Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/154

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NOTES AND QUERIES,

s. in. FEB. is, 1905.

patriotism. But the chroniclers, although their accounts of the numbers engaged vary considerably, are in practical agreement regarding the great slaughter of the French by the invaders in this amazing battle. Agincourt proved even more deadly to France than Poitiers: the whole English loss did not amount to a hundred men ; while the French lost, in dead and prisoners, ten thousand men the flower of their army. Monstrelet puts the total of the French forces at one hundred and fifty thousand six times the numbers of the English. But Henry's army cannot have contained twenty-five or even twenty thousand men. He had lost one-fifth of his invading army before Harfleur, in which he left five hundred men-at-arms and a thousand archers as a garrison. The remainder, according to his chaplain Elmham, consisted only of five thousand archers and scarcely nine hundred men-at-arms ; but Monstrelet estimates the former at fifteen thousand, the latter at two thousand.

Prof. C. W. C. Oman, in his account of the battle, shows that Henry's line was composed on the old plan that had been seen at Crecy : "Right, centre, and left each consisted of a small body of men-at-arms, flanked by two bodies of archers, drawn up in the triangular harrow-shape, and protected by a line of stakes.'' The French, on the other hand, repeated the mistakes of Poitiers. Dismount- ing almost the whole of their men-at-arms, they formed them into three solid lines, one behind the other, on a front no broader than that of the English army. On the wings, indeed, were small squadrons of mounted men under picked leaders, who were ordered to ride on ahead of the main body, and clear away, if possible, the English archers from before their comrades' advance. The ineffec- tive charges of these squadrons began the battle. Man and horse went down before the English shafts, or ever they got near the stakes of the bowmen. The main battle, weighed down by the heavy armour of the period, and tired out before they reached the enemy's lines, also fell an easy prey to Henry's archers. Stuck fast in the mud and riddled with arrows, the nobility of France were hewn down, while the archers " beat upon their armour with mallets as though they were hammering upon anvils," and rolled them one over another until the dead lay three deep. For when the English arrows had given out, Henry bade his whole army charge, and it was the onset of the archers with axe, mallet, and sword that settled the day. "That unarmoured men should have prevailed over mailed men under the odds

of six to one, and on plain open ground, is- one of the marvels of history.'' While the victory was yet unachieved, news was brought to Henry that the enemy waa attacking his rear, and had, indeed, already captured a large part of his baggage. He accordingly issued orders that the prisoners- were to be killed. He knew that the French forces still outnumbered his own, and that, were they to rally, the prisoners, of whom a considerable number had already been taken, would constitute a formidable danger. The knights to whom the king issued his com- mand flatly refused to obey, and a squire with three hundred archers had to be sent to execute it. Prisoners, we must remember, were noblemen and gentlemen, and the large ransoms paid by them would in ordinary cases fall to the share of their captors. Unfortunately the sequel proved that this horrible deed was not a military necessity. The news brought to the king had been grossly exaggerated (see the play, IV. iv. and vii.). The attack on the rear of his army was- nothing but an attempt to plunder. One Isambart of Agincourt, at the head of a few men-at-arms and some six hundred peasants, fell upon the English baggage and rifled a large part of it. Many jewels were lost. Monstrelet mentions a sword, ornamented with diamonds, which was part of the royal property. Walsingham tells us the English crown was captured. What crown was this ? : Henry IV., we know, at his coronation wore a crown known as St. Edward's, which was arched over instead of being open as hereto- fore. The head of the same monarch's monumental effigy at Canterbury is sur- mounted by a lovely open crown. The arched crown is shown in the sculpture of the coronation of Henry V. on the arch of his chantry chapel at Westminster, although in his portrait at Queens College, Oxford, he wears a circlet similar to that used by his father's predecessors.

In the eleventh volume of The Ancestor Mr. A. E. Maiden, under the title ' An Official Account of the Battle of Agincourt,' prints- with an explanation a MS.'contained in Leger- Book A of the city of Salisbury. This ac- ount, after reciting the fact that King Henry rossed the sea with a great army, mentions the siege of Harfleur. It continues, " On ris march he was opposed by a great French army of about a nundred thousand men, while he himself had not with him more than ten thousand." The list of the French slain "in the field of Argencott on Friday,. Deing the feast of Saints Crispin and Cris- pianus, th> 25th of October, 141&," then,