"Agincourt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the island could be conquered by 30,000 men, even if they could have made good their landing. Indeed, to try such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour so well at Agincourt and Cressy, and which was not, in any respect, degenerated, manifests his being blinded by the effects ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... master, and tremble when his envoy should stamp his foot and wave the imperial banner in the halls of Parliament. From whom was this message, and to whom? Was it to the England of Trafalgar and the Nile? Was it to the descendants of the men who conquered at Agincourt and Cressy, and changed for ages at Waterloo the destiny of the world? Why, Nelson would speak from his monument, and the Iron Duke from his equestrian statue, and forbid the degradation of their country. But there stood the Confederate ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and his sires, Yeoman or noble, you shall find Enrolled with men of Agincourt, Heroes who shared great Harry's mind. Down to us come the knightly Norman fires, And front ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... carries, laying them on one of the tea-tables]. This is Burke's Peerage, and this is Froissart's Chronicles. I've been reading it all over again—the St. Aubyns at Crecy and Agincourt [with an exalted expression], and St. Aubyn ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... was king of England for nine years. During this reign almost continuous war raged in France, to the throne of which Henry laid claim. The battle of Agincourt ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... depression. King Richard II, the feeble son of the Black Prince, had been deposed in 1399,[31] and a new and vigorous line of rulers, the Lancastrians, reached their culmination in Henry V (1415-1422). Henry revived the French quarrel, and paralleled Crecy and Poitiers with a similar victory at Agincourt.[32] The French King was a madman, and, aided by a civil war among the French nobility, Henry soon had his neighbor's kingdom seemingly helpless at his feet. By the treaty of Troyes he was declared the heir to the French throne, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... light') from hearing his brother's repetition. He especially delighted in this bit of Schiller and in 'Chevy Chase,' though he resisted Watts' hymns. In the next two or three years he learns a good deal of poetry, and on September 5, 1834, repeats fifty lines of Henry the Fifth's speech before Agincourt without a fault. 'Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Robinson Crusoe' are read in due course as his reading improves, and he soon delights in getting into a room by himself and surrounding himself with books. His religious instruction of course began at the earliest possible period, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... England the strong King Edward III. was followed by the incompetent Richard II. In Germany the Emperor Charles IV., a statesman, had as his successor the drunken sot Wenceslas. In England the Wars of the Roses were looming in the future. Agincourt proved more disastrous to England than to France. There was hopeless turmoil everywhere. As Luther said when a somewhat similar condition existed in Germany—"God, tiring of the game, has thrown the cards on the table." In France the free ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... pulseless heart recall the time of its full beat and early throbbing? It is ever so many hundred years since some of us were young; and we forget, but do not all forget. No, madam, we remember with advantages, as Shakspeare's Harry promised his soldiers they should do if they survived Agincourt and that day of St. Crispin. Worn old chargers turned out to grass, if the trumpet sounds over the hedge, may we not kick up our old heels, and gallop a minute or so about the paddock, till we are brought up roaring? ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of French disaster and discomfiture—is utterly suppressed. The Battles of Ptolemais, of Ivry, of Fontenoy, of Rivoli, of Austerlitz, &c., are here as imposing as paint can make them, but never a whisper of Agincourt, Crecy, Poictiers, Blenheim, or Ramillies, nor yet of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Leipsic, or Waterloo. Even the wretched succession of forays which the French have for the last twenty years been prosecuting ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... splendor, and were very happy; that they had several children; that he was sheriff of London in the year 1340, and several times afterwards lord mayor; that in the last year of his mayoralty he entertained King Henry the Fifth on his return from the battle of Agincourt. And sometime afterwards, going with an address from the city on one of his Majesty's victories, he ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... won a great battle. It was her Agincourt. She had beaten the clever Coleman in a way that had left little of him but rags. However, she could have lost it all again if she had shown her feeling of elation. At Coleman's rudeness her manner indicated a mixture of sadness and embarrassment. Her suffering was so plain to ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... England when Crecy and Agincourt were fought, as Captain BATHURST told the House of Commons recently. How the War Office did without its afternoon tea in those barbarous days it is impossible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... their lamps were not lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel, Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a reality and drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And she by the side of him! He had seen her face in shadow, with the morning sunlight tangled in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... battlefield, or in the silent horror of the trenches, but we have each for himself conflicts to wage with foes more insidious than the armed forces of rival nations, and we can win them only by the same spirit of devotion that brought victory at Agincourt. The Ballad of Agincourt (Volume V, page 95), is followed by notes that make clear its historical setting, but a few comments may help to a better appreciation of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... a ragged cowte's been known To mak a noble aiver; So, ye may doucely fill a throne, For a' their clish-ma-claver: There, him at Agincourt wha shone, Few better were or braver; And yet, wi' funny, queer Sir John, He was an unco ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in 1689 by springing the boom across Lough Foyle, and perished in the act. The same ancestral line is said to comprise the Captain Browning who commanded the ship The Holy Ghost, which conveyed Henry V. to France before he fought the Battle of Agincourt, and in recognition of whose services two waves, said to represent waves of the sea, were added to his coat of arms. It is certainly a point of some importance in the evidence, as has been indicated, that these arms were displayed by the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... than circumscribed his genius. His family was of good old lineage, breathing freely for generations in the upper atmosphere of life, warmed and cheered in a genial sunlight of prosperity. It could stir, too, at the call of patriotism, and send soldiers, as it did, to bite the heroic dust at Agincourt. Another time brought other duties. The poet came into the world in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the great awakening of thought and English intellect was to be followed by stirring action. He was not, indeed, to bear any great part in the senate or the field; but all noble ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... more familiar name from the Court of Armagnac. The troubled reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. prevented England from taking advantage of these dissensions; but Henry V. renewed the war, winning the battle of Agincourt in his first campaign and securing the Treaty of Troyes on his second invasion. After his death came that most marvellous revolution wrought by Joan of Arc, and the expulsion of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the mouth of that genuine piece of royalty, who contrives to hide so much of the poet's own 'sovereignty of nature,' under the mantle of his free and princely humours, the brave and gentle hero of Agincourt. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... ancient stone from the Scots, all our Sovereigns have been seated at the moment of their coronation. On the west of the royal chapel a screen depicts the legends of the Confessor's life; on the east is the mutilated tomb of Henry V., the victor of Agincourt; above it the Chantry Chapel, where, after centuries of neglect, rest the remains of his wife, the French Catherine, ancestress ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Columbus set sail from Palos, American history was a-making in the shire-moots of Saxon England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and Bannockburn. In all the mediaeval achievements of England, in peace and war—in her cathedrals, her castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and Agincourt—Americans may without paradox claim their ancestral part. Why should the sons of the English who emigrated leave to the sons of those who stayed at home the undivided credit of having sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada? Nay, it is only ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... well-disposed readers, that they would return to the food of their forefathers, and reconcile themselves to beef and mutton. This was the diet which bred that hardy race of mortals who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt. I need not go so high up as the history of Guy, earl of Warwick, who is well known to have eaten up a dun cow of his own killing. The renowned king Arthur is generally looked upon as the first who ever sat down to ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agincourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that increase or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful in the theatre, than on the page; imperial tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace; but what ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... patriotic ardour, and for the harmonious eloquence (modelled on classical examples) in which that ardour found expression. His first work, the Livre des Quatre Dames, is in verse: four ladies lament their husbands slain, captured, lost, or fugitive and dishonoured, at Agincourt. Many of his other poems were composed as a distraction from the public troubles of the time; the title of one, widely celebrated in its own day, La Belle Dame sans Mercy, has obtained a new meaning of romance through its appropriation by Keats. In 1422 he wrote his prose Quadrilogue ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... contest. Since that age no British government has ever seriously and steadily pursued the design of making great conquests on the Continent. The people, indeed, continued to cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years it was easy to fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising them an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the energies of our country have been directed to better objects; and she now occupies in the history ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an inch broad; and, in the circlet beneath it, is a rock ruby, of enormous size and exquisite colour, said to have been worn by the Black Prince at the battle of Cressy, and by Henry V. at the battle of Agincourt. The circlet is enriched with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. This crown was altered from the one constructed expressly for the coronation of King George IV.: the superb diadem then weighed 5-1/2 lb., and was worn by the King on ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... and grim, Like to the visage pregnant fancy saw Behind the bars of each disused casque In that east chamber where the harness hung And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace— At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt, That other on the sands of Palestine: A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son. Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow Killing the doves in very wantonness— The gentle doves that to the ramparts came For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill. Each well-sent dart that stained ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... brave Massachusetts and Pennsylvania men did at Ball's Bluff, with their own blood, poured only too lavishly. To our minds, the finest and most characteristic piece of English literature, more inspiring even than Henry's speech to his soldiers on the eve of Agincourt, is Nelson's signal, "England expects every man to do his duty." When we have risen to that level and are content to stand there, with no thought of self, but only of our country and what we owe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... who maintained a kind of royal state in their own possessions, and kept high courts of judicature over life and limb in the whole extent of their hereditary fiefs. In the long English wars, from Crecy to Agincourt, the great body of them disappeared, and only here and there a great vassal was to be seen, distinguished in nothing from the other nobles, except in the loftiness of his titles and the reverence that still clung to the sound of his historic name. The second aristocracy ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... gift. He described his estate—its parks, meadows, groves of oak, the herds of deer, flocks of pheasants; the rooms of the castle, the baronial hall, with antlers nailed upon the beams and rafters, banners that had been carried by ancestors at Crecy and Agincourt. He pictured life in London, scenes in Parliament, the queen's drawing-rooms, the pageantry and etiquette at St. James's. Miss Newville heard ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... both fall by the hands of each other.—See page 91.] In Henry the Fifth, no opportunity was afforded Shakspeare of adopting the last-mentioned course, namely, rendering the issue of the war dramatic; but he has skilfully availed himself of the first.—Before the battle of Agincourt he paints in the most lively colours the light-minded impatience of the French leaders for the moment of battle, which to them seemed infallibly the moment of victory; on the other hand, he paints the uneasiness of the English King and his army in their ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and fun-making to the recital of a bit of "Bill Shakespeare," or a scene from the plays of other authors. "Where on earth do you get it all from?" he asked William one afternoon when the lad, with real dramatic fire, had recited "Henry's oration to his men before Agincourt." You, dear reader, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... English gentry don't want 'em; the Queen can make a duke any day. Look at Blandford's father, Duke Churchill, and Duchess Jennings, what were they, Harry? Damn it, sir, what are they, to turn up their noses at us? Where were they when our ancestor rode with King Henry at Agincourt, and filled up the French King's cup after Poictiers? 'Fore George, sir, why shouldn't Blandford marry Beatrix? By G—! he SHALL marry Beatrix, or tell me the reason why. We'll marry with the best blood of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... leaves in summer or fruits in autumn. I do not wonder that great earls value their trees, and never, save in direst extremity, lift upon them the axe. Ancient descent and glory are made audible in the proud murmur of immemorial woods. There are forests in England whose leafy noises may be shaped into Agincourt and the names of the battle-fields of the Roses; oaks that dropped their acorns in the year that Henry VIII. held his Field of the Cloth of Gold, and beeches that gave shelter to the deer when Shakspeare was a boy. There they stand, in sun and shower, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the past before our eyes as if it were the present. He will make us see as living men the hard-faced archers of Agincourt, and the war-worn spear-men who followed Alexander down beyond the rim of the known world. We shall hear grate on the coast of Britain the keels of the Low-Dutch sea- thieves whose children's children were to inherit unknown continents. ... Beyond the dim centuries we shall see the banners float ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... they give the history of Rome, of Greece, and of course of England, yet of France, which is the country the nearest to us, we are suffered to remain ignorant as to its history. We have all heard of the battles of Cressy, Poitiers and Agincourt, and remember that they were gained by the Edwards and Henry the Fifth, but few persons know anything about who were the French kings under whom they were lost; the only instances where the history of the French is brought to our minds, is when any connexion ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with the Scar, who will fight, as well or better than you, will fight with all that undisciplined valour which, in your father's time, lost Cressy and Azincour [two famous victories in the Hundred Years' War gained over the French by the English, near the towns of Crecy and Agincourt, in 1346 and 1415. See Shakespeare's Henry V for a description of the latter.]. Now, see you not in which of these states a cavalier of fortune holds the highest rank, and must ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Lucy first married Sir Richard le Byron, an ancestor of the Lord Byrons, Barons of Rochdale, and, secondly, Sir Bertine Entwisel, who, after performing repeated acts of valour in the service of his sovereigns, Henry V. and VI., more particularly at Agincourt, was killed in the first battle of St Alban's, and on his tomb was recorded in brass the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... assistance of the pinnace at the time of the attack on his Captain, and it is said that had it not been for Clerke's ill health he would have been tried by court-martial. He was afterwards, when in command of the Agincourt, tried for "disaffection, cowardice, disobedience to signals, and not having done his duty in rendering all assistance possible." He was found guilty on the last two counts only, and was "placed at the bottom of the list of Post-Captains, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... his father, when he had been carried off to inspect Fergus's museum in the lumber-room. "'To see a real General out of the wars' was one great delight in coming here, though I believe he would have been no more surprised to hear that you had been at Agincourt than in Afghanistan. 'It's in history,' he said ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kings were all buried as near to it as they could get, for it was their belief in those days that the devil might carry off the body, and so the nearer they got to the shrine the safer they felt. Henry the Fifth, who won the battle of Agincourt, is there. Those are the actual helmet, shield, and saddle which he used in the battle upon the crossbeam yonder. That king with the grave face and the beard is Edward the Third, the father of the Black Prince. The Black Prince never ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... kingly hero, Henry V, the fortunes of the English armies in France revived. In 1415 he won a great battle at Agincourt, a place, like Cressy, within a day's march of his ships in the Channel. Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine, had been Henry's base for the Agincourt campaign. So the French were very keen to get it back, while ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... ragged cowte's been known To mak a noble aiver; And ye may doucely fill a throne, For a' their clishmaclaver. There him at Agincourt wha shone. Few better were or braver; And yet wi' funny queer Sir John He was an unco ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... security vanished before the actual appearance of the invaders in the heart of France; and when his weary and half-starved force succeeded in crossing the Somme it found sixty thousand Frenchmen encamped on the field of Agincourt right across its line of march. Their position, flanked on either side by woods, but with a front so narrow that the dense masses were drawn up thirty men deep, though strong for purposes of defence was ill suited for attack; and the French leaders, warned by the experience of Crecy ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... plunged into the water to bear him ashore on their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Drummond Castle is much in my mind. What lovely creatures those French are! The women and children, carrying their poor drowned sisters! that little baby in its coffin decked with roses! Don't you yearn towards those dear souls? What are Agincourt and Waterloo in the presence of such sweetness? Well, I love them anyway, and shall brood over them and pray for them while ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... commerce was to do away with the effects of five centuries of disputes and warfare. England was to forget the part which France took in the first American war, and France was to cease to recollect that there had been such days as Crecy and Agincourt, Vittoria and Waterloo; and also that England had overthrown her rule in North America, and driven her people from India. But it was not France and England only that were to enter within the charmed circle; all nations were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sweet bag of a bee A chieftain to the Highlands bound Ae fond kiss, and then we sever Agincourt, Agincourt Ah, my swete swetyng Alas! my love, you do me wrong Allen-a-Dale has no faggot for burning All in the Downs the fleet was moor'd All ye woods, and trees, and bowers And did you not hear of a jolly young Waterman An old ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... England, partly because it was the last great open space on the southern confines of London, and partly because of the royal residence at Greenwich. Fifteen years after it had seen a guest so strange as the Emperor of the East, it saw Henry V. return from Agincourt, and the Mayor of London with the aldermen and four hundred citizens, "all in scarlet with hoods of red and white," greet the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... triumphed, it was awkward to bring out with mockery a martyr in the strife with Catholicism, and, besides, Oldcastle's relatives had protested, and Shakespeare accordingly altered the name of Oldcastle to that of Falstaff, also a historical figure, known for having fled from the field of battle at Agincourt. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Whittington and his lady lived in great splendour, and were very happy; that they had several children; that he was sheriff of London in the year 1340, and several times afterwards Lord Mayor; that in the last year of his mayoralty he entertained King Henry the Fifth, on his return from the battle of Agincourt. And some time afterwards, going with an address from the city on one of His Majesty's victories, he ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the Battle of Agincourt and the great Siege of Rouen, by King HENRY of Monmouth, the Fifth of the name; that won Gascony, and Guienne, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... Jack Cade, Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade, Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d'ye-call, Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall, Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob, One of the lords of No Man's Land, good Lob,— Although he was seen dying at Waterloo, Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too,— Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead Till millers cease to grind men's bones for bread, Not till our weathercock crows once again And I remove my house out of the lane On to the road." With this he disappeared In hazel and thorn tangled ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... the generations thinks itself commonplace. Familiarity breeds equally indifference and contempt. Yet no age of the world has witnessed so much of the drama of life—of the romantic and picturesque—as the age we live in. The years betwixt Agincourt and Waterloo were not more delightfully tragic than the years between Serajevo ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... negotiations wherein Isabella played a prominent part as her husband's representative, were those concerning the liberation of the Duke of Orleans, who had remained in England, a prisoner, after the battle of Agincourt in 1415. The last advice given by Henry V. to his brothers was that they should make this captivity perpetual. Therefore, whenever overtures were made for his redemption, a strong party, headed by Humphrey of Gloucester, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... who follows the camp to sell provisions to the troops. In garrisons and garrison-towns there are also sutlers who provide victuals of every kind; but Drayton's sutlers must have been very petty traders, as, when at Agincourt, Isambert's ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... AGINCOURT: TREATY OF TROYES (1420).—It was in 1392 that the king partially lost his reason. For the rest of his life, except at rare intervals, he was either imbecile or frenzied. By the division of counsels and a series of fatalities, gigantic preparations for the invasion of England had ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... will translate the most famous clause by the modern words "Judgment of his peers" and "law of the land." He will represent the Barons as having behind them the voice of the whole nation—and so forth. When he comes to Crecy he will make Edward III speak English. When he comes to Agincourt he will leave his readers as ignorant as himself upon the boundaries, numbers and power of the Burgundian faction. In the Civil War Oliver Cromwell will be an honest and not very rich gentleman of the middle-classes. The Parliamentary force will be that of the mass of the people ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... how Juliet's behavior varied with Flurry's. If Flurry were inattentive, Juliet was listless; if her history lessons were ill-learned, Juliet's mamma had always a great deal to say about the battle of Agincourt or any other event that it was necessary to impress on her memory. I am afraid Flurry at last took a great dislike to that well-meaning lady, and begged to hear more about Juliet's little brother and sister. When I came to a very uninteresting ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... had been partially blown down and rebuilt about the time of Charles I. The church itself had originally been founded by the Boissey family, and considerably enlarged by the widow of a de la Molle, whose husband had fallen at Agincourt, "as a memorial for ever." There, upon the porch, were carved the "hawks" of the de la Molles, wreathed round with palms of victory; and there, too, within the chancel, hung the warrior's helmet and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Owen lost a head, which when young had been the most beautiful of heads, which had gained for him the appellation of the Rose of Anglesey, and which had captivated the glances of the fair daughter of France, the widow of Monmouth's Harry, the immortal victor of Agincourt. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... looking at. Prince Henry of Wales, tall, comely, open-faced, and well-built, a noble lad of eighteen who called to men's minds, so "rare Ben Jonson" says, the memory of the hero of Agincourt, that other ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Let France be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in support of France; which favour accordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great successive battles: twice by the English, viz., at Crecy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Agincourt. Fought by Henry the fift of that name, King of England, against the whole power of the French: vnder the Raigne of their Charles the sixt, Anno Dom. 1415. The Miseries of Queene Margarite, the infortunate Wife, of that most infortunate ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... many a fort, Furnish'd in warlike sort, Marcheth tow'rds Agincourt In happy hour; Skirmishing day by day With those that stopp'd his way, Where the French gen'ral lay With ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... which refused to flow at a tale of mere distress. But then Brown urges that he is personally hostile to him. And the obscurity of his birth, that would be indeed a stumbling-block. O, Matilda, I hope none of your ancestors ever fought at Poictiers or Agincourt! If it were not for the veneration which my father attaches to the memory of old Sir Miles Mannering, I should make out my explanation with half the tremor ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: A good knight he! we keep a chronicle With all about him'—which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... conferences. We expect to hear of the French attacking our army, though there are accounts of their retiring, which would necessarily produce a peace-I hope so! I don't like to be at the eve, even of an Agincourt; that, you know, every Englishman is bound in faith to expect: besides, they say my Lord Stair has in his pocket, from the records of the Tower, the original patent, empowering us always to conquer. I am told that Marshal Noailles is as mad as Marshal Stair. Heavens! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the basilica to which they belong, have been illustrated by Ciampini: Vetera monumenta, vol. i. plates xxii.-xxiv.—D'Agincourt: Histoire de l'art, Peinture, pl. xiii. 3.—Minutoli: Ueber die Anfertigung und die Nutzanwendung der faerbigen Glaeser bei den Alten, pl. iv.—De Rossi: La basilica di Giunio Basso, in the Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, 1871, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... "about a French officer from Waterloo who blew out his brains with a pocket-pistol on that table, and an English archer from Agincourt who ran amok with a dagger in here, and a trooper of the Seventh ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... commented Ashe. "Look at Agincourt, m'lad, and remember what arrows did to the French ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... was the most practised. This was the national physical exercise, one which had helped the English soldiers to gain a great reputation for themselves, as at Agincourt (1415). At York the "butts," where men practised archery, were outside the ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of the Exodus, and even the legend of Jonah, were seriously placed before boys as history; and discoursed of in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of Agincourt or the history ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thirteenth century, that the first battle in which an English king made effective use of archery (at Falkirk, 1298), his infantry consisted mainly of Welshmen; and there can be little doubt that the famous longbow of England, which won the victories of Crecy and Poitiers and Agincourt, and indirectly did much to destroy feudalism and villenage, had its home ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... further supplies of men into St. Quentin. Montmorency had but 20,000 men with him. His levies consisted of the reserved force of the kingdom—princes, peers, knights, gentlemen, with their personal retinues, the best blood in France. It was such an army as that which lost Agincourt, and a fate not very ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it could not hold out an hour against a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... to eat the leek, overflows in vivacious humour. The piece in its main current presents a series of loosely connected episodes in which the hero's manliness is displayed as soldier, ruler, and lover. The topic reached its climax in the victory of the English at Agincourt, which powerfully appealed to patriotic sentiment. Besides the 'Famous Victories,' {174} there was another lost piece on the subject, which Henslowe produced for the first time on November 28, 1595. 'Henry V' may be regarded as Shakespeare's final experiment ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... were more disastrous to the interests of both the rival kingdoms than even those of the Crusades, and they were marked by great changes and great calamities. The victories of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt—which shed such lustre on the English nation—were followed by reverses, miseries, and defeats, which more than balanced the glories of Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. Provinces were gained and lost, yet no decisive results followed either victory or defeat. The French kings, driven ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... or on them; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings, she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced the whole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Pedro to the Black Prince, and half a century later it glowed on the helmet of that most picturesque of England's kings, Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... can be laid low by a bullet as well as a Frenchman. The days of the Black Prince are past and gone, no Henry V. is to-day victorious at Agincourt, we have to fight with firearms and ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the terrible "hundred years war," wherein Englishmen, led by the descendants of their Norman and French conquerors, retaliated upon Normandy and France the woes they had themselves endured. Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt avenged Hastings; the siege of Rouen under Henry the Fifth was a strange Nemesis. During that century the state of France was almost as sad as that of England during the earlier period; it was but a field for English youth to learn the arts of warfare at the ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with his situation and professions. His adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in a genealogical tree of his family, to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen this country, and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of the Black Prince or the Conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers, when a boy, to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... the bowmen. "Why should English archers use French terms?" he said. I replied that the only reason was this—that a "Monseigneur" here and there struck me as picturesque; and I reminded him that, as a matter of cold historical fact, most of the archers of Agincourt were mercenaries from Gwent, my native country, who would appeal to Mihangel and to saints not known to the Saxons—Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr Vendigeid. And I thought that that was the first and ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... too long to read while we're there," said Noel, "we can read them in the long winter evenings when we are grouped along the household hearthrug. I shall do my paper in poetry—about Agincourt." ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... was strongly fortified, and able to contribute twenty-one ships to the Royal Navy, Portsmouth only supplying five. Many expeditions for Normandy embarked here during the reigns of the Plantagenets, and the men who fought and won at Crecy and Agincourt must have passed, on the way to their ships, under the old West Gate, which still remains much as it was ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... this attitude of acknowledgment general and soldiers were as one. When the pickets had been posted, and night had fallen on the forest, officers and men, gathered together round their chaplains, made such preparations for the morrow's battle as did the host of King Harry on the eve of Agincourt. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... from his own timid father, who told him his brother Charles would make a better king than he, unless Henry spent more time at his books and less at his pike and his bow. The people, on the other hand, were constantly comparing their young prince with the great Henry the Fifth, the hero of Agincourt, and predicting of him as famous deeds as those recorded of his illustrious namesake. However, as it happened, there was no war into which the young soldier could enter at that time, so that he had ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... tradition of a culture demanded by leadership; inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no master, but in servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers—a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish practices of introspection, contemplation, and understanding, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... crown, And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down. So stalked he when he turned to flight on that famed Picard field, Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Caesar's eagle shield: So glared he when at Agincourt in wrath he turned to bay, And crushed and torn beneath his paws the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flag-staff deep, Sir Knight; ho! scatter flowers, fair maids: Ho! gunners fire a loud salute: ho! gallants, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... is historic to begin with, and has contributed its page to Anglo-French annals or English romance. We may take the little railway from Hesdin to Abbeville, traversing the forest of Crcy, and drive across the cornfields to Agincourt. We may stop at Montreuil, which now looks well, not only "on the map," but from the railway carriage, reviving our recollections of Tristram Shandy. At Douai we find eighty English boys playing cricket and football under the eye of English Benedictine monks—their college being ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in their purpose of defence, and their forces composed of materials to which Bonaparte did more justice when he came to be better acquainted with them. Of the three British nations, the English have since shown themselves possessed of the same steady valour which won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, Blenheim and Minden—the Irish have not lost the fiery enthusiasm which has distinguished them in all the countries of Europe—nor have the Scots degenerated from the stubborn courage with which their ancestors for two thousand years maintained their independence against ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... dissolved or prorogued. One hoary member is coeval with the Confessor. Another sheltered William Rufus, tired from the chase. Under another gathered recruits bound with Coeur de Lion for the Holy Land. Against the bole of this was set up a practicing butt for the clothyard shafts that won Agincourt, and beneath that bivouacked the pickets of Cromwell. As we look down upon their topmost leaves there floats, high above our own level, "darkly painted on the crimson sky," a member, not so old, of another commonwealth quite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... should live till I was married." In that, Bryan might have anticipated Benedick, as well as in the resolution. "Rich she shall be, that's certain." He went abroad to the wars. Perhaps he was with Henry V at Agincourt, and thenceforward, till the king's death in 1422, saw more of France than of England. In any case, to the unbounded wonder of the countryside, when at length he did return, Bryan brought back with him a foreign bride to Blenkinsopp. And what ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but more for Shakspeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the general passport to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, indeed, (and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the Brazilian Rio de Janeiro (then Sultan Osman I. and afterward H.M.S. Erin, England having taken over the ship on Aug. 5, 1914) and the Reshadieh, (likewise taken over by England and renamed H.M.S. Agincourt,) and was preparing for war in such haste that Greece did not hesitate to buy at the original cost price the two old American battleships Idaho and Mississippi, (now ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... present, as Prince of Wales, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, before he was sixteen; and there is some reason for supposing that he commanded the royal forces in the Battle of Grosmont, fought and won in his eighteenth year. He was but twenty-eight at Agincourt. Splendid as was his military career, it was all over before he had reached to thirty-six years. The Black Prince was but sixteen at Crecy, and in his twenty-seventh year at Poitiers. Edward IV. was not nineteen when he won ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... the old city walls; the top of this wall was sufficiently wide to afford a pleasant walk, with an extensive view, easily accessible to ladies by steps. This must have been a part of the identical walls which witnessed the embarkation of Henry V. before the battle of Agincourt, and the detection of the conspiracy of Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, which Shakspeare has made so picturesque; when, according to the chorus in Henry V., the ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... dissipated companions, and never thrashing Sir William again. During his reign, Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for. His Majesty then turned his thoughts to France, where he went and fought the famous Battle of Agincourt. He afterwards married the King's daughter Catherine, a very agreable woman by Shakespear's account. In spite of all this however he died, and was succeeded ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... speckled keys and singing, amid the talk which had risen again in the room, to her who leaned beside the mantelpiece a dainty song of the Elizabethans, a sad and sweet loth to depart, the victory chant of Agincourt, the happy air of Greensleeves. While he sang and she listened, or feigned to listen, his heart was at rest but when the quaint old songs had ended and he heard again the voices in the room he remembered his own sarcasm: the house where young men ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... field of battle, the expiring lease of priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a causeless and hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no interest in its event, everything is forgotten but the victory of Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was the model of Italian heroes. He made his employers and his rivals alike his tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of faithless allies; he then armed himself against his allies with the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is, that you can shew me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any intermixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect[259].' Mr. Murphy mentioned Shakspeare's description of the night before the battle of Agincourt[260]; but it was observed, it had men in it. Mr. Davies suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in the tomb of her ancestors[261]. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff[262]. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; it should be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... called together the whole nobility of the kingdom, and advanced against Henry, who, like Edward III., had been obliged to leave Normandy and march towards Calais in search of supplies. The armies met at Agincourt, where, though the French greatly outnumbered the English, the skill of Henry and the folly and confusion of the dauphin's army led to a total defeat, and the captivity of half the chief men in France of the Armagnac party—among them the young Duke of ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... others in mere dash and brilliancy, and within the last few years had dazzled the eyes of the whole nation by the success of his famous feat in Spain, "The most brilliant exploit," says Lord Macaulay, "achieved by English arms upon the Continent, between Agincourt and Blenheim." ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... survive to represent the body and soul of England before her days of mechanical decrepitude and commercial dishonor. There are men working in my own fields who might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt without being discerned from among his knights; I can take my tradesmen's word for a thousand pounds; my garden gate opens on the latch to the public road, by day and night, without fear of any foot entering but my own, and my girl-guests ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... poems of D. are The Wars of the Barons (1603), England's Heroical Epistles (1598) (being imaginary letters between Royal lovers such as Henry II. and Rosamund), Poems, Lyric and Heroic (1606) (including the fine ballad of "Agincourt"), Nymphidia, his most graceful work, Muses Elizium, and Idea's Mirrour, a collection of sonnets, Idea being the name of the lady to whom they were addressed. Though often heavy, D. had the true poetic gift, had passages of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... post was made, Though on thy shattered beeches fell The blended rage of shot and shell, Though from thy blackened portals torn, Their fall thy blighted fruit-trees mourn, Has not such havoc bought a name Immortal in the rolls of fame? Yes—Agincourt may be forgot, And Cressy be an unknown spot, And Blenheim's name be new; But still in story and in song, For many an age remembered long, Shall live the towers of Hougomont ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... an honoured place in heraldry. Two large Walnut trees overshadow the tomb of the poet Waller in Beaconsfield churchyard, and "these are connected with a curious piece of family history. The tree was chosen as the Waller crest after Agincourt, where the head of the family took the Duke of Orleans prisoner, and took afterwards as his crest the arms of Orleans hanging by a label in a Walnut tree with this motto for the device: Haec fructus ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... seem to be especially born for the gentlest tasks of womanhood. She might have been an excellent wife and mother, but from the very hour of her birth she had been vowed to be a nun in gratitude on her mother's part for her father's safety at Agincourt. She had been placed at Wilton when almost a baby, and had never gone farther from it than on very rare occasions to the Cathedral at Salisbury; but she had grown up with a wonderful instinct for nursing and healing, and had a curious insight into the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... weighty considerations from embarking in such a struggle. At the commencement of the war the power of Spain overshadowed all Europe. Her infantry were regarded as irresistible. Italy and Germany were virtually her dependencies, and England was but a petty power beside her. Since Agincourt was fought we had taken but little part in wars on the Continent. The feudal system was extinct; we had neither army nor military system; and the only Englishmen with the slightest experience of war were those who had gone abroad to seek their fortunes, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... dissociated in men's minds from poetry and literature. Had he ever written anything remotely partaking of the nature of a dramatic piece, it could at the most have been the words of the songs in some congratulatory royal pageant such as Lydgate probably wrote on the return of Henry V after Agincourt; though there is not the least reason for supposing Chaucer to have taken so much interest in the "ridings" through the City which occupied many a morning of the idle apprentice of the "Cook's Tale," Perkyn Revellour. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... has sometimes, for no very obvious reason, been styled the father of French lyric poetry, was born in May, 1391. He was the son of Louis D'Orleans, the grandson of Charles V., and the father of Louis XII. Captured at Agincourt, he was kept in England as a prisoner from 1415 to 1440, when he returned to France, where he died in 1465. His verses, for the most part roundels on two rhymes, are songs of love and spring, and retain the allegorical forms of the Roman ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... in the army of Henry V. He with Court and Williams are sentinals before the English camp at Agincourt, and the king disguised comes to them during the watch, and talks with them respecting the impending battle,—Shakespeare, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... who was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, and detained in England twenty-five years, was the author of the earliest known written valentines. He left about sixty of them. They were written during his confinement in the Tower of London, and are still to be seen among the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... night or two away from the ordeal of advanced trenches, in which they had to take their turn, I heard it with more emotion than ever before. In that anthem, chanted by these boys in the darkness, was the spirit of England. If I had been king, like that Harry who wandered round the camp of Agincourt, where his men lay sleeping, I should have been glad to stand and listen outside that ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... records that the French soldiers who invaded Ireland behaved exactly like the French soldiers are described as conducting themselves at Agincourt in the play of "Henry V," and he exclaims, "It is marvellous!" (Wolfe Tone also adds that Shakespeare could never have seen a French soldier, but we know that Bacon while in Paris had ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence |
