"Agincourt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He was the kind of man whose vanity and simplicity are too easily overwhelmed by the obvious. He saw nothing in a European crisis except a war with France; and nothing in a war with France except a repetition of the rather fruitless glories of Agincourt and Malplaquet. He was of the Erastian Whigs, sceptical but still healthy-minded, and neither good enough nor bad enough to understand that even the war of that irreligious age was ultimately a religious war. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... the Battle of Agincourt and the great Siege of Rouen, by King HENRY of Monmouth, the Fifth of the name; that won Gascony, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... sea lifts up his ancient crown, And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down! So stalked he when he turned to flight, on that famed Picard field, Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Caesar's eagle shield: So glared he when, at Agincourt, in wrath he turned to bay, And crushed and torn, beneath his claws, the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flagstaff deep, Sir Knight! ho! scatter flowers, fair maids! Ho! gunners! fire a loud salute! ho! gallants! draw your blades! Thou, sun, shine on her ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... made, Though on thy shattered beeches fell The blended rage of shot and shell, Though from thy blackened portals torn, Their fall thy blighted fruit-trees mourn, Has not such havoc bought a name Immortal in the rolls of fame? Yes—Agincourt may be forgot, And Cressy be an unknown spot, And Blenheim's name be new; But still in story and in song, For many an age remembered long, Shall live the towers of Hougomont And Field ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the Spaniards relied upon mass, and hand to hand fighting, the English on mobility and artillery; applying unconsciously by sea the principles by which the great land-tacticians of the past, Edward III. and Henry V., had shattered greatly superior hosts at Crecy and Agincourt. The finer comprehension of naval strategy on the part of the English admirals had been made of no account by the ignorance of the supreme authority, which detained the fleet on the coast: but their tactical developments were ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... ancestry pleased Stephen. He thought of the forefathers of those whom he knew, who dwelt north of Market Street. Many, though this generation of the French might know it not, had bled at Calais and at Agincourt, had followed the court of France in clumsy coaches to Blois and Amboise, or lived in hovels under the castle walls. Others had charged after the Black Prince at Poitiers, and fought as serf or noble. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on them; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings, she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced the whole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... because their lamps were not lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a duel, Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a reality and drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And she by the side of him! He had seen her face in shadow, with the morning sunlight tangled in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic with that warm light in her face, he had seen her troubled and her eyes bright with tears. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... England when Crecy and Agincourt were fought, as Captain BATHURST told the House of Commons recently. How the War Office did without its afternoon tea in those barbarous days it is impossible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... of D. are The Wars of the Barons (1603), England's Heroical Epistles (1598) (being imaginary letters between Royal lovers such as Henry II. and Rosamund), Poems, Lyric and Heroic (1606) (including the fine ballad of "Agincourt"), Nymphidia, his most graceful work, Muses Elizium, and Idea's Mirrour, a collection of sonnets, Idea being the name of the lady to whom they were addressed. Though often heavy, D. had the true poetic gift, had passages of grandeur, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... bachelor, I did not think I should live till I was married." In that, Bryan might have anticipated Benedick, as well as in the resolution. "Rich she shall be, that's certain." He went abroad to the wars. Perhaps he was with Henry V at Agincourt, and thenceforward, till the king's death in 1422, saw more of France than of England. In any case, to the unbounded wonder of the countryside, when at length he did return, Bryan brought back ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. His principles did not change with his situation and professions. His adventure on Gadshill was a prelude to the affair of Agincourt, only a bloodless one; Falstaff was a puny prompter of violence and outrage, compared with the pious and politic Archbishop of Canterbury, who gave the king carte blanche, in a genealogical tree of his family, to rob and murder in circles of latitude and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... evening the grandest spectacle of all. He overpowered me. Like some huge Spanish galleon making her way with bellying sails and majestic progress amidst a fleet of cockle-shells, so did CHUMP bear himself amidst his party. The neighbouring magnates came to meet us. Lord and Lady AGINCOURT with their charming daughter Lady MABEL POICTIERS, Sir GEORGE BUCKWHEAT and his wife, the Reverend Canon and Mrs. CATSPAW, and a host of others were there to do CHUMP honour. I thought of POLYCRATES and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... only "patriotism is eloquence," but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rent by the rival factions of Burgundy and Orleans, the latter taking its more familiar name from the Court of Armagnac. The troubled reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. prevented England from taking advantage of these dissensions; but Henry V. renewed the war, winning the battle of Agincourt in his first campaign and securing the Treaty of Troyes on his second invasion. After his death came that most marvellous revolution wrought by Joan of Arc, and the expulsion of the English from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... impossible to make intelligible the course of the many wars which the English waged with the French in the Middle Ages unless the true naval position of the former is rightly appreciated. Why were Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt—not to mention other combats—fought, not on English, but on continental soil? Why during the so-called 'Hundred Years' War' was England in reality the invader and not the invaded? We of the present generation are at last ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... she carries, laying them on one of the tea-tables]. This is Burke's Peerage, and this is Froissart's Chronicles. I've been reading it all over again—the St. Aubyns at Crecy and Agincourt [with an exalted expression], and St. Aubyn ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... distress. But then Brown urges that he is personally hostile to him. And the obscurity of his birth, that would be indeed a stumbling-block. O, Matilda, I hope none of your ancestors ever fought at Poictiers or Agincourt! If it were not for the veneration which my father attaches to the memory of old Sir Miles Mannering, I should make out my explanation with half the tremor ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were well worth looking at. Prince Henry of Wales, tall, comely, open-faced, and well-built, a noble lad of eighteen who called to men's minds, so "rare Ben Jonson" says, the memory of the hero of Agincourt, that other ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... was king of England for nine years. During this reign almost continuous war raged in France, to the throne of which Henry laid claim. The battle of Agincourt took ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the charming songs of Thomas Campion, a physician who composed both words and music for several song-books, and in Michael Drayton, a voluminous poet and dramatist who is known to most readers only for his finely rugged patriotic ballad on the battle of Agincourt. Sir Henry Wotton, [Footnote: The first o is pronounced as in note.] statesman and Provost (head) of Eton School, displays the Elizabethan idealism in 'The Character of a Happy Life' and in his stanzas in praise of Elizabeth, daughter of King James, wife of the ill-starred Elector-Palatine ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... laughing any more, but screaming. Blessedest feature of all, Catherine Boucher was dying with ecstasies, and presently there was little left of her but gasps and suffocations. Victory? It was a perfect Agincourt. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... meeting in the Epistle to the Galatians, and that of the fabrication of Eve. We can most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of the Exodus, and even the legend of Jonah, were seriously placed before boys as history; and discoursed of in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of Agincourt or the history of ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Pope—who you don't read and won't appreciate—for that quotation, which you must allow to be poetical,) and sitting to Stroeling, the painter, (do you remember our visit, with Leckie, to the German?) to be depicted as one of the heroes of Agincourt, 'with his long sword, saddle, bridle, Whack fal ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Don Pedro to the Black Prince, and half a century later it glowed on the helmet of that most picturesque of England's kings, Henry V, at the battle of Agincourt. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... any advantage result from such conferences. We expect to hear of the French attacking our army, though there are accounts of their retiring, which would necessarily produce a peace-I hope so! I don't like to be at the eve, even of an Agincourt; that, you know, every Englishman is bound in faith to expect: besides, they say my Lord Stair has in his pocket, from the records of the Tower, the original patent, empowering us always to conquer. I am told that Marshal Noailles is ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... can be laid low by a bullet as well as a Frenchman. The days of the Black Prince are past and gone, no Henry V. is to-day victorious at Agincourt, we have to fight with firearms ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... gave up the Holy Wars, only to go to war one with another. As in the twelfth century, we read of Coeur de Lion in Palestine, and in the thirteenth, of St. Louis in Egypt, so in the fourteenth do we read the sad tale of Poitiers and Cressy, and in the fifteenth of Agincourt. People are apt to ask what good came of the prowess shown at Ascalon or Damietta; forgetting that they should rather ask themselves what good came of the conquests of our Edwards and Henries, of which they are so proud. If Richard's prowess ended in his imprisonment in Germany, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... war because France was encroaching upon Guienne and aiding Scotland, and because he was encouraged by the Flemish towns. Henry V, on the other hand, was merely anxious to make himself and his house popular by deeds of valor. Nevertheless his very first victory, the battle of Agincourt, was as brilliant as that of Crcy or Poitiers. Once more the English bowmen slaughtered great numbers of French knights. The English then proceeded to conquer Normandy and march ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... don't expect so, because cavaliers always were gentlemen, and puritans of any century only of the middle classes. Fancy if we had to announce to strangers that Tom's ancestor carried the standard at Agincourt and Octavia's and mine came ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... Children were born, grew up, married, died—the war raged on; their children in turn grew up, married, died—the war raged on; their children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time under the incredible disaster of Agincourt—and still the war raged on, year after year, and in time these children married ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... holds an honoured place in heraldry. Two large Walnut trees overshadow the tomb of the poet Waller in Beaconsfield churchyard, and "these are connected with a curious piece of family history. The tree was chosen as the Waller crest after Agincourt, where the head of the family took the Duke of Orleans prisoner, and took afterwards as his crest the arms of Orleans hanging by a label in a Walnut tree with this motto for the device: Haec fructus virtutis."—Gardener's ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... gaunt, his face, Mature beyond the logic of his years, Had in it something sinister and grim, Like to the visage pregnant fancy saw Behind the bars of each disused casque In that east chamber where the harness hung And dinted shields of Wyndhams gone to grace— At Poitiers this one, this at Agincourt, That other on the sands of Palestine: A breed of fierce man-slayers, sire and son. Of these seemed Richard, with his steel cross-bow Killing the doves in very wantonness— The gentle doves that to the ramparts came For scattered crumbs, undreamful of all ill. Each well-sent dart that stained ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... English advanced to a place called Agincourt, a name fated to be linked with splendid glory for ever in the hearts of all English folk. The French had a very large army, and the English soldiers were tired with their long march. Many of them were ill and many were hungry; but they loved the king, ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... kept in ignorance of the event of this most glorious victory in modern times, and that in England it is the present fashion to talk of Waterloo as though it were entirely an English triumph—and a thing to be named with Blenheim and Agincourt—Trafalgar and Aboukir. Posterity will decide; but if it be remembered as a skilful or as a wonderful action, it will be like the battle of Zama, where we think of Hannibal more than of Scipio. For assuredly we dwell on this action, not because it was gained by Blucher or Wellington, but because ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... could have resisted; Henry, a brilliant soldier and a bigoted churchman, was anything but a statesman; and the value of his churchmanship may be gauged from the fact that he assumed the insolence of a crusader against a nation more catholic than his own. He won a deplorably splendid victory at Agincourt, married the French king's daughter, and was crowned king of France. Then he died in 1422, leaving a son nine months old, with nothing but success in the impossible task of subduing France to save the Lancastrian dynasty from the nemesis of vaulting ambition abroad ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... This collection contains some thirty-six pieces. The longest poems, "Lillian" and "The Troubadour," each in two cantos, display passages of great beauty and exquisite musical flow. Among the charades, five in number, "Sir Harry, he charged at Agincourt", ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... crust, A word of praise, and now and then The joy of turning home again. But freemen still we fall or stand, We serve because our hearts command. Though kings may boast and knights cavort, We broke the spears at Agincourt. When odds were wild and hopes were down, We died in droves by Leipsic town. Never a field was starkly won But ours the dead that faced the sun. The slave will fight because he must, The rover for his ire and lust, The king ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... clause by the modern words "Judgment of his peers" and "law of the land." He will represent the Barons as having behind them the voice of the whole nation—and so forth. When he comes to Crecy he will make Edward III speak English. When he comes to Agincourt he will leave his readers as ignorant as himself upon the boundaries, numbers and power of the Burgundian faction. In the Civil War Oliver Cromwell will be an honest and not very rich gentleman of the middle-classes. The Parliamentary force will be that of the mass of the people ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... well as by poets and historians, unquestionably would have proved an heroic and military character. Had he ascended the throne, the whole face of our history might have been changed; the days of Agincourt and Cressy had been revived, and Henry IX. had rivalled Henry V. It is remarkable that Prince Henry resembled that monarch in his features, as Ben Jonson has truly recorded, though in a complimentary verse, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... became Madame Orfei, and was much esteemed as "improvisatrice." Madame Dionigi herself published several works, among which a Storia de' tempi presenti, written in view of the education of her children. Her salon in Rome was frequented by many men of distinction, such as Visconti, d'Agincourt, Erskine, etc. She died on the 10th June, 1826, at the age of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... of the sea lifts up his ancient crown, And underneath his deadly paw treads the gay lilies down. So stalked he when he turned to flight on that famed Picard field, Bohemia's plume, and Genoa's bow, and Caesar's eagle shield: So glared he when at Agincourt in wrath he turned to bay, And crushed and torn beneath his paws the princely hunters lay. Ho! strike the flag-staff deep, Sir Knight; ho! scatter flowers, fair maids: Ho! gunners fire a loud salute: ho! gallants, draw your blades; Thou sun, shine on her joyously; ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... a fort, Furnished in warlike sort, Marched towards Agincourt In happy hour,— Skirmishing day by day With those that stopped his way, Where the French general lay With ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... it is, is probably erroneous, and the gate, with its shields of allied families, stands to the memory of its founder. Sir Thomas Erpingham was at Agincourt in 1415, and Shakespeare, in Act iv. of Henry V., remarks of him that he was "a knight grown grey with age and honour." Sir Thomas Browne also (p. 9 of his "Repertorium") says: "He was a Knight of the Garter in the time of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... of ground is historic to begin with, and has contributed its page to Anglo-French annals or English romance. We may take the little railway from Hesdin to Abbeville, traversing the forest of Crecy, and drive across the cornfields to Agincourt. We may stop at Montreuil, which now looks well, not only "on the map," but from the railway carriage, reviving our recollections of Tristram Shandy. At Douai we find eighty English boys playing cricket and football under the eye of English ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... minute, John," interrupted Betty. "See! here's Queen Victoria's crown, and in it is the ruby that belonged to the Black Prince, and which Henry V wore in his helmet at Agincourt! Just think!" with a sigh. ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... other blessings of heaven and earth. The charming faces of these statues are said to have been modeled after Diane de Poitiers and other famous beauties of the time. While wandering through the court, we came suddenly upon traces of Charles of Orleans, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt, and was a captive for twenty-five years in English prisons. A gallery running at right angles to the wing of Louis XII is named after the Duke of Orleans, probably by his son Louis. This gallery, much simpler than the buildings surrounding ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... leads, is a hero-soldier figure; and Egmont, generous, impulsive, magnetic, chivalrous, devoid of forecast, had, at St. Quentin's, administered such defeat as "France had not experienced since the battle of Agincourt." He was a brilliant soldier, and burnt like lightnings before men's eyes. Both these commanders were dramatic, and compelled victory, so as to merit the rank of soldiers forever. William the Silent falls not in such company. His campaigns were ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... repetition. He especially delighted in this bit of Schiller and in 'Chevy Chase,' though he resisted Watts' hymns. In the next two or three years he learns a good deal of poetry, and on September 5, 1834, repeats fifty lines of Henry the Fifth's speech before Agincourt without a fault. 'Pilgrim's Progress' and 'Robinson Crusoe' are read in due course as his reading improves, and he soon delights in getting into a room by himself and surrounding himself with books. His religious ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ditch or moat which surrounded the Tower. In the days of Richard II., when the king had his troubles with Wat Tyler, the Archbishop of Canterbury was beheaded on Tower Hill, or, rather, massacred, for it said that he was mangled by eight strokes of the axe. When Henry V. gained his great victory at Agincourt, he placed his French prisoners here. Henry VIII. was here for some time after he came to the throne, and he made his yeomen the wardens of the Tower, and they still wear the same dress as at that day. The dress is very rich,—scarlet and gold,—and made very large; the coat short, and sleeves ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... house is about 1459, and the walls of the western tower are 4 feet in thickness. The Nappa lands came to James Metcalfe from Sir Richard Scrope of Bolton Castle shortly after his return to England from the field of Agincourt, and it was probably this James Metcalfe who built ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... own right, was aunt on the mother's side to Margaret of Flanders, wife of Philip the Hardy. Dying without heirs, she bequeathed Brabant, Limburg and Antwerp to her great-nephew, Anthony of Burgundy, younger brother of John the Fearless. Anthony was killed at Agincourt and was succeeded first by his son John IV, the husband of Jacoba of Holland, and on his death without an heir in 1427, by his second son, Philip of St Pol, who also died childless in 1430. From him his cousin Philip ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... rhymed histories. In 1612-13 he published the first part of 'Polyolbion,' and in 1622 completed the work. In 1626 we hear of him being styled Poet Laureate, but the title then implied neither royal appointment, nor fee, nor, we presume, duty. In 1627 he published 'The Battle of Agincourt,' 'The Court of Faerie,' and other poems; and, three years later, a book called 'The Muses' Elysium.' He had at last found an asylum in the family of the Earl of Dorset; whose noble lady, Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke, and who had ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan |
