Henry set sail from Southampton on August 11th. His point of attack was Harfleur, in the estuary of the Seine, now a decayed village, but then reckoned to be the first seaport of Normandy. This importance was one reason for attacking it; another was the activity shown by its sailors in capturing English shipping. The fleet of transports was necessarily large, fourteen or sixteen hundred vessels in all; it seems to have accomplished the voyage in safety, though, as the disembarkation of the troops did not begin till the night of August 14th, it may have encountered rough weather, and some stores were certainly spoiled by the sea.

Henry’s first care was to issue strict orders for the good behaviour of his army. All property of the Church was to be held sacred, and no violence to be done to any clerical person; women were not to be injured. The penalty of death was to be inflicted on all offenders.

He had effected his landing, which it would have been easy to oppose, without molestation. Nor did he meet with any hindrance when, four days afterwards, the disembarkation of his men and stores completed, he marched68 to Harfleur and invested the town. This occupied both banks of the river Lézarde, a tributary of the Seine. The entrance to the harbour was defended by a chain drawn across from two towers which flanked either end of the walls. The defences of the town were strong, and each of the three gates was defended by an outwork. The garrison consisted of four hundred men-at-arms, who with their attendants may have made up a force of between two and three thousand men. It was reinforced, before the investment of the town was made complete, by a body of troops under the Lord of Gaucourt, who immediately assumed the chief command. Henry sent a herald to demand the surrender of the town. It was consistent with the position which he claimed, that of a sovereign demanding his rightful inheritance, that he threatened the inhabitants with death if they refused obedience to the lawful Duke of Normandy.

A regular siege was then commenced. Trenches were pushed up to the town, and when the batteries were finished a cannonade was opened. Henry had some heavy field-pieces and a certain number of artillerymen and engineers, though these, of course, did not bear anything like the modern proportion to the whole force of the army. The defence was obstinate. The besieged repaired the damage caused by the cannonade almost as fast as it was done, and successfully countermined the English mines. They inflicted no little loss on their assailants by the missiles which they discharged from the walls, and even made some sallies with success. Meanwhile the English army was suffering greatly. No small part of the stores brought from England had69 been damaged in the passage across the Channel, and supplies from the country could only be obtained by sending out large bodies of men. It was not long before disease began to show itself in the camp. Bad and scanty food, and the wetness of the weather, which seems to have been constantly unfavourable throughout the campaign, caused an epidemic of dysentery. As many as two thousand men are said to have perished of this disease. Among them was the Bishop of Norwich—who, churchman as he was, seems to have been a trusted and efficient counsellor in military matters—and many nobles and knights.

Henry did not fail to perceive the gravity of the situation, and determined to risk an assault. This was to be delivered at dawn, after a cannonade had been kept up during the night. But before morning came, the commander of the garrison sent an envoy to the King, bearing the offer to capitulate unless the town should be relieved by the King of France within three days. It was now the 19th of September, and the siege had lasted exactly thirty days. No help arrived within the stipulated time; indeed the French king and his counsellors had at once informed the inhabitants that their army was not ready to act. On Sunday the 22nd, the Lord of Gaucourt, accompanied by a number of the chief inhabitants of Harfleur, made a formal surrender of the keys to the English king. Henry received his visitors in a magnificent tent which had been raised for the purpose on a hill fronting the town. Everything was arranged to suit the royal state which it was a point of principle with him to assume. Sir Robert Umfraville stood on his right hand holding a spear, on the70 point of which was the crowned helmet which it was his custom to wear, and which denoted that the King was seeking to recover his own by arms. The English nobles stood in ranks on either side. The ceremony over, the Governor and his company were royally feasted, and on the next day Henry entered the town.

It was characteristic of the devout temper of the man that his first thought was for his religious duties. He dismounted on reaching the gate, had his shoes and beaver removed, and walked barefooted to the church of St. Martin, where he offered up a thanksgiving for his success. This piety, however, did not prevent him from pushing to the extreme his use of a conqueror’s rights. The nobles and men-at-arms were stripped of their armour and sent away, “clothed in their jackets only,” after giving a promise on oath to surrender themselves prisoners at Calais on the Martinmas following (November 11th). This, perhaps, was no more than defeated combatants might have expected. But the treatment of the inhabitants seems to have been harsh. They were compelled to ransom their lives with all that they possessed, and then, with their wives and children, were driven out of the town. To each was given a miserable pittance of five sous, and they were permitted to take with them a part of their clothing. “It was pitiful,” says Monstrelet, writing apparently from the report of an eye-witness, “to see and hear the sorrow of these poor people, thus driven away from their dwellings and property.”

Harfleur was undoubtedly a great prize. The actual amount of booty taken in the town was large, and the harbour was the most important in Western Normandy.71 The loss of it, too, was deeply galling to the French king, who made it the ground of an urgent summons to his nobles that for want of succour his gallant and loyal subjects of Harfleur had been forced to surrender. But the capture of a single town, however important and wealthy, was not an adequate result of an expedition which had aimed at nothing less than the conquest of France. It became a pressing question what was to be done. The first expedient tried, if we may so speak, was to send a challenge to the Dauphin, offering to submit the decision of the claim to the throne of France to the issue of a single combat. Henry was too good a sol............