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occupied in doing so, or in killing those who would not surrender,
when a great noise arose in the rear of the French – their flying
banners were seen to stop – and King Henry, supposing a great
reinforcement to have arrived, gave orders that all the prisoners
should be put to death. As soon, however, as it was found that the
noise was only occasioned by a body of plundering peasants, the
terrible massacre was stopped.
Then King Henry called to him the French herald, and asked him to
whom the victory belonged.
The herald replied, ‘To the King of England.’
‘WE have not made this havoc and slaughter,’ said the King. ‘It is
the wrath of Heaven on the sins of France. What is the name of
that castle yonder?’
The herald answered him, ‘My lord, it is the castle of Azincourt.’
Said the King, ‘From henceforth this battle shall be known to
posterity, by the name of the battle of Azincourt.’
Our English historians have made it Agincourt; but, under that
name, it will ever be famous in English annals.
The loss upon the French side was enormous. Three Dukes were
killed, two more were taken prisoners, seven Counts were killed,
three more were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights and
gentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss amounted to
sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl
of Suffolk.
War is a dreadful thing; and it is appalling to know how the
English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners
mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how the
dead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen and
countrywomen, and afterwards buried in great pits; how the dead
upon the English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their
bodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in such
things, and in many more much too horrible to relate, that the real
desolation and wickedness of war consist. Nothing can make war
otherwise than horrible. But the dark side of it was little
thought of and soon forgotten; and it cast no shade of trouble on
the English people, except on those who had lost friends or
relations in the fight. They welcomed their King home with shouts
of rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore on
their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every
town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries
out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made
the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had
run with blood.
SECOND PART
THAT proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their country to
destruction, and who were every day and every year regarded with
deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French people,
learnt nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from
uniting 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 the
French king to plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria,
and to make her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitter
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enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge.
He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regent
of France, and made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at
that time possessed of Paris; but, one of the gates of the city
being secretly opened on a certain night to a party of the duke’s
men, they got into Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacs
upon whom they could lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards,
with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the
prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin was now
dead, and the King’s third son bore the title. Him, in the height
of this murderous scene, a French knight hurried out of bed,