Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their TimesBrooks, Elbridge S. (Elbridge Streeter)
History
Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times
Brooks, Elbridge S. (Elbridge Streeter)
Biography -- Juvenile literature; Boys -- Biography
A sorry record is the story of that fearful fight. For three long hours
the battle raged from Haughmond Abbey on to Berwick Bridge, and ere the
noon of that bloody day, twelve thousand valiant Englishmen fell on the
fatal field. "So faute thei, to gret harm of this nacion," says one queer
old chronicle; and another says: "It was more to be noted vengeable, for
there the father was slain of the son and the son of the father." The
great historian Hume tells us that "We shall scarcely find any battle in
those ages where the shock was more terrible and more constant."
The fire of passion and of fight spread even to the youngest page and
squire, and as Lionel pressed close after the "gilded helmet and the
three-plumed crest" of his brilliant young prince, his face flamed with
the excitement of the battle-hour. Again and again he saw the king
unhorsed and fighting desperately for his crown and life; again and again
he saw the fiery Hotspur and Douglas, the Scot, charge furiously on the
king they had sworn to kill. Backward and forward the tide of battle
rolls; now royalist, now rebel seems the victor. Hark! What shout is that?
"The king, the king is down!"
And where Hotspur and the Douglas fight around the hillock now known as
the "King's Croft," Lionel misses the golden crest, he misses the royal
banner of England!
"Sir Walter Blount is killed! the standard is lost!" is now the sorry cry.
But now the prince and his hardy Welsh fighters charge to the rescue, and
Lionel gave a cry of terror as he saw a whizzing arrow tear into the face
of his beloved prince. Young Harry reeled with his hurt, and Lionel with
other gentlemen of the guard caught him in their arms. There was confusion
and dismay.
"The prince is hurt!" cried Lionel, and almost as an echo rose those other
shouts:
"The king is slain!"
"Long live the Percy!"
"Back to the rear, my lord!" pleaded Lionel, as he wiped the blood from
the fair young face of the prince.
"Back, back, my lord Prince. Back to my tent," urged the Earl of
Westmoreland, and "Back, back, while there is yet safety," said the other
knights, as the tide of battle surged toward the bleeding prince.
"Stand off!" cried young Harry, springing to his feet. "Stand off; my
lords! Far be from me such disgrace as that, like a poltroon, I should
stain my arms by flight. If the prince flies, who will wait to end the
battle?"
And just then another shout arose--a joyous, ringing cry:
"Ho, the king lives! the standard is safe! St. George for England!" And
the brave young Harry, turning to his guard, said:
"What, my lords? to be carried back before the victory? 'T would be to me
a perpetual death! Lead me, I implore you, to the very face of the foe. I
may not say to my friends: 'Go ye on first to the fight!' Be it mine to
say: 'Follow me, my friends!'"
Then, as the royal standard waved once more aloft, he burst with his
followers into the thick of the fight, his unyielding valor giving new
strength to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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