Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/575

A.D. 1422.] of conduct while prosecuting his wars, he was immeasurably their superior. It is only necessary to recollect the carnage and devastation which they carried everywhere in their march, the towns they relentlessly sacked, the lands and villages which they burnt and plundered, to perceive how far Henry exceeded them both in feeling and sound policy. They died detested by those whose cities and fields they had ruthlessly destroyed; Henry was remembered with affection for his protection to the invaded, and especially to women, and to the weak and aged. He exhibited instances of partial severity; theirs was general, and continued to the last.

Towards his own subjects he was constitutionally just. He was, as we have said, especially of a military genius, a warrior by ambition and from impulse. Martial fame was his grand fascination, and his imagination coloured all his aspirations, and justified to himself all his enterprises. He believed that the path of his honour was, at the same time, the path of duty; and, contented with the liberal supplies of his subjects, he made no attempt at encroachment on their rights. No monarch ever more fully realised the beau ideal of a great prince to his subjects, and four centuries have not availed to withdraw from his memory the splendour which his conquests throw around him in his life.

There was one circumstance in which the death of Henry V. differed greatly from that of many kings mighty and dreaded in their lifetime. His corpse was not abandoned the moment the breath had departed, and what had been a king was only a carcase. There was not a revolting exhibition of the baseness of courtiers, as in the cases of William the Conqueror and Edward III. On the contrary, his officers determined that he should, though dead, depart from France with as much regal state as he entered it. They had the body embalmed, and carried in great ceremony to the Church of Notre Dame, where the funeral service was performed with all the pomp that the Roman Catholic Church knows so well how to employ on such occasions.

The queen, it appears, was not present at his death, and was kept in ignorance of it for some days. On its being communicated to her, she was attended by some of the nobles to the city of Rouen, and thither the body of the king was carried in solemn procession, and there lay in state for several days. "The body was then laid on a chariot drawn by four noble horses. Just above the dead body they placed a figure made of boiled leather, representing his person as nigh as might be devised, painted curiously to the semblance of a living creature, on whose head was put an imperial diadem of gold and precious stones; on its body a purple robe furred with ermine; in the right hand a sceptre royal; in the left an orb of gold with a cross fixed thereon. And thus adorned was this figure laid in a bed on the same chariot, with the visage uncovered towards the heavens; and the coverture of this bed was of red, beaten with gold; and besides, when the body should pass through any good town, a canopy of marvellous value was borne over it by men of great worship. In this manner he was accompanied by the King of Scots as the chief mourner, and by all the princes, lords, and knights of his house, in vestures of deep mourning. At a distance from the corpse of about two English miles, followed the widow, Queen Catherine, right honourably accompanied. The body rested in the Church of St. Wolfran, in Abbeville, where masses were sung by the queen's order for the repose of Henry's soul, from the dawning of morning till the closing of night. The procession moved through Abbeville with increased pomp. The Duke of Exeter, the Earl of Marche, Sir Louis Robsart, the queen's knight, and many nobles, bore the banners of the saints. The hatchments were carried by twelve renowned captains; and around the bier-car rode 400 men-at-arms in black armour, their horses barbed black, their lances held with the point downwards. A great company clothed in white, bearing wax-torches, lighted, encompassed the procession. The queen, with a mighty retinue, followed."

Thus this vast procession kept on its way from town to town, through Hesdin, Montreuil, Boulogne, to Calais, where it arrived on the 12th of October, and found vessels ordered by the privy council waiting to convey the corpse and the company over. From Dover the great funeral procession advanced slowly through Canterbury and Rochester to London. On the way it was met by fifteen bishops in their pontifical habits, and by many abbots in their mitres and vestments, and a great assemblage of priests and people. The priests chanted their solemn anthems for the dead all the way from Blackheath and through the streets of London, where they arrived on Martinmas day. Thus they went on to St. Paul's, and, after the obsequies there performed, to Westminster Abbey. All the way every householder stood at his door with a torch in his hand; and all London seemed to follow after: The princes of the family rode in open carriages immediately after the bier, so that their grief might be manifest to all the people, who were greatly edified thereby, and especially by the deep sorrow of the queen. The body was interred near the shrine of the Confessor. The queen had a splendid tomb there erected for him, on which was inscribed that it was done by his queen, Catherine. Before it was extended a silver-plated effigy, with the head of solid silver, gilt.

During Henry's reign the long schism which had prevailed in the Church was terminated. It had lasted forty years, during which time there were two rival Popes; and towards the end of the time three. The Emperor Sigismund then set himself to remove this scandal, and by his exertions all the leading governments of Europe were brought to combine for the purpose. At the Council of Constance they compelled one Pope to resign, and excommunicated the two others; a new one, under the name of Martin V., being elected at the next conclave.

The reign of Henry V. is also remarkable for a fact which demonstrated that the old feudal system was at an end so far as it regarded the constitution of the army. The kings could no longer calculate on the nobles supplying their proper quotas of men. Henry, therefore, in 1415, before setting out for France, empowered commissioners to take in each county a registration of all the free men capable of bearing arms; to divide them into companies, and keep them in a state of discipline, ready to resist any invader. Thus arose a fixed militia, and this left him more at liberty to obtain contracts with powerful barons to serve with their vassals under his banners, or to enlist men. To keep his armies efficient he paid very high wages—two shillings per