"Aha, voila, Monsieur de la Trimouille! C'est un jeune homme tres capable, et un chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. Il est Capitaine pour le Roi, et Vicomte de Thouars. Enfin notre affaire, va commencer!"
The cavalry seemed now to avoid the vanguard, and the men of the Wight had every reason to be proud of themselves. They had driven off the foe, and had made themselves respected. Most of the young men of the Wight thought the victory was won, and exchanged many a merry jest at the expense of the defeated French.
CHAPTER XXVI.
HOW "THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST WERE A' WEDE AWAY."
In this pause of the battle, Dicky Cheke and Maurice Woodville, with the custrels and varlets who were looking after the horses of the dismounted knights and esquires, took refuge in the square, and the men began to take the affair a little more easily.
The dismounted knights got on horseback again, and Ralph was delighted to see that the time was coming when they would be the attacking party. He longed to break a lance with some of those swaggering French men-at-arms who rode past them, waving their spears and jeering them with taunting words. But the time had not come yet. In the interval the wounded were attended to. Surgical science was at a very low ebb, but what little the surgeon-barbers did know, was applied to the relief of the sufferers, most of whom, however, bled to death. The men of the Wight had hitherto suffered very little; two men had been killed outright by a cannon-ball, and some dozen or so had received more or less serious lance thrusts. The men who served the artillery, however, had been very severely handled, and the Isle of Wight men, few of whom had seen cannon-shot wounds, were shocked at the awful results of those few minutes of artillery practice at close quarters.
Clumsy and badly served as those primitive guns were, the execution they did was murderous; and the Captain of the Wight, who possessed such large experience of mediæval warfare, noted the change those deadly weapons must produce, and determined to urge upon King Henry the importance of employing more largely in the field these engines of destruction.
Dicky, Ralph, and Maurice were all mounted and standing together. From their superior position on horseback they could see through their visors all that was going on, as far as it was possible to make out anything in that forest of spears. The boys could not understand why they stood inactive spectators.
"Marry, Ralph, why don't we give it these varlets as they ride past us? A good charge now would knock over dozens, and I am longing for my prize-money. Look at that fat Frenchman! did you ever see such a jack-pudding?"
"T wish I could make out what is going on," said Ralph, who had been trying to pierce the bewildering masses of steel-clad men, who seemed never to end as they trotted past with lance on hip and fluttering pennon. "Hullo, here come the footmen; now look out."