able, 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 morni