Chapter XXI - England Under Henry the Fifth

by Charles Dickens

　　FIRST PART

　　The Prince of Wales began his reign like a generous and honest man.He set the young Earl of March free; he restored their estates andtheir honours to the Percy family, who had lost them by theirrebellion against his father; he ordered the imbecile andunfortunate Richard to be honourably buried among the Kings ofEngland; and he dismissed all his wild companions, with assurancesthat they should not want, if they would resolve to be steady,faithful, and true.

　　It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions; andthose of the Lollards were spreading every day. The Lollards wererepresented by the priests - probably falsely for the most part -to entertain treasonable designs against the new King; and Henry,suffering himself to be worked upon by these representations,sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle, the Lord Cobham, to them,after trying in vain to convert him by arguments. He was declaredguilty, as the head of the sect, and sentenced to the flames; buthe escaped from the Tower before the day of execution (postponedfor fifty days by the King himself), and summoned the Lollards tomeet him near London on a certain day. So the priests told theKing, at least. I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyondsuch as was got up by their agents. On the day appointed, insteadof five-and-twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir JohnOldcastle, in the meadows of St. Giles, the King found only eightymen, and no Sir John at all. There was, in another place, anaddle-headed brewer, who had gold trappings to his horses, and apair of gilt spurs in his breast - expecting to be made a knightnext day by Sir John, and so to gain the right to wear them - butthere was no Sir John, nor did anybody give information respectinghim, though the King offered great rewards for such intelligence.Thirty of these unfortunate Lollards were hanged and drawnimmediately, and were then burnt, gallows and all; and the variousprisons in and around London were crammed full of others. Some ofthese unfortunate men made various confessions of treasonabledesigns; but, such confessions were easily got, under torture andthe fear of fire, and are very little to be trusted. To finish thesad story of Sir John Oldcastle at once, I may mention that heescaped into Wales, and remained there safely, for four years.When discovered by Lord Powis, it is very doubtful if he would havebeen taken alive - so great was the old soldier's bravery - if amiserable old woman had not come behind him and broken his legswith a stool. He was carried to London in a horse-litter, wasfastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted to death.

　　To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words, Ishould tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy,commonly called 'John without fear,' had had a grand reconciliationof their quarrel in the last reign, and had appeared to be quite ina heavenly state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, inthe public streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by aparty of twenty men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy - according tohis own deliberate confession. The widow of King Richard had beenmarried in France to the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans. Thepoor mad King was quite powerless to help her, and the Duke ofBurgundy became the real master of France. Isabella dying, herhusband (Duke of Orleans since the death of his father) married thedaughter of the Count of Armagnac, who, being a much abler man thanhis young son-in-law, headed his party; thence called after himArmagnacs. Thus, France was now in this terrible condition, thatit had in it the party of the King's son, the Dauphin Louis; theparty of the Duke of Burgundy, who was the father of the Dauphin'sill-used wife; and the party of the Armagnacs; all hating eachother; all fighting together; all composed of the most depravednobles that the earth has ever known; and all tearing unhappyFrance to pieces.

　　The late King had watched these dissensions from England, sensible(like the French people) that no enemy of France could injure hermore than her own nobility. The present King now advanced a claimto the French throne. His demand being, of course, refused, hereduced his proposal to a certain large amount of French territory,and to demanding the French princess, Catherine, in marriage, witha fortune of two millions of golden crowns. He was offered lessterritory and fewer crowns, and no princess; but he called hisambassadors home and prepared for war. Then, he proposed to takethe princess with one million of crowns. The French Court repliedthat he should have the princess with two hundred thousand crownsless; he said this would not do (he had never seen the princess inhis life), and assembled his army at Southampton. There was ashort plot at home just at that time, for deposing him, and makingthe Earl of March king; but the conspirators were all speedilycondemned and executed, and the King embarked for France.

　　It is dreadful to observe how long a bad example will be followed;but, it is encouraging to know that a good example is never thrownaway. The King's first act on disembarking at the mouth of theriver Seine, three miles from Harfleur, was to imitate his father,and to proclaim his solemn orders that the lives and property ofthe peaceable inhabitants should be respected on pain of death. Itis agreed by French writers, to his lasting renown, that even whilehis soldiers were suffering the greatest distress from want offood, these commands were rigidly obeyed.

　　With an army in all of thirty thousand men, he besieged the town ofHarfleur both by sea and land for five weeks; at the end of whichtime the town surrendered, and the inhabitants were allowed todepart with only fivepence each, and a part of their clothes. Allthe rest of their possessions was divided amongst the English army.But, that army suffered so much, in spite of its successes, fromdisease and privation, that it was already reduced one half.Still, the King was determined not to retire until he had struck agreater blow. Therefore, against the advice of all hiscounsellors, he moved on with his little force towards Calais.When he came up to the river Somme he was unable to cross, inconsequence of the fort being fortified; and, as the English movedup the left bank of the river looking for a crossing, the French,who had broken all the bridges, moved up the right bank, watchingthem, and waiting to attack them when they should try to pass it.At last the English found a crossing and got safely over. TheFrench held a council of war at Rouen, resolved to give the Englishbattle, and sent heralds to King Henry to know by which road he wasgoing. 'By the road that will take me straight to Calais!' saidthe King, and sent them away with a present of a hundred crowns.

　　The English moved on, until they beheld the French, and then theKing gave orders to form in line of battle. The French not comingon, the army broke up after remaining in battle array till night,and got good rest and refreshment at a neighbouring village. TheFrench were now all lying in another village, through which theyknew the English must pass. They were resolved that the Englishshould begin the battle. The English had no means of retreat, iftheir King had any such intention; and so the two armies passed thenight, close together.

　　To understand these armies well, you must bear in mind that theimmense French army had, among its notable persons, almost thewhole of that wicked nobility, whose debauchery had made France adesert; and so besotted were they by pride, and by contempt for thecommon people, that they had scarcely any bowmen (if indeed theyhad any at all) in their whole enormous number: which, comparedwith the English army, was at least as six to one. For these proudfools had said that the bow was not a fit weapon for knightlyhands, and that France must be defended by gentlemen only. Weshall see, presently, what hand the gentlemen made of it.

　　Now, on the English side, among the little force, there was a goodproportion of men who were not gentlemen by any means, but who weregood stout archers for all that. Among them, in the morning -having slept little at night, while the French were carousing andmaking sure of victory - the King rode, on a grey horse; wearing onhis head a helmet of shining steel, surmounted by a crown of gold,sparkling with precious stones; and bearing over his armour,embroidered together, the arms of England and the arms of France.The archers looked at the shining helmet and the crown of gold andthe sparkling jewels, and admired them all; but, what they admiredmost was the King's cheerful face, and his bright blue eye, as hetold them that, for himself, he had made up his mind to conquerthere or to die there, and that England should never have a ransomto pay for him. There was one brave knight who chanced to say thathe wished some of the many gallant gentlemen and good soldiers, whowere then idle at home in England, were there to increase theirnumbers. But the King told him that, for his part, he did not wishfor one more man. 'The fewer we have,' said he, 'the greater willbe the honour we shall win!' His men, being now all in good heart,were refreshed with bread and wine, and heard prayers, and waitedquietly for the French. The King waited for the French, becausethey were drawn up thirty deep (the little English force was onlythree deep), on very difficult and heavy ground; and he knew thatwhen they moved, there must be confusion among them.

　　As they did not move, he sent off two parties:- one to lieconcealed in a wood on the left of the French: the other, to setfire to some houses behind the French after the battle should bebegun. This was scarcely done, when three of the proud Frenchgentlemen, who were to defend their country without any help fromthe base peasants, came riding out, calling upon the English tosurrender. The King warned those gentlemen himself to retire withall speed if they cared for their lives, and ordered the Englishbanners to advance. Upon that, Sir Thomas Erpingham, a greatEnglish general, who commanded the archers, threw his truncheoninto the air, joyfully, and all the English men, kneeling down uponthe ground and biting it as if they took possession of the country,rose up with a great shout and fell upon the French.

　　Every archer was furnished with a great stake tipped with iron; andhis orders were, to thrust this stake into the ground, to dischargehis arrow, and then to fall back, when the French horsemen came on.As the haughty French gentlemen, who were to break the Englisharchers and utterly destroy them with their knightly lances, cameriding up, they were received with such a blinding storm of arrows,that they broke and turned. Horses and men rolled over oneanother, and the confusion was terrific. Those who rallied andcharged the archers got among the stakes on slippery and boggyground, and were so bewildered that the English archers - who woreno armour, and even took off their leathern coats to be more active- cut them to pieces, root and branch. Only three French horsemengot within the stakes, and those were instantly despatched. Allthis time the dense French army, being in armour, were sinkingknee-deep into the mire; while the light English archers, half-naked, were as fresh and active as if they were fighting on amarble floor.

　　But now, the second division of the French coming to the relief ofthe first, closed up in a firm mass; the English, headed by theKing, attacked them; and the deadliest part of the battle began.The King's brother, the Duke of Clarence, was struck down, andnumbers of the French surrounded him; but, King Henry, standingover the body, fought like a lion until they were beaten off.

　　Presently, came up a band of eighteen French knights, bearing thebanner of a certain French lord, who had sworn to kill or take theEnglish King. One of them struck him such a blow with a battle-axethat he reeled and fell upon his knees; but, his faithful men,immediately closing round him, killed every one of those eighteenknights, and so that French lord never kept his oath.

　　The French Duke of Alenon, seeing this, made a desperate charge,and cut his way close up to the Royal Standard of England. He beatdown the Duke of York, who was standing near it; and, when the Kingcame to his rescue, struck off a piece of the crown he wore. But,he never struck another blow in this world; for, even as he was inthe act of saying who he was, and that he surrendered to the King;and even as the King stretched out his hand to give him a safe andhonourable acceptance of the offer; he fell dead, pierced byinnumerable wounds.

　　The death of this nobleman decided the battle. The third divisionof the French army, which had never struck a blow yet, and whichwas, in itself, more than double the whole English power, broke andfled. At this time of the fight, the English, who as yet had madeno prisoners, began to take them in immense numbers, and were stilloccupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not surrender,when a great noise arose in the rear of the French - their flyingbanners were seen to stop - and King Henry, supposing a greatreinforcement to have arrived, gave orders that all the prisonersshould be put to death. As soon, however, as it was found that thenoise was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, theterrible massacre was stopped.

　　Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and asked him towhom the victory belonged.

　　The herald replied, 'To the King of England.'

　　'We have not made this havoc and slaughter,' said the King. 'It isthe wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. What is the name ofthat castle yonder?'

　　The herald answered him, 'My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt.'Said the King, 'From henceforth this battle shall be known toposterity, by the name of the battle of Azincourt.'

　　Our English historians have made it Agincourt; but, under thatname, it will ever be famous in English annals.

　　The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three Dukes werekilled, two more were taken prisoners, seven Counts were killed,three more were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights andgentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss amounted tosixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earlof Suffolk.

　　War is a dreadful thing; and it is appalling to know how theEnglish were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisonersmortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how thedead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen andcountrywomen, and afterwards buried in great pits; how the deadupon the English side were piled up in a great barn, and how theirbodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in suchthings, and in many more much too horrible to relate, that the realdesolation and wickedness of war consist. Nothing can make warotherwise than horrible. But the dark side of it was littlethought of and soon forgotten; and it cast no shade of trouble onthe English people, except on those who had lost friends orrelations in the fight. They welcomed their King home with shoutsof rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore ontheir shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in everytown through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestriesout of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and madethe fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt hadrun with blood.

　　SECOND PART

　　That proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their country todestruction, and who were every day and every year regarded withdeeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French people,learnt nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far fromuniting against the common enemy, they became, among themselves,more violent, more bloody, and more false - if that were possible -than they had been before. The Count of Armagnac persuaded theFrench king to plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria,and to make her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitterenemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge.He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regentof France, and made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were atthat time possessed of Paris; but, one of the gates of the citybeing secretly opened on a certain night to a party of the duke'smen, they got into Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacsupon whom they could lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards,with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke theprisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin was nowdead, and the King's third son bore the title. Him, in the heightof this murderous scene, a French knight hurried out of bed,wrapped in a sheet, and bore away to Poitiers. So, when therevengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris intriumph after the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin wasproclaimed at Poitiers as the real Regent.

　　King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Agincourt, buthad repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover Harfleur; hadgradually conquered a great part of Normandy; and, at this crisisof affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of halfa year. This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke ofBurgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should be heldbetween the French and the English kings in a plain by the riverSeine. On the appointed day, King Henry appeared there, with histwo brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, and a thousand men. Theunfortunate French King, being more mad than usual that day, couldnot come; but the Queen came, and with her the Princess Catherine:who was a very lovely creature, and who made a real impression onKing Henry, now that he saw her for the first time. This was themost important circumstance that arose out of the meeting.

　　As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that time to betrue to his word of honour in anything, Henry discovered that theDuke of Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret treaty withthe Dauphin; and he therefore abandoned the negotiation.

　　The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of whom with the bestreason distrusted the other as a noble ruffian surrounded by aparty of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss how to proceed afterthis; but, at length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over theriver Yonne, where it was arranged that there should be two stronggates put up, with an empty space between them; and that the Dukeof Burgundy should come into that space by one gate, with ten menonly; and that the Dauphin should come into that space by the othergate, also with ten men, and no more.

　　So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When the Duke ofBurgundy was on his knee before him in the act of speaking, one ofthe Dauphin's noble ruffians cut the said duke down with a smallaxe, and others speedily finished him.

　　It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this base murder wasnot done with his consent; it was too bad, even for France, andcaused a general horror. The duke's heir hastened to make a treatywith King Henry, and the French Queen engaged that her husbandshould consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, oncondition of receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, andbeing made Regent of France during the rest of the King's lifetime,and succeeding to the French crown at his death. He was soonmarried to the beautiful Princess, and took her proudly home toEngland, where she was crowned with great honour and glory.

　　This peace was called the Perpetual Peace; we shall soon see howlong it lasted. It gave great satisfaction to the French people,although they were so poor and miserable, that, at the time of thecelebration of the Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying withstarvation, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There wassome resistance on the part of the Dauphin in some few parts ofFrance, but King Henry beat it all down.

　　And now, with his great possessions in France secured, and hisbeautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him greaterhappiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the fulness ofhis triumph and the height of his power, Death came upon him, andhis day was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that hecould not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke serenelyto those who wept around his bed. His wife and child, he said, heleft to the loving care of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and hisother faithful nobles. He gave them his advice that England shouldestablish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer himthe regency of France; that it should not set free the royalprinces who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrelmight arise with France, England should never make peace withoutholding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked theattendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid whichsolemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand fourhundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his ageand the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.

　　Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in aprocession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where hisQueen was: from whom the sad intelligence of his death wasconcealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bedof crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and agolden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carriedit to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the roadblack. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the RoyalHousehold followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumesof feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as lightas day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calaisthere was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. Andso, by way of London Bridge, where the service for the dead waschanted as it passed along, they brought the body to WestminsterAbbey, and there buried it with great respect.