Henry has known John the Fearless long enough to realize that the Duke, while resourceful and on occasion… — Dan Jones

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.

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.

Broadly speaking, these have remained the two poles of historical opinion ever since. Henry was either what the Edwardian scholar C. L. Kingsford called a “typical medieval hero” or the exemplar of all that was most depressing about the Middle Ages: a time of barbarity dressed up as chivalry, during which of the private ambitions of warlords were cloaked in the humbug of religion and used as the pretext to shed the blood of thousands, for the gain of a town here and a castle there, both of which might well be lost again the following year.