16 quotes
His golden reputation is based on nothing more than the inconvenient fact that people at the time seemed to like that sort of thing.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Henry has demonstrated a reliable lesson of warfare: often as not, extortion works.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Henry’s experience of rolling up his sleeves and taking charge of financial administration is a crash course in the unglamorous side of kingship. It is useful, but not always a lot of fun.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
They have heard enough about Ireland to know what they need to acquire for the journey. Ireland is going to be cold, and wet.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
It is undoubtedly a grand conspiracy, but not a very clever one. And as with any complicated scheme, there are more ways for it to go wrong than right.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
As he grows up, he will shed any inclination to treat his enemies leniently. Toughness and a near-total lack of sentimentality will become hallmarks of his political character.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Henry has known John the Fearless long enough to realize that the Duke, while resourceful and on occasion useful, is not a man to be trusted.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Richard was the rightful king, but a fool. Henry’s father is a capable man, but a usurper. Sometimes it is hard to know which of these positions is worse.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
History, however, is not a congeniality contest. How we rate Henry for likability today is of little consequence. What matters is what he did in his own time, how he optimized for the standards of his own age, and what the consequences were of his relatively short life and reign.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Henry’s career since the age of thirteen has been an applied lesson in the first principles of warmongering: it must be paid for, and it will always cost more than it should. To lose one’s grip on finance risks political crisis.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Dull, painstaking, technocratic work seldom moves bards and chroniclers in the same way as battlefield victories. Yet the great triumph of Henry’s leadership of the royal council in 1410–11 is that he realizes that nothing can proceed without it.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
The task of the delegates at the Council of Constance is to wheedle or force the resignations of all three men who currently claim to be pope: Benedict XIII in Avignon, Gregory XII in Rome, and a piratical gangster from southern Italy who rules as John XXIII from Pisa.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Henry’s father is ill, but he is not ready to die. This is a problem for the king himself. It is an even more serious problem for everyone else. A semifunctioning king is far worse for the realm than a dead one.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
It is the view of Henry’s chaplain, perhaps echoing the king’s own, that no besieged people could have prepared themselves “more prudently or with greater security to themselves.” All the same, Henry may reason, in a contest between prudence and cannonballs, the advantage is typically held by the side with the biggest guns.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Above everything, they have been raising huge sums of money. Henry’s career since the age of thirteen has been an applied lesson in the first principles of warmongering: it must be paid for, and it will always cost more than it should. To lose one’s grip on finance risks political crisis. What is more, to Henry’s mind, to be broke is unkingly, even shameful.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)
Sigismund has become obsessed with reconciling Christendom’s divided peoples, so that a united international army might one day be raised once more and sent to chastise the Turks. Three critical steps toward achieving this are to heal the papal schism that has wrenched Europe apart since 1378, to stop the Burgundian-Armagnac civil war, and to make peace between England and France.
Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King (2024)