HENRY V - The Cautious Conqueror by Labarge, Margaret Wade

Stein & Day, 1976, New York, first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 x 9, 219 pp, illus, map. VG/VG condition. Here is King Henry V - not Shakespeare's or Laurence Olivier's Henry, but the real man.This book sets the record straight, demonstrates convincingly that Henry V was a commander-and a king-who never took unnecessary risks. He fought at Agincourt, though heavily outnumbered, because the alternative was total abandonment of his long-term plans. A man without glamour, he was a master of tactics and strategy.Henry's career brought manifold successes. Though he spent less than a quarter of his nine years' reign in England, his influence was such that, apart from one incipient revolt, the country for the first time in a generation was free of civil strife. And abroad he carried all before him so that at his death he had come literally within two months of seeing his dream of uniting the kingdoms of England and France under his own sovereignty come true.Margaret Wade Labarge shows that in the conditions of the Fifteenth Century the union might have held and this most misrepresented of English kings would have changed the course of English history.The author gives us a marvelous picture of warfare in the age of chivalry-the strange rituals, the personal challenges, the parleys, the pledges of honor, and the ruthless barbarities, in which Henry himself played a full part.