Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable, and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace, but there is no peace. The waris actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

PATRICK HENRY.

THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT

IN the eyes of the nobles, Richard the Second's chief crime had been his policy of peace, and the aid which they gave to the revolution sprang mainly from their hope of a renewal of the war. The energy of the war party was seconded by the temper of the nation at large, already forgetful of the sufferings of the past struggle, and longing only to wipe out its shame.

The internal calamities of France offered at this moment a tempting opportunity for aggression. Its King, Charles the Sixth, was a maniac, while its princes and nobles were divided into two great parties, the one headed by the Duke of Burgundy and bearing his name, the other by the Duke of Orleans and bearing the title of Armagnacs.

The struggle had been jealously watched by Henry the Fourth, but his attempt to feed it by pushing an English force into France at once united the combatants.

Their strife, however, recommenced more bitterly than ever when the claim of the French crown by Henry the Fifth on his accession declared his purpose of renewing the war. No claim could have been more utterly baseless, for the Parliamentary title by which the House of Lancaster held England could give it no right over France, and the strict law of hereditary succession, which Edward asserted, could be pleaded, if pleaded at all, only by the House of Mortimer.

Not only the claim, indeed, but the very nature of the war itself was wholly different from that of Edward the Third. Edward had been forced into the struggle against his will by the ceaseless attacks of France, and his claim of the crown was a mere afterthought to secure the alliance of Flanders. The war of Henry, on the other hand, though in form a mere renewal of the earlier struggle on the expiration of the truce made by Richard, was in fact a wanton aggression on

the part of a nation tempted by the helplessness of its opponent and still galled by the memory of former defeat.

It was in vain that the French strove to avert the English attack by an offer to surrender the Duchy of Aquitaine; Henry's aims pointed to the acquisition of Normandy rather than of the South, and his first exploit was the capture of Harfleur. Dysentery made havoc in his ranks during the siege, and it was with a mere handful of men that he resolved to insult the enemy by a daring march, like that of Edward, upon Calais.

The discord, however, on which he probably reckoned for security, vanished before the actual appearance of the invaders in the heart of France, and when his weary and halfstarved force succeeded in crossing the Somme, it found sixty thousand Frenchmen encamped right across its line of march.

Their position, flanked on either side by woods, but with a front so narrow that the dense masses were drawn up thirty men deep, was strong for purposes of defense but ill suited for attack; and the French leaders, warned by the experience of Cressy and