ABSTRACT
IV.3, and Dericke with his Frenchman (in FV). The Boy (whom we have already seen in Eastcheap in ILl and 3) is introduced to indicate that the baggage is unprotected: 'for there is none to guard it but boys'. Next we pass to the French side where the leaders bewail their catastrophic defeat, and return to the fight either to perish in the heaps of dead (as described by the King's chaplainl ) or to attempt a counterattack, for, as Orleans says:
IV.6 shows that the battle is not yet won; the news that York and Suffolk are dead has scarcely been digested when a new alarum sounds, and realizing that 'The French have reinforc'd their scatter'd men', the King orders that 'every soldier kill his prisoners!' This agrees with accounts by the Chaplain3 and others. Holinshed, however, ascribes the order to the tumult caused by the attack on the baggage train and the King's fear lest the enemy 'should gather togither againe, and begin a new field' (inf 397). In IV. 7 the attack on the baggage, with the killing of the helpless boys, is given by Fluellen and Gower as the reason for the order, and the King's anger at this breach of the laws of chivalric war is reflected in the words which preface his new threat (taken from Holinshed) to slay all prisoners unless the French cavalry gathering on the hill 'void the field': 'I was not angry since I came to France / until this instant', he exclaims (54-5).
