at close quarters by the advance of the archers with the usual "loud shouts," supported by the Duke of Bedford and the men-at-arms. These defeats caused the French to again waver in their plan for meeting the enemy, for at the battle of Herrings, and the skirmish at Beauvais in 1430, they made their attack mounted, the English archers receiving the first charge behind their palisade of pointed stakes, and defeating the enemy by the clouds of arrows taking their usual deadly effect on the horses. These stakes, six feet long and sharpened at both ends, formed an important item of the archers' equipment, and were planted in the ground by the front rank, sloping towards the enemy, the next rank fixing theirs intermediately to affright the enemy's horse. Throughout the Anglo-Burgundian alliance, the Burgundians of all arms were often compelled "under pain of death" to fight dismounted, the Picards especially adopting the tactics and perhaps equalling the English. A little later, as at the battle of Montlhéry, 1465, both Burgundian and English archers are armed with the formidable long-handled leaden mauls or mallets, which the armour of the men-at-arms was incapable of resisting. In the account of one of these battles we learn incidentally that the duty of the varlets who invariably formed part of the retinue of each man-at-arms was to succour and refresh their masters during the heat of the engagement, and to carry the prisoners they took to the rear. As the various hauberks of mail, brigandines, gambesons, and other defences became more or less obsolete and discarded by men-at-arms armed cap-à-pied, they were relegated to a lighter-armed cavalry and the infantry; but so long as a suit of mail continued to be worn by the man-at-arms as a defence underlying the armour of plate, flexibility in the latter was of paramount importance. [Illustration: FIG. 18.--_Helm from the tomb of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey, date 1400-1420. From a photograph lent by Baron de Cosson._]