the horses at every step sunk so deeply into the mud, that it required
great exertion to extricate them,--and that the narrowness of the place
caused their archers to be so crowded as to prevent them from drawing
their bows." Michelet's description of the day is the best that can be
read, and he tells us, that, when the signal of battle was given by Sir
Thomas Erpingham, the English shouted, but "the French army, to their
great astonishment, remained motionless. Horses and knights appeared to
be enchanted, or struck dead in their armor. The fact was, that their
large battle-steeds, weighed down with their heavy riders and lumbering
caparisons of iron, had all their feet completely sunk in the deep wet
clay; they were fixed there, and could only struggle out to crawl on a
few steps at a walk," Upon this mass of chivalry, all stuck in the mud,
the cloth-yard shafts of the English yeomen fell like hailstones upon
the summer corn. Some few of the French made mad efforts to charge, but
were annihilated before they could reach the English line. The English
advanced upon the "mountain of men and horses mixed together," and
butchered their immovable enemies at their leisure. Plebeian hands that
day poured out patrician blood in torrents. The French fell into a
panic, and those of their number who could run away did so. It was the
story of Poitiers over again, in one respect; for the Black Prince owed
his victory to a panic that befell a body of sixteen thousand French,
who scattered and fled without having struck a blow. Agincourt was
fought on St. Crispin's day, and a precious strapping the French got.
The English found that there was "nothing like leather." It was the last
battle in which the oriflamme was displayed; and well it might be; for,
red as it was, it must have blushed a deeper red over the folly of the
French commanders.

The greatest battle ever fought on British ground, with the exceptions
of Hastings and Bannockburn,--and greater even than Hastings, if numbers