I saw a wonderful spectacle of bloodshed on both sides;
here unwieldy Switzers wallowing in their gore like an ox
in his dung, there the sprightly French sprawling and turning
on the stained grass like a roach new taken out of the
stream; all the ground was strewed as thick with battle-axes
as the carpenter’s yard with chips; the plain appeared like a
quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In
one place might you behold a heap of dead murdered men
overwhelmed with a falling steed instead of a tombstone, in
another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their
own bowels, and as the tyrant Roman emperors used to tie
condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corses, so
were the half living here mixed with squeezed carcasses
long putrified. Any man might give arms that was an actor in
that battle, for there were more arms and legs scattered in
the field that day than will be gathered up till doomsday. The
French King himself in this conflict was much distressed,
the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face;