oust the King of the French, our lord, the most noble and excellent of Christian kings, from the throne of so powerful a kingdom?  Thinkest thou that it is for fear of thee and of the English that he hath made thee an offer of his daughter together with so great a sum and a portion of his land?  Nay, verily; he was moved by pity and the love of peace; he would not that the innocent blood should be spilt and Christian people destroyed in the hurly-burly of battle.  He will invoke the aid of God Almighty, of the blessed virgin Mary, and of all the saints.  Then by his own arms and those of his loyal subjects, vassals, and allies, thou wilt be driven from his kingdom, and, peradventure, meet with death or capture.”

On returning to Paris the ambassadors, in presence of the king’s council and a numerous assembly of clergy, nobility, and people, gave an account of their embassy and advised instant preparation for war without listening to a single word of peace.  “They loudly declared,” says the monk of St. Denis, “that King Henry’s letters, though they were apparently full of moderation, had lurking at the bottom of them a great deal of perfidy, and that this king, all the time that he was offering peace and union in the most honeyed terms, was thinking only how he might destroy the kingdom, and was levying troops in all quarters.”  Henry V., indeed, in November, 1414, demanded of his Parliament a large subsidy, which was at once voted without any precise mention of the use to be made of it, and merely in the terms following:  “For the defence of the realm of England and the security of the seas.”  At the commencement of the following year, Henry resumed negotiations with France, renouncing his claims to Normandy, Anjou, and Maine; but Charles VI. and his council adhered to their former offers.  On the 16th of April, 1415, Henry announced to a grand council of spiritual and temporal peers, assembled at Westminster, his determination “of setting out in person to go and, by God’s grace, recover his heritage.”  He appointed one of his brothers, the Duke of Bedford, to be regent in his absence, and the peers, ecclesiastical and laical, applauded his design, promising him their sincere co-operation.  Thus France, under a poor mad king and amidst civil dissensions of the most obstinate character, found the question renewed for her of French versus English king-ship and national independence versus foreign conquest.

On the 14th of August, 1415, an English fleet, having on board, together with King Henry V., six thousand men-at-arms, twenty-four thousand archers, powerful war-machines, and a multitude of artisans and “small folk,” came to land near Harfleur, not far from the mouth of the Seine.  It was the most formidable expedition that had ever issued from the ports of England.  The English spent several days in effecting their landing and setting up their siege-train around the walls of the city.  “It would have been easy,” says the monk of St. Denis, “to