years of age, was sent to Guienne to take advantage of that movement; but both he and his son fell in battle, 20th July, 1453; and on the 10th of October following Bordeaux surrendered to Charles. 131.-THE SLAUGHTER OF THE PRISONERS AT AGINCOURT. REV. J. E. TYLER. The name of Henry of Monmouth is inseparable from the battle of Agincourt; and immeasurably better had it been for his fair fame had himself and his little army been crushed in that tremendous struggle, by the overwhelming chivalry of France, than that he should have stained that day of conquest and glory by an act of cruelty or vengeance. If any cause except palpable and inevitable necessity could be proved to have suggested the dreadful mandate for his soldiers to put their prisoners to the sword, his memory must be branded by a stigma which no personal courage, not a whole life devoted to deeds of arms, nor any unprecedented career of conquest, could obliterate. The charge of cruelty, however, like some other accusations, examined at length in these memoirs, is of comparatively recent origin; and as in those former instances, so in this, our duty is to ascertain the facts from the best evidence, and dispassionately to draw our inference from those facts after an upright scrutiny and patient weighing of the whole question in all its bearings. Our abhorrence of the crime may well make us hesitate before we pronounce judgment against one to whose mercy and chivalrous honour his contemporaries bore willing and abundant testimony; the enormity of so dreadful an example compels us, in the name of humanity and of justice, not to screen the guilty. We may be wisely jealous of the bias and prejudice which his brilliant talents, and his life of patriotism and glory, may unconsciously communicate to our minds; we must be also upon our guard lest an excessive resolution to do justice, foster imperceptibly a morbid acquiescence in the condemnation of the accused. The facts, then, as they are gleaned from those authors who wrote nearest to the time (two of whom are French, the other English, were actually themselves present on the field of battle, and were eye-witnesses of some portion at least of the circumstances which they narrate,) seem to have been these, in their order and character. At the close of one of the most desperate struggles ever recorded in the annals of antient or modern warfare, whilst the enemy were in the act of quitting the field, but had not left it, the English were employing what remained of their well nigh exhausted strength in guarding their prisoners, and separating the living from the dead, who lay upon each other, heaps upon heaps, in one confused and indiscriminate mass. On a sudden a shout was raised, and reached Henry, that a fresh reinforcement of the enemy in overwhelming numbers had attacked the baggage, and were advancing in battle array against him. He was himself just released from the furious conflict in which, at the close of his almost unparalleled personal exertion, he engaged with the Duke of Alençon, and slew him on the spot. Precisely, also, at this juncture, the main body of the French who had been engaged in the battle, and were apparently retreating, were seen to be collecting in great numbers, and forming themselves into bodies throughout the plain, with the purpose, as it appeared, of returning to the engagement. To delay might have been the total sacrifice of himself and his gallant little band; to hesitate might have been death. Henry instantly, without a moment's interval, by sound of trumpet ordered his men to form themselves, and attack the body who were advancing upon his rear, and to put the prisoners to death, "lest they should rush upon his men during the fight." These mandates were obeyed The French reinforcement, advancing from the quarter where the baggage was stationed, no sooner felt a shower of arrows, and saw a body of men ready to give them battle, than they turned to flight; and instantly Henry, on seeing them run, stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and made it known to all that he had had recourse to the measure only in self-defence. Henry, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a dreadful catastrophe, sent forthwith a herald to those companies of the enemy who were still lingering very suspiciously through the field, and charged them either to come to battle at once, or to withdraw from his sight; adding, that, should they array themselves afterwards to renew the battle, he would show no mercy, nor spare either fighting-men or prisoners. In Of the general accuracy of this statement of the facts little doubt can be entertained, though in the midst of the confusion of such a battle-field it would not be matter of surprise were some of the circumstances mistaken or exaggerated. reflecting on this course of incidents, the thought forces itself upon our mind, that the mandate was given not in cool blood, nor when there was time and opportunity for deliberation and for calculating upon the means and chances of safety, but upon the instant, on a sudden unexpected renewal of the engagement from a quarter from which no danger was anticipated; at a moment, too, when, just after the heat of the battle was passing over, the routed enemy were collecting again in great numbers in various parts of the field, with a view evidently of returning to the charge and crushing their conquerors; at a moment, too, when the English were scattered about, separating the living from the dead, and all was yet confusion and uncertainty. Another fact, as clearly and distinctly recorded as the original issuing of the mandate, is, that no sooner was the danger of the immediate and inevitable sacrifice of the lives of his men removed by the retreat of the assailants, than, without waiting for the dispersion of those menacing bodies then congregating around him, Henry instantly countermanded the order, and saved the remainder of the prisoners. The bare facts of the case, from first to last, admit of no other alternative than for our judgment to pronounce it to have been altogether an imperative inevitable act of self-preservation, without the sacrifice of any life, or the suffering of any human being, beyond the absolute and indispensable necessity of the case. But, perhaps, the most striking and conclusive testimony in vindication of Henry's character on that day of slaughter and victory, is borne both by the silence and also by the expressed sentiments of the contemporary historians. This evidence deserves to be put more prominently forward than it has ever yet been. Indeed, as long as there was no charge of cruelty, or unnecessary violence, brought against his name in this particular, there was little need of alleging any evidence in his defence. It remained for modern writers, after a lapse of centuries, to stigmatize the command as an act of barbarity, and to represent it as having tarnished and stained the victory of him who gave it. It is, however, a most remarkable and satisfactory circumstance that, of the contemporary historians, and those who followed most closely upon them, who have detailed the proceedings with more or less minuteness, and with a great variety though no inconsistency of circumstances, in whose views, moreover, all subsequent writers, with few exceptions, have unreservedly acquiesced, not one single individual is found to cast the slightest imputation on Henry for injustice or cruelty; while some, in their account of the battle, have not made the most distant allusion to the circumstance. All the earlier writers who refer to it appear, with one consent, to have considered the order as the result of dire and unavoidable necessity on the part of the English king. Not only so: whilst no one who witnessed the engagement, or lived at the time, ever threw the shadow of reproach or of complaint on Henry or his army, various writers, especially among the French historians, join in reprobating the unjustifiable conduct of those among the French troops who rendered the massacre inevitable, and cast on their own countrymen the entire responsibility and blame for the whole melancholy affair. Instead of any attempt to sully and tarnish the glory won by the English on that day, by pointing to their cruel and barbarous treatment of unarmed prisoners, they visit their own people with the very strongest terms of malediction, as the sole culpable origin and cause of the evil. And that these were not only the sentiments of the writers themselves, but were participated in by their countrymen at large, is evidenced by the record of a fact which has been generally overlooked. Those who were deemed guilty of thus exposing their countrymen to death, by unjustifiably renewing the attack when the conflict was acknowledged to be over, and after the French soldiery had given up the field, not only were exposed to disgrace in their characters, but suffered punishment also for the offence in their persons. Anticipating censure and severe handling as the consequences of their misconduct, they made valuable presents to such as they thought able to screen them; but so decided was the indignation and resentment of their countrymen, that the leaders of the offending parties were cast into prison, and suffered a long confinement, as the punishment for their misconduct on that day. The inference, then, which the facts, as they are delivered by English and French writers, compel us to draw, coincides with the professed sentiments of all contemporaries. Those, on the one hand, who shared the glory and were proud of the day of Agincourt, and those, on the other, whose national pride and wounded honour, and participation in the calamities poured that day upon the noblest families of France, and in the mourning spread far and wide throughout the land, caused them to abhor the very name of Agincourt, all sanction our adoption of that one inference: Henry did not stain his victory by any act of cruelty. His character comes out of the investigation untarnished by a suspicion of his having wantonly shed the blood of a single fellow-creature. 132.-THE DEATH OF JOHN TALBOT AND HIS SON. SHAKSPERE. "This is that terrible Talbot, so famous for his sword, or rather whose sword was so famous for his arm that used it; a sword with bad Latin* upon it, but good steel within it; which constantly conquered where it came, in so much that the bare fame of his approach frighted the French from the siege of Burdeaux." Such is the quaint notice which old Fuller, in his 'Worthies,' gives of Talbot. It is easy to see how his bold chivalrous bearing, and, above all, the manner of his death, should have made him the favourite of the poet as well as of the chroniclers. His name appears to have been a traditionary household word up to the time of Shakspere; and other writers, besides the chroniclers, rejoiced in allusions to his warlike deeds. Edward Kerke, the commentator on Spenser's Pastorals,' thus speaks of him in 1579:-"His nobleness bred such a terror in the hearts of the French, that ofttimes great armies were defeated and put to flight at the only hearing of his name: in so much that the French women, to affray their children, would tell them that the Talbot cometh." The coronation of Henry VI. in Paris took place as early as 1431. In the scene of Shakspere's Henry VI.' where this event is represented, Talbot receives a commission to proceed against Burgundy; and the remainder of the Act is occupied with the events of the campaign in which Talbot fell. Twenty years, or more, are leapt over by the poet, for the purpose of showing, amidst the disasters of our countrymen in France, the heroism by which the struggle for empire was so long maintained. The detailed narrative which Hall gives of Talbot's * Sum Talboti pro vincere inimicos meos. death, is very graphic, and no doubt furnished the materials for the following scenes, which give the most beautiful example of the use of the couplet in the early English drama. "This conflict continued in doubtful judgment of victory two long hours; during which fight the lords of Montamban and Humadayre, with a great company of Frenchmen, entered the battle, and began a new field; and suddenly the gunners, perceiving the Englishmen to approach near, discharged their ordinance, and slew three hundred persons near to the Earl, who, perceiving the imminent jeopardy and subtile labyrinth in the which he and his people were enclosed and illaqueate, despising his own safeguard, and desiring the life of his entirely and well beloved son the Lord Lisle, willed, advertised, and counselled him to depart out of the field, and to save himself. But when the son had answered that it was neither honest nor natural for him to leave his father in the extreme jeopardy of his life, and that he would taste of that draught which his father and parent should assay and begin, the noble earl and comfortable captain said to him, Oh, son, son! I, thy father, which, only hath been the terror and scourge of the French people so many years,-which had subverted so many towns, and profligate and discomfited so many of them in open battle and martial conflict, neither can here die, for the honour of my country, without great laud and perpetual fame, nor fly or depart without perpetual shame and continual infamy. But because this is thy first journey and enterprise, neither thy flying shall redound to thy shame, nor thy death to thy glory: for as hardy a man wisely flieth as a temerarious person foolishly abideth, therefore the fleeing of me shall be the dishonour, not only of me and my progeny, but also a discomfiture of all my company: thy departure shall save thy life, and make thee able another time, if I be slain, to revenge my death, and to do honour to thy prince and profit to his realm. But nature so wrought in the son, that neither desire of life, nor thought of security, could withdraw or pluck him from his natural father; who, considering the constancy of his child, and the great danger that they stood in, comforted his soldiers, cheered his captains, and valiantly set on his enemies, and slew of them more in number than he had in his company. But his enemies, having a greater company of men, and more abundance of ordinance, than before had been seen in a battle, first shot him through the thigh with a hand gun, and slew his horse, and cowardly killed him, lying on the ground, whom they never durst look in the face while he stood on his feet: and with him there died manfully his son the Lord Lisle, his bastard son Henry Talbot, and Sir Edward Hull, elect to the noble Order of the Garter, and thirty valiant personages of the English nation; and the Lord Molyns was there taken prisoner with sixty other. The residue of the English people fled to Burdeaux and other places; whereof in the flight were slain about a thousand persons. At this battle of Chastillon, fought the 13th day of July, in this year, ended his life, Lord John Talbot, and of his progeny the first Earl of Shrewsbury, after that he with much fame, more glory, and most victory, had for his prince and country, by the space of twenty-four years and more, valiantly made war and served the king in the parts beyond the sea, whose corpse was left on the ground, and after was found by his friends, and conveyed to Whitchurch in Shropshire, where it is intumulate." SCENE I-The English Camp near Bourdeaux. Enter Talbot and John his Son, Tal. O young John Talbot! I did send for thee, That Talbot's name might be in thee revived, Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse; John. Is my name Talbot? and am I your son ? Dishonour not her honourable name, To make a bastard and a slave of me : Tal. Fly, to revenge my death, if I be slain. Rather than life preserv'd with infamy. Tal. Shall all thy mother's hopes lie in one tomb ? John. To fight I will, but not to fly the foe. Tal. Part of thy father may be sav'd in thee. John. No part of him but will be shame in me. Tal. Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it. If death be so apparent, then both fly Tal. And leave my followers here, to fight and die? My age was never tainted with such shame. John. And shall my youth be guilty of such blame? Than can yourself yourself in twain divide: For live I will not if my father die. Tal. Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son, Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon. Come, side by side together live and die; And soul with soul from France to heaven fly. SCENE II.-A Field of Battle. [Exeunt. Alarum: Excursions, wherein Talbot's Son is hemmed about, and Talbot rescues him. Tal. Saint George and victory! fight, soldiers, fight: The regent hath with Talbot broke his word, And left us to the rage of France his sword. Where is John Talbot ?-pause, and take thy breath; I gave thee life, and rescued thee from death. |