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 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 const