Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/558

544 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