plotters beheaded before the king sailed in August for
the Norman coast. His first exploit was the capture of Harfleur. Dysentery
made havoc in his ranks during the siege, and it was with a mere handful
of men that he resolved to insult the enemy by a daring march like that of
Edward upon Calais. The discord however on which he probably reckoned for
security vanished before the actual appearance of the invaders in the
heart of France; and when his weary and half-starved force succeeded in
crossing the Somme it found sixty thousand Frenchmen encamped on the field
of Agincourt right across its line of march. Their position, flanked on
either side by woods, but with a front so narrow that the dense masses
were drawn up thirty men deep, though strong for purposes of defence was
ill suited for attack; and the French leaders, warned by the experience of
Crecy and Poitiers, resolved to await the English advance. Henry on the
other hand had no choice between attack and unconditional surrender. His
troops were starving, and the way to Calais lay across the French army.
But the king's courage rose with the peril. A knight in his train wished
that the thousands of stout warriors lying idle that night in England had
been standing in his ranks. Henry answered with a burst of scorn. "I would
not have a single man more," he replied. "If God give us the victory, it
will be plain we owe it to His grace. If not, the fewer we are, the less
loss for England." Starving and sick as they were, the handful of men whom
he led shared the spirit of their king. As the chill rainy night passed
away he drew up his army on the twenty-fifth of October and boldly gave
battle. The English archers bared their arms and breasts to give fair play
to "the crooked stick and the grey goose wing," but for which--as the rime
ran--"England were but a fling," and with a great shout sprang forward to
the attack. The sight of their advance roused the fiery pride of the
French; the wise resolve of their leaders was forgotten, and the dense
mass of men-at-arms plunged heavily forward through miry ground on the
English front. But at the first sign of movement Henry had halted his
line, and fixing in the ground the sharpened stakes with which each man
was furnished his archers poured their fatal arrow-flights into the
hostile ranks. The carnage was terrible, for though the desperate charges
of the French knighthood at last drove the English archers to the
neighbouring wood