to Henry, if he would, on his part, restore Harfleur. together with all the prisoners he had made, and give up his pretensions to the throne of France. But Henry, undismayed by the large force before him, was as bold now as he had been in his own capital, and would only treat upon the same conditions. If he had allowed himself to be amused by the Constable with these negotiations a day or two longer, his army would have been starved outright. Seeing then that the French had no intention to come to him, he determined to go to them. He threw out two detachments,-the one to lie in ambush on the left flank of the French, the other to the rear, where, when the battle began, they were to set fire to a barn and house belonging to the priory of St. George at Hesdin, and so create an alarm. These manœuvres were executed; and the two detachments, both composed of archers, got to the posts appointed, and lay in wait without being perceived by the enemy. 128. THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT.-(Continued.) PENNY MAG. THIS "marvellous, fierce, and cruel battle" abounds in striking and stirring pictures; the first onset of the English is, perhaps, one of the most striking of them all. It was towards the hour of noon when Henry gave the brief but cheering order -"Banners Advance!" And then the venerable Sir Thomas Erpingham, the commander of the archers, a knight grown gray with age and honour, threw his truncheon into the air, exclaiming "Now strike !" The distance between the two armies was less than a quarter of a mile. The English came on in gallant array, until the foremost were within bow-shot of the French. Then the archers stuck their stakes in the ground before them, and set up a tremendous shout. Their loud huzzas were instantly echoed by the men that lay concealed on the left flank of the French, who, the next minute, were assailed by a tremendous shower of arrows both in front and flank. The French had few bowmen or none at all, for that weapon was considered unworthy of knightly hands, and the princes had insolently rejected the service of the burghers and other plebeians, holding that France ought to be defended only by men of gentle blood. Messire Clignet, of Brabant, thought that he could break the English archers with the lance, and he charged with twelve hundred horse, crying "Mountjoye! St. Denis!" But the ground was soft and slippery; the flight of arrows that met them right in the face was terrific. Some were slain; some rolled horse and horseman on the field; others turned their horses' heads; and of the whole twelve hundred, not above seven score followed their chiefs up to the English front, where the archers, instead of wearing steel armour, had even thrown aside their leathern jackets that they might have a freer use of their nervous arms. But between the defence of the sharp stakes, and the incessant flight of their arrows, very few of the French lances reached those open breasts. Such of the knights as stood their ground, stooped their heads as the arrows went through their vizors; confused and blinded, they scarcely knew what they were doing. They lost the command of their horses, which, wounded in many places, became mad with pain, and galloped back, joining the other fugitives, and breaking the first division of the French army. Three horses only penetrated beyond the stakes, and they were instantly slain. The confusion of the French was now very great. Everywhere within reach of the arrows the French horses were capering about, or rushing wildly through the lines, doing mischief to their own army and causing the wildest uproar. Columns got mixed; the words of command |