THE Earls of Northampton and Arundel, however, dispatched a messenger to the king, who was surveying the battle calmly from the mound of a windmill, to ask him for immediate succour.

When he had delivered his message, the king asked him, ‘Is my son dead? or is he struck to the ground, or so wounded that he cannot help himself?’ ‘God forbid, Sir,’ the messenger replied, ‘but he is hard beset, and your aid would be right welcome.’ The king replied firmly, ‘Return to those who sent you and tell them from me that they must not send for me to-day as long as my son is alive. Let the boy earn his spurs.* I desire, if it be God’s will, that the day be his, and that the honour of it remain to him and to those whom I have appointed to support him.’

The king’s confidence gave courage to the English soldiers as well as to the English commanders, and led to that great and decisive victory, in which nearly all the great baronage of France perished.*