Page 1706 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant. Take a trumpet, Herald;
Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill.
If they will fight with us, bid them come down,

Or void the field: they do offend our sight. [55]
If they’ll do neither, we will come to them,
And make them skirr away, as swift as stones
Enforcèd from the old Assyrian slings.

Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have,
And not a man of them that we shall take [60]
Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.

Enter Montjoy.

EXETER
Here comes the Herald of the French, my liege.

GLOUCESTER

His eyes are humbler than they us’d to be.

KING HENRY

God’s will, what means this, Herald? Know’st thou not
That I have fin’d these bones of mine for ransom? [65]
Com’st thou again for ransom?

MONTJOY
No, great King:
I come to thee for charitable licence,

That we may wander o’er this bloody field
To book our dead, and then to bury them;
To sort our nobles from our common men; [70]

For many of our princes − woe the while! −
Lie drown’d and soak’d in mercenary blood;
So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs
In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds
Fret fetlock deep in gore, and with wild rage [75]

Yerk our their armèd heels at their dead masters,
Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great King,