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Updated: June 10, 2025
King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover Harfleur; had gradually conquered a great part of Normandy; and, at this crisis of affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half a year.
The force that he brought with him was about thirty thousand men, and he immediately employed it in laying siege to Harfleur. The place was strong, so far as walls and bulwarks could make it, but it was not well victualled, and after a five-weeks' siege it was obliged to capitulate. But the forces of the besieged were thinned by disease as well as actual fighting.
The houses along the quay have a most paintable appearance, their overhanging floors and innumerable windows forming a picturesque background to the fishing-boats. Harfleur, on the same side of the river as Havre, is on the road to Tancarville. We pass through it on our way to Caudebec.
The danger to which during this journey they were exposed arose, not from the new Government at Paris, but from the excited state of the peasantry. After many perils and adventures, sometimes indeed travelling on foot to avoid dangerous places, they reached Harfleur on March 3. An English steamer, the "Express," lay at the wharf, on which the king and queen embarked as Mr. and Mrs. William Smith.
This conversation took place as they were dropping down Southampton waters. Their destination was known to be Harfleur, which, as it was strongly fortified and garrisoned, was like to offer a sturdy resistance. The fleet was a great one, consisting of from twelve to fourteen hundred sail, which the king had collected from all the ports of England and Ireland, or hired from Holland and Friesland.
The prisoners and the main portion of the booty which, as Harfleur was the chief port of Normandy, and indeed of all the western part of France, was very great he sent direct to England, together with the engines of war. The sick and ailing were then embarked on ships, with a considerable fighting force under the Earl of Warwick.
"Monsieur le protonotare," asked Gauchere, "what do you prognosticate of this pretended foundling?" "The greatest misfortunes," replied Mistricolle. "Ah! good heavens!" said an old woman among the spectators, "and that besides our having had a considerable pestilence last year, and that they say that the English are going to disembark in a company at Harfleur."
The burgesses and the small garrison of Harfleur made a gallant defence; but, on the 22d of September, not receiving from Vernon, where the king and the dauphin were massing their troops, any other assistance than the advice to "take courage and trust to the king's discretion," they capitulated; and Henry V., after taking possession of the place, advanced into the country with an army already much reduced by sickness, looking for a favorable point at which to cross the Somme and push his invasion still farther.
Melcourt-le-Danois which had once looked down into the very waves now dominated in the first place a strip of gardens, and orchards of small fruit, through which the, road from Harfleur to the village of Melcourt, half a mile farther up the Seine, ran like a bit of white braid.
"Alas!" said Henry to his son, "you know too well how I gained this crown. How will you defend this ill-gotten possession?" "With my sword," said the prince, "as my father has done." Henry V. was, perhaps, the first English monarch who had ships of his own. Two of these, which sailed against Harfleur, were called "The King's Chamber," and "The King's Hall."
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