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By Root 1328 0

through it and lead a mass of Frenchmen to the rear of the English center. Why not capture a king as well as a duke? “Forward!” he bellowed.’ Forward!” but when he tried to go forward he half tripped on the bodies that had fallen across the Duke of York’s legs. Lanferelle tried to kick the dead men out of his path, but a lance thrust from an Englishman hammered his breastplate and threw him back. “Bastard!” Lanferelle shouted, driving the mace’s bloody spikes toward the snarling face, then a shout of warning made him glance to his left and he saw that the English were driving into the French ranks and threatening to fight around to his rear. He reckoned there was still time to break the enemy line and he tried to go forward again and once more was checked by the dead men, and a sudden rush of Englishmen came to oppose him, their lances, poleaxes, and maces battering his armor and he had no choice but to step back. His chance to cleave the line was gone for the moment.

He backed away, leaving the Duke of York face down in the mud. The duke, stunned and trampled, had drowned in a blood-drenched puddle and now the English advanced across his corpse, coming for Lanferelle and for his standard of the sun and falcon, and Lanferelle held them at bay with swift hard strokes. He did not know the duke was dead, only regretted that he had temporarily lost him, but then he saw another standard to his left, a standard deep in the French ranks that showed a rearing lion blazoned with a crown and he reckoned Sir John Cornewaille’s ransom would make him rich enough. “With me!” he bellowed, and he rammed and shoved and fought his way toward Sir John.

Away to Lanferelle’s right a furious battle raged around the king’s four standards. Scores of Frenchmen wanted the honor of capturing England’s king, but they faced the same horrors that dogged the rest of the French attackers. Their front rank had gone down fast, its men exhausted by the mud and wounded by the arrow-storm, and the king’s bodyguard had killed them with axes, maces, and mauls. Now the attackers tripped on bodies and were met by ax strokes, yet still they pushed forward and a French lance pierced the faulds of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the king’s younger brother, and the blow to the groin drove him down into the furrows. Frenchmen surged to take the fallen man prisoner, but Henry stood over his injured brother and used his sword two-handed to hack at the enemy. He fought with a sword because he regarded that as a royal weapon, and if it put him at a disadvantage against men armed with poleaxes and maces, then Henry did not acknowledge it, because he knew God was with him. He could feel God in his heart, he sensed God giving him strength, and even when a French poleax rang on his crowned helmet with a sudden blinding force, God protected him. A golden fleuret was chopped from the crown and his helmet was dented, but the steel was not broken and the leather liner soaked some of the blow’s force and Henry stayed conscious as he lunged the sword into the axman’s armpit and screamed his war cry. “Saint George!”

Henry of England was filled by a God-given joy. Never, in all his life, had he felt closer to God, and he almost pitied the men who came to be killed for they were being killed by God. Henry’s bodyguard flanked him and, one by one, they killed eighteen Frenchmen who, only the night before, had sworn a solemn oath to kill or capture the King of England. The eighteen had been bound together by their oath and they had advanced together and now they died together. Their bodies lay tangled and bloody to impede the men who still wanted the fame of capturing a king. A Frenchman bellowed his challenge, stumbling forward, spiked mace thrashing at the king, and the king slammed the sword hard forward to lodge the point in the slit of the Frenchman’s visor, and the mace struck a man next to the king, who staggered, and another Englishman drove his poleax spike into the Frenchman’s throat so that blood ran down the ax’s iron-sheathed handle. The man sank to his knees, and the king