bowmen, who drew their bowstrings to their ears, sent their shafts with force enough to pierce any but the best armour. At the end of the day the Black Prince led his own men to charge the last division of the French army in front, while a small body of

horse was sent rouna to take it in the rear. The French gave way in all directions; the French king himself was captured; and the English, with a loss of 300 men, found they had killed and captured almost as many Frenchmen as there were men in their own army.

The story of Agincourt begins like that of Cressy. Henry V. was making for Calais. The French barred his way. 6000 Englishmen, worn Agincourt, out by long marches, had to face 30,000 1415.

of the best knights in France. Henry placed some

of his archers in front, and sent others to line the woods which covered the flanks of his small force on either side. The French had to advance across a muddy ploughland a mile in length. So heavy were the men in armour, and so sticky the mud, that as a body they never reached the English at all. A few managed to crawl up, but the great mass stuck, a splendid mark for the English archers. When it had been well riddled, the English charged. Being lightly armed and without armour, they could move freely where the enemy could not; and thus first the French vanguard, and then the main line, were overthrown and butchered, the dead actually lying two or three deep. The third division of the French army fled, though it alone far outnumbered Henry's entire force, being too terrified to stand an attack.

One fact stands out in all the battles. The English archers decided them. Not only could they shoot The English farther and faster than any crossbowmen, Archers. or French archers, but when properly backed they could stop heavy cavalry. The day of the knights in armour was over. Their charges, hitherto thought irresistible, could be broken by archers and steady infantry. The best missile weapons won. The same fact has been shown over and over again in the history of war. Just as the longbow beat the crossbow, so the musket has beaten the bow, the rifle has replaced the smooth bore, the breech-loader has triumphed over the muzzle-loader, and the magazine-rifle and the Maxim gun now hold the field, with increased range and rapidity of fire.

Yet although England could beat the French in Reasons for pitched battles, they were not numerous English Failure. enough to hold the country. They could overrun it; the Duke of Lancaster could march

across the south of France, and none dared meet him in battle. Yet when the French remained in their walled towns they were safe. In days when artillery was scarcely used, and was very cumbrous and short in range, sieges were long affairs, needing many men and costing many lives. Thus when the French had learned wisdom; when they risked no pitched battles, but fought behind walls; when they kept up a continual warfare of small parties, the English power drooped. Bit by bit Bertrand du Guesclin regained all that had been lost. When Edward III. died the English possessions had dwindled down to Bordeaux, a strip of Gascony, and Calais; in Richard II.'s reign the French even invaded England. They plundered the Isle of Wight, and for a time a French force was encamped in Sussex.

Henry V., we have seen, was more startlingly successful than Edward III. at his best, for his son was proclaimed King of France at Paris. Still, he had a much easier task. The French king, Charles VI., was little better than a madman. France itself was not united; it was divided up into two great parties, the Burgundians, headed by their duke, The Alliance of and the Orleanists or Armagnacs. So England and fierce were these factions against each Burgundy. other that they even descended to murder. First a Duke of Orleans, and then a Duke of Burgundy was treacherously slain by the other side. In the end the Burgundians, sooner than see the Armagnacs triumph, allied themselves with Henry V. Thus it is not England alone fighting against France. It is England, in alliance with one half of France, fighting against the other.

Henry V.'s success, then, depended much on the

Burgundian alliance. He was strong because France was divided. But this could not last. Nothing, in fact, unites a country so speedily as foreign invasion. We have seen this already in Scotland. We may observe it again in France. By degrees Burgundians and Armagnacs came to see that they were both Frenchmen, to whom England was a deadly foe.

The task of rousing the French spirit fell to Jeanne Darc, commonly called in England Joan of Arc. She was a simple peasant girl, who believed Jeanne Darc. that she was sent by Heaven to drive the English from France. Dressed as a soldier, she led the French soldiers to the attack. She entered Orleans, and drove off the English who were besieging it; then she won battle after battle. The English declared that they could not beat her. This was true, for she was backed by France growing united again. Even after Joan had been taken prisoner, and cruelly burned as a witch by the English, things went from bad to worse with our armies. Soon the Burgundians abandoned the English alliance, and then English power in France vanished for the last time. It is interesting for our purpose to notice that the first in the long series of English defeats, that of Beaugé, was mainly won for the French by a body of Scots. Here was one result of that alliance which lasted so long between England's two enemies. Pope Martin V., hearing of the share of the Scots in the victory, observed, "Truly the Scots are a cure for the English".

The Hundred Years' War practically brings to an end English efforts to gain territory on the Continent. That object abandoned, we shall see England turn to a new plan, namely, that of spreading her power at sea and in the New World. Before, however, she

had the opportunity to do this, she had to pass through a period of trouble at home, which was something like the trouble that she had profited by in France. She was torn to pieces by bloody wars for the crown. Fortunately no foreign invader came to England to make matters worse, as Henry V. had done for France.

XIII. THE BLACK DEATH AND THE

SERFS.

We have seen that the Norman Conquest left the class who cultivated the land in the position of serfs. They were bound to the land, and had to give their lord so many days' work each week, and certain extra days' work at the busy seasons of hay-making, harvest, and ploughing. As time went on, however, many of the serfs had come to an arrangement with their lords to pay money instead of service; Commutation for example, if a man's labour was reckoned of Service. at a penny a day, he would pay threepence a week if he had owed three days' work, and further pennies for extra days. The plan was convenient for both parties: the serf got more time to work on his own plot of land; the lord got money with which he could hire labourers, and was saved the trouble of continually striving to compel unwilling or lazy serfs to perform their services.

This plan of "commuting" services for money was spreading gradually over the country, but it was not complete, when it was interrupted by a disaster. This was the Black Death, a fearful plague which The Black ravaged our island from 1347 to 1350. At Death. least one-third of the whole population perished. It