s, from the skirt of these woods they were still able to
pour their shot into the enemy's flanks, while Henry with the men-at-arms
around him flung himself on the French line. In the terrible struggle
which followed the king bore off the palm of bravery: he was felled once
by a blow from a French mace and the crown of his helmet was cleft by the
sword of the Duke of Alencon; but the enemy was at last broken, and the
defeat of the main body of the French was followed by the rout of their
reserve. The triumph was more complete, as the odds were even greater,
than at Crecy. Eleven thousand Frenchmen lay dead on the field, and more
than a hundred princes and great lords were among the fallen.

[Sidenote: Conquest of Normandy]

The immediate result of the battle of Agincourt was small, for the English
army was too exhausted for pursuit, and it made its way to Calais only to
return to England. Through 1416 the war was limited to a contest for the
command of the Channel, till the increasing bitterness of the strife
between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, and the consent of John of Burgundy
to conclude an alliance, encouraged Henry to resume his attempt to recover
Normandy. Whatever may have been his aim in this enterprise--whether it
were, as has been suggested, to provide a refuge for his house, should its
power be broken in England, or simply to acquire a command of the
seas--the patience and skill with which his object was accomplished raise
him high in the rank of military leaders. Disembarking in July 1417 with
an army of forty thousand men near the mouth of the Touque, he stormed
Caen, received the surrender of Bayeux, reduced Alencon and Falaise, and
detaching his brother the Duke of Gloucester in the spring of 1418 to
occupy the Cotentin made himself master of Avranches and Domfront. With
Lower Normandy wholly in his hands, he advanced upon Evreux, captured
Louviers, and seizing Pont-de-l'Arche, threw his troops across the Seine.
The end of these masterly movements was now revealed. Rouen was at this
time the largest and wealthiest of the towns of France; its walls were
defended by a powerful artillery; Alan Blanchard, a brave and resolute
patriot, infused the fire of his own temper into the vast population; and
the garrison, already strong, was backed by fifteen thousand citizens in
arms. But the genius of Henry was more than equal to the difficulties with
which he had to deal. He had secured himself from an attack on