When from a meadow by,2
Like a storm suddenly,

The English archery

Struck the French horses;

10. With Spanish yew so strong,
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents stung,
Piercing the wither;3
None from his fellow starts,
But, playing manly parts,
And like true English hearts,
Stuck close together.

11. When down their bows they threw,
And forth their 'bilbows drew,
And on the French they flew,
Not one was tardy;

Arms were from shoulders sent,
Scalps to the teeth were rent,
Down the French peasants went-
Our men were hardy.

12. This while our noble king,

His broadsword 'brandishing,
Down the French host did 'ding,
As to o'erwhelm it;

And many a deep wound lent,
His arms with blood besprent,
And many a cruel dent

Bruised his helmet.

13. Glo'ster, that duke so good, Next of the royal blood, For famous England stood,

With his brave brother,

Clarence, in steel so bright,
Though but a maiden knight,
Yet in that furious fight

Scarce such another.

1 Our grandsire great.-Edward | who had been posted behind palisades III. was the great-grandfather of Henry V., and he, or rather his son, the Black Prince, gained over the French the great victories of Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356). But Henry V. was not descended from the Black Prince, but from John of Gaunt, his brother.

2 From a meadow by.-When the French cavalry had been thrown into confusion, partly by being crowded in a narrow space, and partly by the soft and clayey soil, the English archers,

in a field out of sight of the enemy, began their attack. A shower of arrows increased the confusion in the ranks of the French horsemen; and then the archers fell on the Frenchmen with their swords, and hewed them to pieces. 3 With'er, the ridge between the shoulder-bones of a horse; generally withers.

4 St. Crispin's day.-August 25th. Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers.

12.-JOAN OF ARC.

[Henry V. had made himself master of all France north of the Loire before the end of 1421; but in 1422 he died at Paris. His son and successor Henry VI. was an infant nine months old; and the government was intrusted to his uncles

the Dukes of Gloucester and Bedford, the former being Protector in England, and the latter Regent in France. The war in France continued. Bedford, with the assistance of the Earl of Salisbury, ably maintained the honour of England; but the English cause was weakened by the alienation of the Duke of Burgundy, and by the intrigues and quarrels of Gloucester at home. On the death of Charles VI. in 1422, his son the Dauphin had taken the title of Charles VII.; but he had not yet been crowned, his capital and the whole north of France being in the hands of his enemies. This was the position of affairs when, in 1428, the English resolved to cross the Loire and invade the south of France. As a preliminary step, Orleans was besieged by Salisbury; and this siege was in progress when Joan of Arc made her appearance.]

1. The fall of Orleans was confidently anticipated; and the most gloomy apprehensions prevailed in the councils of the French monarch, when the French throne was saved

A.D.

from ruin by Joan d'Arc, the daughter of a small 1412 farmer at Domrémy, a hamlet in Champagne.1 This interesting female was born about the year 1412. Her education did not differ from that of the other poor girls in the neighbourhood; but she was 'distinguished above them all by her diligence, modesty, and piety.

A. D.

2. Young as she was, Joan had heard enough of the 'calamities which oppressed her country, to bewail 1428 the hard fate of her sovereign, driven from the throne of his fathers. It chanced that in May 1428, a 'marauding party of Burgundians compelled the inhabitants of Domrémy to seek an asylum in Neufchâteau." The village was plundered, and the church reduced to a heap of ruins.

3. On the departure of the Burgundians, the fugitives returned, and the sight wound up the enthusiasm of Joan to the highest pitch. She escaped from her parents, prevailed on an uncle to accompany her, and announced her mission to Baudricourt, one of the French generals, who, though he treated her with ridicule, deemed it his duty to communicate her history to the dauphin, and received an order to forward her to the French court. To travel a distance of one hundred and fifty leagues, through a wide

tract of country, of which one portion was possessed by hostile garrisons, and the other perpetually infested by parties of plunderers, was a perilous and almost hopeless attempt.

4. But Joan was confident of success; on horseback, and in male attire, with an escort of seven persons, she

passed without meeting an enemy; and on the tenth day, at Fierbois, a few miles from Chinon,3 announced to Charles her arrival and object. An hour was fixed for her admission to the royal presence; and the poor maiden of Domrémy was ushered into a spacious hall, lighted up with fifty torches, and filled with some hundreds of