The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03Stevenson, Robert Louis
History
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century; Horror tales; Literature -- History and criticism
From the battle of Agincourt (Oct. 1415) dates the second period of
Charles's life. The English reader will remember the name of Orleans in
the play of _Henry V._; and it is at least odd that we can trace a
resemblance between the puppet and the original. The interjection, "I
have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress" (Act iii. scene 7), may
very well indicate one who was already an expert in that sort of trifle;
and the game of proverbs he plays with the Constable in the same scene
would be quite in character for a man who spent many years of his life
capping verses with his courtiers. Certainly, Charles was in the great
battle with five hundred lances (say, three thousand men), and there he
was made prisoner as he led the van. According to one story, some ragged
English archer shot him down; and some diligent English Pistol, hunting
ransoms on the field of battle, extracted him from under a heap of
bodies and retailed him to our King Henry. He was the most important
capture of the day, and used with all consideration. On the way to
Calais, Henry sent him a present of bread and wine (and bread, you will
remember, was an article of luxury in the English camp), but Charles
would neither eat nor drink. Thereupon Henry came to visit him in his
quarters. "Noble cousin," said he, "how are you?" Charles replied that
he was well. "Why then do you neither eat nor drink?" And then with some
asperity, as I imagine, the young duke told him that "truly he had no
inclination for food." And our Henry improved the occasion with
something of a snuffle, assuring his prisoner that God had fought
against the French on account of their manifold sins and transgressions.
Upon this there supervened the agonies of a rough sea-passage; and many
French lords, Charles certainly among the number, declared they would
rather endure such another defeat than such another sore trial on
shipboard. Charles, indeed, never forgot his sufferings. Long
afterwards, he declared his hatred to a seafaring life, and willingly
yielded to England the empire of the seas, "because there is danger and
loss of life, and God knows what pity when it storms; and sea-sickness
is for many people hard to bear; and the rough life that must be led is
little suitable for the nobility":[27] which, of all babyish utterances
that ever fell from any public man, may surely bear the bell. Scarcely
disembarked, he followed his victor, with such wry face as we may fancy,
through the streets of holiday London. And then the doors closed upon
his last day of garish life for more than a quarter of a century. After
a boyhood passed in the dissipations of a luxurious court or in the camp
of war, his ears still stunned and his cheeks still burning from his
enemies' jubilations; out of all this ringing of English bells and
singing of English anthems, from among all these shouting citizens in
scarlet cloaks, and beautiful virgins attired in white, he passed into
the silence and solitude of a political prison.[28]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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