A single horseman whose steed
was mad with pain, an arrow in its eye and a second in its
nostril, sprang over the hedge and clattered through the whole
army, disappearing amid whoops and laughter into the woods behind.
But none others won as far as the hedge. The whole front of the
position was fringed with a litter of German wounded or dead,
while one great heap in the center marked the downfall of the
gallant French three hundred.
Whilst these two waves of the attack had broken in front of the
English position, leaving this blood-stained wreckage behind them,
the main divisions had halted and made their last preparations for
their own assault. They had not yet begun their advance, and the
nearest was still half a mile distant, when the few survivors from
the forlorn hope, their maddened horses bristling with arrows,
flew past them on either flank.
At the same moment the English archers and men-at-arms dashed
through the hedge, and dragged all who were living out of that
tangled heap of shattered horses and men. It was a mad wild rush,
for in a few minutes the fight must be renewed, and yet there was
a rich harvest of wealth for the lucky man who could pick a
wealthy prisoner from amid the crowd. The nobler spirits
disdained to think of ransoms whilst the fight was still
unsettled; but a swarm of needy soldiers, Gascons and English,
dragged the wounded out by the leg or the arm, and with daggers at
their throats demanded their names, title and means.
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