HENRY V.*
JOHN, bastard of Waurin, was born near the close of the fourteenth century. He was present, whether as a combatant is uncertain, with the French army at Agincourt, where his father and brother were slain. He took a part in one of the Hussite crusades (Mr. Hardy's marginal date would make it the first, but this seems to us doubtful), and served in the war against the Dauphin's adherents, which lasted from 1420, when the Burgundiaus allied themselves with England to revenge the murder of John the Fearless, till the death of the Duke of Bedford in 1435. Thenceforward he seems to have been in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. As he ad- vanced in life, he amused himself with writing a chronicle of England, which he lived to complete up to 1471. The earlier part of this work, though interesting as the first foreign history of England, is a mere compilation, and can have little historical value. We are therefore glad to see that Mr. Hardy has altered his plan, and instead of presenting us with all the volumes he originally threatened, has passed at once to the period concerning which Waurin had special means of information. He has done wisely also in dispensing with a translation. It is not advisable to waste the small sum at the disposal of the Master of the Rolls, in providing for the very exceptional persons who wish to read such a book as this, but are repelled by the slight archaisms of the language.
Even in this volume there is very little that is peculiar to Waurin, and the most part of it agrees almost word for word with Mon- strelet or St. Remy, or both. Still it does not follow that his work is without authority. If he transcribed a chronicle as he found it, it must have been that he saw no need of correction, and it is quite possible that he had a hand in the composition of the records from which he borrowed so freely. Indeed, this seems to us almost certain. Waurin relates the story of Agincourt in almost the same words as Monstrelet and St. Remy, and at the close ho vouches for the truth of his narrative thus :—" Tent do nobles hommes et gentilz escuyers y morurent que pitio estoit, comma je acteur de ceste euvre vey a mes yeulz. Avec ce que jen ay enquis auz officyers darmes et autres estans es deux ostz que jay bien este adverty de In verite," &c. Elsewhere he refers to Toison d'Or (St. Remy) as his authority for what passed in the English camp, he himself having been in the French one. The tone of the words we have quoted recalls the emotion which Waurin had felt at the sight of the place of carnage, and which must have been deepened by the loss of his nearest relatives. We can scarcely fancy hint copying another account of an event which touched him so deeply, still less citing as one of his authorities the author from whom he was so coolly plagiarizing ; but if the narration had • Email des Cronigues et Ancldennes Istories de la Grant Braaigne, a present nomme Engleterre. Par Jehan do Waurin, Seignevr du Forestal. Edited by William Hardy, F.S.A., 1399-1422. London : Longmans. 1868.
been drawn up by them in common, both might use iL without scruple.
Whatever share Waurin had in its composition, the present volume gives in a convenient form the history of Henry V.'s conquests. It is a marvellous story. Rarely have such opportunities been used with such skill as by Henry. At first sight, his career seems mainly one of unexampled luck. His enter- prise would have been impossible but for the disordered condition of France, the internal dissensions which paralyzed her power. This was, however, an element in Henry's calculations, one of the chief motives for asserting his pretensions. No penetration could have foreseen the favours which fortune lavished on him in his first campaign. There can be little doubt that he began his march from Harfleur to Calais merely as a bravado. Harfleur, in spite of its strategical importance, would not seem to English eyes a sufficient prize to repay such expenditure of life and money as had been made. There would be a show of victory in an undisputed march through French territory, and he might fairly hope that the quarrels of the French nobles would prevent their collecting an army in time to oppose him. He had scarcely started when he discovered his danger. He tried to hurry across the ford at the mouth of the Somme, and so avoid the enemies who were gathering round him. A chance prevented his escape. A Gascon gentleman, taken prisoner by the vanguard, declared that the Blanche Tache ford was watched by a strong force. This was a lie, devised to divert Henry into the country and detain him till the arrival of the French army. It succeeded, and Agincourt was the result. In the battle Henry's good luck was again remarkable. When we have rendered him all the glory due to his courage and skill on that eventful day, and to the spirit which he infused into his followers, it must still be allowed that the victory was owing as much to the strange incapacity of the generals opposed to him, and to the accident of the weather,—those heavy rains which made the ground so deep that the French knights could not move, "par quoy cello pesanteur darmeures avec la mollete de in terre destrempee, comme dit est, les tenoit comme immobiles."
At a later period, when Henry's haughtiness had offended the Duke of Burgundy, and driven him to seek alliance with the Dauphin, his difficulties were suddenly dispersed by a deed of inconceivable folly and wickedness. The death of John the Fearless removed a chief who had a personal grievance against Henry, and who might have become his formidable enemy, while the indignation that it excited not only threw Burgundy into the arms of England, but made even good Frenchmen ashamed to support the Dauphin. Henry himself was not slow to perceive the advantage he would draw from it. " Quant le roy d'Angleterre fut de ce adverty a scavoir ung jour aprez la chose advenue. Grant dommage,' dist-il, est du due de Bourgoigne, it fut bon et leal chevallier et prince d'honneur ; mais par sa mort a layde de Dieu et do saint George sommes audessus de nostre desir, si aurons malgre thus Francois dame Katherine que tant evens desiree.' " But for this crime Henry would never have possessed himself of the chief power in France, and it may be doubted whether up to this time he had seriously aimed at the French Crown.
This was a wonderful run of luck, but it would have been worth little but for Henry's skill in availing himself of it. As a general he had few equals in any age, and no rival in his own. At once bold and cautious, he could form large plans and attend to the smallest details in their execution. At a time when an army was usually a mere mob of brave men, his soldiers were under perfect discipline. He was an accomplished strategist, while his enemies wanted even the rudiments of tactics. The Black Prince may have shown in the campaign which ended at Poictiers as much tenacity and tactical skill as were displayed in the march to Calais and the battle of Agincourt ; but the one was a mere fruitless raid, the other was part of a carefully planned expedition. Henry came home not only with the prestige of a great victory, but with the valuable acquisition of Harfleur, at once a gate into Normandy and a fortress commanding the mouth of the Seine. M. Puiseux has more than once pointed out how well devised was Henry's second campaign (that of 1417). Instead of dashing himself at once against the walls of Rouen, he secured his base by the com- plete conquest of Lower Normandy, and then by the capture of Pont de l'Arche got command of the Seine above as well as below the city he was about to besiege. Since the days of William the Conqueror Europe had not seen so great a captain, with the possible exception of Richard I.
It must be remembered that Henry was not only a soldier ; he was ;great also as an adniinistrator and a diplomatist ; once or twice he may have offended allies by hasty speech ; but, as a rule, he knew the value of a graciousness which derived a double charm from his wonted sternness. He knew, too, how by vain negotia- tions to keep his enemies amused, and sow distrust among those who might otherwise have combined against him ; while at the right moment he could give vent to his impatience, and spur on a hesitating ally. His skill as an administrator is proved by the contentment of English people. Not all his successes would have reconciled them to the war, had it been carried on with the lavish extravagance of Edward III. When we regard the use which Henry made of these fine powers, it seems as if Nature were bent on letting her best gifts run to waste. That a man endowed with all these capacities and with a noble nature should have lived only to spread misery over a neighbouring country, and to burden his own with useless conquests, is a touch of that fatal irony which mocks us so often in history. Much may, no doubt, be said of the remote advantages of this long struggle ; England was probably stirred to a higher self-conscious- ness and trained for her future greatness ; the divided provinces of France were welded together in the furnace of a com- mon affliction. Abstractions of this kind make little impres- sion on the imagination that has once realized even a part of the horrors of this groundless war. Still we have no right to judge Henry harshly. He did not sin against the morals of his own time, and we might find it hard to prove that our own has much advanced, when we remember how many brilliant apologists the First Napoleon has found. What has done most to prejudice modern writers against Henry is perhaps the tone of unctuous piety in which he was apt to speak of his successes. Judging him by strict law, and recognizing the vanity of his claims upon the French Crown, we think of him as conscious of his injustice, and when we find him piously discoursing on the'clivine assistance graciously vouchsafed to him, we may be reminded of Captain Breitmann relating
"How Brovidence pleased him with deapods and shpoons."
Naturally enough, this trait has given special offence to the French historians. We think it is Michelet who reckons as chief among the many hardships of the Duke of Orleans' captivity that he had to listen to the homilies of his conqueror. Yet there is no reason to believe that Henry was insincere. A man of his nature, active, keen-sighted, practical, with no turn for speculation, was not likely to soar above the conventional morality of his time, and the opinion that surrounded him did not check his desires. Nor is it at all evident that he was conscious of the badness of his claim. It must be borne in mind that, although he talked of a right to the Crown of France, what he really aimed at in the beginning was the recovery of certain lands, and especially Normandy, belonging of ancient right to the King of England. When the great prize came within his reach, he did not hesitate to grasp it (he must have had rare strength of mind to refrain) ; but it was for demands having, at least, a show of reason that he began the war.
His contemporaries, at least, did not charge him with hypocrisy. At a time when scarcely any man's word could be trusted, and when treachery had almost ceased to be dishonourable, Chastellain could say of him, " Etoit sobre de bouche, veritable en parolle, hault et clove en couraige, et a viles choses et basses ne decliuoit envis." There is another charge against him less easy to rebut. While he was never wantonly cruel, he was regardless of human suffering in pursuance of his aims. The slaughter of his prisoners at Agincourt is only too notorious, but there is even less excuse for his hardness in driving back into starvation the poor wretches expelled from Rouen. Still even for this Waurin has no word of reproach, while he lays the blame of the Agincourt massacre on the mob whose futile attempt at a rally compelled Henry to take this sad precaution. Waurin lived in an age of war, and did not grudge the sacrifices necessary to produce a great' conqueror. We will conclude with the few words in which he sums up the impression produced by Henryon those who watched his career :—"Sage homme eatoit et expert en toutes choses dont il se entremettoit et de tres haultain voulloir." We add one more phrase, in memory of our old friend Captain Fluellen, " Et Bien entretenoit is disciplene de chevallerie comme jadis fasoient les Rommains."
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