His chivalric bearing.
Certainly the march to Calais (after the taking of Harfleur) was never exceeded in heroic bravery by any imaginary exploit in romance. The attenuated condition of his army forbad all immediate prosecution of his ambitious aspirations for the French crown; but a direct return to England did not accord with his high and courageous spirit; and, treating the soil of France as if it were his own, he resolved to march to Calais. He professed neither desire nor fear to meet his enemies; and he pursued his march with firm and grave steps, openly declaring to the French heralds the destination of his course. Political objects were suspended, but he secretly wished to raise the chivalric character of his people; and he had numbers and vigour yet remaining to have a joust to the utterance with his enemies. As at Poictiers so at Agincourt, the yeomen divided with the knights of England the glory of the conquest: but the battle of Agincourt was in itself more heroic, for the English themselves were the assailants, instead of, as in the former battle, waiting the attack.
Henry’s disdain of the wish of having more men from England,—his noble cry, “Banners, advance!” when his few thousands were ranged against all the proud chivalry of France,—his rendering himself conspicuous by his crown, his armour, and his splendid tunic,—his knighting some brave Welsh soldiers, his personal defenders, even as they lay expiring;—these circumstances, vouched for, as they are, by the most faithful chroniclers, apparently belong to the romance rather than to the history of chivalry.
After the battle he was as courteous[93] to his noble prisoners as the Black Prince had been on a similar occasion; and there was something very beautiful in his not permitting his battered helmet, with its royal crown, to be exhibited, during the customary show at his public entrance into London.[94]
Commencement of the decline of chivalry.
Henry V. was the last of our chivalric kings. Though he revived the fame of Edward III. and the Black Prince, yet immediately after his reign the glories of English chivalry began to wane.
In our subsequent wars in France, indeed, there were among our nobility many knightly spirits,—the Warwicks, the Talbots, the Suffolks, the Salisburys, all worthy to have been the paladins of Charlemagne, the knights of Arthur’s Round Table. But they went not with the character of the age; they opposed, rather than reflected it. Chivalry was no longer a national feature in our wars when there was no sovereign to fan the flame.
The civil wars.
Caxton’s lamentation.
Henry VI. was a devotee, and Edward IV. a voluptuary. The civil wars in England operated as fatally upon the noble order of knighthood as the civil wars in France had done in that country. In those contests, far fiercer than national hostilities, there was a ruthlessness of spirit that mocked the gentle influences of chivalry. Accordingly it was asked, in the time of Edward IV., “How many knights are there now in England that have the use and exercise of a knight? that is to say, that he knoweth his horse, and his horse him, ready to a point to have all things that belongeth to a knight; a horse that is according and broken after its kind, his armour and harness meet and fitting.”[95] “I would,” continues the father of English printing, “it pleased our sovereign lord that twice or thrice in a year he would cry jousts of peace, to the end that every knight should have horse and harness, and also the use and craft of a knight; and also to tourney, one against one, or two against two, and the best to have a prize, a diamond or jewel. The exercises of chivalry are not used and honoured as they were in ancient time, when the noble acts of the knights of England that used chivalry were renowned through the universal world. O ye knights of England, where is the custom and usage of noble chivalry? What do ye now but go to the bains and play at dice? Alas! what do ye but sleep and take ease, and are all disordered from chivalry? Leave this, leave it, and read the noble volumes of St. Graal, of Launcelot, of Tristrem, of Galaod, of Perceval, of Perceforest, of Gawayn, and many more. There shall ye see manhood, courtesy, and gentilness.”[96]
To this testimony of the decline of chivalry must be added the important fact that in 1439 people petitioned parliament for liberty to commute by a pecuniary fine the obligation to receive knighthood. This change of manners did not occur, as is generally supposed, in consequence of the use of gunpowder; for during the civil wars in England artillery was seldom and but partially used in the field, and, except at the great battle of Tewkesbury, in the year 1471, that arm of power had no effect on the general issue of battles. The cavalry and infantry were arranged in the old system: the lance was the weapon of those of gentle birth, while the bow and the bill were used by people of inferior state. Comines, who wrote about the close of the fifteenth century, says, that the archers formed the main strength of a battle.[97]