BASTARD. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings, And stand securely on their battlements As in a theatre, whence they gape and point At your industrious scenes and acts of death. Your royal presences be rul’d by me: Do like the mutines of Jerusalem, Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town: By east and west let France and England mount Their battering cannon charged to the mouths, Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl’d down The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city: I’d play incessantly upon these jades, Even till unfenced desolation Leave them as naked as the vulgar air. That done, dissever your united strengths, And part your mingled colours once again; Turn face to face, and bloody point to point; Then, in a moment, Fortune shall cull forth Out of one side her happy minion, To whom in favour she shall give the day, And kiss him with a glorious victory. How like you this wild counsel, mighty states? Smacks it not something of the policy? KING JOHN. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads, I like it well. France, shall we knit our powers And lay this Angiers even with the ground; Then after fight who shall be king of it? BASTARD. An if thou hast the mettle of a king, Being wrong’d as we are by this peevish town, Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery, As we will ours, against these saucy walls; And when that we have dash’d them to the ground, Why then defy each other, and pell-mell, Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell. KING PHILIP. Let it be so. Say, where will you assault? KING JOHN. We from the west will send destruction Into this city’s bosom. AUSTRIA. I from the north. KING PHILIP. Our thunder from the south Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town. BASTARD. O prudent discipline! From north to south, Austria and France shoot in each other’s mouth: I’ll stir them to it.—Come, away, away! FIRST CITIZEN. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay, And I shall show you peace and fair-fac’d league; Win you this city without stroke or wound; Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds That here come sacrifices for the field: Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings. KING JOHN. Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.