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Updated: June 10, 2025
At last, however, they yielded, and undertook to pay fifty thousand golden crowns to settle all accounts which they owed to the tradesmen in the city, and to give up all places in the district of Caen except Harfleur.
Well knowing the greatness of the peril, and that the very best of his captains had scarcely the will, if they had the power, to restrain the license that soon became barbarity unimaginable, he spoke sadly overnight of his dread of the day of surrender, when it might prove impossible to prevent deeds that would be not merely a blot on his scutcheon, but a shame to human nature; looking back to the exultation with which he had entered Harfleur as a mere effect of boyish ignorance and thoughtlessness.
He called Margaret from Bar to Harfleur, where her faithful adherent Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, prepared to cross with a small force of French soldiers into Wales.
The king accordingly despatched his brother the Duke of Bedford with a fleet of 500 ships, containing 20,000 men, to the relief of the town. They found the enemy's fleet, in which were several large Genoese carracks, lying before the haven of Harfleur, and pressing the siege with all possible vigour.
And though success attended his efforts beyond all expectation, he most wilfully endangered the safety not only of himself, but of his gallant army, when he determined to march with reduced forces through the enemy's country from Harfleur to Calais. It was a rashness nothing less than culpable, but in his own interests rashness was good policy.
Yet he was prudent, conciliatory, and willing to wait; and as the English power in France that triangle of which the base was the sea-line from Harfleur to Calais, and the apex Paris was unnatural and far from being really strong; and as the relations between Bedford and Burgundy might not always be friendly, the man who could wait had many chances in his favour.
But the genius of Henry was more than equal to the difficulties with which he had to deal. He had secured himself from an attack on his rear by the reduction of Lower Normandy, his earlier occupation of Harfleur severed the town from the sea, and his conquest of Pont-de-l'Arche cut it off from relief on the side of Paris.
The French Court, on the other hand, offered him her hand with Aquitaine and the money, an offer rejected instantly; and Henry made ready for a rough wooing in arms. In 1415 he crossed to Harfleur, and while parties still fought in France, after a long and exhausting siege, took the place; thence he rode northward for Calais, feeling his army too much reduced to attempt more.
Now, while the siege of Harfleur had been going on, the arrangements for the embarkation of the troops and stores carried out, and the town put in a state of defence, troops had been marching from all points of France at the command of the French king to join him at Rouen, so that here and in Picardy two great armies were already assembled, the latter under the command of the constable.
Besides Dunois, who commanded the besieged garrison, was Raoul de Gaucourt, who had defended Harfleur in 1415; he had but recently returned from imprisonment in England, and was burning to avenge his captivity. La Hire, Xaintrailles, Coulant, Coaraze, and Armagnac were among the defenders of Orleans.
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