Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2

J >> J. Endell Tyler >> Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2

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Des Ursins represents the catastrophe to have been occasioned by
the news spread through the field that the Duke of Brittany was
arrived with a powerful reinforcement, on which the French
rallied. He gives, however, two accounts; in one of which he
reports the prisoners taken by the English to be fourteen
thousand, a number exceeding the whole body of fighting men in
the English army.

Paradin de Cuyseault, in his Annals of Burgundy, marks very
strongly in how serious a light the offence of the French
assailants was viewed by their contemporaries:

"And this [the order for the slaughter of the prisoners] was
executed, of which the said Bournonville and Azencourt were the
cause: and they being accused of this charge before the Duke of
Burgundy, his will was that they should suffer death: but the
Earl of Charolois saved them, in return for the beautiful sword."

Pierre de Fenin, a contemporary esquire, and a clerk of the
household to Charles VI, employs expressions very pointedly
exculpatory of the English; he does not speak of Henry's mandate
at all:

"Whilst the battle between the English and French _was yet
pending and going on_, and the English had already almost gained
the mastery, Isambert d'Azencourt, and Robinet de Bournonville,
accompanied by some men-at-arms of little note, made an assault
on the baggage of the English, and caused a great [affray] (p. 182)
terror. When the English saw that it was the French who were coming
upon them to attack them, _in that necessity they felt themselves
obliged_ to put to death many whom they had already made prisoners;
for which the two persons above mentioned were afterwards made
the objects of severe execration, and were also punished for the
offence by the Duke of Burgundy."[138]

[Footnote 137: In the printed copies of Monstrelet
the reading is "de la _hart_," a mistake, it is
presumed, for _mort_. Many such errors occur in his
work.]

[Footnote 138: The Author is compelled to express
his regret that some of our own modern writers
(among others Goldsmith and Mackintosh) have been
led to take a different estimate of the character
of this transaction. Whether their judgments were
formed after a careful weighing of the several
accounts furnished by contemporary authors and
eye-witnesses of the conflict, or whether they
allowed their feelings of philanthropy, and their
abhorrence of cruelty, to dictate their sentence in
this case, the Author cannot refer to their works
without appealing from them to the facts as they
stand in those undisputed records which were
accessible alike to them and to ourselves. On this
subject Rapin, Carte, Holinshed, Nicolas, with
others, may be consulted.]

Among the many instances of heroism which occurred during the battle,
Henry's conduct was particularly distinguished. He fought on foot like
a lion, as our annalists express themselves, and was throughout the
noblest example of valour. Especially was his gallant rescue of his
brother, the Duke of Gloucester, remembered with admiration. That
prince had been wounded by a dagger, and thrown on the ground by the
Duke of Alencon and his soldiers, when Henry rushed between them, and
defended his brother till he was removed from the conflict. This noble
deed nearly cost him his life; for, stooping down to raise his brother,
the Duke of Alencon, or one of his men, struck him such a blow as (p. 183)
to break off a part of his crown.

The loss on both sides has been very variously reported. Probably of
the French not less than ten thousand fell in that field of
blood;[139] of the English perhaps less than one-tenth of that number.
But France did not on that day reckon her loss by the number of the
slain; the chief of her chivalry[140] and nobility fell there. (p. 184)
On the English side the only men of note who were slain in the battle
were the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Keghley, Thomas
Fitz-Henry, John de Peniton, and David Gamme.[141]

[Footnote 139: It is quite impossible to reconcile
the different accounts of the loss on the part of
the English. Walsingham speaks of thirty only
having fallen; De Fenin reports them to have been
four or five hundred; whilst Monstrelet raises the
number to sixteen hundred.

On the part of the French, Le Fevre says, that from
a hundred to six score princes fell, and about
seven or eight thousand of noble blood. In the
Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius, continued by
Raynaldus, the statement of Theodoric Niemius is
quoted, who says (unquestionably without authority)
that Henry advanced from Harfleur with sixty
thousand men, besides two thousand in attendance on
the carriages. He affirms that the French had one
hundred thousand men; among whom were one thousand
Italians, commanded by Buligard, who had long
governed Genoa in favour of the French. He says,
moreover, that more than five thousand five hundred
French nobles were slain; and fifteen hundred taken
prisoners, and carried to England.]

[Footnote 140: Hume, with his usual inaccuracy,
asserts that the French army at Agincourt was
headed as well by the Dauphin, as by all the other
princes of the blood. The Dauphin wished to assist
his countrymen, when they resolved to intercept the
invaders; but, as we are expressly told by Le Fevre
(c. 59), was not suffered to join the rendezvous.
This is not the only mistake into which Hume has
fallen in his account of this battle. In one
paragraph he reports Henry to have been under the
necessity of marching by land from Harfleur to
Calais, in order to reach a place of safety from
which he might transport his soldiers back to
England; in another paragraph he represents him
(with the same temerity which had been evinced by
his predecessors before the battles of Poictiers
and of Cressy) to have ventured without any object
of moment, and merely for the _sake of plunder_, so
far into the enemy's country as to leave himself no
retreat. He tells us, moreover, that "Henry was
master of fourteen thousand prisoners," whom he
afterwards says that the King "carried with him to
Paris, thence to England." Hume took this also
without inquiry. Walsingham says, "Henry took (as
they say--ut ferunt,--as though even that estimate
required to be supported by common report,) seven
hundred prisoners;" and of his prisoners, how many
soever they were, he transported (as Des Ursins
tells us) only the most considerable to England,
dismissing the rest under promise to bring their
ransom to him in the field of Lendi, on the feast
of St. John in the summer, and, if he were not
there, they should be discharged of the debt.]

[Footnote 141: Of this gallant Welshman, the
following account is taken from the Appendix of the
"Battle of Agincourt." "Dr. Meyrick (now Sir
Samuel) says, Davydd Gam, _i.e._ Squint-eyed David,
was a native of Brecknockshire, and, holding his
land of the honour of Hereford, was a strenuous
supporter of the Lancastrian interests. He was the
son of Llewellyn, descended from Einion Sais, who
possessed a handsome property in the parishes of
Garthbrengy and Llanddeu. In consequence of an
affray in the high street of Brecknock, in which he
unfortunately killed his kinsman, he was compelled
to fly into England to avoid a threatened
prosecution, and became the implacable enemy of
Owain Glyndowr, whom he attempted to assassinate.
Gam, it may be supposed, was his nick-name, as he
called himself David Llewellyn; and there are good
grounds for supposing that Shakspeare has
caricatured him in Captain Fluellin. His
descendants, however, conceiving that his prowess
more than redeemed his natural defect, took the
name of Game. Sir Walter Raleigh has an eulogium
upon his bravery and exploits on the field of
Agincourt, in which he compares him to Hannibal. He
was knighted on the field with his two companions
in glory and death, Sir Roger Vaughan, of
Bedwardine in Herefordshire, and Sir Walter, or
rather Watkin Llwyd, of the lordship of Brecknock.
Sir Roger had married Gwladis, the daughter of Sir
David Gamme, who survived him, and became the wife
of another hero of Agincourt, Sir William Thomas of
Raglan; and Sir Watkin was by his marriage related
to Sir Roger."

The Author gives this passage as he finds it,
without having attempted to verify the statement as
to David Gamme's descent or history. Certainly the
testimony which Sir Samuel Meyrick makes Sir Walter
Raleigh bear to his "bravery and exploits on the
field of Agincourt," cannot be fairly extracted
from Sir Walter's own words: "But if Hannibal
himself had been sent forth by Mago to view the
Romans, he could not have returned with a more
gallant report in his mouth than Captain Gamme made
unto King Henry the Fifth, saying, 'That of the
Frenchmen there were enow to be killed, enow to be
taken prisoners, and enow to run away!'" We have no
doubt of Captain Gamme's gallant bearing at
Agincourt; but Raleigh refers to nothing beyond his
report of the numbers of the enemy.--Raleigh, book
v. sect. 8.]

The last-mentioned person is that David Gamme who was ransomed (p. 185)
from Owyn Glendowr, and who is reported to have replied, when
questioned as to the number of the enemy, "My liege, there are enough
to be slain, enough to be taken prisoners, and enough to run away!"
This gallant speech of David Gamme immediately before the battle, (p. 186)
has been delivered down from father to son among his Cambrian
compatriots with feelings of exultation and pride. A circumstance of a
very opposite character and tendency (which has never, it is believed,
hitherto appeared in our histories,) must not be suppressed here.
Among those who swelled the enormous host which on that day gave
battle to the King of England, were found natives of his own
Principality. During the dreadful devastations caused by Owyn
Glyndowr, great numbers left their mansions and estates a prey to his
fury, and saved themselves from personal violence by taking refuge in
England, or beyond the seas. Many, too, of those who had made
themselves notorious as Owyn's partisans, fled from Wales when his
cause began to falter, and avoided the penalty of perseverance in
their rebellion, or the humiliating alternative of submission to one
whom they deemed a tyrant and usurper. Quitting their native soil in
the enjoyment of health and strength, not a few of these inhabitants
of the Principality enlisted under the standard of foreign powers;
especially (as it is reasonable to conclude) of the King of France,
who had espoused the cause for which they were expatriated. How large
or how small a number of Welshmen fell in the ranks of the French on
that day, or how many escaped, we have no means of ascertaining. Our
attention is drawn to the subject by the record of a fact too (p. 187)
specific, and too well authenticated, to be doubted or evaded.[142]
William Gwyn of Llanstephan, was in the army of the enemy on the field
of Agincourt, and his corpse was found among the slain. His castle of
Llanstephan was in consequence forfeited to the crown, and was granted
to the King's brother, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester.

[Footnote 142: The fact is recorded in the Patent
Rolls, P. 2, 3 Hen. V.]

* * * * *

Being left master of the field, Henry withdrew his army a few paces,
and addressed them in a speech very characteristic of his mind. After
thanking them for their services, he bade them consider his success as
undoubted proof of the justice of his cause; and directed them not to
pride themselves on the event, but to give the glory to God. Henry
then called to him Montjoye, the principal herald of France, and
demanded of him to whom the victory belonged; who replied, that it was
to the King of England. He then asked the name of the neighbouring
castle; and, being informed that it was Agincourt, "Then," said he,
"this shall for ever be called

"THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT."[143]

[Footnote 143: The spot from which the battle of
Agincourt took its name has been confounded with a
place named Azincourt, near the town of Bouchain in
French Flanders. On the position of the real field
of battle, and its present condition, the Author
has much satisfaction in making the following
extract from a paper read before the Royal Society
of Literature, April 4, 1827, by John Gordon Smith,
M.D. who had visited and examined the spot under
circumstances of peculiar interest:

"Perhaps I may be pardoned for relating that I had
the honour to receive a Waterloo medal on the field
of Azincour, or rather, that I had the fortune to
belong to one of the British regiments that
signalized themselves in the campaign of 1815, and
which afterwards was invested with the
above-mentioned mark of their sovereign's
approbation on the very spot which, nearly four
hundred years before, was the scene of the scarcely
less glorious triumph of Harry the Fifth of
England. In 1816 a portion of the British army was
cantoned in the immediate neighbourhood of this
celebrated field, and the corps in which I then
served made use of it during several months as
their ordinary drill-ground.... We amused ourselves
with reconnoitring excursions, comparing the actual
state of the localities with authentic accounts of
the transactions of 1415. The changes that have
taken place have been singularly few, and an
attentive explorer would be able to trace with
considerable accuracy the greater part of the route
pursued by the English army in their retreat out of
Normandy towards Calais. The field of Azincour
remains sufficiently in statu quo to render every
account of the battle perfectly intelligible; nor
are those wanting near the spot, whose traditionary
information enables them to heighten the interest
with oral description, accompanied by a sort of
ocular demonstration.

"Those who travel to Paris by way of St. Omer and
Abbeville, pass over the field of the battle, which
skirts the high road to the left, about sixteen
miles beyond St. Omer; two on the Paris side of a
considerable village or bourg named Fruges; about
eight north of the fortified town of Hesdin; and
thirty from Abbeville. All accounts of the battle
mention the hamlet of Ruisseauville, through which
very place the high road to Paris now passes.

"Azincour is a commune or parish consisting of a
most uninteresting collection of farmers'
residences and cottages, once however distinguished
by a castle, of which nothing now remains but the
foundation. The scene of the contest lies between
this commune and the adjoining one of Tramecour, in
a wood belonging to which latter the King concealed
those archers whose prowess and vigour contributed
so eminently to the glorious result. Part of the
wood still remains; though, if I remember rightly,
at the time of our visit, the corner into which the
bowmen were thrown had been materially thinned, if,
indeed, the original timber had not been entirely
cut down, and its place been scantily supplied by
brush or underwood. Some of the trees, however, in
the wood of Tramecour were very old in 1816.

"The road above mentioned is the great post-road;
the old road, now degenerated into a mere
cart-track, from Abbeville to the once celebrated
city of Therouanne, passes over the scene of
action, and must have been that by which the French
army reached the ground before the English, who had
been compelled to make a great circuit."--Vol. i.
part ii. p. 57.]

Henry, naturally anxious to hasten with his troops beyond the reach of
his enemies, and to arrive at Calais before they could recover (p. 188)
from their present overwhelming distress, removed from his quarters,
passing through the field of battle early on the next day, taking his
prisoners with him. Many vague expressions occur in some writers,
which might be wrested to imply wanton cruelty in the English after
the battle; but no direct charge of the sort is brought against (p. 189)
them; and we may reasonably hope that there was no more of human
suffering than of necessity followed so tremendous a conflict: whilst
all writers agree in recording and extolling the kindness, and
compassion, and courtesy shown by Henry to his prisoners, especially
to the Duke of Orleans; endeavouring by all means in his power to
cheer and console them. Just as after the battle of Grosmont, (p. 190)
when he was only seventeen years old, so now in the prime of manhood,
on the field of Agincourt, we find in him the same kind and
warm-hearted conqueror: "In battle a lion; but, duty appeased, in
mercy a lamb!"

The army found great difficulty at Calais from the scarcity of
provisions; and the prisoners, as may be supposed, were in still
greater distress. The moment Henry, who was staying at Guisnes, heard
of it, he ordered vessels to be procured to convey both soldiers and
prisoners to England. Henry himself reached Calais[144] on the 29th of
October, and was received with every demonstration of loyalty. He was
met by the clergy singing Te Deum; whilst the inhabitants shouted,
"Welcome the King, our Sovereign Lord!" News reached London very
early, whilst the citizens were yet in bed, on Tuesday, October 29;
and on that day the victory was celebrated by religious processions,
in which we are told the Queen Dowager joined, though Arthur, (p. 191)
Count of Richmond, her own son, was among the prisoners. On Monday,
November 4, the Duke of Bedford announced the welcome news officially
to parliament. Henry embarked for England on Saturday, 16th of
November, and reached Dover late on the same day, though the wind had
been very boisterous, and one or two of his vessels were lost. So
overflowing was the joy and zeal of his subjects, that we are told
they rushed into the sea, and brought him to shore in their arms. At
Canterbury he was met by the archbishop and clergy: on Friday, 22nd of
November, he slept at Eltham. The next day he was met, about ten
o'clock, at Blackheath, by the Mayor and all the civic authorities of
London, dressed in their most splendid robes, and accompanied by not
less than twenty thousand citizens on horseback.

[Footnote 144: Before his departure from Calais, a
dispute arose between him and two noblemen, who had
been taken prisoners at Harfleur, and set at
liberty on condition of surrendering themselves at
Calais. The merits of the case cannot now be known.
The one, De Gaucourt, brought an action against the
representatives of the other, after his death, and
after the death of Henry, to recover what he paid
for that other's [D'Estouteville's] ransom. To give
a colouring to his case, he charges Henry with
refusing to confirm the stipulations made by his
representatives at Harfleur, and with other harsh
conduct. But an ex parte statement at that time,
and under those circumstances, can form no ground
of suspicion against a third party.]

In London a most magnificent pageant was ready to welcome him. Minute
descriptions of the various devices, such probably as England had
never seen before, have come down to us. But we need take no further
notice of them than to remark, that during the splendid scene, which
lasted from ten o'clock till three, (in the course of which Henry
humbly returned thanks both in St. Paul's and in Westminster Abbey,)
the King's deportment was singularly modest. His dress was simple; he
rode gravely on, attended by a small retinue; and, his thoughts
apparently wrapped up in contemplating the power and goodness of (p. 192)
the Almighty, he seemed altogether indifferent to the splendour of the
scenes and the devotedness of the crowds through which he passed. So
anxious was he to avoid exciting the applause of his people, that he
would not allow the helmet which he wore at Agincourt to be exhibited
on this occasion; the battered state of which bore evidence to the
danger he had encountered: nor would he allow the minstrels to compose
verses, or sing songs, to his praise; but persisted in attributing the
glory of his victory to God alone.

It is pleasing to trace the rewards[145] bestowed by Henry on his
companions in arms at Agincourt, and the measures which he adopted to
preserve their names from oblivion. With this view he doubtless caused
a roll to be made recording their names; though only a transcript of
one part has been yet discovered among the archives. We may hope that
not many years will elapse before numbers of those most interesting
documents which now lie buried in heaps of confusion will be brought
to light. Henry selected to fill every vacancy in the order of the
Garter, (not bestowed on sovereign princes,) the peers and
distinguished commanders who fought with him at Agincourt; and when he
restricted the use of coats of arms in a subsequent expedition to
those who could prove their right to them, he excepts those only who
bore arms with him at Agincourt. To commemorate this victory with more
especial honour, he created a King-at-arms, called "Agincourt." (p. 193)

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