ne 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
allow