Part 10

The departure of the Falstaff troops from the metropolis, though an event, judged by its results, worthy of celebration by the historic pencil, was not, _per se_, one of sufficient importance to call forth any such public demonstrations as the closing of shops, the erection of triumphal arches, or of balconies for spectators, the turning out of municipal authorities, the reading of addresses, &c. &c. The Lord Mayor of London on that day attended to his business, cuffing his ‘prentices and mixing his wines, stretching and powdering his broadcloth, washing his stale ribs of beef with fresh blood, or prematurely ripening his hides with marl and ash bark,--according to the civic chair in that year happened to be filled by vintner, clothier, butcher, or tanner,--just as though nothing were going forward. There was not even so much as a procession of virgins to scatter flowers before the warriors’ footsteps; not even a band of music to play before them; not so much as a wooden barrier to keep off the crowd that did not come to look at them!

There were two good reasons for this apparently contemptuous indifference on the part of the public. In the first place, it was not then customary to celebrate great victories until after they had been obtained. In the second place, the Falstaff troops were not, at their setting forth, conspicuous either by numbers or equipment. They amounted altogether to certainly not more than fifteen warriors, for the most part indifferently armed and clad. Of these, two were our friends Bardolph and Peto, the latter holding the rank of Lieutenant, to Captain--or, as he would now be called, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Falstaff. The exact grade of Bardolph in the expedition is not easy of definition: it is to be presumed he officiated as a sort of aide-de-camp, varying his titular distinction according to his audience. * The remainder of the troop were, it is true, men of some considerable renown, but owing their celebrity to achievements which made their gallant leader by no means over anxious to be seen in their company; so that the march from London was commenced in an unobtrusive, not to say straggling manner, Sir John Falstaff himself not taking horse till his forces had been some half-hour before him on the road to glory.

* A distinguished member of the Shaksperian Society has, I am informed, a quarto in preparation devoted to the solution of the following vital question:--“Was Gadshill killed at the battle of Shrewsbury? and if not, how is it we hear no more of him after the date of that action?” I can answer the question in two lines. Gadshill was hanged at Dulwich, ten days before the setting out of the expedition, for robbing an aged farmer of two geese, and a pair of leathern inexpressibles.

And was this intrepid chieftain actually about to risk the chances of battle against the armies of Percy, Douglas, and Glendower, with such fearful disadvantages of number and discipline as these? No, reader. Let us guard against exaggeration. There are limits to everything--even the heroism of Sir John Falstaff. We must not lose sight of the fact that our hero would have a king, with several princes and noblemen, with their followers, to support him in his expedition;--moreover, he was to recruit forces as he went along.

The mode of raising soldiers in those days was very simple, and much more efficacious than at present. There was, then, no occasion for foreign legions, militia nurseries, and such tedious devices. The king, who could only do one wrong--namely, that of allowing himself to be kicked off the throne by the other king--when he was in want of soldiers, resorted to the simple expedient of taking them. That is to say, he appointed his officers--who, instead of having to ruin themselves in scarlet cloth, bullion lace, sabres, feathers, and horseflesh, as in the present day--were merely expected to find their own soldiers, a commodity as cheap as dirt, and treated accordingly. This the king’s commission enabled them to do with great facility. Armed with the royal authority, the officer entered a parish or township, and said he wanted a certain number of men. The local authorities were compelled to furnish the number required, subject to the officer’s approval; and the men selected were compelled to go, whether they liked it or not. This admirable system of recruiting, subjected to slight modifications, is still in vogue on the continent. Its discontinuance in our own country fully accounts for the fact--so often pointed out to us by our neighbours, who of course are more qualified to judge of us than we are ourselves--that we have long ceased to be a great military nation; a fact which, though humiliating, is incontrovertible--witness the notorious incapacity of our Guards in the late Crimean war!

Sir John Falstaff was empowered to press into the service of King Henry the Fourth a hundred and fifty men. Amongst them there may have been several who looked upon that monarch as an usurper, and might object to fighting against the partisans of Mortimer, Earl of March, who, if English law meant anything, was certainly their lawful monarch. This was no business of Sir John Falstaff’s.

And how did Sir John speed with his recruiting? Admirably, as he did in most of his undertakings. His number was soon complete. Of the quality of his troops and his manner of raising them let him speak for himself. No description of mine could approach his own inimitable picture. (Let it be premised, in justification of this great captain’s occasional regard of his own interest in the matter, that the commanders of regiments in those days had no such privileges as tailoring contracts, &c., and were fain to avail themselves of such advantages as offered.)

“If I be not ashamed of my soldiers I am a soused gurnet. I have misused “the king’s press most damnably. I have got, in exchange for a hundred “and fifty soldiers, three hundred and I press me none but good “householders, yeomen’s sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as “had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as “had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caviler “worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such “toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, “and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge “consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves “as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked “his sores: and such indeed as were never soldiers; but discarded unjust “serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and “ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten “times more dishonourably ragged than an old-faced ancient: and such have I “to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you “would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come “from swine-keeping, from eating chaff and husks. A mad fellow met me “on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the “dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through “Coventry with them, that’s flat:--Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt “the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of them out “of prison. There’s but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half “shirt is two napkins tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a “herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from “my host at St. Alban’s, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry; but that’s “all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.

The above profound reflections (which every officer of irregular infantry would do well to lay to his heart) were made by Sir John Falstaff, on the occasion of a review of his troops near Coventry--at which the Prince of Wales and the Earl of Westmoreland assisted. I am inclined to fix the date of this important military display on the third day previous to the battle of Shrewsbury. The Royalist forces were proceeding towards that city by forced marches. Sir John Falstaff, as is well known, came upon the field in ample time to give battle to the rebels; and it is improbable that any system of forcing could have got him over sixty miles of ground in less than three days.

Whether or not the knight found the hedgerows of Warwick, Stafford, and Salop of such fruitfulness--in the matter of linen--as he had anticipated, the historian has no means of ascertaining. The shirt in those days, it should be stated, was a comparatively recent invention--nor had the art of the laundress been brought to its present perfection.

VI. HOW SIR JOHN FALSTAFF WON THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY.

Even had the Royalist side been deprived of the immense weight of Sir John Falstaff’s counsels and support, the issue of the struggle could not have been doubtful. Fortune seemed to have declared against the rebels from the outset. The Earl of Northumberland was taken ill at Berwick, and unable to join his gallant son in the field. The Welsh under Glendower did not come up in time for the battle. All the efforts of their gallant and patriotic chieftain to bring his troops past the neighbouring cheese districts of the border county of Chester had proved ineffectual.

Nevertheless the rebels determined on giving battle, which was perhaps a superfluous piece of generosity on their part, as the king, the princes, and Sir John Falstaff had come determined to take it. Hotspur--the warmth of whose heels would not seem to have produced in him any remarkable coolness of head--sent, on the eve of the engagement, an epistle to the king, which is strikingly illustrative of the knightly courtesy of the period. In this document he accuses Henry of murder, perjury, illegal taxation, obtaining money under false pretences, kidnapping, and bribery at elections. * The crimes of garrotting and stealing drinking vessels from the railings of private dwellings were not then known, or it is more than probable that these too would have entered into the wholesale list of accusations. Such a document, it will be admitted, was not calculated to dispose the king to leniency or placability. He was a monarch of the bilious temperament, and not at any time remarkable for excessive amiability or good humour. A popular historian has informed us that “he was subject to fits, which bereaved him for a time of reason.” ** The effect of such a communication on a monarch so constituted may be imagined.

* Hall, folio 21--‘22, &c.

** Pinnock on Goldsmith--a work that has not come within the sphere of my observation for many years. The passage quoted, however, and many others from the same, were indelibly impressed on my memory at the time of perusal by a system of mnemonics now unhappily falling into disuse.-- Biographer.

Whether it was that the insurgent chieftains had formed a mistaken estimate of the king’s nature, and imagined that he required a great deal of provoking before he could be induced to give them the thrashing they seemed so ardently to desire, it would be difficult to say. At any rate, on the morning of the battle, Sir Thomas Percy, the Earl of Worcester, thought it advisable to look in on the royal camp, as he happened to be passing, with a flag of truce, and favour his Majesty with a _viva voce resume_ of some of the heads of his nephew’s spirited epistle of the preceding night, which might have slipped the royal memory. To Percy’s address--which has been put into excellent blank verse by Shakspeare--the king replied with a proposal that the rebels should lay down their arms and go home quietly, which he knew would not be accepted. Percy departed, and the royal council of war at which he had been heard--and at the deliberations of which the Princes Henry and John, with Sir Walter Blunt and Sir John Falstaff, had assisted--broke up to prepare for action.

The rival armies were drawn up on a large plain near the town of Shrewsbury overlooked by Haughmond Hill. The character of the ground is indicated in the opening lines of the fifth act of the chronicle of “Henry the Fourth” (Part I.):--

“How bloodily the sun begins to peer Above yon bosky hill! The day looks pale At his distemperature.”

Herein we have one of ten thousand proofs of Shakspeare’s fidelity to historic and natural truth on all occasions. Mr. Blakeway says that great author has described the scene as accurately as if he had surveyed it. “It still merits the appellation of a bosky hill.”

“Bosky” must be taken in its ancient and poetical sense, signifying “wood-covered,” and not in its more modern and familiar acceptation, which the presence of Sir John Falstaff, Bardolph, and other warriors of their way of living, might have rendered applicable to the aspect of the country.

The opposing forces were about equal in number, each army consisting in round numbers of twelve thousand men. In point of discipline and training the advantages were also fairly balanced. The light infantry, under Sir John Falstaff, consisted, as we have seen, of raw recruits, indifferently clad and nourished. But, as an offset to this must be taken into consideration the condition of the Scots under Douglas--large numbers of whom, being from the northern highlands, were, according to English notions, of necessity more imperfectly clothed than even the Falstaff troops themselves. For courage on either side there could not have been much to choose; Englishmen and Scotchmen could hit as hard, and were quite as fond of doing it, then as in the present day.

Hume, writing of this decisive engagement, says:--

“We shall scarcely find any battle in those ages where the shock was more “terrible and more constant. Henry exposed his person in the thickest of “the fight: his gallant son, whose military achievements were afterwards so “renowned, and who here performed his novitiate in arms, signalised himself “on his father’s footsteps; and even a wound, which he received in the face “with an arrow, could not oblige him to quit the field. Percy supported that “fame which he had acquired in many a bloody combat; and Douglas, his “ancient enemy, and now his friend, still appeared his rival amongst the “horror and confusion of the day. This nobleman performed feats of valour “which are almost incredible: he seemed determined that the King of England “should that day fall by his arm: he sought him all over the field of battle; “and as Henry, either to elude the attacks of the enemy on his person, or to “encourage his own men by the belief of his presence everywhere, had “accoutred several captains in the royal garb, the sword of Douglas rendered “this honour fatal to many: but while the armies were contending in this “furious manner, the death of Percy, by an unknown hand, decided the victory, “and the royalists prevailed. There are said to have fallen on that day, on “both sides, near two thousand three hundred gentlemen; but the persons “of greatest distinction were on the king’s: the Earl of Stafford, Sir Hugh “Shirley, Sir Nicholas Ganoil, Sir Hugh Mortimer, Sir John Massey, Sir “John Calonly. About six thousand private men perished, of whom two- “thirds were of Percy’s army. The Earls of Worcester and Douglas were “taken prisoners: the former was beheaded at Shrewsbury; the latter was “treated with the courtesy due to his rank and merit.”

The above account is substantially correct. To the list of killed and wounded it is necessary to add the names of Sir Walter Blunt amongst the two thousand three hundred gentlemen, and amongst the six thousand private men, one hundred and forty-seven hapless warriors whose particular fate will be presently mentioned. Sir Walter Blunt was one of the several captains whom the king had “accoutred in the royal garb,” with the view “either to elude the attacks of the enemy on his person, or to encourage his own men by the belief in his presence everywhere.” The reader may accept which theory he pleases. I myself incline to the former, having the greatest confidence in Henry Bolingbroke’s wisdom as a general and sense of his own value as an individual.

Of the violence of the shock between the conflicting armies, one circumstance alone is sufficient corroboration. Sir John Falstaff, emulating his royal chieftain, also “exposed his person in the thickest of the fight”--nay, may very reasonably be asserted to have been “the thickest of the fight himself.” We will not pause to dwell upon the magnitude of risk incurred by Sir John--much greater in proportion to his bulk than that of the slender and dyspeptic monarch--in exposing so vast a target to the arrows of the enemy. Our knight’s heroic achievements are too numerous to need any stress to be laid on one solitary instance. Suffice it, that Sir John, at an early stage of the battle, conducted his troops to a position of the greatest danger, where they perished almost to a man. In his own light-hearted words, uttered amidst the most terrible carnage and peril, “he led his ragamuffins where they were peppered!”

“There’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive!” said Sir John, wiping his brow, that was clotted with dust and blood, “and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life.”

And with this historic fact staring them in the face, there are not wanting people to pronounce Sir John Falstaff a coward! Well, well! Sir John himself has told us what the world is given to!

The heroism of the Douglas and his gallant Scots has not been exaggerated by their compatriot historian, in whom exaggeration on the subject might well be pardoned. Those intrepid warriors--their movements, for the most part, unencumbered with nether garments--performed prodigies of valour and ubiquity. It was said of the field of Shrewsbury in the fifteenth, as of the four quarters of the globe in the nineteenth century, “You found Scotchmen everywhere!”

Amongst the Royalist gentlemen with whom the gallant Scotch leader had the honour of crossing swords in the course of the day, but to whom the reciprocal honour was not “fatal,” as Hume has told us it had been to so many, we must class Sir John Falstaff. The fact that the hero of these pages was sought out for single combat by the “hot, termagant Scot,” is a proof of the high estimation in which our knight’s valour was held even by his enemies. The Douglas could not have mistaken him for the King, of whom he was in such active pursuit. Sir John’s costume and personal appearance must have placed that out of the question. At any rate, they met and fought. After a brief encounter--in which the training of poor Wat Smith, the Maldyke cudgeller, was doubtless not forgotten--the fortune of war decided against our hero. He fell wounded,--not dangerously, or even severely, but wounded. The Douglas seeing his formidable enemy hors de combat, and--let us assume--espying one of the King’s counterfeits in the distance, retreated without following up his advantage. I might revive national jealousies, which had better be left at rest for ever, were I to hint that the unquestionably brave Caledonian had _possibly had enough of it_, and had found his stalwart English adversary rather more than he had bargained for. I will content myself with the statement that the Earl of Douglas quitted the scene of action abruptly, leaving Sir John Falstaff alive,--not seriously injured, but for the moment incapable of doing mischief.

And now I approach what I confess to be a most delicate question, and one whereof the solution causes me much perplexity. The question is--“Who killed Hotspur?”

Hume, as we have seen, asserts that the young Northumbrian fell by an unknown hand; Shakspeare, as the world knows, represents him to have been slain by the Prince of Wales, after a brief hand-to-hand combat.

Which is the truth? Is either the truth?

As I have professed to abide by the representations of Shakspeare on all occasions, in preference to those of other historians, consistency bids me to adopt his views on this momentous problem. But I hesitate. After all, even Shakspeare was but a man. May not the wish to glorify a popular favourite have lulled his conscience to sleep just for once, and induced him to crown one hero with another’s laurels? He _has_ been known to falsify history for the gratification of popular feeling--in one instance most glaringly. Has he not loaded the shoulders of Richard the Third with more hump and iniquity than that monarch is historically licensed to carry? And why? Because he happened to be writing in the time of Henry the Seventh’s granddaughter, and the name of the last Plantagenet was still execrated in the land; just as was that of the now respected Cromwell in the fine old English reign of the great and good King Charles the Second.

Let us, however, calmly consider Shakspeare’s view of the case in point, and sum up the probabilities before coming to any definite decision.

According to Shakspeare, at the moment when the Earl of Douglas _was running away from Sir John Falstaff_--I repeat that I impute no unworthy motives to that possibly intrepid act on the part of the noble Earl--while the Earl of Douglas was running away, and Sir John Falstaff lay panting and bleeding (the Prince of Wales saw him bleed) on the field of battle, the two young Henrys, Percy and Plantagenet, had met, at a short distance from the scene of the last recorded struggle, and were exchanging formal civilities previous to the laudable operation of cutting each other’s throat, after the chivalrous manner of our prize-ring gladiators, derived traditionally from the practice of the Dacian Pet and the Herculaneum Slasher, as chronicled in the writings of Tintinabulus. * The Game Chicken, from the wilds of Northumberland, complimented the Larky Boy--champion of the Westminster Light Weights--with some irony rather implying a regret that the latter bantam should be in a recently hatched and inadequately-fledged condition, and scarcely entitled to the honours of immolation at the hands, or rather the red-hot spurred heels of himself, the Northumberland Chicken, which he declared the Larky One was nevertheless foredoomed to undergo; to which Larky replied by advising his adversary not to crow prematurely, nor too loudly, nor yet to waste arithmetical calculation upon chickens whose incubation was at least problematical. He admitted that he was not an old bird, but at the same time implied that he was not to be caught by the peculiar species of conversational bait of which his opponent was so over liberal. Briefly, they flapped their wings, and, without further cackling, flew to the attack.

* Vita in Roma... De Pugnatoribus. Cap. I.

“The pen of Homer” has been worn by myself and others into a rather stumpy condition for the recital of warlike encounters. Let me borrow the pen of Jones, the latest London successor of the graphic Tintinabulus, to describe the event in question, which Shakspeare represents as having “come off” at Shrewsbury.

ROUND THE FIRST.

The two plucky ones were in admirable condition. At first it might have been feared that the Westminster Boy, who had bolted from his training a short time previously, would not be able to come to the scratch; while it was presumed that the Northern Customer, having been for some weeks out of collar, and at grass, might have accumulated a troublesome superabundance of pork; whereas it proved----