It was characteristic of the devout temper of the man that his first thought was for his religious duties. He dismounted on reaching the gate, had his shoes and beaver removed, and walked barefooted to the church of St. Martin, where he offered up a thanksgiving for his success. This piety, however, did not prevent him from pushing to the extreme his use of a conqueror’s rights. The nobles and men-at-arms were stripped of their armour and sent away, “clothed in their jackets only,” after giving a promise on oath to surrender themselves prisoners at Calais on the Martinmas following (November 11th). This, perhaps, was no more than defeated combatants might have expected. But the treatment of the inhabitants seems to have been harsh. They were compelled to ransom their lives with all that they possessed, and then, with their wives and children, were driven out of the town. To each was given a miserable pittance of five sous, and they were permitted to take with them a part of their clothing. “It was pitiful,” says Monstrelet, writing apparently from the report of an eye-witness, “to see and hear the sorrow of these poor people, thus driven away from their dwellings and property.” Harfleur was undoubtedly a great prize. The actual amount of booty taken in the town was large, and the harbour was the most important in Western Normandy. The loss of it, too, was deeply galling to the French king, who made it the ground of an urgent summons to his nobles that for want of succour his gallant and loyal subjects of Harfleur had been forced to surrender. But the capture of a single town, however important and wealthy, was not an adequate result of an expedition which had aimed at nothing less than the conquest of France. It became a pressing question what was to be done. The first expedient tried, if we may so speak, was to send a challenge to the Dauphin, offering to submit the decision of the claim to the throne of France to the issue of a single combat. Henry was too good a soldier not to know that his antagonists were not likely to give him so easy a way of escaping from a perilous position, and could not have been disappointed when no answer was sent to his message. The safest course would now have been to return at once; and this seems to have been pressed upon the King by the majority of his counsellors. But this prudent advice did not approve itself to Henry’s adventurous temper. He was determined to show that, at least, he was not afraid of the foes whom he had challenged, and who, as he declared--it is hard to say with what belief in his own words--had unjustly seized his inheritance. He determined accordingly to make what may be called a military parade to Calais. This involved a march of not less than a hundred and fifty miles through a hostile country, a dangerous, and, but that one who cherishes such designs as Henry’s must make a reputation for daring, a useless operation; but the