The imaginary scholiast explains the meaning of this to be, that the brood of the Gallic cock, or, in other words, the French, will be vanquished by the English, whom they jeeringly call "tailards"; that the appellation which is here applied to them and which has been somewhat euphemistically translated by "big-buttocked", is intended as a set-off against the ignominious term by which they commonly designate the English; and that the four cockrels especially referred to, are the king and his three sons. "And, indeed, these four," it is added, "were actually vanquished in that battle, the King himself being captured with one of his sons, whilst the other two fled from the field."[310] After Poitiers, the invasion of France by Henry V is chronologically the next important event in the long medieval struggle between England and France. The initial success of the English, whilst embittering the animosity of their enemies, inspired a restraining respect; and there is an expression of those mingled feelings of aversion and of fear in the lines which a poetaster of the day addressed to the invaders, partly as a reproach, partly as an appeal: "Perfidious race that perjured England breeds, Whose evil nature shows in all your deeds, Why must you still, with baneful purpose, seek Your spite on righteous Frenchmen thus to wreak? Christ's servants they, and constant to the faith Which twice from you has suffered wanton scathe; Your words are fair, but yet in all you do, The crooked paths of falsehood you pursue; Cut off that poisonous tail you long have worn, A byword to the nations, and their scorn! For thee, their king, be not my warning vain, And, in thy mem'ry let this truth remain: That God who willed thou shouldst a 'tailard' be Has not denied his hallowing grace to thee."[311] But the fortune of war began to turn against the English on the death of Henry V in 1422; and the exultation caused by that event is voiced by Olivier Basselin, in one of his popular poems:-- "The King who sat upon the English throne The crown of France claimed also for his own; He strove to drive as outcasts from their land The men that dared to stem the invading tide; But, when death dashed the sceptre from his hand, The alien host was scattered far and wide, And France is now from English 'tailards' freed; May curses light on all the recreant breed!"[312] A few years later, possibly about 1430, a popular ballade, in which an unknown writer celebrated the exploits of Jeanne d'Arc, opened with a repetition of the old insult:-- "Back, English 'tailards', back!"[313]