# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 70

CHAPTER LXX.
The short reign of Henry V. is like a chapter of romance. It is the history of the life of a prince who was especially a hero. Young, handsome, accomplished, not only in arms but in learning, skilled in and fond of music, valorous, chivalrous, generous, and successful to the very height of human glory in arms, he lived beloved and died young, the pride of his native country, whose martial fame he raised above that of all others, and the wonder of the world at large. He is one of those rare sovereigns who have run a brief but brilliant career, which seems rather to belong to the realm of imagination and poetry, than that of common-place realities of life. Amongst the numerous tribe of heroes, the class is small, and while we involuntarily place in it Achilles, Alexander the Great, Cœur de Lion of England, Henry IV. of France, and Charles XII. of Sweden, we look almost in vain to others to add to the group. We exclude from it the adventurers inspired by the lust of universal conquest, the Genghis Khans and Napoleons; and not less so the Tells and Hofers, the champions of oppressed liberty, a very different and far nobler genus. The small section of the warrior class to which Henry of Monmouth belonged are kings of acknowledged thrones, growing up in the aspirations of heroic fame, and surrounded by all the splendour and prestige of their station, doing valorous deeds in a few years of youth and early manhood, which astonish their age, and remain the fixed stars of martial fame for ever. Henry of Monmouth is one of the fairest and noblest of the tribe; for, with all the passion for military glory and the power to achieve it, he was in a great measure free from the violent passions and savage excesses of some of them. He is a prince of whom England, regarding him as belonging to its feudal period, may be justly and greatly proud, and that without a blush and almost without a regret.
Henry V. was born at Monmouth Castle, belonging to the great estates of his mother, Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Hereford. He was born in or about the year 1388, and, therefore, was about twenty-five on ascending the throne. Various particulars of the early life of this popular prince have been carefully preserved; as that he was a sickly child, was nursed at the village of Courtfield, about six miles from his native castle, and that his nurse's name was Joan Waring, for whom he showed so much regard that he settled a pension of twenty pounds a year upon her. Even his cradle is said to be still preserved at Bristol. His mother was a lady of finished education, and is declared by Froissart to have been skilled in Latin and school divinity. Probably owing to her influence, he received a superior education also to the princes of his time. His mother died when he was but a child, but his grandmother, the old Countess of Hereford, saw that it was continued, and she had the satisfaction of living to see him the conqueror of Azincourt. He early displayed a taste for music, and was particularly fond of the harp. He was afterwards sent to Oxford, and a room is pointed out in Queen's College as that which he occupied as a student. A portrait of Henry was painted on the glass of the window, no doubt after he had become famous, with this inscription beneath it in Latin verse:—"To record the fact for ever that the Emperor of Britain, the triumphant lord of France, the conqueror of his enemies in himself, Henry V., was once the great inhabitant of this chamber." Henry was there under the tutorship of his half-uncle, Henry Beaufort, a son of John of Gaunt, by Catherine Sweynford, and afterwards Cardinal Beaufort.
When Richard II. banished his father he took charge of Henry; and Henry V., on coming to the throne, took the earliest opportunity of testifying his regard for Richard's memory. Richard continued the education of Henry in his own palace; he took him along with him on his last expedition to Ireland, and there dubbed him a knight-banneret for his bravery in a dangerous skirmish with the natives. When he was suddenly recalled to England by the return of Henry's father from his banishment, he left Henry with his cousin, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in the castle of Trim, in Westmeath. Henry of Lancaster soon sent for his son and he joined him at Chester on his march to London.
On his father's coronation he was made heir presumptive and created Prince of Wales; and when only fifteen he fought his first great battle at Shrewsbury, and there won his spurs. Though we have seen him valiantly fighting for five or six years against Owen Glendower, yet his father's jealousy of him had kept him so completely out of both the council and all state affairs, that he was obliged to amuse his active mind by those youthful dissipations and escapades which have gained him a merry ​immortality from the pen of Shakespeare. In those narratives of Prince Hal's wild life the dramatic poet, however, appears to have invented little; though, for obvious reasons, he has given other names and characteristics to some of the prince's companions. Even where he is made to assist in a robbery at Gadshill, there appears to have been nothing introduced but what was perfectly historical. Henry IV. was not only so constantly on the stretch for money himself to defray the costs of his civil contentions, but the young Prince of Wales was left so destitute of funds by the rebellion of his Welsh tenants, by the consumption of his English rents to subdue them, and by his father's parsimony, that Stowe in his Annals says:—"The prince used to disguise himself and lie in wait for the receivers of the crown lands, or of his father's patrimony, and, in the disguise of a highwayman, set upon them and rob them. In such encounters he sometimes got soundly beaten; but he always rewarded such of his father's officers who made the stoutest resistance."
He is said to have found all that amusement in the terrors and regrets of the people robbed by him and his companions, which the poet has so livingly described.
Great Seal of Henry V.
It is a curious fact that, in the place of the fictitious Sir John Falstaff, the afterwards celebrated Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, is said to have been the chief companion of the prince on these occasions; but as Sir John became the leader of the Lollards, and as in Shakespeare's time Protestantism was in the ascendant under Queen Elizabeth, a new character was substituted, and adorned with the name, slightly changed, of Sir John Falstaff, a knight of the same period.
The fears which Prince Henry's wildness had created in the mind of his father, who seemed to anticipate in his son another Richard II., do not appear to have been at all participated in by the people. They saw in the prince too many proofs of a clear, strong, and generous spirit to doubt of his ultimate conduct. The cold and ungenerous nature of his father, his continual demands on their purses, to put down the enemies which his criminal ambition had raised around him; his murder of Richard II., and his many executions of his opponents, members of the noblest families of the realm, had completely weaned their affections from him, and they looked with the most lenient eyes on the jollities and practical jokes of his more warm-hearted son.
The manner in which Henry justified these expectations immediately on the death of his father must have been particularly flattering to the sagacious foresight of the public, and is a circumstance which a poet might conceive as a fine act of an intrinsically great mind temporarily occupied by the levities of youth, rather than one which is of frequent occurrence. On the contrary, it is of a nature as rare as it is beautiful.
We are told that the prince held his merry and even riotous court at Cheylesmore, near Coventry, an estate belonging to his duchy of Cornwall; and thither flocked the young, and, indeed, the more mature nobility, to such a degree, that that of his father was almost wholly deserted; and that Henry IV. regarded this circumstance with peculiar jealousy. Not only had the chief justice Gascoigne, as we have seen, committed the prince to confinement, but John Hornsby, the Mayor of Coventry, had done the same for some violation of the law's decorum while residing at Cheylesmore. But no sooner was his father dead than he withdrew to his closet, and spent the remainder of the day in private devotion, in reviewing his past life, and taking resolves for the future. The consequence was that in the evening he hastened to his confessor, a recluse in the church at Westminster, to whom he confided his views, and who confirmed him joyfully in his noble determination.
The world, therefore, saw him at once break like a sun from obscuring clouds, and. casting off all the habits as well as the costume of wild gaiety, stand before it a grave and wise king, "severe in youthful beauty." He summoned before him the whole troop of his dissolute companions, announced to them that the days of the jovial prince were for ever past, and those of the serious and moral king were come. He bade them take, if they could, the new pattern of his life; but, till that was ​strictly done, to appear no more in his presence. Saying this, he dismissed them with liberal proofs of his bounty; and Henry V. had as completely put off the jovial Prince of Wales as if he had never been. This was great, and novel in its greatness; but it was only the lowest step of this remarkable reform. He not only banished from him the associates of his past follies, but he called forward and distinguished by his favour and approbation all those who had discharged their duty to the state faithfully, though in doing it they had dared to disapprove of his own conduct, and even to lay him under unceremonious restraint. The base and obsequious found to their astonishment that they had lost instead of won his favour. Those who apprehended his wrath by the fulfilment of stern duties, were agreeably cheered to find themselves appreciated and advanced. The upright chief justice Gascoigne stood first and foremost in the full sunshine of his favour.
This was the second step in the scale of his wisdom and magnanimity. There was a far higher and more difficult one; but even that he ascended with the same imperial ease. He remembered with gratitude the kindness which the unfortunate Richard II. had shown him when he was a boy, the son of a banished man, at his court; and though to recognise the deposed sovereign and do justice to his memory at once condemned the usurpation of his father, and reminded the world of the flaw in his own title, such considerations did not delay his proceedings for a moment. He hastened to Langley, whither his father had had the body of Richard conveyed, and having brought it from its tomb, and laid it on a rich car of state, he conducted it with royal pomp to Westminster, where it was laid in the tomb which Richard had built for his beloved wife, "the good Queen Anne," of Bohemia, and where he had intimated his own desire to lie.
Henry V.
Not only did Henry pay this affectionate mark of regard to the wishes of the unfortunate monarch, but he attended as chief mourner, and, says Fabyan, "After a solemn torment there holden, he provided that the tapers shuld brenne daye and nyght about his grave whyle the world endureth;" with a dole ​to the poor of eleven and eightpence weekly, and twenty pounds a year on the anniversary of his death.
This proceeding has been attributed to policy rather than generosity in Henry, as trusting to convince the public by it, that Richard was actually dead; but the whole of Henry's character shows that he was far above any such miserable policy; that he was as open and straightforward in following his honest convictions as he was intrepid in despising mere state tricks; and the very next fact that we have to record proves this strikingly. Henry could afford to pay respect to a dead monarch, but a living claimant to the throne was a more formidable thing. The Earl of Marche, the true heir to the throne, was not only living, but still a young man, and had been brought up much in Henry's society. So far, however, from entertaining any jealous fear of him, like his father, he at once received him with the utmost courtesy and kindness, gave him the most unlimited freedom, and full enjoyment of all his honours and estates. He displayed the same generous disposition in reversing the attainder of the Percies, and in recalling the young Lord Percy from Scotland to the full restoration of all his titles and demesnes. Still further; all those who during his father's time had sought to recommend themselves by a ruthless zeal for the Lancastrian interests, he removed from their offices, and supplied their places by men of more honourable and independent minds, without regard to party. No conduct could have been more just and noble, and, therefore, more wise, than that of the young king; and the consequence was, that he won all hearts to him, and fixed himself as firmly on the throne as if he had been descended in the strictest course from its true kings. Amongst the very first to support him in his royal position was the Earl of Marche himself, who continued to the last his most faithful subject and attached friend.
Cradle of Henry V.—Preserved at Monmouth Castle.
But no mortal character is without its defective side, and that in Henry showed itself in regard to ecclesiastical reform. The followers of Wycliffe had now increased into a numerous body, under the name of Lollards. These followers, however, appear to have consisted chiefly of the commonalty, and to include few of the upper ranks. But amongst them was Sir John Oldcastle, as we have mentioned, a bold and able man, Sir Thomas Talbot, Sir Roger Acton, and others. Sir John Oldcastle was more commonly known as Lord Cobham, having married the heiress of that nobleman, and being called to the House of Lords in right of his wife. Lord Cobham, it appears, had, while the companion of Henry, as Prince of Wales, been so distinguished for his gaiety and giving in to all the prince's whims and wildnesses, that his enemies called him "the ruffian knight, commonly brought in by the commediants on their stage." For a century after his time he is represented as walking the boards of the theatre in the character which Shakespeare has now transferred, for the reasons we have mentioned, to Sir John Falstaff. Nay, even Shakespeare himself calls him Sir John Oldcastle in his first edition. But as the prince had reformed, so it appears had Lord Cobham also. He had embraced the principles of the Lollards, and the ability and high character of the man inspired the Church with the greatest alarm.
The Church had for ages enjoyed a profound and unquestioned sway over men's minds. Since it had established its own supremacy through much persecution and many horrors under the great pagan nations of Greece and Eome, it had held on its way with a wonderful tranquillity. But this tranquillity was based on the absence of all religious inquiry and speculation. Occasionally there had been a burst of fanaticism, as that of the Pastoureaux of Flanders, that of the Flagellants and the Bianchi of Italy; but no steady attempt to introduce the religion of the Bible. So long as the great body of the people was satisfied to leave the teaching of Christian doctrine entirely in the hands of the clergy, and to bow implicitly to the dictum of the Church, all was peace. But as the Church had, unhappily, deemed it best to retain the Bible in its own hands, and to keep the multitude practically ignorant of its contents, it was clear that whenever the time arrived, as arrive it must, that education issued from the cloister, and entered into the secular dwelling, there would arise a war of opinion which would shake the very foundations of society, and never cease till freedom of opinion had triumphed, or till mind had sunk for ever beneath the sway of ceremony and despotism. That war had now commenced. The publication of the Bible in the vernacular tongue by Wycliffe, the preaching of his doctrines by his numerous bands of poor priests, and the reflections of the people on these doctrines and their sequences, had done their work. There was a fermentation of opinion in the public mind which never could cease, if the idea of a universal and impartial Providence, the Author of all knowledge, as of all worlds, was true, till the whole mass was leavened by the exciting principle.
The commotion now produced by the recalled Lollards was the commencement of this great war, though our historians do not seem to have perceived it, which was destined to go on, through wonderful and terrible burnings, hangings, beheadings, imprisonings, scourgings, torturings; through the groans from the thumbscrew and the wedge of the iron boot; through inquisitions and star chambers, till in some countries, as Bohemia and Italy, Protestantism was exterminated: but in our country ​it had established itself at the Revolution of 1688, by the Act of Toleration, and yet, even here, not so wholly established itself, but that the conflict of opinion, though mollified and separated from, the burning stake and the dungeon, should go on, as it will go on from age to age, still stimulating inquiry, and ultimately establishing, if not uniformity of faith, at least "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."
Room in the Lollards' Tower, Lambeth Palace, in which the Reformers were confined.
The Church, startled at the new phenomenon of the laity assuming the office of self-inquiry and self-decision, and still more by the obstinacy with which the people maintained this novel function, began to punish and coerce. The prelates persecuted the reformers, and the reformers, raised to a sublime sense of their own right by a nearer approach to Christian truth, rebelled as vigorously. The war of opinion assumed its bitterest aspect. The Church, too far removed from the experience of the primitive ages, had again to learn the power of persecution to produce that which it would destroy; that to lop the boughs of religious opinion is only to strike deeper its roots; that in casting stones on a martyr, you are only piling him up a monument; that endeavouring to hew down the tree of any faith that has a sap of vitality in it, is only to scatter its seeds by every stroke of the axe, and where you level a single stem to disseminate a forest.
In a fatal hour, Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, obtained the statute De heretico comburendo, by which William Sawtre had been burnt, and now again sought to apply the same deceptive remedy. With this intent he applied to Henry for permission to indict Lord Cobham, as the head and great encourager of the sect, for heresy, and by his public execution to strike terror into the whole body of reformers. Henry, however, was too averse by nature to persecution, and too mindful of his old friendship for this nobleman, to accede at once to so violent a measure. He undertook to have some conversation with Lord Cobham on the subject himself, observing very truly to the primate that gentleness and persuasion were the best moans of conversion. He therefore called Cobham into his closet at Windsor, and exerted the knowledge which he had acquired of school divinity at Oxford to convince his friend. But Lord Cobham, fresh from the zealous perusal of the Bible itself, and from the earnest discussion of its truths amongst his Lollard associates, was more than a match for the royal casuist. He maintained the truth of his doctrines with the boldness of a man who knows that he is right, and that on questions far above all the decision of kings. It was, in fact, the very worst resolution that Henry could have come to, that of himself arguing the point with the great apostle of the new faith; for nothing so soon excites anger and resentment in the mind as religious controversy, especially where the party which has begun with high pretensions feels himself defeated. Words probably of severity arose between the king and Lord Cobham, for the latter suddenly left Windsor and withdrew to his own house of Cowling in Kent.
Henry now seems to have lost his tenderness towards his old friend in the awakened feeling of a determination to subdue where he failed to convince, and to have given Arundel permission to take his own way with the offender; for, immediately on Lord Cobham's withdrawal, there appeared proclamations ordering all magistrates to apprehend every itinerant preacher, and directing the archbishop to proceed against Cobham according to law; that is, the recent law against heresy. This alarming measure brought back Lord Cobham to Windsor, having drawn up a confession of faith, probably in conjunction with his most eminent friends. This confession still exists, subscribed by Cobham himself, and on looking it over at this time of day, one is at a loss to discover in it what any true Catholic could object to.
It begins with the Apostles' Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity, and then declares that no one can be saved unless he be a member of the Church. "Now the Church ​consists of three bodies:—1. Of the saints in heaven, who during life renounced Satan, the world, and the flesh. 2. Of the souls in purgatory, abiding the mercy of God, and a full deliverance of pain. 3. Of the Church militant, which Church is divided into three estates:—1. Of the priesthood, which ought to teach the Scripture purely, and give example of good living; 2. Of knighthood, which, having the sword, should compel the priesthood to fulfil its duty, and should seclude all false teachers; and 3. Of the common people, who ought to bear obedience to their king and civil governors, and priests."
It moreover declares that the sacraments are necessary to all believers, and that in the sacrament of the altar is contained very Christ's body and blood, that was born of the Virgin and died on the cross. "If a better faith than this," he continues, "can be taught by the word of God, the subscriber will most reverently at all times subscribe thereunto."
According to this confession, the Lollards themselves still recognised the right of compulsion by the state—to compel, at least, the priests to do their duty, and to "seclude all false teachers." This doctrine of compulsion in religious matters accordingly descended as a heritage to the reformed church, and produced its bitter fruits of persecution in all the future reigns of the reformed sovereigns, till stemmed by William III. through the Act of Toleration.
But Henry would not even receive Cobham's confession. His blood was evidently up, and in that mood he was firm as a rook. He declared that he had nothing to do with confessions of faith; they belonged to bishops: forgetting that he had just before undertaken to expound his own faith in order to convert his heretical friend. Cobham then offered, in the spirit of the times, for he was a brave and experienced soldier, to purge himself from the charge of heresy by doing battle with any adversary, Christian or infidel, who dared to accept his challenge. But Henry simply asked him whether he would submit to the decision of the bishops, which he refused; but still, like a good Catholic, offered to appeal to the Pope. Henry's only answer was to leave him to the tender mercies of Arundel, who summoned him before him, and, in conjunction with his three suffragans, the Bishops of London, Winchester, and St. David's, condemned him to be burnt.
Cobham's story, and the story of the whole case of the Lollards, is, unfortunately, told only by their enemies, and the enemies of the Reformation. We are, therefore, necessarily required to be on our guard against exaggeration on their part, and against false charges, which so readily insinuate themselves during times of heated controversy. We find his conduct described while before his prelatical judges as bold and insolent, and theirs, on the contrary, as mild and dignified. But we are not to forget that Cobham stood thore as the representative of a large, earnest, and cruelly-persecuted body; a body, three of whoso leaders—Sawtre, Thorpe, and Badley—had already been burnt, and who believed that they were suffering for "the faith as delivered to the saints;" that he must, therefore, feel himself bound to maintain a confidence befitting his position as the champion of the truth and the cause of the reformed public. It is not to be forgotten that he well knew that those who sat so mildly and in such calm dignity, sat there not to forgive, but to destroy him and all his fellows in the faith, and to exterminate them by the most terrible of deaths. It is, in this view of the question, then, impossible not to recognise in Lord Cobham, not the insolent demagogue, but the brave and undaunted defender of great principles, and of the popular liberty.
"He maintained," says Lingard, "that the Church had ceased to teach the doctrine of the Gospel from the moment that it became infected with the poison of worldly riches; that the clergy were the Antichrist; that the Pope was the head, the bishops and prelates the limbs, and the religious orders the tail of the beast. That the only true successor of St. Peter was he who most faithfully practised the virtues of St. Peter." And that then, turning to the spectators and extending his arms, he exclaimed, "Beware of the men who sit here as my judges. They will seduce both you and themselves, and will lead you to hell."
But there is that direct discrepancy between this statement and the confession just preceding it, that we must regard the latter representation as exaggerated or distorted. To appeal to the Pope and acknowledge his authority in the one, and describe him as the Antichrist and the beast in the other, is too glaringly absurd to be true of a man like Lord Cobham. The upshot, however, of the trial was, that which had been determined on from the first; after two days' hearing, in which he eloquently and heroically defended his doctrines before the whole synod of prelates and abbots, he was condemned to expiate his heresy at the stake, and meantime was committed to the Tower for safe custody. In the words of the record, he was "sweetly and modestly condemned to be burnt alive on the 10th of October." But Henry still was not prepared to acquiesce in so desperate a doom on one who had spent with him so many mirthful days. He granted the reformer a respite of fifty days; and before that time had expired, Lord Cobham had managed to escape from his prison, probably by the connivance of his lenient sovereign.
But once more at large, and in communication with his friends and confederates, Cobham became all the more active in his plans for the maintenance of the great cause. The Church had now manifested its intentions; it had shown that it was not conversion, but destruction of the whole body of the reformers that it was resolved upon; and the question, therefore, with the persecuted sect naturally was, by what means it was to prevent the fate menacing it. If we are to believe the chroniclers of the times, the Lollards resolved to anticipate their enemies, to take up arms, and to repel force by force. That seeing clearly that war to the death was determined against them by the Church, and that the king had yielded at least a tacit consent to this iniquitous policy, they came to the conclusion to kill not only the bishops, but the king and all his kin.
So atrocious a conspiracy is not readily to be credited against men who contended for a greater purity of gospel truth, nor against men of the practical and military knowledge of Lord Cobham. But over the whole of these transactions there hangs a veil of impenetrable mystery, and we can only say that the Lollards are charged with endeavouring to surprise the king and his brother at ​Eltham, as they were keeping their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the court receiving intimation of the design, and suddenly removing to Westminster; that, disappointed in this scheme, the Lollards were summoned from all quarters to march towards London, there to secure and kill all the principal clergy. They were, according to these accounts, to meet in St. Giles's Fields, on the night of the 6th of January.
The king, it is stated, being warned of this movement, gave due notice to the city, and on the day previous to the proposed meeting, the Mayor of London made various arrests of suspected persons, and amongst others of a squire of Lord Cobham's, at the sign of the "Ark," in Bishopsgate Without. The aldermen were ordered to keep strict watch each in his own ward, and at midnight Henry himself issued forth with a strong force. He is represented as being greatly alarmed for the public safety, from the popular insurrections which had lately been raging in Paris, and to which we shall presently have to draw attention. He ordered all the city gates to be closed, to keep the Lollards who were within the walls separate from those without, hastening then to the place of rendezvous.
Here again the narratives of this unaccountable affair contradict each other. One represents all the roads as being covered with the adherents of Lord Cobham, hastening to the appointed spot in St. Giles's Fields. That on asking the first overtaken who they were for, they replied by the preconcerted watchword—"For Sir John Oldcastle," and that these being seized, the rest took the alarm and fled. By other accounts there were expected to be 25,000 men collected in the same fields, but only fourscore were found there. That some of these confessed that they came there to meet Lord Cobham, but that the greater part knew nothing of any such meeting, but appeared to have been there by mere accident.
As for Lord Cobham himself, the reputed originator of this great rising, the enthusiastic advocate of Lollardism, and the practical military man, he was nowhere to be seen or heard of. Had he got wind of the king's intended visit? If so, why had he not taken prompt means to warn his followers? If he had not heard of it, where was he? Why was he not there? The whole affair bears so wild, so misty and inconsistent an aspect, that the most probable solution of it is, that the bishops, disappointed of their prey by Lord Cobham's escape, concerted this plan, and probably themselves disseminated the summonses to the meeting, in order to collect there some runaway followers of the fugitive leader, who under torture might disclose some knowledge of his retreat. If so, they failed in their main object; but they succeeded in alarming the king and the country, and giving a considerable check to Lollardism.
Henry, surprised at the non-appearance of the confidently predicted host of armed heretics, sent out detachments of his troops in all directions, and these picked up about seventy poor creatures who were tried as Lollards. Little reliance can be placed on the compulsory confessions of these prisoners. Amongst them was a silly fanatic, one William Murle, a rich brewer and maltster of Dunstable, who was said to be taken with others at Harengay Park, who had two led horses with him, trapped with gold, and a pair of gilt spurs in his bosom, expecting to be knighted by Lord Cobham in the field.
About thirty of these captives were executed on the spot of their reputed rendezvous, St. Giles's Fields, being drawn and hanged as traitors, and then burnt; amongst them Sir Thomas Acton, whose body, instead of being burnt, was buried under the gallows.
In the whole of these strange transactions there is not the slightest evidence of the presence or complicity of Lord Cobham; but the anxious object of the clergy is manifested in the proclamation which was issued on the ninth of January, offering 1,000 marks for the apprehension of Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. Sir John was nowhere to be found, for not a man would betray him; but the House of Commons had fully imbibed the intended alarm, and in their address to the king, they declared their conviction that the insurgents sought "to destroy the Christian faith, the king, the spiritual and temporal estates, and all manner of policy and law." The king would seem fully to have arrived at the same fearful conclusion; for in his proclamation he states that they meant "to destroy him, his brothers, and several of the spiritual and temporal lords, to confiscate the possessions of the Church, to secularise the religious orders, to divide the realm into confederate districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle president of the commonwealth."
The singularity of this charge, and its real nature as a plea of the hierarchy which had thus early raised the cry of "the Church in danger," in order to crush the new Church which was arising out of its own corruptions and neglects, is shown most luminously by the fact that the very Parliament which joined in the cry, and was lending itself to the suppression of the Lollards, at this very time was itself vehemently bent on the very object which they thus made criminal in the Protestant body. We find in Hall, folio 35, that on the king demanding supplies, they renewed the offer which they had made to his father to seize all the ecclesiastical revenues, and convert them to the use of the crown.
The clergy were greatly alarmed by this demonstration from their own coadjutors, and feeling that the age was ripe for compelling them to disgorge a good portion of their enormous wealth, they agreed to confer upon Henry all the alien priories which depended on capital abbeys in Normandy, and had been bequeathed to those abbeys when that province continued united to England. The great originator of Church persecution in this country, the man who first planted the stake and lit the flame around the bodies of his fellow-men for Christ's sake—a deed prolific of centuries of crime and horror, of civil dissension, and disgrace to the Christian name—was now gone to his account, and his successor Chicheley, as determined a persecutor as himself, endeavoured to turn the attention of the king by recommending him to carry war into France.
Henry was himself already meditating that very step. It was the dying advice of his father not to permit his subjects to remain long in inaction; which, in an age which possessed few resources but hunting or war to sufficiently occupy the minds of the great barons, was sure to breed domestic factions, while successful war kept them about the person of their prince, and attached ​them to him by every motive of honour and advantage. The state of France at that epoch was such as rendered a fresh attempt to conquer it most alluring, and even to suggest the idea to a monarch like Henry, chivalrous and ambitious of glory, that he was, in a manner, called by God to the salutary work of rescuing a great nation from its own suicidal frenzy, and punishing the iniquity of its people—which was actually monstrous—as the Israelites were led up to punish the corrupt inhabitants of Canaan. Having, therefore, consented to the desires of the Church, and of that unique Parliament which, while it recommended the stripping of the Church, was deadly in its resentment against any other body attempting the same thing—that all judges and magistrates should arrest any persons suspected even of Lollardism, and deliver them over to the tender mercies of the ecclesiastical courts, and that these unfortunate schismatics should, on conviction, forfeit all their lands, goods, and chattels, as in cases of felony—he addressed himself to his great enterprise, the conquest of France.
That unfortunate country was in the most deplorable condition. The dissension, the unbounded dissoluteness, and the mutual murder of the princes, seemed to have utterly debauched and demoralised the people. From head to foot, the whole body, political and social, was diseased. Every principle of honour or of rectitude, every feeling of conscience or of pity appeared extinct. Cruelty, rapacity, crime, and lawlessness were become the grand features of the nation.
French Carpenter and Maid-Servant (Fifteenth Century)
The Battle of the Carpenters and Butchers.(See page 524)
​what really appeared more obvious, that he was the appointed instrument of Providence to chastise the flagrant iniquity of the rulers of France.
That reconciliation of the Duke of Orleans to Burgundy, the murderer of his father, which we have recorded, did not last three months. After the retirement of the Duke of Clarence to Guienne, this feud broke out with fresh fury. The Count of Armagnac, the father-in-law of Orleans, one of the most clear-sighted men amongst them, indeed, never laid down his arms. Burgundy continued in Paris, and there he got up a popular faction which gradually drew the whole city into scenes and outrages which remind us of the Parisian revolutions of our own times. He made a league with the butchers, who came out with ferocious alacrity, glad of such a sanction to play a conspicuous part on that great theatre of national confusion. They adopted a white hood as their badge; and, being in alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, they also opened a communication with his revolutionary subjects in Flanders. The men of Ghent and Bruges had lost none of their taste for insurrection, and entered with delight into the scheme of revolutionising France under cover of the leadership of their own ruler. The white hood was distributed freely in those towns, and seat by delegates all over France. As the faction grew it proceeded to show its authority; and very soon the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri, the dauphin, the king himself, found themselves compelled to don the white hood, and show themselves as members of the honourable fraternity of political butchers. The judges, the barristers, the members of Parliament, the noblesse, the professors and students of the university, the clergy, the monks, every class of the community, in short, were obliged to wear the white hood, as the only livery of patriotism. A reign of terror now commenced; the whole of the populace were ranged under the white hood, and had acquired the name of Cabochiens from one of their most ferocious leaders. They had reduced the upper classes of all descriptions to an ostensible submission to their despotism, and they now began to perpetrate every species of disorder. They seized on all such of the citizens as had wealth enough to yield a heavy ransom, and, if they refused to pay freely, they threw them into prison and detained them there till their resistance gave way. Their cry through all this was for the good of la belle France. They broke into the palace, and, besides plundering it, they carried away in triumph the Duke of Bavaria, the brother of the infamous Queen Isabella. They mounted the ladies of the court, two by two, on horseback, and bore them in triumph to the prison of the Louvre. Nor did they content themselves with plunder, and with these fantastic escapades; blood was literally mingled with their wine, and amongst their victims was the Sire de la Riviere, one of the most learned men of France, of an ancient and most honourable family.
To make confusion worse confounded, the dissolute and heartless Louis, the dauphin, quarrelled with the Duke of Burgundy, and fomented intrigues and parties against him. Chief was arrayed against chief, and mob against mob. The respectable portion of the citizens long made dumb with terror, took heart as the host of their plebeian tyrants began to direct their terrible energies against each other, and sent secretly to the Armagnacs. From being stout Burgundians thousands now declared openly for Orleans and his father-in-law; and when the Duke of Berri endeavoured to force on the city a heavy tax, to carry on the war against the Armagnacs, they rebelled resolutely. In vain were the master butchers employed to levy the hateful impost; their rude compulsion only drove the burghers more rapidly into the arms of the opposite faction.
The professors of the university had risen into consideration in consequence of the divisions in the Church; which were quite as unhappy as those of the state, no less than three different Popes now claiming the chair of infallibility and the allegiance of the religious world. The clergy, by their violent animosities in contending with each other for this or that pontiff, had lost greatly the confidence of the people, who now in Paris turned to the men of learning. The professors were equally engaged in discussing, the pretensions of the rival Popes; but they displayed so much more erudition and ability in their party warfare, that they rose in public estimation, while the regular clergy declined. To them the factions continually referred their own disputes. No sooner did they feel their influence than they began to exert it against the butchers. They had seen with indignation their monarch, their princes, their princesses, and high-born ladies continually captives in the hands of these brutal men. They saw their favourite ministers butchered or cast into dungeons, and a most hateful and bloody despotism treading down everybody who dared to oppose them, or who refused to submit to their insolent demands.
But the professors might have preached and harangued in vain if they had not unexpectedly raised up an unlookedfor alliance. The butchers had beheaded the Provost of Paris on the 1st of July 1413, and this put the finish to their horrible domination. The carpenters determined to take the field against them, and, adopting the white scarf of the Orleans party, they came forth in all their strength. The conflict of white scarfs and white hoods became furious; but the carpenters prevailed. The butchers mustered in formidable force in the Place de Grēve, so memorable for its horrors on a more recent day; but, after a vigorous fight, they were vanquished, and were eventually driven out of Paris. The Duke of Burgundy was soon compelled to follow his butcher faction, and in August, after making an abortive attempt to carry off the king, he retired to Flanders. The Duke of Orleans entered the city with the Armagnacs; the white hoods vanished, and the white scarfs became the universal wear. Everything, except disorder, was changed. The ministers and magistrates were removed, and replaced by others of the party in the ascendant. Those who had imprisoned and persecuted, now had the same, or a severer measure meted out to themselves. The faction of the dauphin was there struggling with that of the Armagnacs, and that of the queen against her own son. Louis, who had been amongst the first to call in the Armagnacs, now as earnestly implored the return of the Duke of Burgundy.
Early in 1414 Burgundy accordingly marched to Paris with a large army, expecting to find the gates opened to him by the dauphin; but, on the contrary, it was stoutly defended by Orleans and the Count of Armagnac, who threatened to hang up any one on the spot who showed the least disposition to favour Burgundy. The duke was compelled to retreat again into Flanders, and leave the ​Armagnacs in complete superiority. They had the king in their hands, and they compelled him to sign anything they pleased. The Duke of Burgundy was declared by royal proclamation guilty of "the damnable murder of the late Duke of Orleans," as well as of sundry other high crimes and treasons, and condemned to the forfeiture of all his territories.
The Armagnacs, having issued this proclamation, marched out of Paris, seized the duke's city of Compiègne and laid siege to Soissons. This town was defended by the brave Count de Bournonville, and at this siege the archers of England were found fighting against their fellow-subjects, the archers of Guienne. But the English very soon opened the gates to their countrymen from Bordeaux; the Armagnacs rushed in, and perpetrated one of the most frightful massacres in history. The rabble of Armagnacs appeared possessed with a demoniac frenzy, which sought the destruction of everything. Men, women, and children were massacred without mercy or discrimination. They pillaged the churches and monasteries; tore down the sacred ornaments of the altars; trod under foot the consecrated wafer; scattered the relics of saints, and demolished or defaced the images. The king was in their hands a complete puppet, and they made him the scapegoat of all their crimes. In his name the head of the brave governor, De Bournonville, was struck off, as well as those of a number of the principal officers and citizens; and, notwithstanding the English had admitted them, they hanged 200 of their archers from the walls. Others of the distinguished inhabitants were sent under guard to Paris, where they met with the same fate.
From the butchery of Soissons this fanatic army marched to Arras, into which Burgundy had managed to retire; but they were there successfully resisted. While meditating to raise the siege, the alarming news arrived of the King of England's preparations for the invasion of France. A hollow truce was patched up between the contending parties; but, before the Armagnacs withdrew from the city, the house in which the king lodged was found to be on fire (probably from design by some of the desperadoes of one or other faction), and he escaped with difficulty.
Once more Paris became the rendezvous of the various chiefs of these revolting factions; where, in the autumn, the infamous dauphin originated a conspiracy to drive both Burgundians and Armagnacs from the capital, secure the person of the king, and make himself dictator. The scheme failed; and Louis was himself obliged to flee to Bourges. The Armagnacs once more rose on his retreat, fell on the Burgundians with great fury, and expelled their wives and children from the city.
Again in April of the following year, 1415, the dauphin regained possession of Paris by a base stratagem. He invited his mother, Queen Isabella, the Dukes of Orleans and Berri, with the other princes of the blood, to meet at Melun, in order to settle all differences and unite with one accord against the English invader. The queen and princes fell into the snare. They set out for Melun, and the dauphin simultaneously hastened into the capital, closed the gates against them, and ordered them, with the exception of Berri, severally to retire to their estates. One great object of Louis was to secure the rich hoards of his mother, which she had deposited in the church of St. Denis. Once possessed of them, he charged his mother, Orleans, Burgundy, and the rest of the princes of the blood—for Louis was a perfect Ishmaelite in his enmities—with being the authors of all the calamities which had fallen on France. The declaration would have been true enough had he included his own share in them. But he now promised to redress everything; and, as an earnest of his intentions, he proceeded to perpetrate still worse extravagances, follies, and wrongs. He levied on all sides the most arbitrary exactions, which he spent surrounded by troops of insolent and insatiable courtiers. His court became still more disgracefully licentious than any before it. He shut up his wife, the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, in the chateau of St. Germain-en-Laye, and placed at the head of his court a servant of the palace as his mistress. The Duke of Burgundy, enraged at the treatment of his daughter, vowed vengeance against the profligate dauphin, and prepared to march against him, accompanied by his butcher chiefs, Caboche, Legoix, and others of the white-hood clan. Meantime Armagnac was ravaging the south of France and St. Pol the north. Never was a country so torn by faction and desolated and degraded by crime; and it was at this moment that Henry of England prepared to descend on the devoted land, announcing himself as the scourge of a justly incensed Providence.
In little more than twelve months after mounting the throne, Henry forwarded to France, in July, 1414, his demand of the crown of that country. No answer was returned. He then reduced his requisition from the whole realm to the following modest one; namely, the provinces of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou; the territories which formerly composed the duchy of Aquitaine; and the several towns and counties included in the treaty of Bretigni; that Charles VI. should put him in possession of half of Provence, the inheritance of Eleanor and Sanchia, the queens of Henry III., and of his brother Richard, and two of the four daughters of Beranger, once sovereign of that country. That he should pay up the arrears of King John's ransom, 1,200,000 crowns, and give Henry his daughter Catherine, with 2,000,000 crowns more.
To this astounding demand the French Government replied that the king was willing to give the hand of his daughter, with 600,000 crowns, a higher sum than had ever been paid with any princess of France, and all the territories anciently included in the duchy of Aquitaine.
To this Henry refused to consent, but summoned a Parliament, the speaker of which was Thomas Chaucer, the son of the great poet, and received from it the unwontedly liberal supply of two-tenths and two-fifteenths. To give an air of moderation to his demands, however, Henry still pretended to negotiate. He sent over to Paris a splendid embassy, consisting of 600 horsemen, headed by the Earl of Dorset and the Bishops of Durham and Norwich. They entered the capital with so much parade and magnificence, that the French vanity was surprised and mortified by it. The ambassadors first proposed a continuation of the truce for four months. ​They repeated the terms of the former embassy as to peace and the matrimonial alliance of the two countries, but consented to accept the princess with half the original sum. On the other side, the French raised the amount proffered from 600,000 to 800,000 crowns. Here the matter ended, and the embassy returned.
Parliament of Henry V.-From the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum.
This was, no doubt, precisely what Henry expected; and now he made preparations for an immediate invasion. On the 16th of April he summoned at Westminster a council of fifteen spiritual and twenty-eight temporal peers, when he announced his resolve "to recover his inheritance by arms." His speech was received with the utmost applause and enthusiasm. The great barons and knights, eager to obtain military fame, engaged to furnish their quotas of troops to the utmost of their ability; Parliament granted two-tenths and fifteenths, and dissolved and made over to the king no less than a hundred alien priories, not conventual. Henry himself exerted every means of increasing his resources. He raised loans by pawning his crown jewels, the magnificent crown itself of Henry IV., and by other means, and altogether amassed the sum of 500,000 nobles in ready money. He rifled the cupboards and buffets of the royal palaces, and gave them as pledges of the ultimate payment of their prices to great creditors.
The Duke of Bedford, Henry's brother, was appointed regent of the kingdom during the royal absence; and the youthful monarch, full of aspirations of glory and conquest, set forward towards Southampton, the port of embarkation.
Meantime, the French princes, engrossed by their own dissensions, had made no exertions to prepare the kingdom for such a formidable attack. They fondly hoped that Henry would close with the liberal terms offered him, and were, therefore, thunderstruck with the present promptitude of his motions. They hastily sent over the Duke of Vendome and the Archbishop of Bourges to repeat the last advanced terms offered through the Duke of Bern. They met Henry at Winchester, but he would listen to nothing but the most complete surrender of all the rights that England ever possessed in France. There was now no going back; the time for mere diplomatic talk was over with Henry. He declared that the crown of France was his right, and that he would wrest it from its usurper by the sword. The Archbishop of Bourges, who seems to have been a man of spirit, on this assumed a bold demeanour, and declared that the King of France had made all possible concession, not out of any fear, but from sincere desire of peace. That if the king imagined he could easily overcome France he deceived himself. That its throne was the firmest in Europe. If," said he, "thou makest thy attempt, our sovereign lord will call upon the blessed Virgin, and upon all the saints, and by their aid thou wilt be driven into the sea by the king, his faithful subjects, and powerful allies; or thou wilt be slain, or taken captive."
To this lofty language Henry only smiling, replied, "We shall see." He appeared no way to resent the freedom of the spirited prelate, but gave him his passports at his request, and dismissed him and his attendants with valuable presents.
Proceeding to Southampton, Henry actively superintended the preparations for the embarkation of his army, which lay encamped along the shore in magnificent array. While he was thus engaged he once more sent off a messenger to the King of France, as if it were necessary to announce formally his coming. This time it was Antelope, his pursuivant-at-arms, who was instructed to demand all the provinces of England and the hand of Catherine, or to deliver the king's defiance. It was at this time, when the old king made a mild but firm reply, that the wild and profligate Louis, the dauphin, sent his gasconading message, accompanied by a parcel of tennis-balls, telling Henry that they much better befitted him, by all accounts of his past life, than cannon-balls; on hearing which, Henry is said to have been stung with momentary anger, and replied, "These balls shall be struck back with such a racket as shall force open Paris gates."
Some historians have treated this incident as apocryphal and improbable; but no fact is better authenticated by almost every chronicler of the time, and nothing is more accordant with the character of Prince Louis.
But in the very midst of Henry's active occupation of embarking his troops, danger was much nearer to him than from the tennis-balls or bravadoes of the giddy dauphin. A conspiracy to assassinate him was discovered at the very moment that it was intended to carry it into execution; and what is singular, the discovery came from the very person for whose especial benefit the movement was intended.
The young Earl of Marche, as we have already had occasion to state, was not only the true heir to the throne, but had been brought up with Henry, and was really attached to him. The sister of the young earl was married to Richard, Earl of Cambridge, and brother to the Duke of York. Cambridge, by his alliance with the true prince, appears to have been infected with the ambitious desire of seeing himself not merely brother to a legitimate prince who was contented in his station, which, though that of a subject, was honourable and happy, but brother to a king. From the little light ​thrown by contemporary historians on the progress of the plot, we can only perceive that Cambridge had sought the co-operation of several persons who were known to have acted or suffered in the opposition to the late king. These were Sir Thomas Grey, of Heton, in Northumberland, and Lord Scrope, of Masham, both of whom had been involved in the Percy insurrections themselves, or by their near relatives. Scrope was at this time high in the favour of his sovereign. He was his trusted chamberlain, and one of the most confidential of his privy council. In the chase and in his social hours, he was the especial companion of Henry. Yet he appears to have given in to this base conspiracy, and Henry was to be assassinated before embarking, after which, the conspirators were to escape to Wales with the Earl of Marche, and there raise the banner of revolt in his behalf.
It would seem that the conspiracy was as ill-constructed as it was wicked. The conspirators do not appear to have obtained the decided sanction of the principal person concerned. Probably Cambridge might have speculated on private conversations with his brother-in-law, the Earl of Marche, and have persuaded himself that he would fall in with such a scheme when it appeared to him feasible. But when, at the moment of action, Marche was apprised of the intended blow, he refused, by the earnest advice of his man Lacy, to swear to keep the secret, but required an hour in which to consider of the proposal. However the persuasions of Cambridge or his own secret feeling: might have inclined him at any previous moment, now, when his friend and noble patron Henry was menaced with instant death, Marche at once decided, and hastened to apprise the king of his danger. That Marche had listened to the voice of the tempter is plain from him first requesting a pardon from Henry for giving ear "to his rebels and traitors sufficiently to understand their schemes."
This pardon Henry at once accorded, but he seized the conspirators, and brought them immediately before a council, where their fate was to be decided by twelve jurors of the county. Grey pleaded guilty to the charge of having conspired to kill the king, "to proclaim the Earl of Marche, in case Richard II. was really dead," to having by their emissaries solicited the said Richard, or, as he was by the indictment declared to be, Thomas of Tumpington, who personated that monarch, to invade the king's dominions with a body of Scottish forces and Scottish lords.
Cambridge and Scrope demanded to be tried by their peers, whereupon all the lords of the army were summoned; the Duke of Clarence was appointed to preside in place of the king, and the Duke of York, that he might not sit in judgment on his own brother, nominated the Earl of Dorset his proxy.
Cambridge made an earnest appeal to the king for mercy, and Scrope pleaded, like Marche, that he had only listened in order to ascertain the objects of the conspirators, so that he might effectually defeat them. The plea did not avail him any more than the cowardly prayer of Cambridge. They were all three condemned, were led out to the north gate of the town, and had their heads struck off, just as the royal fleet, with a favourable wind, hoisted sail, and bore out of the harbour of Southampton, on the 13th of August, 1415.
This memorable expedition, thus painfully inaugurated by the blood of treason in the very near kindred of the king, consisted of 6,000 men-at-arms, and 24,000 archers, which so many occasions had now demonstrated to be the real power of England. These troops wore carried in a fleet of 1,500 sail; and, with an auspicious wind, entered the mouth of the Seine on the second day, August 18th. Three days were consumed in landing the troops and stores, and it does not appear that there was any opposition from the enemy.
Henry at once laid siege to the strong fortress of Harfleur, situated on the left bank of the river, and defended by a numerous garrison, under the command of the Counts D'Estouteville, De Guitri, and De Gaucourt, as well as others of the French nobility. The siege was conducted according to the principles of the greatest master of engineering of the time, Master Giles, the splendid manuscript of whose work, "De Regimine Principum," is yet preserved in the Harleian Collection of the British Museum.
The French knights of the garrison displayed the utmost bravery, and made repeated assaults on the troops of Henry while throwing up their entrenchments, but they were received in such a manner by the archers that they were soon very glad to keep within the shelter of their walls. These walls themselves were in bad repair; the succours which had been promised by the Government did not arrive; the English cannon was fast demolishing the outworks, and sappers undermining the towers. A worse enemy than even the English was also amongst them—the dysentery, owing to the dampness of the place, and the unhealthy quality of the provisions; and the garrison surrendered on the 22nd of September, after a defence of thirty-six days.
Henry seated himself on his throne, placed beneath a magnificent tent, on the summit of a hill opposite to the town, where he received the submission of the garrison. On each side of the throne stood the English nobles; Sir Robert Umphraville on the king's right hand bearing the royal helmet, surmounted by the crown, on the point of a lance. De Gaucourt, the Governor of Harfleur, attended by thirty-four burgesses, approached; and kneeling, presented the keys of the town and prayed the king's mercy.
Henry's conduct on this occasion was opposed to his usual humanity, and seemed dictated not by the generous policy which immediately afterwards followed, but by the stern and less effective principles which guided Edward III. at Calais. He fixed his banner and that of St. George over the principal gate, and then gave permission for the men-at-arms to retire, having deposited their arms, stripped to their doublets, on condition that they swore to take no further part in this campaign, but to surrender themselves within a certain time as prisoners to the Governor of Calais.
So far, all was lenient and humane; but then, after walking barefoot to church, to return thanks for his victory, he commanded all the inhabitants—men, women, and children—to quit their homes for over; to relinquish all their property to the conquerors, except a portion of their clothes, and five pennies each to procure provisions on their way. All their wealth, the arms and horses of the garrison, were to become the spoil of the English ​host, and to be equally distributed amongst them according to the terms of their service. These terms themselves were extraordinary, for the feudal system was so far worn out that Henry was obliged to make contracts with different lords and gentlemen, who engaged to serve him a year from the first day of muster. The wages paid on this occasion were:—to a duke, 13s. 4d. per day; to an earl, 6s. 8d.; a baron, or banneret, 4s.; a knight, 2s.; an esquire. 1s.; and an archer, 6d. If we estimate these sums at their present value, that is, fifteen times increased, we shall see how infinitely better paid were the common soldiers of Henry V. than those of Victoria I. The pay of a duke would be £10 a day; of an earl, £5; a baron, £3; a knight, 30s; au esquire, 15s.; and of an archer, 7s. 6d. Dukes, earls, and commanders in general take good care of themselves now-a-days; but the common soldiers would be astonished at receiving 7s. 6d. per day.
Besides this the men were to receive the ransom money of all prisoners that they made, and two-thirds of the booty. This undoubtedly arose from the fact being now clearly demonstrated that the archers were the real strength of the army, and the source of all the English victories.
But notwithstanding the lavish terms on which the army had been engaged, the siege of Harfleur was dearly purchased by it. The weather was extremely hot, and the place, lying low on the banks of the Seine, was at that season extremely unhealthy. A dysentery, partly from those causes, and partly from the incautious eating of unripe fruit, and the putrid exhalations from the offal of animals killed for the camp, broke out, and raged amongst the soldiers far more mortally than the awkward artillery of that age. About 2,000 of the troops had perished, besides great numbers who were disabled by sickness. Several officers of rank died, and when Henry had shipped off his sick for England, including the Duke of Clarence, the Earls of Marche, Arundel, Marshall, and many other great officers, his army was reduced to about one-half of its original number.
A council of war, which Henry had called before shipping off his invalids, had come to the decision of returning wholly to England, and making preparations for the next year; but to this Henry would not listen for a moment. To embark altogether, he said, would look like fear, and convert their conquest into a flight. He was resolved, he added, to march to Calais, and dare every peril, rather than the French should say that he was afraid of them. France was his own, he contended, and he would see a little more of it before quitting it. He trusted in God that they should take their way without harm or danger, but if compelled to fight, glory and victory would be theirs, as it had boon always that of his ancestors in that country. He declared his route to be Normandy, Picardy, and Artois to Calais.
Having taken this resolution, nothing could turn him from it, though he had only 900 lances and 5,000 archers, barely 6,000 men in all; while a French army of 100,000 men was already on foot to intercept his march. Before setting out he repaired the fortifications of Harfleur, and placed it under the command of his uncle, the Earl of Dorset, as governor, and Sir John Fastolf, as lieutenant-governor, with a garrison of 2,000 men, which were independent of the 6,000 men he intended to take with him. He invited over many English families to settle in Harfleur, and make it a second Calais, granting them the houses and premises of the former inhabitants.
Having made these arrangements, on the 8th of October he set forward on his most daring march. He disposed his little host in three divisions, attended by two detachments, which served as van and rear guards on the march, ready to be converted in the field into wings for protecting his flanks. Never was a more hardy enterprise undertaken. It might, according to all ordinary principles, be termed fool-hardy. But all the victorious expeditious of the Edwards I. and III. had been of the same character, and, had they failed, would have been recorded in history as unexampled instances of rashness and folly: so much depends on the result, rather than the antecedents of an action.
At every step the little army of England was watched by overwhelming forces. The Constable of France, Count D'Albret, lay directly in their way in Picardy with 14,000 men-at-arms and 40,000 foot, and laid waste the whole country before them. At Rouen the king and dauphin lay with another large army, and fresh troops were hastening from all quarters towards his line of march. The French host mustered in his track already upwards of 100,000; some writers say 140,000 men. Henry had to traverse a long tract of country infested with these exasperated enemies. His troops were in want of provisions, lodgings, guides, which their enemy took care to deprive them of They had, in fact, to march through a desert, defended by strong towns, intersected by deep rivers, and were exposed every moment to have their scouts, foragers, and stragglers cut off, while the foe took care to avoid a general engagement.
The army was sometimes whole days without food. The wretched people were themselves starving, from the devastations purposely made by their own countrymen, and sickness began to decimate the British troops from their excessive fatigues and want of necessary food. At the passage of the river Bresle, the garrison of Eu made a furious sortie, and fell upon the rear of the army with loud shouts and amazing impetuosity, but, spite of the exhausted condition of the soldiers, they received the attack with coolness, slew the French commander, and drove back the garrison to its fortress.
In four days, that is, on the 12th of October, Henry had arrived at the ford of Blanche-taque, where his grandfather, Edward III. had passed the Somme. He had intended to do the same, but the French, taught by their former failure, had taken care to make this ford impassable by driving strong stakes into the bottom, and D'Albret appeared on the right bank with a numerous force. Disappointed in this expectation, he retreated to the little town of Airennes, where Edward III. had slept two nights before the battle of Creçy. He then advanced up the river, searching for a ford or bridge, as Edward had sought down it. He avoided Abbeville, where D'Albret lay with his main army, and marched to Bailleul, where he slept on the 13th.
Still advancing upwards, he found every bridge broken, every ford secured, and D'Albret and his forces marching along the right bank in exact time with him, ready to repel any attempt at crossing the river.
Azincourt. King Henry V and the Sire de Holly.(See page 532)
​with fatigue and sickness, began to lose heart. They beheld themselves with alarm advancing further and further from the sea, and knew that tremendous bodies of troops were in both front and rear. "I who write," says a chaplain of the army, whose manuscript recital was first discovered by Sir Harris Nicolas in the Cottonian collection, "and many others looked bitterly up to heaven, and implored the Divine mercy, and the protection of the Virgin, to save us from the imminent perils by which we were surrounded, and enable us to reach Calais in safety."
The next day Henry attempted to force a passage at Port St. Remy, but without success, as Edward III. had done before him. On the 15th, the following day, he made another endeavour to cross at Ponteau de Mer, but was again foiled. Still going on, he tried other passages on the 16th and 17th, but without avail. Everywhere appeared the most hopeless obstacles. Taking advantage of the winding of the river, Henry now dashed across the country from the neighbourhood of Corbie to Boves, and thence marched on Nefles. On the way he made a halt in a valley, and ordered his archers to provide themselves each with a stake of six feet long, and to sharpen it at each end. He then pushed forward again to outmarch the constable, who was obliged to follow a more circuitous route by Peronne. He had sent, however, strict orders to guard all the fords of the river, but not being present to, see this enforced, Henry at Nefles received information that the passage was still open between Voyenne and Bethencourt. On the 19th he came up to this place, and made a dash across it. Pour bannerets led the way successfully; the rest of the army and the baggage followed rapidly in their track; and in twelve hours the English had arrived safely on the right bank. Henry marched on to Monchy-la-Gauche; while the constable, instead of daring to attack him, fell back on Bapaume, and thence on St. Pol.
It is remarkable that during all this march up the river from the 13th to the 20th, a full week, the swarming French armies in his rear had not dared to fall upon him in his trouble and perplexity. As in the former case of Edward III., they felt that they had a lion in pursuit, and dreaded that he should turn and stand at bay. In any other case but that of an English army in a mood of desperation, they were enough to have annihilated the whole force at any moment.
While D'Albret had been guarding the passages of the Somme, the French princes, instead of attacking Henry, had held a, council of war at Rouen in presence of the king. Here they had resolved to give battle to the English by a majority of thirty-five to five, and they fixed the 25th as the important day of action. They sent three heralds to announce this resolve to the King of England.
Henry was at Monchy when the heralds arrived. They delivered their message on their knees, which was that the King of Franco and his nobles were prepared to meet him in the field on the following Friday. Henry replied, with apparent indifference, "The will of God be done." The heralds then inquired by what way he meant to march, so that they might meet with him. He replied, "By that which leads straight to Calais: and if my enemies attempt to intercept me it will be at their peril. I shall not seek them, and I will not move a step quicker or slower to avoid them. I could, however, have wished that they had adopted other counsels, instead of attempting to shed the blood of Christians."
This was singular language for a man to hold who was notoriously in a foreign country 'with a hostile force, come avowedly to subdue it by his arms, and, therefore, necessarily himself intending to shed the blood of Christians; but the 'true meaning is, that Henry, at Harfleur, had sent a challenge to the dauphin, offering to decide the question of the crown of France by single combat; and this speech was an announcement that he was still ready to put his claims on this personal hazard.
Some writers have asserted that Henry, on this occasion, imitated the offered concession of the Black Prince, when in precisely the same predicament before the battle of Poictiers, and expressed his willingness to surrender his conquest of Harfleur for a free passage to Calais. But nothing could be farther from his language and bearing. His tone and demeanour were those of a conscious hero, who knew his strength, and took no thought for any disproportion of numbers. The heralds, instead of finding the king in any degree alarmed or dispirited, appear to have been greatly awed by his commanding coolness; and, receiving a present of 100 crowns, returned with a profound impression of the martial character of the king.
The constable had placed himself in advance directly in Henry's route to Calais; but he followed leisurely on his track, as if no enemy were either before or behind him. Yet all this time fresh forces had been flocking in to the standard of the constable; and his army was now so overwhelming, that it began to be impatient to fall on the English, confident that they could surround and destroy them. But the experienced D'Albret remembered the days of Creçy and Poictiers, when the like confidence had produced the most complete destruction to the French armies from a mere handful of these iron Englishmen. He fell back from St. Pol to the villages of Ruisseauville and Azincourt before he consented to stand and await the English king. Henry, on his part, leaving Peronne to the left, marched through Encre and Lucheu to Blangy, where there was a bridge over the deep and rapid stream of the Ternois, which the French had neglected to destroy. At his approach they appeared disposed to demolish it, but drew off, and he passed over without interruption. The Duke of York rode on and saw that the constable's forces were marching towards the village of Azincourt. Henry reconnoitred them from an eminence, and, believing that they intended to give him battle, he ordered his troops to form and receive them. They stood prepared till it was dark; but no en«my approaching, they advanced along a road which led them to the village of Malsoncellles. There they halted at but a few bow shots from the enemy's lines; but they procured plenty of provisions, and refreshed and rested themselves more than they had done during the whole march.
When the moon was up, Henry, with some of his most experienced officers, ascended the heights above the village of Maisoncelles, and beheld the whole French army drawn up in the plains of Azincourt, completely cutting off any further advance towards Calais. It was ​evident that the eve of a decisive battle had arrived. It was equally impossible to advance towards Calais or retreat towards Harfleur. In fact, to attempt in the slightest degree to retreat would be synonymous with destruction; for that would utterly dishearten his own men and bring the immense swarms of the enemy like a flock of hungry wolves upon them. Even if they could beat back such a host under such circumstances, they must soon perish by the way, for the whole region was a wilderness, destitute of food or shelter. The hour of action had arrived.
Henry was placed precisely in the same circumstances as Edward III. had been at Creçy, and the Black Prince at Poictiers. His army was reduced by the march, and many of his men were feeble with sickness. They had to contend with a force more than twelve times their own number; an enemy led on by all the princes of the blood, plentifully supplied with everything, and confident of success. But for all that they did not lose heart for a moment, and the king appeared amongst them with the same calm and heroic air which had inspired with such assurance the immortal archers of Creçy and Poictiers.
The resemblance between the situations, and the circumstances of the three great battles of those ages in France, of which this was last of the trio, is one of the most curious facts in history. The English monarchs had Bet out on a precisely similar wild march across an enemy's country, careless of being surrounded by infinitely superior numbers, fighting on their own soil for everything dear to them. They had been driven to the same extremity, and obliged to make a stand against odds such as no men but Englishmen would dream for a moment of opposing. Yet on every one of these occasions they had been enabled to select a position of surprising strength, and so much resembling each other that the parallel is marvellous. The same sloping ground, protected behind by woods, and flanked by the same; the approach, contracted by woods or a deep lane, so that the vast hosts were useless so long as they maintained that position.
Yet on the other side the French had the insuperable advantage, not only of immense numbers, but of obtaining at will all necessary supplies. The country was entirely open to them; their cause was the cause of the common people against an invader, and they had only to wait in order to starve out the intruder, or, if he attempted to cut his way through them, to avoid a general engagement; still, however, desolating the country before and around, and harassing the flanks and rear of the foe, lion-like in spirit and prowess, but necessarily sinking under famine and fatigue.
That the French should, in the confidence of their numbers, have overlooked those vast advantages, these certain means of victory, in the first instance, is by no means wonderful; but after the terrible lesson of Creçy, and again of Poictiers, that they should have committed the same glaring blunder a third time, is an evidence of their lack of cool calculation at that time which never ceases to astonish us. The Duke of Berri, now a very old man, who fought in the battle of Creçy fifty-nine years before, was one of the few individuals, at least amongst the commanders, who appeared to have a misgiving. Ho strenuously opposed any general engagement, and though he did not su ceed in that important particular, he did in another nearly as important. Ho earned his point that the king should not command in person, as was proposed.
"Better," he said, "it will be to lose the battle, than to lose the battle and the king too."
On the part of the French generally all such cautions were treated as dotage. There was nothing but the most absolute confidence of victory in their camp. They were full of jollity, and feasted gaily on abundance of provisions and wine. Already they were engaged in noisy declamations regarding the distribution of their prisoners and their booty, for they made themselves certain of securing the whole of the British army. They resolved to put all the English to the sword, except the king and his principal nobility, whom, they proposed to spare for the sake of their ransoms.
The constable planted his banner on the Calais road, a little in advance of the village of Ruisseauville, and the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, of Berri, Alençon, and Brabant, and all the groat lords planted theirs round it with loud acclamations and rejoicings that the hour was come which was to give up to them their enemy and all his spoil. But the joy was soon damped, for the night set in dark and rainy. The ground was a clay which soon swam with water, and became so slippery that their horses slid and stumbled about in great disorder. The pages and valets rode to and fro seeking straw to lay on the muddy ground for their officers and themselves. There was a great bustling and I moving to and fro; people shouting to one another, and making much noise, but obtaining very little comfort; and it was at length observed that their horses stood silent and did not neigh, which is looked upon on the eve of battle as a very bad omen. When they would have cheered themselves with music, very few instruments could be found. At length, however, they succeeded in lighting fires along their lines, and bursts of laughter and merriment were repeatedly heard by the English, while their enemies were, no doubt, calculating the value of their horses and the arms on their backs.
The English, on their part, passed a night of serious reflection. They had made a long march under great difficulties and privations. Many of them were wasted by sickness, worn down by fatigue and scanty and unwholesome fare. They were in the presence of an immense force. But they were descendants of the heroes of Creçy, which lay not far off, and they had the utmost confidence in the bravery of their leader. They spent the early part of the night in making their wills, and in devotion. The king visited every quarter of his little camp, and sent out, as soon as the moon gave light enough, officers to arrange the plan of battle the next day, and ordered bands of music to play through the whole night.
At break of day Henry summoned the men to attend matins and mass, and then leading them into the field, arranged them in his usual manner, in three divisions and two wings; but in such close array that the whole appeared but as one body. The archers, who were his grand strength, he posted in advance of the men-at-arms, four in file, in the form of a wedge. Besides their bows and arrows, the archers were now armed each with a battle-axe and a sword. The fatal field of Bannock​burn, where the archers were rendered useless by their want of side arms, when Bruce rode his cavalry amongst them, seems to have taught the English this precaution. Every man, too, bore on his shoulder the stout stake, which Henry had ordered them to provide themselves with, pointed at each end, and tipped with iron. This they planted obliquely before them, as a chevaux de frise, and thus opposed a formidable rampart to the French cavalry. Such a defence had never been used before in any Christian army.
Determined to rival the fame of their predecessors m the most renowned fields, the bold archers of Nottingham, of York, of Lincoln, and of Kent, stripped off their jerkins of buff, laid bare their brawny arms and their broad chests, to give free play to their action. Many even flung away cap and shoe, and, half naked, they are said to have presented so savage an appearance as struck awe into the enemy.
The fight on the English side being intended, as at Creçy and Poictiers, to be on foot, Henry had placed all his baggage, with the priests and the horses, in the rear, near the village of Maisoncelles, under the guard of a small body of archers and men-at-arms. He dismissed all his prisoners on their parole to appear at Calais if he won the victory. He then mounted a grey palfrey, and rode along the lines of each division. He wore a helmet of polished steel, surmounted by a crown sparkling with jewels, and on his surcoat were emblazoned the arms of England and France. He went from banner to banner addressing and encouraging the men. He recalled to their minds the glorious victories of Creçy and Poictiers; he told them that he was resolved to wise as great a triumph or to die on the field; and he declared that every man who showed himself that day worthy of his country and his name, should henceforth be deemed a gentleman, and be entitled to wear coat-armour.
Still more to excite their spirits, he told them that the French had determined to cut off three fingers of their right hands in order to ruin them for ever for bowmen, and he bade them remember what they had done at the siege of Soissons, where they had hanged 200 brave bowmen like dogs. These observations inflamed their resentment wonderfully against the enemy, and Walter Hungerford, a gallant officer of their body, said, in Henry's hearing, "Would to God we had here with us in the field some more of the good knights and brave bowmen who are sitting idle in merry England!"
"No," replied Henry, "not a single man of them! If God gives us the victory, the fewer we are, the more honour. The fewer we are, if we lose, the less the loss to our country. But we will not lose. Fight with your usual courage, and God and the justice of our cause will protect us. Before night, the pride of our enemies shall be humbled in the dust, and the greater part of that multitude shall be stretched on the fields, or captives in our power."
So the king went on inspiring confidence by his words, but far more by the lively cheerfulness of his countenance, which, like that of Edward III. on the like occasion, seemed to presage nothing but victory and glory.
The French had drawn up their host in a manner similar to that of Henry, but instead of their files being four, they were thirty-nine deep. The constable himself commanded the first division; the Dukes of Barre and Alençon the second; the Earls of Marle and Falconberg the third. But in their eagerness to come at the English, they had crowded their troops into a narrow field between two woods, where they had no room to deploy, or even to use their weapons freely, and the ground was so slippery with the rain, that their horses could with difficulty keep on their legs; while the English archers, who were immediately opposed to them, were not only on foot, but many of them barefooted, and, disencumbered of their clothes, were ready to make their way alertly over the soft ground.
Both the French and English commanders had ordered their men to seat themselves on the ground with their weapons before them, and thus they continued to face each other without action for some time. The constable, most probably to gain time for the arrival of the expected reinforcements, still lay quiet, and Henry took the opportunity to distribute refreshments of food and wine through his ranks. He also seized the opportunity to send off secretly two detachments, one to lie in ambush in a woody meadow at Tramecourt, on their left flank, and the other to set fire to some houses in their rear as soon as they were engaged, to throw them into alarm.
Scarcely had the king executed this manœuvre, when he was surprised by a deputation of three French knights from D'Albret, the commander. They came to offer him a free passage to Calais, if he would agree to surrender Harfleur, and renounce his pretensions to the throne of France. Henry disdained to enter into any negotiations except on the very same terms that he had dictated before he left England; and, penetrating the real object of these overtures, that of gaining time, he impatiently dismissed the matter. But the envoys were not to be so readily dispatched. One of them, the Sire de Helly, who had been a prisoner in England, and was accused of breaking his parole, introduced that matter, and offered to meet in single combat, between the two armies, any man who should dare to asperse his honour.
"Sir knight," said Henry, curtly, "this is no time for single combats. Go, tell your countrymen to prepare for battle, and doubt not that, for the violation of your word, you will a second time forfeit your liberty, if not your life."
"Sir," replied De Helly, insolently, determined to prolong the parley, "I shall receive no orders from you. Charles is our sovereign. Him we shall obey, and for him we shall fight against you whenever we think proper."
"Away then," said Henry, "and take care that we are not before you." And instantly stepping forward he cried, "Banners, advance!"
With that Sir Thomas Erpingham, a brave old warrior, threw his warder into the air, exclaiming, "Now strike!" and the English moved on in gallant style till they came within bowshot of the French lines. Then every man kneeling down kissed the ground, a custom which they had learned from the Flemish, who, at the great battle of Courtray, where they defeated the French cavalry with such brilliancy, had thus each taken up a particle of earth in his mouth, while the priest in front elevated the Host. It was a sign of consecration to the great duty of the day; and having done this homage to the God of battles, they ​rose up with a tremondous shout, struck each man his, pointed stake into the ground before him, and stepping in front of these stakes, sent a flight of arrows at their foes, and again retired behind them.
The constable, who well knew the terrible effect of the English archers on the French troops, had prepared a scheme similar to that of Bruce at Bannockburn to break their line, and throw them into confusion. He had few or no archers, for the French at that period adhered to the feudal notion that knights and gentlemen only must handle arms. The dreadful defeats of Creçy and Poictiers had not cured them of the foolish idea that arms must not be trusted to plebeian hands. He therefore had trained a body of 1,200 men-at-arms under Messire Clignet, of Brabant, who were to make a desperate charge on the archers, and break up their ranks. They came on with fierce cries of "Mountjoye! St Denis!" but the slipperiness of the ground, and the fierce flight of arrows which struck through their visors and their armour, threw them at once into confusion. Their horses reeled and stumbled against each other in the muddy clay and to avoid the iron hail of arrows they turned their heads aside, and thus knew not how to guide their steeds. Of the whole 1,200 not more than seven score ever reached the spiked barricade of the archers, from which the few remaining horses recoiled; and the whole troop in a few minutes lay dead or wounded on the ground. Only three horses are said to have penetrated within the line of stakes, and there they fell perforated with wounds. Meantime, hundreds of wounded steeds were dashing to and fro, and continually returning upon the French lines, stung to madness by their pain. All became confusion and disorder in the first division. The men-at-arms were so wedged together that they could not extricate themselves from the throng to advance or retreat. While the bravest strove to rush on the enemy, the timid endeavoured to fall back on the next division, and the most awful chaos arose.
Still the English archers poured in their arrows, dropping multitudes at each discharge; and when their arrows failed they seized their battle-axes, and, leaving their stakes, rushed on with fierce cries. At this signal the men in ambush replied with similar shouts, and, falling on the flank of the French army, added immensely to the terror and disorder. While they showered their arrows in that direction, the archers in front hewed their way with their hatchets through all opposition. They dashed amid the steel-clad horsemen, burst through the whole array of horses and armour, slew the commander-in-chief and many of his most illustrious officers, and in a very short time, without any aid whatever from the men-at-arms, dispersed the whole of the first division.
The second division opened to receive the fugitives, which occasioned fresh disorder; and at this crisis the Duke of Brabant, who had hastened on before his expected reinforcements, galloped up with a fresh body of horse, and charged the advancing archers. Those indomitable men, however, speedily cut him down, destroyed his detachment, and kept on their way, laying prostrate all before them. They soon arrived at the second division, who, though wallowing up to their horses' girths in the middle of a ploughed field, the men on foot being sunk by the weight of their armour almost up to the knees, yet kept their ground. At this moment Henry advanced with his men-at-arms; but, seeing the nature of the ground, he rallied his brave bowmen, who, having no weight to carry, could do active battle, even on that rotten ground. At his call they speedily re-formed, and under his command made a fresh charge.
It was now that the real battle look place. The Duke of Alençon, who with the Duke of Barre headed this division, had made a vow to kill or take captive the King of England, or to perish in the attempt. He led on his troops with desperate valour, and a mortal struggle of two long hours took place. The English archers still wielded their massive axes in the front, and the French men-at-arms fought with undaunted bravery. Henry combated in the midst of his archers, who still plied their weapons with loud hurrahs, and, animated by battling under the eye of the king, seemed still as active and fresh as if they were just come into the strife. Henry's life, however, was repeatedly in danger. His brother, the Duke of Clarence, was thrown down near him, wounded, and in danger of being killed, when Henry rushed to his assistance, strode across the body, and beat off the assailants till the prince could be removed. But no sooner was Clarence in safety than a band of eighteen knights, headed by the Lord of Croy, confronted the king. They had sworn to each other to take or kill him. One of these knights struck Henry with his battleaxe, and brought him to his knees; but his brave followers closed round him instantly, and slew every one of the assailants. The Duke of Alençon then fought his way to the royal standard. With one stroke of his battleaxe he beat the Duke of York to the ground, and killed him; with the next he clove the crown on Henry's helmet. At that sight every arm was raised—every weapon was directed at him. He saw his imminent peril, and cried out to Henry, "I yield to you; I am Alençon!" Henry held out his hand, but it was already too late; the gallant duke lay dead.
Here the battle may be said to have ended; for though the third division, which was the most numerous of all, was still unbroken, at the sight of the Duke of Alençon's troops flying in all directions, they too fell back and began to waver. Another moment and they would have been in full flight, but in the rear of Henry's army, where the priests and the baggage were posted, there rose a loud tumult, and messengers came galloping to say that they were attacked by a large force. Henry immediately believed that this force was that expected hourly under the Duke of Brittany; and fearful of being surrounded, he immediately gave orders to kill all the prisoners, lest they should turn against them.
As they had taken their captives, which, since the death of Alençon, was in crowds, they removed their helmets, that, should any occasion arise, they might readily dispatch them. The slaughter now made of these helpless men was terrible. Many fell without a chance of resistance, many others struggled and wrestled with their destroyers, but in vain. The scene was terrible, and the French third division, also becoming aware of the attack in the rear, took fresh courage, and prepared ​to make battle still. But a short time discovered the real cause of the alarm, which the fears of the English had converted into a formidable assault. It was merely a body of peasants under Robinet do Bournonville and Ysambert d'Azincourt, who thought they would profit by the battle, and, while the combatants were in the heat of the action, drive off the English horses, which were all left with the baggage. They little dreamed that their scheme would prove so disastrous to their countrymen, many a noble French knight falling the victim of this stratagem, for which they were afterwards severely punished by their feudal lord, the Duke of Burgundy.
Ruins of Monmouth Castle, the Birthplace of Henry V
The mistake being discovered, Henry gave instant orders to stop the slaughter of the prisoners, and the third division of the French army also coming at the truth, galloped off the field at full speed. Only about 600 could be prevailed upon to face the enemy, and following their commanders, the Earls of Marie and Falconberg, they charged bravely on the conquerors, and either perished or were made captives.
Henry's little army was too much exhausted and too much encumbered with prisoners to be able to pursue the flying legions. He gave orders to see to the wounded, and then summoning the heralds, he traversed the fields, accompanied by his chief barons, and saw the coats of arms of the fallen princes and knights examined, and their names registered. While this was doing, and others were busy stripping the dead, he called to him the French king-at-arms, Mountjoye, who came attended by the other heralds French and English, and he said—"We have not made this slaughter, but the Almighty, as we believe, for the sins of France." Then turning to Mountjoye, he asked—"To whom does this victory belong?" "To the King of England," replied Mountjoye, "and not to the King of France." "And what castle is that which I see at a distance?" continued Henry. "It is called the castle of Azincourt, "replied the herald. "Then," said Henry, "since all battles ought to be named after the nearest castle, let this henceforth and lastingly bear the name of the battle of Azincourt."
Reception of Sigismund on the Coast of England.(See page 537.)
Of all the battles ever fought by France up to that time none was ever so fatal as that of Azincourt. "Never did so many and so noble men fall in one battle," says their own chronicler, Monstrelet. It was a wholesale slaughter of its princes and nobles. Seven princes of the blood had fallen; the Constable D'Albret; the Dukes of Brabant, of Barre, and Alençon; the Count of Nevers, the brother of the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant, the Counts of Marie and another brother, John, brothers of the Duke of Barre; the Count of Vaudemont, brother to the Duke of Lorraine, the Archbishop of Sens, the Count of Dampierre, the Lords Helly, who fell as Henry had promised him, of Rambure, Verchin, and Messire Guichard Dauphin, the other deputy who was sent to Henry before the battle. On the whole there fell that day 10,000 men, amongst whom there was one marshal, thirteen earls, ninety-two barons, 1,500 knights, and 8,000 gentlemen.
There were 14,000 prisoners left in the hands of the English, amongst whom were the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the Marshal Bourcioault, the Counts Eu, Vendôme, Richemont, Craon, and Harcourt, and 7,000 barons, knights, and gentlemen. No wonder that the news of so direful an overthrow, so unexampled a slaughter and capture of the aristocracy of the country, should spread consternation throughout France.
The highest estimate of the loss of the English is 1,600, while Elmham contends that it was only 100, and other contemporary writers that it was only forty. Taking the highest estimate, it was a wonderful disparity between the loss of the conquerors and the conquered. The only persons of note who fell on the English side were the Earl of Suffolk and the Duke of York, a man whose whole life had been stained with treachery and meanness, and of which it might be said that its only honourable incident was its termination.
The horror which fell on the whole of France at the news of this terrible defeat, is described by contemporary writers as extreme. The whole country appeared stunned and stupefied. Those near to the spot or concerned in it were dejected and inconsolable. The Duke of Orleans was found on the field buried beneath a heap of slain, by a brave English squire, Robert Waller; and when made aware of all that had taken place, he seemed like a dead man, and determined to die by starvation. Henry went to console and cheer him, but ho found it a difficult task. "How fare you, cousin?" he said; "why do you refuse to eat and drink?" The duke replied that he was resolved to fast. "Not so," said the king;" "make good cheer; if God has given me the grace to win this victory, I acknowledge that it is through no merit of mine own. I believe that God has willed that the French shall be punished; and if what I have heard be true, it is no wonder, for they tell me that never was there seen such disorder, such license of wickedness, such debauchery and shameful vices as now prevail in France. It is pitiful and horrible to hear, and certainly the wrath of God must have been awakened."
No two facts, indeed, could be more striking than the depraved condition of France at that period, and the great advance which Henry had made on his predecessors, the Edwards and the Black Prince, in humanity and sound policy. He went through the country like a man who sought to win the hearts as well as the sovereignty of the people. He strictly forbade all injury to the inhabitants of the districts through which he passed, insisting on everything being duly paid for, so that, instead of the wild demon work of the Black Prince, his father, and great grandfather, he might have been simply marching through his own territory; and it is but justice to his father to say, such had been his practice in his English and Scotch campaigns.
On the following morning the English set forward again from Maisoncelles, on their way to Calais; Henry still endeavouring to dissipate the gloom of his prisoner, the Duke of Orleans, had him to ride along with him, and conversed with him in a kind manner. This was the same young Duke of Orleans who had married and already lost Isabella of Valois, the widow of Richard II., whom Henry had so perseveringly endeavoured to gain for himself, but in vain. The disappointed lover was now become the conqueror and master of his successful rival, and though he did not let any feeling connected with the subject appear, it is nevertheless true that he kept Orleans during his own life captive, refusing all ransom for him, as the next heir to France after Charles the dauphin. Orleans was a beautiful lyric poet, and composed many of his finest poems in the Tower of London. He remained a captive in England twenty-three years.
Philip, Count of Charolais, the son of the Duke of Burgundy, afterwards so well known under the name of Philip the Good, was at the time residing in the neighbouring castle of Aire. His father had sternly prohibited him from taking any part in the battle, but so soon as he heard of the catastrophe he was perfectly overwhelmed with grief, and, like the Duke of Orleans, refused all sustenance. But the moment that he heard how the dead had been stripped, he sent the bailiff of Aire and the Abbot of Ruisseauville to see all the French interred. The English are said to have carried the whole of their dead into a large wooden barn, and burnt them to ashes.
Five thousand eight hundred of the aristocracy of France were buried by the abbot and bailiff in three great pits, in twenty-five roods of land, which they purchased for the purpose; and the Bishop of Guisnes went down to these awful wholesale graves, and sprinkled the dead bodies with holy water, and blest their resting-place, which for ages afterwards was conspicuous by its enclosure of trees. The Count of Charolais conquered his grief sufficiently to attend in person the funerals of his uncles, the Duke of Brabant aud the Count of Nevers. The friends of other knights and gentlemen came and carried away their bodies to their own estates, or buried them in the neighbouring churches with much mourning. Thousands of others, who had managed to crawl from the field into the adjoining villages, died and were buried there, but many others perished in the neighbouring woods, the prey of wolves and ravens. And then came down a long, drear silence on that terrible field, now become a perpetual name.
This great battle was fought on the 25th of October, 1415, the day of Crispin and Crispianus, and though the plough has been busy on the spot for upwards of ​years, there still remain some traces of the scene. Azincourt lies on the left of the road from St. Omer to Abbeville. The traveller passes through the village of Ruisseauville, so prominent in the account of the battle. The village of Azincourt itself is a group of dirty farm-houses and wretched cottages, but where the hottest of the battle raged, between that village and the commune of Tramocourt, there still remains a wood precisely corresponding with the one in which Henry placed his ambush; and there are yet existing the foundations of the castle of Azincourt, from which the king named the field.
The English army, heavily laden with spoil, reached Calais, where they learned that Bardolf, the governor, had gone out with 300 men-at-arms, to assist in rescuing his sovereign from his apparent danger before the battle, but that he had been intercepted by an overwhelming body of the people of Picardy, and his troops nearly all made prisoners. Here on the 29th Henry called a council to decide his next movement. Had he been prepared, nothing could be more obvious than that if he meant to win France, now was his time, while the whole country was paralysed by this signal defeat, and the chief leaders slain or captive. A rapid march on Paris would probably have made him at once master of the country. But Providence had wisely decreed otherwise, for France won would have reduced England from a great nation to a province; and, indeed, Henry was in no condition to pursue his success. His army was partly already arrived in England: that left with him was surfeited with spoil, and impatient to be there too.
In the council of Calais, therefore, language was held which it was known was such as the king wished, namely, that he had done enough to demonstrate his title to the crown of France; that God by the victory of Azincourt had declared his sanction to his claim., and would, therefore, undoubtedly support him in his endeavours at a proper time to complete his conquest.
Henry set sail, and, landing at Dover on the 16th of November, was received by the whole population with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of joy. He was carried in the arms of the people from his ship to the strand, whole crowds plunging in the madness of their delight into the waves, and surrounding him in his triumphal progress with the most deafening acclamations. Never did victor receive a more rapturous and flattering ovation. The whole road to London exhibited one great throng and procession. At Canterbury, Rochester, and every town through which he had to pass, the inhabitants poured forth en masse to receive him. At Blackheath, the Lords, the Commons, the clergy, the mayor, aldermen, and the people of London met him and conducted him into London in one vast and dense crowd. The houses of the streets through which he passed wore decorated with tapestry emblazoned with the deeds of his ancestors; wine ran from all the conduits; pageants were erected at intervals, and bands of children festively arrayed sang hymns in his praise. The city terminated its reception by presenting the king with two basins of gold, each worth £.500. Henry had gratified the vanity of his people to the highest degree, and they poured upon him the incense of applause with unbounded measure. The whole nation was intoxicated with proud delight.
Parliament gave him a substantial proof of its participation in the universal satisfaction. It ordered the tenth and fifteenth voted in its preceding session to be collected at once, and added to it another tenth and fifteenth. It granted him tonnage and poundage for the protection of the seas, and conferred on him for life the subsidy on wool, woolfells, and leather,falling into the same error as Richard II.'s Parliament, which by this very measure rendered him independent of annual aid, and the possession of which was made a capital charge against him on his deposition. From Henry, however, they never had cause to repent of their rashness. His fault was not an ambition of arbitrary government; and his affable and generous temperament, combined with the splendour of his deeds, made him during the whole of his short reign one of the most popular of monarchs.
In the spring of the following year, 1416, Henry had the honour of a visit from Sigismund, King of the Romans, and Emperor Elect of Germany. The object of Sigismund was to secure Henry's aid in accomplishing his great scheme of putting an end to the division in the popedom, which was still raging. Sigismund had visited France, and was flattered by cordial promises of co-operation by Charles and his ministers. Henry, who at this time was by far the most famous sovereign in Europe, was determined to receive Sigismund in a manner which should convince him that the wealth of his kingdom and the splendour of the English crown were in full correspondence with his great fame. Ho summoned all the knights and esquires of the realm to attend him in London. A fleet of 300 sail waited at Calais to bring over this unusual guest with all his retinue, amounting to 1,000 horsemen; and officers were appointed to escort him from Dover to the capital, discharging all the expenses by the way.
Yet amidst his magnificent arrangements for the reception of his distinguished guest, Henry was cautious not to endanger in the slightest degree his national rights. Sigismund, while in Paris, had attended a cause which was pleaded before Parliament, and was in courtesy invited to occupy the throne, and while sitting there, had been so incautious as to knight an esquire who was in danger of suffering wrong because of his inferior rank. To prevent any such mistake, a precaution was taken which, for a moment, had an aspect anything but hospitable. No sooner did the emperor's ship cast anchor, than Sigismund saw the Duke of Gloucester and several noblemen ride into the water with drawn swords, and demand to know whether in coming thus, he designed to exercise or claim any authority in England. On Sigismund replying in the negative, this hostile reception immediately gave way to one of courtesy and honour. Besides his main object, the settlement of the papal schism, Sigismund was also anxious to effect a peace between the kings of England and France; and accordingly he was accompanied by ambassadors from Charles, whose propositions were zealously seconded by William, Duke of Bavaria and Count of Hainault, who was become a great admirer of Henry. It is said that Henry wont to such a length of concession as to waive his claims on the crown, and content himself with the provisions of the treaty of Bretigni, concluded by Edward HE. But even this would have ​dismembered France of its most valuable provinces; and, though Charles is stated to have given a full assent to the proposal, there were others who were more averse to any such terms with England.
In the very midst of this apparently amicable negotiation, amid the frightful anarchy of France, the Count of Armagnac had now succeeded to the authority of the Dauphin John, recently dead, and being also constable in the place of D'Albret, slain at Azincourt, he determined, if possible, to win popularity by wresting from England its recent conquest of Harfleur. He marched there with a large army, drew lines around the town, while a fleet of French ships, aided by a number of Genoese caracks, which he had hired, blockaded the harbour. It was in vain he was reminded of the negotiations pending at London; he determinedly rejected all proposals of truce or peace, and pressed on with all his characteristic ardour the siege of the place.
Henry, alarmed and indignant at the news of this investment at this moment, proposed, in his impetuous promptness, to rush across the Channel and fall on Armagnac in person; but Sigismund, his royal guest, suggested to him that it was not a cause of sufficient importance to demand his own presence. He sent the Duke of Bedford, his brother, with a fleet to the relief of Harfleur. The duke mustered at Eye such ships as he could procure in haste, and on the 14th of August, 1416, reached the mouth of the Seine. He found the blockade of a formidable character. The galleys of the Genoese were so tall that the loftiest of the duke's ships could not reach to their upper decks by more than a spear's length. Besides these, there were also Spanish ships of great size, and all were posted with great judgment. Nothing daunted, the duke resolved on attacking them in the morning. At sunset he summoned on board of his ship all the captains of his fleet to concert the plan of the battle, and during the night he kept his squadron together by displaying a light at his masthead.
The next morning, the 15th of August, 1416, Bedford was agreeably surprised to see the French quit their secure moorings, and, in their rash confidence, leave behind their powerful allies of Genoa and Spain, and come out into the open sea to attack him. He very soon captured two of their ships, and, after a long and desperate conflict, most of the rest were taken or destroyed; a few escaping up the river. Bedford lost no time in bearing down on the Genoese galleys, which, notwithstanding their height, his sailors clambered up like squirrels, and boarded in gallant style. The garrison within the town now joined their countrymen in an attack on the land forces, which speedily raised the siege and fled. The duke remained to see the town put into a complete state of defence; and during this time, which was three weeks, the vast number of bodies which had been plunged into the Seine during the fight, rose and covered the whole of the waters all round the ships, much to the horror of the sailors. The duke led them away as soon as possible, and returned to England, having most successfully completed his mission.
In the following month of September, Henry proceeded to Calais, accompanied by his imperial guest Sigismund, who had concluded an alliance with him, and been enrolled a Knight of the Garter, and by the Duke of Bavaria, to meet John Sanspeur, Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy, during the late campaign, had professed to remain neuter. Though summoned by Charles to assist in expelling the English, he neither went himself nor permitted his vassals to do so. His county of Flanders not only maintained an avowed neutrality with England, but carried on their usual lucrative trade with it without any regard to French interests. Yet Burgundy had been cautious not to enter into direct engagements with Henry, or to lend any assistance to his invading army. Nay, after the battle of Azincourt, where his brothers the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nevers fell, he had expressed great resentment, and even defied Henry to mortal combat. But now circumstances had occurred in France which stung him to the quick, and made him ready to forget even the destruction of his brothers; but to understand the motives for this congress with the King of England and his allies at Calais, we must once more glance at the unhappy condition of France.
Blind to all dangers without, that wretched country was still torn by its mad factions. Not even the thunderbolt which had fallen in their midst in the terrible defeat of Azincourt could long arouse them to a sense of their peril. There was scarcely a family in the kingdom but had to mourn the loss of one or more of its members in that enormous carnage. But these feelings rapidly died out before the demon spirit of party hatred. The Burgundians, who had kept in a great measure out of the campaign, soon began to express their joy that the Armagnacs had been so sanguinarily chastised and humbled by the English. The common people held much the same language as the King of England, and denounced the crimes and imbecility of their rulers as the cause of their calamities and their national disgrace. When the Count of Armagnac was placed at the head of affairs, the Duke of Burgundy was forbidden to approach Paris, and even insulted by Armagnac with the offer of a pension and the government of Picardy for his son Philip. Burgundy set out on his march to Paris to expel the Armagnacs, but at Troyes was met by a proclamation in the king's name ordering him to disband his troops. He continued his march in defiance of it, pretending that he was in arms only against the English invaders. By the end of November he had reached Lagny, only six leagues from the capital. Here he waited to try the effect of the butcher-faction in the city. He had with him the ferocious Caboche, and other leaders of that terrible clan, and trusted through their means to raise all their savage tribes again in his favour. But the constable, Armagnac, kept them down with a strong hand; and, instead of the long hoped-for success, came the news of the sudden death of the Dauphin Louis, his son-in-law. The rumour was that he had been dispatched by poison, lest he should join his father-in-law, Burgundy, and admit him to the city. The duke demanded that his daughter, the dauphin's widow, should be given up to him, which was done, but without either her jewels or her dowry; and, disappointed in his attempt on the capital. Burgundy returned homo to Flanders.
The condition of that unfortunate city was now as frightful as in some periods of the tremendous revolutions of late years. The Armagnacs raged in their triumph over Burgundy as furiously as Jacobins of our time ​against the Girondists. They thrust into prison or drove out of the city all who opposed their arbitrary conduct, not merely of the butcher-faction, but the professors of the university who denounced their unpatriotic proceedings, expelling no loss than forty of them. But now the Count of Armagnac was seized with the ambition of recovering Harfleur from the English, and thus winning popularity and no sooner had he set out with his army than the partisans of Burgundy produced a new plot in favour of Burgundy. This was to seize on the government in the name of the new dauphin. Prince John, and by uniting with him for Burgundy to exercise the administration. But the vigilance of the Armagnac party again defeated this scheme. The chiefs of the agitators were seized. Belloy, a wealthy cloth merchant, and Regnaud, a clergyman highly esteemed for his learning and piety, were seized and beheaded. Orgemont, a canon of Paris, was brought to execution, but was there claimed by the chapter of the cathedral, and sent back to prison, where he died miserably.
Armagnac, at once defeated by the English, and thus endangered by revolt in his absence, returned to Paris in the worst of tempers. He abolished the chief privileges of the city, annihilated the fraternity of butchers, and placed the public under the most stringent despotism. No meetings or assemblings of the citizens, even for the most innocent domestic purposes, were permitted. Not a marriage or a christening could be celebrated without licence from the Government, and it must be attended by soldiery. Everything which could be possibly used as a missile by the populace was removed. Bottles, heavy pots, iron utensils, were taken away and secured, and not a flower-pot was allowed to stand in the windows, lest it should be thrown down on the heads of the troops. All arms were ordered to be delivered up on pain of death, and were deposited in that since so celebrated fortress, the Bastile. The city was in a state of siege, and the infuriated Armagnacs having disarmed their enemies, began to put the most dreaded of them to death.
This had the effect of causing all who could to escape from the city, who, adding to the already vast numbers of the expelled Burgundians and butchers, formed themselves into bands, and laid waste the country round Paris. They were soon joined by other predatory forces from Artois, and disorder once let loose grew with terrible rapidity. The whole of France was very soon desolated by wild troops of various descriptions, who preyed on the inhabitants at pleasure. It was one universal anarchy. The numerous mercenary forces of Germans, Lombards, and Savoyards, who had been brought into the country by one or other of the factions which had so long torn the very vitals of France, helped themselves now without control, and ravaged the miserable country at will. The troops which were actually in the pay of the Government perpetrated the same outrages on the helpless people, and numerous swarms of the very scum of all these, brigands of the vilest and most lawless character, ranged through the land, committing every species of villany and horror under the name of "Begeaux." They were still more demoralised than the bands of Free Companions in the time of the Black Prince.
The condition of France was such as defied description. No country ever presented such a spectacle of ruin, misery, crime, and desolation. According to their own writers of the time, whole districts were deserted by their inhabitants, who had many of them been destroyed in the most shocking manner. Many of the most fertile farms had not been cultivated for twenty years. But in the country all round Paris the horrors of this period raged in tenfold degree. Within the city sate the brooding and leaden despotism, of the Armagnacs, crushing every motion in the cruel terror of reaction; without raged fire and the most devilish passions of defeated faction. You might have ridden a whole day (say the chroniclers) without seeing a house or farm which was not burnt or plundered. Ono of the leaders, John de Potx, entered St. Germain-in-Laye, where the king was residing, and, followed by 400 of his partisans in disguise, attempted to carry him off. De Solré, another, burned the châteaux in the very environs of the city, and, seizing one of the gates, was near entering the city with his brutal hordes.
The Count of Armagnac struggled desperately with these legions of savage enemies; and the war of the factions went on, ever more desperate, deadly, and exterminating. He procured a papal ban against those various marauders, and issued a proclamation authorising any one to pursue and destroy them as wild beasts. He sent out troops in different directions to quell them where they could, and, under the pretence of executing their orders, the most sanguinary vengeance was inflicted on the Burgundian partisans. In the neighbourhood of Noyon one of his captains, Raymoud de la Guerre, is said to have laden all the trees in the neighbourhood with noblemen and gentlemen of that faction, whom he hanged without ceremony or mercy.
Such was the condition of France when the Duke of Burgundy consented to meet Henry, Sigismund, and the Duke of Bavaria at Calais. The spirit of enmity betwixt him and the Armagnacs had reached its height. It was between them war to the death; neither party was any longer capable of a thought besides that of the extermination of the other. Burgundy was expelled and worsted by Armagnac, and he sought the aid of England.
There had been through the year continual correspondence between the courts of Burgundy and England, which purported to concern treaties of trade; and now the congress opened on the 3rd of October, 1416, for the ostensible purpose of healing the schism in the Church. The Armagnacs were struck with direst consternation at this ominous conference. They neither gave credit to the object being trade nor the peace of the Church; but they believed, and assorted, that Burgundy had sold himself to Henry, had formally acknowledged his title to the throne of France, and done homage to him for his provinces of Burgundy and Alost, in order to avenge himself of his Armagnac opponents. That such a treaty was agitated at the congress is certain, for the protocol is preserved in Rymer, and by it Burgundy was not only to acknowledge Henry's claim, but to assist him in establishing it. There is, however, no proof that he actually signed it.
Whatever was determined upon remains unknown, any farther than it can be surmised from what followed. Henry returned to England to make immediate and extensive preparations for the invasion of France, on the ​conclusion of the existing armistice. Sigismund went on to Constance in prosecution of his plans for the Church, and Burgundy retired to Valenciennes, as if also about to co-operate with Henry by the muster of his Flemish forces. But here a new and unexpected turn of affairs appears to have taken place. John, the new dauphin, had shaken himself loose of the Armagnac party, and made overtures to Burgundy. The duke caught at the opportunity of having the dauphin in his hands, and by such an alliance regaining his ascendancy in the state without incurring the odium of supporting a foreign invader against the rightful sovereign.
The two princes swore eternal friendship to each other. The dauphin pledged himself to assist the duke in driving from power the Armagnacs, and the duke engaged to aid the dauphin in expelling the English from France. The Armagnacs, confounded at this new coalition, issued a summons in the king's name to the dauphin to return to Paris, with which the prince offered to comply on condition that he brought the Duke of Burgundy and his followers with him. Finding that they could not induce the prince to quit his new ally, there is every reason to believe that they dispatched him with poison, for on the 14th of April, 1417, he was taken suddenly ill, and died in agonies with all the symptoms of poison. No one at that time doubted that it was the work of the Armagnacs, and it was generally believed that the abandoned Queen Isabella, or more properly Jezebel, was an active accomplice in the destruction of both this and her preceding son, whom she hated for their opposition and exposure of her flagitious life.
But if Isabella was guilty of these revolting crimes, she was speedily punished. Her youngest son, Charles, who now became dauphin, though but sixteen, was extremely artful, and by no means disposed to yield to the domination of his mother, whom he as heartily despised as his elder brothers had done. Isabella, through all the calamities which had afflicted France, had pursued the same unbroken course of vice and dissipation. Her court was a vile sty of sensuality and profligacy, without one particle of pity for the miseries of the people. As one paramour was assassinated, as was the case with the Duke of Orleans, she provided herself with another, and this modern Messalina outraged the feelings of the suffering people by a constant round of balls, masquerades, fêtes, and court galas, while France was pouring its best blood on the battle-field, or famine was raging in the most opulent towns. Age had not abated her heartless follies; the old king was in a state of imbecility, alternating with madness, and was so totally neglected by her, that he was, sometimes found half-starved, without attendants, and covered with vermin, from the want of clean linen.
Meantime Isabella lived in royal state in the castle of Vincennes, in the midst of her voluptuous court, and protected by a strong guard, commanded by her paramour, Bois-Bourdon, the Sieurs De Graville and De Giac. The moment that there became a strife for power between Isabella and the now dauphin, Charles, the king, who had been hitherto perfectly indifferent to the queen's proceedings, and lived obscurely with his own mistress, evinced a wonderful sensitiveness to Isabella's peccadilloes. He had De Bois-Bourdon arrested, put to the torture, and then flung into the Seine, sewn up in a leathern sack, with a label attached—"Let pass the justice of the king." Isabella herself was arrested and sent into close confinement at Tours. The Count of Armagnac is said to have the more willingly executed this severity on Isabella, because she had violently complained of his seizure of her treasures both at Paris and Melun, a measure to which the public necessities had driven him.
Engaged to frenzy by the loss of her favourite, of her power, and of her money, Isabella now meditated deep revenge. She had hated the Duke of Burgundy with a mortal hatred ever since he assassinated her beloved Duke of Orleans; and he had now added to his offences by implicating her in a manner in the murder of her own son, the Dauphin John. He had sent all over France a circular letter, accusing in the most unmeasured terms the Armagnac party, with whom Isabella was then actively united, of having poisoned the dauphin, charging on them all the miseries and disgraces that afflicted France, and calling on the people to come forward and punish the murderous traitors. "One evening," said the duke in his letter, "our most redoubtable lord and nephew fell so grievously sick, that he died forthwith. His lips, tongue, and face were swollen; his eyes started out of his head; it was a horrible sight to see, for so look people that are poisoned."
Yet the very next thing which the public heard was that Isabella had escaped from her prison at Tours, and thrown herself into the arms of the Duke of Burgundy, her old and most detested enemy. Such are the terrible extremes of a bad woman's vengeance. She now burned, at any cost, to revenge herself on Armagnac, and not less so on her own son Charles, whose destruction she sought as earnestly as she had done that of his brothers. This most unnatural woman had bribed her keepers to allow her to attend early mass at the church of Marmontier, in the suburbs of Tours. They accompanied her, but suddenly found themselves surprised by the Duke of Burgundy, who had secreted himself for the purpose in a neighbouring forest, with 800 men-at-arms. The moment Isabella was in the guardianship of this prince, she proclaimed herself regent of the kingdom during the continuance of the king's malady, and the Duke of Burgundy her lieutenant.
The Mass in the Abbey Church of Marmontier.(See page 540.)
Burgundy, after the sudden death of the dauphin, had besieged that city with an army of 60,000 cavalry, he promised to restore peace, and abolish all oppressive taxes. The people in the country there ready to look upon him as a deliverer; and many cities, including Amiens, Abbeville, Dourlens, Montrouil, and other towns in Picardy opened their gates to him. Paris, in the hands of the Armagnacs, made a steadfast resistance. He, however, became master of Chalous, Troyes, Auxerre, and on being joined by Isabella, most of the towns, except those taken by the King of England, declared for Burgundy and the queen. Isabella had a great seal engraved, and appointed her officers of state. She declared that the Armagnacs held the king and dauphin prisoners in Paris, and were, therefore, traitors. She made Burgundy governor-general of the whole kingdom, appointed the Duke of Lorraine constable, and the Prince of Orange governor of Languedoc. There was a great flocking of princes and nobility to the Queen's court, and thus there were established two royal parties and two courts, the one with the king and dauphin in Paris, the other with the queen at Chartres. The people, elated by the promises of Burgundy, rose in many places and killed the tax-gatherers, crying, "Long live Burgundy, and no taxes!" They regarded every rich man as an Armagnac, for that was a good plea on which to plunder him; and thus passed the winter of 1417.
Meantime, Henry of England advanced into the heart of Normandy, having, on setting out, issued to his army orders in consonance with those enlightened principles of humanity and policy which he had adopted in such noble contrast to the practice of the Edwards. He forbade, on pain of the severest punishment, all breaches of discipline, all injury to the lives and property of the peaceable inhabitants, and especially of insult to clergymen, or outrage to the wives, widows, and maidens of the country. Yet the Normans, neglected by their own rulers, who were engaged like wolves in tearing each other's throats instead of defending their common soil, still retained their allegiance, and regarding Henry, not as the descendant of their ancient dukes, but as a foreign invader, rejected him with great bravery. Probably the atrocities committed on them by the Edwards had thoroughly alienated their hearts from the English. But they were unable to contend with the superior forces and martial skill of Henry; and Fouques, Auvillers, and Villers surrendered after short sieges; Caen resisted, but was taken by assault; Bayeaux submitted voluntarily; and l'Aigle, Lisieux, Alençon, and Ealaise, after some stout resistance. Henry then went into comfortable winter quarters, intending to proceed, on the return of spring, with his proposed task of reducing every fortress in Normandy. During the winter, however, he made occasional military demonstrations as the weather permitted, and received deputations from both the great parties in the state; but he steadily refused to treat on any other terms than that he should receive the hand of the Princess Catherine, should be at once appointed regent of the country, and declared successor to the crown on the king's death. The attempts at reconciliation between the factions themselves were equally abortive.
While Henry was thus successfully prosecuting his campaign in Normandy, there had occurred a slight disturbance at home. The Scots, thinking that, the king being absent with the flower of the army, the kingdom must be left greatly unprotected, made a descent upon England. The Duke of Albany and Earl Douglas crossed the borders each with an army, and while Albany laid siege to the castle of Berwick, Douglas invested that of Roxburgh. But the Dukes of Exeter and Bedford, the regent, made a rapid march northward with such forces that the Scotch leaders suddenly abandoned their enterprise, and disbanded their armies.
Simultaneous with this inroad once more appeared Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, on the scene. He had been concealed in Wales, but the absence of the king afforded him also the expectation of taking vengeance on his enemies. It has been surmised that the Scotch and Sir John had mutually concerted this attack. Be this, however, as it may, there can be no doubt that both Sir John and the Lollards in general were greatly embittered by the cruelties practised on them by the bishops. These dignitaries had set them the example of bloodshed, and had certainly taken the initiative in the attempt to put down difference of theological opinion by destroying their opponents, and during the three years that Lord Cobham had eluded them, they had pursued and burnt the Lollards with increasing severity. Such lessons are readily taught, and nothing could be more natural than that the injured party should seek retaliation in kind. Sir John, too, was probably deeply incensed by his old companion, the king, giving him over so forcibly to the tender mercies of the clergy; and, though they could not in this case assert that he sought his life, he probably felt little compunction in disturbing his Government in the endeavour to come at the official persecutors.
The hasty retreat of the Scots defeated the intentions of the Lollards, and Lord Cobham, hastening from his rendezvous near St. Alban's, endeavoured to regain the Welsh mountains, but he was intercepted near Broniart, in Montgomeryshire, by the retainers of Sir Edward Charlton, Earl of Powis.
When brought before the House of Peers, his former indictment read, and asked by the Duke of Bedford what he had to say in his defence, he made a bold and able speech; but being stopped and desired to give a direct answer, he refused to plead, declaring that there was no authority in that court so long as Richard II. was alive in Scotland; for it seems, like many others, he was still of opinion that the Scotch Richard was genuine. He was at once condemned, and was hanged as a traitor in St. Giles's Fields, and burnt as a heretic, December, 1417.
In the spring of 1418 Henry resumed his operations in Normandy with vigour. He had received a reinforcement of 15,000 men, so that he could divide his forces, and conduct several operations at the same time. Amongst his new troops appeared a new race on the continent, which excited especial wonder amongst the French. These wore a regiment of Irish, who wore now sufficiently reconciled to the English rule to form a portion of their army. Monstrelet, the great French chronicler of those times, says, "The King of England had with him ​Numbers of Irish, mostly men on foot, having only a stocking and shoe on one leg and foot, with the other leg and foot quite naked. They carried targets, short javelins, and a strange sort of knives. Those who had horses had no saddles, but they rode excellently well on small mountain horses. These Irish did oft times make excursions all over Normandy, doing infinite mischief, and bringing back to the camp much spoil and forage. They took men, and even little children from the cradle, with beds, furniture, and all, and, mounting them on the top of their booty, on cows and bullocks, drove them all before them, for the French often fell in with them riding in this manner." They took the men and children for ransom, but the French were greatly horrified at them, for they believed that they took the little children to eat.
The Dukes of Gloucester and Clarence, the king's brothers, took the command of different bodies of troops, and proceeded to reduce the strongest towns in Lower Normandy. Gloucester compelled Cherbourg to surrender, after a long and obstinate defence, on the 29th of September; but before this most of the towns of Lower Normandy had opened their gates. Henry advanced along the Seine and made himself master of the whole country from Louviers to the sea; finding, in this part of his campaign, infinite advantage from his conquest of Harfleur. Pont de l'Arche completed the possession of all Lower Normandy, with the exception of Cherbourg, which Gloucester was blockading. By July, making certain of the ultimate fall of this city, Henry regarded Lower Normandy as his own. The people had defended their cities with obstinate valour. In vain he reminded them that he was the descendant of their own Rollo, and that all his nobles drew their origin from Normandy. The Normans had fresher and more recent memories—those of the havoc of the Edwards, and the repeated burning of their ports and ravaging of their coasts by the English. The two people had ceased to speak the same language, and the barbarities of war had placed a vast gulf of national antipathies between them.
Henry did all in his power to efface these cruel recollections. He maintained a strict adherence to his orders for the protection of the inhabitants, though we fear his Irish troops were found rather difficult to deal with on this head; and he abolished the gabelle, an odious duty on salt, and other oppressive impositions. He was ever open to appeals against injury and injustice; and his manners were most affable and winning to all who approached him. Before proceeding to the siege of Rouen, he organised a Government for Lower Normandy, appointed a chancellor and treasurer, and left that part of France, though under a foreign rule, far more quiet and habitable than any other district of the realm.
The siege of Rouen was the grand operation which was not only to lay all Normandy at the foot of the conqueror, but open the highway to Paris. Rouen, the capital of Upper Normandy, was at that time one of the most populous and beautiful cities in France. It is situated within a semicircle of hills, smooth in character, but of considerable elevation; and its southern side is washed by the broad waters of the Seine. It is said to have contained 200,000 inhabitants; but, if that were true, a very large proportion must have inhabited the suburbs. The present boulevards, which surround the old portion of the city, terminated by the river at each end, stand on the site of the ancient ditch and defences; and though the buildings are as dense and the streets as narrow as they could possibly be in the time of Henry V., they do not include more than half the present population, which is merely Calculated at 91,000. These 91,000 have spread themselves on every side, far beyond the boulevards, the ancient limits. They extend over the pleasant ranges of Cauchois, Beauvoisine, and La Monté on the north and west; for two miles eastward, with intermingled gardens and manufactories, up the valley of Martinville, on the north side of St. Catherine's Hill; for a mile or more, with wharfs and works of trade, along the hanks of the Seine in the same direction; and on the southern bank of the river, in the Faubourg St. Sever, lies a population of at least 10,000 people, amid the smoke of tall chimneys and the sounds of manufacturing industry, which two bridges connect with the old city. Where, then, the 200,000 inhabitants of Henry's time could have stowed themselves, while the less than 100,000 of the present Manchester of France demand so much room, is a problem not easily solved. If they occupied the suburbs to a similar extent, they must, at the approach of the English army, have been burnt out and dispersed into the country at large, for the Rouenese determined to defend their city to the last. The general commanding there, Guy le Bouteillier, at once set fire to all the suburbs, destroying every house, garden, and fence without the walls, that they might afford no shelter to the enemy, and made the whole circle of the environs of Rouen one naked and black desert.
The French calculated greatly on the resistance of Rouen; they fondly hoped that it would altogether arrest the progress of the conqueror, and do that for the wretched Government which it took no pains to do for itself. The city was strongly fortified. On all sides it was enclosed by massive ramparts, towers, and batteries. Fifteen thousand trained men, and a garrison of 4,000 men-at-arms were collected within it. Many of these were gentlemen of Lower Normandy, who, having vainly endeavoured to check the progress of the enemy in their own neighbourhood, had retired hither to assist in making one last and determined stand against the power which had driven them from hearth and home. The governor had made every preparation for the most obstinate resistance. Not only had he laid waste the environs and annihilated the suburbs, but he had commanded every man and every family to quit the city who had not provisions for ten months, and the magistrates had enforced the order.
Henry has, indeed, been blamed, in a military point of view, for not making a rush upon Rouen so soon as he had reduced Harfleur, and opened to himself the Seine. Then, it is said, Rouen was feebly garrisoned, was full of people stricken with panic, and the defences were in an imperfect condition. By prosecuting the sieges of successive smaller towns he had allowed the Rouenese ample time to prepare for his approach, to strengthen their old fortifications and add new ones, to reduce the useless mouths and increase the militant hands. This is probably true; but Henry knew that it was only a work of time, of which the French allowed ​him any quantity, and he went on step by step, confident of accomplishing his object.
On the 30th of July he appeared before the town. He had 200 sail of small vessels on the Seine, so that he could convoy his troops to any portion of the environs. He found the brave and patriotic Bouteillier ready to encounter him. Instead of lying concealed behind his strong walls this leader met him in the open field, and attacked him with the utmost impetuosity. The battle was desperate and bloody, and though ultimately compelled, by the numbers and the tried valour of the English, to retire, he never ceased to renew the attack, and interrupt the commencement of Henry's works for the investment of the place. He continually made fierce sorties, destroyed his embankments, beat up the quarters of the soldiers now here, now there, and greatly obstructed the operations of the besiegers.
At length Henry succeeded in encamping his army in six divisions before the six gates of the city. He protected these by lofty embankments from the shot from the city, and connected them with each other by deep trenches, so that the men could pass from one to the other without danger from the arrows of the enemy. Then, finally, the whole town on the land sides was enclosed in strong military lines, which he strengthened with thick hedges of thorn, and on the most commanding situations without the camp he placed towers of wood, batteries of cannon, and engines for the projection of arrows and stones.
At the present day, with our scientific engineering and our immense power of artillery, the situation of Rouen must be pronounced weak, provided that an enemy is once in possession of the heights around it. From these, and especially from the hill of St. Catherine—which, 900 feet in height, immediately and prominently overlooks the eastern end of the town—modern batteries would demolish the whole city in a single day. But at that time, though formidable trains of artillery are talked of, they were unquestionably clumsy, inefficient, and ill-directed. Cannon was brought by the French to Azincourt, but we hear of nothing that it did, while the grand weapon of that day, the yew-bow and the cloth-yard shaft, familiar to the brawny arms of British yeomen, carried death wherever they came. Henry is said to have discharged stone balls of a foot diameter from huge cannon at Harfleur, and one of these very stones is yet preserved in the court of the Museum of Antiquities at Rouen of still greater diameter; while two of these enormous guns, one containing one of these ponderous balls, are shown at Mount St. Michael in Normandy. However, Henry found himself unable to make a breach in the walls by any power that he possessed, or to bombard the town from the heights, and sot zealously to work thoroughly to invest the place, and reduce it by blockade.
Yet he was in entire possession of all the surrounding eminences, and especially of that of St. Catherine, from which he drove the garrison. The numbers of English travellers who every summer climb this verdant hill, and behold from it the whole magnificent panorama of the city and its environs, one of the most lovely scenes in the world, still behold the ancient town itself much as it might be supposed to meet the eye of Henry V. Those pleasant slopes to the north and west, instead of gay villas and umbrageous gardens, as now, were covered with tents and armies. The populous valley of Martinville, and the wide, flat suburb of St. Sever, across the river, the Southwark of Rouen, were then burnt and waste, and not, as now, busy with manufactories, with bleaching grounds and streaming people; but the old town presented its broad mass of red and almost continuous roofs, and the cathedral, St. Ouen, St. Maclou, and a score of other stately churches, some of the noblest ecclesiastic structures in the world, rose high into the air above towers and palaces. Those magnificent churches, now hoar5' with age, were then comparatively new; reared in all the exubeiance of the florid style, every buttress, port, and finial, every tower, to its dizzy summit, encrusted with work delicate and clear as if carved in ivory; every glorious window and soaring spandrel perforated with the most gorgeous tracery. We may believe that Henry—who was not, like most of the princes and nobles of those days, an illiterate, or semi-illiterate man, but who had been educated at Oxford, and had intellectual tastes, and was especially fond of music, and a master himself on the harp—would pause, even if he had the power, ere he would willingly let loose destruction on so fair a scene. In the choir of that proud cathedral lay the lion heart of Richard of England; in its southern aisle, the dust of Rollo, the founder of his race; and many a recollection of the proudest days of Normandy and Normanic England clustered around it. Far and wide, wherever his eye fell.—and it could range over scores of miles—it was a scene befitting the locality of such a capital. The lovely Seine flowed on through the richest meadows, its bosom gemmed by numbers of the most wooded and fairy-like islands, and swept the feet of the precipitous chalk cliffs of St. Catherine with a serene grace that seemed to promise ages of peaceful abundance to that fair capital.
Such were, not improbably, the thoughts of the king, for he resolved to spare the city, but to win it. He therefore pressed on his works, which, extending over a circuit of several miles, required enormous labour and much time. The troops of Bouteillier did not allow him to construct these in quiet. They continued to make daring sorties; and many a gallant deed of arms was done under the walls of the city. But Henry continually brought up fresh troops; the camp on St. Catherine itself, as is obvious to all who contemplate the immense traces of its fortifications, could, if necessary, shelter 10,000 men. He collected vast numbers of workmen also from the country round; and, finally, so completed his circumvallations, that neither could the sallying garrison make any impression, nor could a single article of provisions find its way into the city. All such supplies from the river he had cut off by drawing three strong chains of iron across it above the city, and three similar ones below. Above, near his own troops, and protecting them, he threw across a bridge, and near the bridge he moored a squadron of boats, which he had had dragged over land by enormous labour of men and horses. He had a fleet of hired Portuguese ships guarding the mouth of the river; and the banks and islands of the Seine were protected by detachments of soldiers. Supporting these strong defences he had a numerous garrison at Pont de l'Arche; and, while he shut out all supplies from the ​town, his 200 small vessels in the river plied to and fro, bringing in abundance to his camp from the whole country.
Those stringent measures soon began to tell. Before two instead of ten months had expired, famine had shown its hideous face. Though the governor had reduced the population greatly before the siege commenced, he now expelled from the city 12,000 more useless mouths, as they were termed in the iron language of war. Henry forbade them to be admitted within the lines, for the tender mercies of sieges are cruel under the most humane of commanders. To permit at will the expulsion of the people was to prolong the siege, and, therefore, as at Calais, under Edward I., notwithstanding some of these wretched outcasts were fed by the humanity of the troops, the greater number perished through want of food and shelter.
But within the city famine stalked on, and the misery was terrible. During the third month the besieged killed and subsisted on their horses. After that, for ten months, they killed the dogs and cats; and the necessity growing more and more desperate, they descended to rats, mice, and any species of vermin they could clutch in their famine-sharpened fingers. It is said that, in the whole siege, from famine, from the wretched unwholesome food eaten, by the sword, and other means, no less than 50,000 of the inhabitants perished.
All this time the unhappy people cried vehemently to the Duke of Burgundy, the head of the Government, for succour. Their messengers returned with flattering but fallacious promises, and no relief was ever sent. On one occasion the heartless minister oven fixed the precise day on which he would arrive in force and compel the English to raise the siege. At this news a wild joy ran like lightning through the famishing city. The bells wore rung with mad exultation; people ran to and fro spreading the glad tidings and uttering mutual congratulations. The troops were ordered to be every man in readiness to rush forth at the right moment, and second the assault of their friends without. The day came and went; no deliverer appeared, and a deadly despair sank down on the devoted city.
It was in the midst of these horrors that the Cardinal Ursini, who had in vain exerted himself to reconcile the insensate factions, now turned to Henry, and entreated him to moderate his pretensions, and incline to peace. But Henry was too sagacious a politician to renounce the advantages which the folly and crimes of his enemies opened up to him. He was willing to make overtures of peace, and he did so to both parties, but it was still on his fixed terms of the sovereignty of France. He repeated his clear persuasion that his work was the work of an avenging Providence. "Do you not perceive," he said to Ursini, "that it is God who has led me hither by the hand? France has no sovereign. There is nothing here but confusion; there is no law, no order. No one thinks of resisting me. Can I, therefore, have a more convincing proof that the Being who disposes of empires, has determined to put the crown of France upon my head?"
After the union of Burgundy and the queen, Armagnac grew more savage in his retaliative warfare. He sent from Paris his captains Tanuegui du Chastel and Barbazan to attack the Burgundians. They carried on a murderous warfare, taking several towns and fortresses, and putting their garrisons to the sword. Armagnac himself took the field, and, being repulsed from Senlis, in revenge he beheaded all his prisoners. Thou the Bastard of Thian, the Burgundian commander, in retaliation, also put to death his prisoners. Such was the devilish atrocity to which the contending chiefs had arrived, that it began to revolt the most callous. The Bishop of Paris took courage and opened a correspondence with Burgundy. The dauphin, who, as well as his imbecile father, was in the hands of Armagnac, also sent agents to treat with the duke and the queen his mother. The Pope, Martin V., had sent the cardinals Ursini and St. Mark to endeavour to mediate between the factions, and to put an end to this scandalous condition of things, and they succeeded in making a treaty with Burgundy and the queen. The people of Paris were in raptures at the news, but Armagnac was still in the city with a strong garrison; he had still the wretched king and the dauphin in his power; and he refused to recognise the treaty, and proceeded to proscribe and put to death as traitors all who dared to utter a different sentiment. The city was deluged with blood. But his time was now come. The whole people were weary of his savage despotism, and were ripe themselves for some desperate deed.
A company of young men had entered into secret correspondence with the Burgundians; and on the night of the 29th of May, Perrinet le Clerk, one of their number, opened the gate of St. Qermain-des-Prés to L'Isle-Adam, a captain of the Duke of Burgundy, and his troop marched in profound silence to the Chatelet, where they wore joined by 500 of the inhabitants. They then divided into different bodies, and, having admitted the whole garrison of Pontoise, they ran through the streets, crying, "Our Lady of Peace! Long live Burgundy! Let those who are for peace come and follow us!"
The mass of the people obeyed the summons with instant alacrity. They threw on their clothes and followed the Burgundians, who hastened to the houses of the chief Armagnacs, dragged them from their beds, and thrust them into prison. Tannegui du Chastel, a Breton, and one of the most daring of the Armagnacs, ran to the chamber of the dauphin, and carried him off, wrapped merely in his bed-clothes, to the Bastile, from whence he escaped to Melun. But scarcely did Du Chastel disappear from one door of the dauphin's chamber, when the mob broke in, and, missing him, seized all the gentlemen of his retinue, and sent them to prison. L'Isle-Adam, meantime, had hurried to the Hotel St. Pol, where the king lived, and, securing him, they set him on a horse, idiotic as he was, and paraded him through the streets, to convince the people that all they did was by his orders. The Count of Armagnac himself, who had fled and concealed himself in the house of a mason, was given up to L'Isle-Adam by this man, in terror of the denunciation against all who protected him.
On the 11th of June, Tannegui du Chastel made a sortie with 1,600 men from the Bastile, in the hope of recovering Paris; but he was driven back to his retreat, the people flinging down upon him and his followers at every step all kinds of missiles from their windows and roofs. The Armagnacs had killed a ​considerable number of poor people in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and now the mob, in their rage, fell on the Armagnac citizens, and massacred all they could find. Women, and even children, like demons in their fury, dragged the dead Armagnacs about the streets, mutilating; and insulting them in their diabolical frenzy.
Rouen, from the Hill of St. Catherine.
No sooner was the news of this revolution spread than the equally brutalised population of the country came pouring into Paris to share in the plunder and carnage. The Burgundian butchers once more walked the streets of the capital in sanguinary ascendency, and Paris was a hell! Had not avarice come in to stay the hand of murder, in the hope of ransom, not a single Armagnac would have been left alive.
But even yet the horror had not culminated. Instead of the Duke of Burgundy and the queen, now in the ascendant, exerting themselves to restrain the cruelty and restore order, they kept aloof—Burgundy at Montbelliard, and the queen at Troyes; and they are accused of even stimulating the massacre of their defeated enemies.
Nothing short of the monstrosity of crime to which those long and deadly feuds had led at this time could induce us to credit such appalling suggestions. But the queen is related to have replied to a deputation sent to invite her to Paris, that she would never set foot again in that city while a single Armagnac breathed in it. On the other hand, though Tannegui du Chastel had fled to Bourges with the dauphin, 150 miles off, rumours, said to. ​be traceable to the Burgundian camp, were constantly spreading that he was on his way to surprise Paris, release all the Armagnac captives, and slay every Burgundian, man, woman, and child.
Cardinal Ursini's Visit to Henry V.(See page 545.)
These rumours were incessantly revived, keeping the people in perpetual alarm, and irritating them to a state of mind bordering on desperation. At length, on the night of Sunday, the 12th of June, cries were hoard in the streets that Tannegui was at the gates, and that all Paris would be butchered. The people, roused to a pitch of uncontrolled fury, swore that there would be no peace while one Armagnac lived. They rushed out, armed and implacable, crying, "Peace for ever! Long live the Duke of Burgundy!" L'Isle-Adam endeavoured, at the head of his soldiery, to appease their murderous designs; but he and his 1,000 men were nothing in the path of a whole city breathing destruction. They gave way, and the wild mob rushed on, crying that the Armagnacs were dogs; that they had ruined France; were now in treaty to make it over to the English; and had prepared English flags to plant on the walls of Paris. They burst open the prison doors, they ranged like wild beasts through the houses of the Armagnacs; and there was one fierce, deadly, universal massacre.
The Count of Armagnac, who had so long ridden on the crest of the troubled sea of French affairs, was one of the first on whom they glutted their thirst of blood; and his mangled remains were dragged with curses for three days through the streets of Paris by the excited women and children. The wild work of extermination went on for many days. In the first outbreak of this carnival of Moloch, between four o'clock in the morning and mid-day, 1,500 persons perished. In the three first days, besides the constable, the chancellor, and six bishops, 3,500 persons of eminent rank and character were put to death. The streets ran with blood; and ​when murder had wearied itself out, or ceased for want of fresh victims, pestilence took up the work, and the whole tale of the victims of this outbreak is said to have amounted to 14,000 persons, of whom 5,000 were women.
In the midst of those horrors, the queen and the Duke of Burgundy made their entry into Paris in triumph on the 14th of July. The streets, not yet dried from the blood of the massacred, were strewn with flowers; and these contemptible princes, themselves stained with more than one murder, or the reputation of it, rode on as if nothing had occurred. The butcheries had not ceased when they entered Paris, and they rather encouraged than put a stop to them, for they had spites of their own which they sought to gratify. They got the poor doting king into their possession, and, thus armed with the royal authority, they made use of the leaders of the mob to execute their own vengeance on those they hated, and then executed their tools to pacify the people. They made strenuous endeavours to secure the person of the dauphin; but Tannegui du Chastel and the Armagnacs had him at Bourges, and kept good watch over him. They then entered into negotiations with him, offering him terms of coalition, and doing all in their power to allure him to Paris; but such overtures were hopeless while the whole Armagnac party were burning for revenge of their late butchery. Though the old Count of Armagnac was dead, his son was alive, and vowing the most signal retribution. With the Count of Dreux, and other French barons, he had been harassing Henry's province of Guienne as a diversion in favour of Normandy; but he and his associates at once made peace with the King of England and joined the dauphin, demanding justice on his father's assassins. Tannegui du Chastel, equally eager for revenge, and more truculent, denounced extermination to the Burgundians. By their advice the dauphin assumed the title of regent, repudiating his mother's right to it, and opened a Parliament at Poictiers.
Thus France, after all the murders of the heads of its factions, had still two factions as decided and iniquitous as over. Each of these factions sought to make an alliance with Henry, the common enemy of their claims. Henry amused them as long as it suited his purpose. He sent commissioners to meet those of the dauphin at Alençon, and those of Burgundy at Pont de l'Arche; and having heard all they had to say, without at all communicating his own views, at length dismissed them with the insulting observations that the dauphin was a minor, the king not of sound mind, and Burgundy's authority doubtful, so that no safe treaty could be made with any of them.
During these attempts at negotiation Henry still pressed on the siege of Rouen. Winter was now setting in, and the famished citizens saw its approach with horror. They had long been reduced to the severest condition of starvation, and still the determined De Bouteillier held out. They had consumed every green and every living thing but themselves and their children. The inky Robec, flowing through and under Rouen, the Styx of the place, had long ceased to furnish one desperate rat to the hungry watchers. The time was come when a man looked at his neighbour's leathern girdle with fierce desire, and an old shoe was the only material for a stew. A lizard, a bat, or a snail were luxuries which only could be purchased by the rich. Gaunt Famine, the sternest of all conquerors, now subdued the iron hardihood of the governor, and he offered on the 3rd of January to capitulate; but Henry insisted on unconditional surrender. Bouteillier, indignant and in despair, assembled the garrison, and proposed to them to set fire to the city, to throw down a portion of the wall, which was already undermined by the English, and burst headlong into the camp of the enemy, where, if they could not cut their way through, they should at least perish as became soldiers.
This stoical design, as terribly sublime as any project of antiquity, reaching the ears of Henry, he lowered his demands. It was impossible not to be struck with such heroism in men wasted by months of utter want, and he had no wish to see Rouen a heap of smoking ruins. He offered the soldiers their lives and liberties on condition that they did not serve against him for twelve months; and he guaranteed to the citizens their property and their franchises on the payment of 300,000 crowns. On the 13th of January, 1419, the terms of surrender were signed, and on the 19th Henry entered the city in triumph. To his honour he strictly observed the treaty, suffering no infringement of the citizens' rights, nor displaying any signs of vengeance. The only person exempted from this clemency was a priest who had, during the siege, excommunicated him, and pronounced the direst curses upon him. Him he imprisoned for life; and a captain of the city militia was executed a few days after the entrance of the city, for treasonable designs.
The fall of Rouen was the fall of the whole province. The fortresses which had hitherto held out now speedily opened their gates, and the red cross of England waved on all the towers of Normandy, announcing it an appendage of England.