At the very beginning of his reign the wars with France began again. The king sent to France and claimed some lands that had belonged to Edward the Third; and the young prince of France sent back the message--"There is nothing in France that can be won with a dance or a song. You cannot get dukedoms in France by playing and feasting, and the prince sends you something that will suit you better than lands in France. He has sent you a barrel of tennis balls, and bids you play with them and let serious matters be." Then King Henry was very angry, and said--"We thank him for his present. When we have matched our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God's grace, play a set Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard. Before I was King of England I was wild and merry because I knew not how great and solemn a state waited for me. I have played in my youth like a common man because I was only Prince of Wales; but now that I am King of England I will rise up with so full of glory that I will dazzle all the eyes of France." [Illustration] Henry sailed over to France and besieged a town called Harfleur. He spoke to the soldiers before they attacked the town. "Break down the wall and go through," he said, "or close the wall up with our English dead. Bend every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English, Whose blood is fetched from fathers of war proof. Be copy now to men of grosser blood And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, let us swear That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not; Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George." The Englishmen answered nobly to his appeal, and Harfleur was taken. Then the English advanced to a place called Agincourt, a name fated to be linked with splendid glory for ever in the hearts of all English folk. The French had a very large army, and the English soldiers were tired with their long march. Many of them were ill and many were hungry; but they loved the king, and for his sake, and for the sake of their country, they were brave in spite of hunger and cold. Though they were in a strange country and many times outnumbered by their foes, they kept up a brave heart as Englishmen have done, thank God, many's the good time, all the world over. So few were they that the Earl of Westmoreland said, just before the battle,-- "Oh, that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work to-day!" The king came in just as he was saying this, and said--