hinder their operations, and the inhabitants of the town and neighborhood would have worked thereat with zeal, if they had not counted that the nobility of the district and the royal army commanded by the constable, Charles d’Albret, would come to their aid.”  No one came.  The burgesses and the small garrison of Harfleur made a gallant defence; but, on the 22d of September, not receiving from Vernon, where the king and the dauphin were massing their troops, any other assistance than the advice to “take courage and trust to the king’s discretion,” they capitulated; and Henry V., after taking possession of the place, advanced into the country with an army already much reduced by sickness, looking for a favorable point at which to cross the Somme and push his invasion still farther.  It was not until the 19th of October that he succeeded, at Bethencourt, near St. Quentin.  Charles VI., who at that time had a lucid interval, after holding at Rouen a council of war, at which it was resolved to give the English battle, wished to repair with the dauphin, his son, to Bapaume, where the French army had taken position; but his uncle, the Duke of Berry, having still quite a lively recollection of the battle of Poitiers, fought fifty-nine’ years before, made opposition, saying, “Better lose the battle than the king and the battle.”  All the princes of the royal blood and all the flower of the French nobility, except the king and his three sons, and the Dukes of Berry, Brittany, and Burgundy, joined the army.  The Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, and the Constable d’Albret, who was in command, sent to ask the King of England on what day and at what place he would be pleased to give them battle.  “I do not shut myself up in walled towns,” replied Henry; “I shall be found at any time and any where ready to fight, if any attempt be made to cut off my march.”  The French resolved to stop him between Agincourt and Framecourt, a little north of St. Paul and Hesdin.  The encounter took place on the 25th of October, 1415.  It was a monotonous and lamentable repetition of the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers; disasters almost inevitable, owing to the incapacity of the leaders and ever the same defects on the part of the French nobility, defects which rendered their valorous and generous qualities not only fruitless, but fatal.  Never had that nobility been more numerous and more brilliant than in this premeditated struggle.  On the eve of the battle, Marshal de Boucicaut had armed five hundred new knights; the greater part passed the night on horse-back, under arms, on ground soaked with rain; and men and horses were already distressed in the morning, when the battle began.  It were tedious to describe the faulty manoeuvres of the French army and their deplorable consequences on that day.  Never was battle more stubborn or defeat more complete and bloody.  Eight thousand men of family, amongst whom were a hundred and twenty lords bearing their