# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 72

CHAPTER LXXII.
Henry VI., on the death of his father, was scarcely nine months old. However prosperous his father had been, and however well fortified he seemed to have left him in the care of his mother and the ability and unity of his uncles, as well as the reverence of the people for their late brilliant king, no one who had studied history, even in the smallest degree, but must have foreseen in the course of so long a minority many troubles, and probably much disaster.
While a strong hand guides the course of government, discordant elements, if they do not sleep, are at least suppressed in their action, and often scarcely seem to exist. But that hand once removed, all those elements start into motion. A thousand conflicting interests manifest themselves, and numbers of men are soon found struggling for an eminence which heretofore they had deemed unattainable. By such circumstances how many a minor has been plunged into calamity, and not infrequently into speedy ruin!
But if this be true of the heir of one kingdom, how much more so must it be of the heir of two—and two such realms as England and France! It would, indeed, have been a miracle if the clashing ambitions of the blood-relations, and of other great men around the infant king's throne, had not produced much trouble and civil conflict. But the prospect of his power in France was still more critical. There he was the nominal heir to a throne of which his father had not lived to obtain possession—of a kingdom not yet entirely subdued by the British arms; a kingdom naturally hostile to an English ruler; a kingdom of proud, sensitive people, who, though they had consented to the ascendency of Henry V., in order to procure some degree of repose, yet had by no means forgotten the haughty and the cruel deeds of the English in their country; above all, a kingdom in which the rightful heir to the throne was still alive—in fact, had still most devoted adherents; and who presented to their feelings the image of a young prince unjustly and unnaturally excluded from his own great patrimony by an imbecile father and a haughty conqueror.
Though the dauphin had disgusted a large portion of the French by his adherence to the Armagnac faction, which had steeped the capital and the country in the blood of its people; though he was stained by the blood of the murdered Burgundy, and was reputed to be more fond of pleasure and disgraceful companions than of good government and love to his people, still he was their native-born prince. He had fought from his mere boyhood against the island invaders. He was a Frenchman, and the hearts of all Frenchmen turned naturally towards him, notwithstanding his faults, in the spirit of inextinguishable patriotism. It would be his fault if this feeling did not grow, and that the French should come to regard him as the hope of the nation—the hope of its ultimate redemption from the galling yoke of the foreigners.
The effect of these circumstances became first manifest in England. After the interment of Henry V., Queen Catherine retired to Windsor with her infant charge, and the Parliament proceeded to take measures for the security of the throne during the minority. The nobles during the reign of Henry V. had been held in perfect and respectful subordination by the ability and the high prestige of the king. Parliament had asserted its own, but sought not to encroach on the royal prerogative in the hands of a sovereign who showed no disposition to encroach on the popular rights. But now Parliament, and especially the House of Peers, showed unmistakable evidence of a consciousness of their augmented authority.
Henry on his death-bed had named the Duke of Bedford as regent of France, the Duke of Gloucester as regent of England, and the Earl of Warwick as guardian of his son. On the arrival of the official information of the king's death, a number of peers and prelates, chiefly members of the royal council, assembled at Westminster, and issued commissions to the judges, sheriffs, and other officers, ordering them to continue in the discharge of their respective functions; and also summoning a Parliament to meet on the 5th of November. On the day previous to the meeting of Parliament, a committee of peers offered to the Duke of Gloucester a commission empowering him, in the king's name and with the consent of the council, to open, conduct, and dissolve the Parliament. Gloucester objected to the words, "with the consent of the council." He contended that it was an infringement of ​his own right, the king before his death having named him regent. But the peers insisted that what they did was made necessary by the extreme youth of the king, and Gloucester was obliged to give way.
The Parliament immediately on assembling ratified all the acts by which it had been convoked, and entered upon the duty of arranging the form of government for the minority. Gloucester contended that his authority as regent did not depend on the consent of the council, but was the act of the late king himself; and that in no commissions of the late king had any such words as acting by the consent of the council been introduced. But Parliament declared the appointment of the late king to be of no force, inasmuch as to make it valid, it required the consent of the three estates. It was also shown that the two last centuries presented three minorities, those of Henry III., Edward III., and Richard II., and in none of them, except in the two first years of Henry III., had the powers of the executive government been committed to a guardian or a regent.
They refused altogether the title of regent, as far as England was concerned, but, leaving the Duke of Bedford regent of France, they did not even grant to Gloucester the same power under another name in this country. They gave the chief authority to the Duke of Bedford as the elder brother, and nominated him not regent, which might sanction the idea of his authority being derived from the crown only, but protector, or guardian of the kingdom. They then appointed Gloucester protector during the Duke of Bedford's absence only, making him, as it were, merely deputy-protector, his brother's lieutenant.
They thus completely set aside the arrangement of the late king, and reduced the power of Gloucester to a subordinate degree. They limited it still more by appointing the chancellor treasurer and keeper of the privy seal, and sixteen members of council, with the Duke of Bedford as president. In the absence of the duke, Gloucester was to officiate as president. The care of the young king was committed to the Ear1 of Warwick, and his education to Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, afterwards the famous Cardinal Beaufort. Beaufort was one of the three natural sons of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford, who were legitimated by royal patent, and had taken the name of Beaufort from the castle of Beaufort in France, where they were born. The bishop was thus half-brother to Henry IV., and, consequently, great uncle to the infant king. Both as a churchman, and as belonging to a family which, though of royal blood, could have no pretensions to the crown, Parliament deemed him a fitting person to enjoy that important office.
These arrangements must have been very mortifying to the Duke of Gloucester; but being proposed by the Peers, and fully consented to by the Commons, he acquiesced in them with the best grace he could. The following liberal salaries were voted to the members of council:—
| | | | | | £ | s. | d. |
| To | the Protector, per annum | … | … | … | 5,333 | 6 | 8 |
| To„ | Dukes and archbishops | … | … | … | 200 | 0 | 0 |
| To„ | Bishops and earls … | … | … | … | 133 | 6 | 8 |
| To„ | Barons and bannerets | … | … | … | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| To„ | Esquires … … … | … | … | … | 30 | 0 | 0 |
Having also enacted regulations for the proceedings of the council, and continued the tonnage and poundage and the duties on wool for two years, the Parliament was dissolved.
In France the Duke of Bedford appeared, for the moment, all powerful. He had a reputation for ability, both in the council and the field, second only to his late brother the king. He had had great experience under the consummate command of Henry V., and was everywhere regarded as a man of the highest prudence, probity, bravery, and liberality. The authority which the English Parliament had conferred on him, adding even to that designed by the late king, raised him still more in public opinion. He had now the whole power of England in his hands. His troops had long been inured to victory, and he was surrounded by a number of the most distinguished generals that the nation had ever produced. There were the Earls of Somerset, Warwick, Suffolk, Salisbury, and Arundel, the brave Talbot, and Sir John Fastolfe. He was master of three-fourths of France, was in possession of its capital, and was in close alliance with the most powerful prince of France, the Duke of Burgundy. Following out the dying advice of the late king, he offered to Burgundy the regency of France, but that prince declined it, and, by the advice of his council, Charles VI. conferred it on Bedford.
While everything thus appeared to favour the English interest, the dauphin's affairs were eminently discouraging. He possessed but a fragment of France in the south, and his officers were more celebrated for their ferocity than their military skill. He was only about twenty years of age, and had the character of an indolent and dissipated prince. His wife, Mary of Anjou, was a woman of great beauty and virtue, but she was neglected by him for his mistress, Agnes Sorel, to whom he was blindly devoted. The Duke of Burgundy, the most powerful prince of the blood, was his mortal enemy, on account of the assassination of his father. The other great princes of his family, who should now have given strength to his party, the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the Counts of Eu, Angoulème, and Vendome, had been prisoners in England ever since the fatal day of Azincourt. The Duke of Brittany, one of the greatest vassals of his crown, had now deserted him and gone over to Burgundy and England. No other prince or noble had joined his standard, nor any foreign nation except the Scots.
But in the very depth of these depressing circumstances a sudden light sprang up. His father, Charles VI., died on the 21st of October, 1422, at his palace of St. Pol in Paris. This event was not likely to afflict the dauphin greatly. The Valois had shown a wonderful callousness to their natural ties, and for years the dauphin had been engaged in active war with both his parents, and had been formally renounced and disinherited by them. In a political point of view the death of the king was of the very highest advantage to him. It cut at once a powerful bond of obedience to the English. Many of the French nobility, while ostensibly supporting the English, did it only out of deference to their own monarch. But that monarch once gone, they could not for a moment think of conferring their allegiance on a mere child and a foreigner when the true heir was at hand. In all French hearts, more or less, whenever or however situated, those sentiments began actively to stir; and the death of ​Charles VI., instead of seating Henry of Windsor on the throne of France, gave a shook to the English power there from which it never recovered.
The dauphin, when the news of his father's death reached him, was in Auvergne; and his knights at once conducted him to a little chapel near, erected the banner of France, and proclaimed him king. They then marched to Poictiers, where, Rheims being in the hands of his enemies, he was solemnly crowned and proclaimed as Charles VII.
Even in Paris there was some attempt at rising in his favour, as in England there had been a rising on the borders of Wales in favour of the old line; but, in both instances, the power of Henry's authorities crushed the movement, and all for the time remained quiet.
The Seal of Henry VI.
In Paris there appeared for some time after the king's death to prevail a sort of interregnum. Henry VI. was not proclaimed as King of France, and the Parliament of Paris ignored his name in its acts; but, on receiving his full authority from England, and hearing what the dauphin was doing, the Duke of Bedford ordered Henry to be proclaimed. He moreover summoned a great assembly, consisting of the Parliament, the archbishop and his clergy, the university, the chief military officers, the magistrates and principal burgesses of the city, who all swore allegiance to Henry VI., King of England and King of France. The same ceremony took place throughout all the provinces of France which were subject to the English and Burgundians. Thus France had two monarchs, and it remained to be decided by the sword which of them should prevail. On the side of Henry of England was military and territorial power; on that of Charles VII., the less conspicuous, but far more potent, force of nature and of patriotism.
The Duke of Bedford exerted himself to strengthen the English alliance to the utmost. To bind to him more securely the powerful Duke of Burgundy, he concluded the marriage with the Princess Anne, the youngest sister of the duke, which had been contracted at the treaty of Arras. On the 17th of April, 1423, he met at Amiens, Burgundy, the Duke of Brittany, and his brother Arthur, the Earl of Richemont. Bedford knew that, next to Burgundy, the Duke of Brittany was the most desirable ally of the English. The provinces of France now in possession of England lay between the territories of those two princes, and must always be exposed to their attacks, when not in friendship with them. The Duke of Brittany had already acceded to the treaty of Troyes in resentment towards the Government of Charles VI., and had done homage to Henry V., as the acknowledged heir to the throne. But Bedford sought to bind him by fresh ties. His brother, the Earl of Richemont, was a bold and ambitious man, and Bedford planned to gratify his ambition. The Earl of Richemont had been one of the prisoners taken at Azincourt. While in England, Henry V. had shown him much kindness, and had permitted him to visit Brittany on his parole, where affairs of state made his presence highly desirable. He was in Brittany when Henry's death took place, and declared that as his parole was only given to Henry, it was now void, and, therefore, he declined to return to England. The plea was wholly untenable according to the laws of honour, but Bedford, so far from seeking to enforce the obligation, sought to lay him under one of a more pleasing kind. He proposed a marriage between Richemont and another of the sisters of the Duke of Burgundy, the widow of the dauphin Lewis, the elder brother of Charles. By this marriage Richemont became not only allied to Burgundy, but to Bedford, and the Duke of Brittany more deeply interested in the career of these princes. At this meeting they all swore to love each other as brothers, to support each other against the attacks of their enemies, whoever they might be; but, above all, to protect the oppressed people of France, and to banish as soon as possible the scourge of war from its so long afflicted soil.
The new King of France, meanwhile, was not idle. He sought to strengthen himself in the only quarter from which he had hitherto received essential aid—namely, amongst the Scots. The Duke of Albany, the Regent of ​Scotland, was now dead, and his son and successor Murdoch, a man of an easy disposition, not finding any employment for the more restless and martial spirits amongst his subjects, those Scots eagerly offered their services to Charles VII., who gave them every encouragement, and heaped all the distinctions in his power upon them. The Earl of Buchan, the brother of the Scottish regent, was himself not only their leader, but the Constable of France. Continued arrivals of these Scotch adventurers swelled the ranks of Charles. Amongst others the Earl of Douglas brought over 5,000 men. These strengthened Charles in the south, but as ho possessed some fortresses in the north, Bedford determined first: to clear those of the enemy, in order that he might afterwards advance with more confidence southwards. The castles of Dorsoy and Noyelle, the town of Rue in Picardy, and Pont-sur-Seine, Vertus, and Montaigne, successively fell before the English arms. But a still more decisive action took place in June at Crevant in Burgundy. There James Stuart, Lord Darnley, at the head of a body of Scottish auxiliaries, and the Marshal of Severac with a number of French troops, sat down before the town. The Duke of Burgundy, feeling himself too weak in that quarter to cope with them, sent a pressing message to Bedford for aid. The duke at once dispatched the Earls of Salisbury and Suffolk to raise the siege of Cervant. But the French, relying on their numbers, and still more on the well-known valour of their Scottish allies, stood their ground, and awaited the attack. On their march the English fell in with the Burgundians at Auxerre, under the Count of Toulongeon, hastening to the same goal. Still their united numbers wore inferior to the enemy, and they had to force the passage of the Yonne in the face of the main body of the enemy.
The Duke of Brabant driving away the Ladies of his Wife Jacqueline.
The discipline of the combined army may be conceived from the regulations issued at Auxerre for its conduct The soldiers were ordered to love and treat each other as brothers; that the vanguard should consist of 120 men-at-arms, and the same number of archers, taken in equal proportions from each nation. When the orders were given for dismounting in the presence of the enemy, disobedience was to be punished with death. The horses were to be left half a league in the rear; and any man leaving his post in the line should suffer death. No prisoners wore to be made till the victory was secure; or all such prisoners should be put to death, and the captor, too, if he resisted. Finally, every archer was ordered ta supply himself with a stake sharpened at both ends, as used by Henry V. at Azincourt. The men carried ​each provision for two days; and thus they came in sight of the town. They found the French and Scots drawn up in great force on the right bank of the river. To draw them away from the place where they meant to cross, they appeared to direct the whole force of their attack upon the bridge. For three hours the battle raged there; but then, seeing that their stratagem had taken effect, the English at once plunged into the river and were followed by the Burgundians. They forced their way over, gained the opposite bank, and the battle became fierce and general. The Scots fought valiantly; but the French, galled by a rear attack from the arrows of the garrison, soon gave way, and left their brave allies to bear the whole brunt of the battle. Attacked both in front and flank, the heroic Scots were mowed down mercilessly. The combined army cleared the field and entered the place in triumph, carrying with them prisoners two of the commanders—the Count of Ventadour and Lord Darnley—each of whom had lost an eye in the battle. Of the Scots, 3,000 were said to be slain, and 2,000 taken with their general.
This was a most disastrous blow to Charles, and the ruin of his affairs seemed imminent; but just at this crisis came reinforcements from both Italy and Scotland, and retrieved his fortunes. The Duke of Milan sent him a strong body of Lombards, who surprised the Burgundian marshal, Toulongeon, and took him prisoner; and thus they were enabled to exchange him for Lord Darnley. It was at this moment also that the Earl of Douglas landed with his 0,000 Scots at Rochelle. Charles, delighted at this most timely succour-, selected his body-guard from these Scottish auxiliaries; and, as he had already given to Lord Stuart of Darnley the two lordships of Ailbigny and Concressault, he now conferred on Douglas the more valuable dukedom of Tourraine, which had belonged to himself as dauphin. The French ambassador also reported that the regent of Scotland and the Scottish nobility had sworn in his presence to maintain the ancient alliance between the two countries, and promised—what was not in their power to perform—that, should then-king be liberated, he should ratify their engagements.
In these circumstances there were many things to encourage Charles and mortify the English. This Earl of Douglas, who now came to reinforce the new French monarch, had formerly fought for Henry V.; and it is probable this going over was the main cause of his being rewarded with the dukedom of Touiraine. Besides this, John de la Pole, brother to the Duke of Suffolk, was, on his return from Anjou into Normandy, laden with plunder, met at La Gravelle by a strong force under Harbourt, Count of Aumale, one of the chiefs of the royal party. The English were taken by surprise, encumbered by their booty, and especially by 10,000 head of cattle. Taken at this disadvantage, the archers, however, planted their sharp stakes, and for some time maintained the unequal contest; but they were eventually compelled to give way, and leave their cattle behind thorn, as well as 500 of their comrades slain, and their commander, De la Pole, prisoner.
De la Pole was soon afterwards exchanged; but these successes greatly encouraged all those who were inclined to go over to the French king. Several towns in the north and north-west of France had declared for their native prince. There was a spirit abroad there alarming to the English, and therefore, instead of being able to cross the Loire and bear down effectually on Charles, they were compelled to defend their hold on their own northern territories. To add to this disquietude, the Count of Richemont, whose friendship had been so anxiously sought by Bedford, soon proved that his character was of a kind not to be depended upon. That he was not bound by any principle of honour he had sufficiently shown by breaking his parole, and he soon showed Bedford that he who is contented to wink at the perfidy of such a man when it suits his interest, will soon have cause to open his eyes again in vexation. Richemont, haughty and ambitious, was not contented to servo but at the head of an army. This Bedford had not sufficient confidence in his abilities or his integrity to concede. Nothing short of that would satisfy him. Bedford had secured him an alliance with himself and the Duke of Burgundy, by the marriage of Margaret, the sister of Burgundy; he had granted him ample lauds, and he now offered him a liberal pension; but all would not soothe his offended dignity. He withdrew to his brother of Brittany, and used all his influence to detach him from the English interest.
Chagrined by this, Bedford strove all the more to rivet the good-will of Burgundy; but at the very time when Bedford entered into the alliance with Burgundy and Brittany at Amiens, which was to be so brotherly, and to last for ever, those two princes had made a separate and secret treaty, which boded no good to England at some future day. Seeing how precarious the friendship of these princes was, Bedford turned his attention to another source of strength. It was of the utmost consequence to deprive Charles of the assistance of Scotland, and to obtain, if possible, the co-operation of the brave Scots for England. He wrote, therefore, to the council at home, earnestly recommending that the Scottish king should be liberated, allowed to return to his kingdom with honour, and on such terms as should make him a fast friend to the country.
It will be recollected that James, the son of Robert III. of Scotland, was kidnapped at sea by Henry IV. of England, as his father was sending him to France for security, this being his only remaining son and successor—the elder son, the Duke of Rothsay, having been murdered by Eamorgny. James was well treated and well educated by Henry; but the Duke of Albany, the young prince's uncle, having usurped the government of Scotland under the name of regent, it was equally the interest of Henry and Albany to retain the young king in England. He had, accordingly, remained a royal captive at the English court now eighteen years. On the death of Henry IV., Henry V. had still retained James, who could not have been restored without incurring a war with Albany, for which his continual wars in France left him no leisure. On the Scots engaging in France against him, he endeavoured to prevail on James to issue an order forbidding his subjects to serve in the army of the dauphin. James is said to have replied that so long as he was a captive, and his government in the hands of another, it neither became him to issue any such orders, nor for the Scots to obey it. He therefore steadfastly ​refused; but added that it would be a pleasure and an advantage to himself to make the campaign in France under so renowned a captain as himself. We have, therefore, seen James of Scotland commanding a detachment of Henry's army, on condition that within three months after its close he should be allowed to return to Scotland.
Henry VI
It would seem that the Government of the infant Henry VI. did not feel themselves bound by the engagement between James and Henry V., for he was still in captivity when Bedford suggested the policy of his release. The father and grandfather of James, Robert II., and Robert III., had been monarchs rather amiable than of great capacity; James was a very different person, His English education, his life and experience at the English court in the midst of very stirring times, and men of great talents, had operated on a mind naturally vigorous to such advantage, so that he was not only a very accomplished man, but, as he showed, endowed with all the qualities of a great and active monarch.
James I. was in person handsome, in constitution vigorous, in mind frank, affable, generous, and just. His accomplishments were of a high order. He had cultivated a knowledge of books and music in his many long years of solitary life in the Tower and at Windsor. At Windsor love had made a poet of him. He beheld from his window one of the queen's ladies in the court below, who wonderfully attracted his attention. This lady was Joan Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset, grand-daughter of John of Gaunt, and niece of Bishop Beaufort, afterwards the cardinal, the educator of the boy-king. Joan Beaufort was a fitting consort for the youthful King of Scotland. When he came, under Henry V., to have more liberty and freer intercourse with the court, her beauty and excellence entirely won his heart, and in honour of her he wrote the "King's Quhair," that is, the King's Book, a poem which to this day continues to be admired by all lovers of our old, genuine poetry.
On the arrival of Catherine of Valois, the young bride ​of Henry V., at Windsor, she was naturally interested in this handsome and accomplished captive king. She learned his attachment to the Lady Beaufort, and, as we have seen, promoted his suit with the king and with her family. They were affianced; yet James was still detained in England. The time was now come when circumstances combined for his release. The old Duke of Albany had been long dead, and his son Murdoch, who had succeeded him, was neither able to keep in order the rude barons of Scotland, nor his still ruder sons. Two of them were so haughty and licentious that they were said to respect neither the authority of God nor man. Their behaviour to their father was destitute of all reverence, so much so, that one of them importuning the father for a favourite falcon, and he refusing it, the brutal son snatched it from the regent's wrist, and wrung its neck. The loss of his falcon did what numberless greater insults had not effected. "Since thou wilt give me neither reverence nor obedience," said the enraged Murdoch, "I will fetch home one whom we all must obey."
Murdoch Stuart was as good as his word. He began to make overtures to the English Government for the return of James. As the young king was greatly attached to the English court, and likely to be more closely connected with it by marriage, the restoration to his throne was obviously much to the advantage of England under existing circumstances. At this juncture came the recommendation of Bedford, and the matter was accomplished. The Scots agreed to pay a considerable ransom by annual instalments. James was married to his admired Joan Beaufort, and, returning to his kingdom, was crowned with his queen at Scone, on the 21st of May, 1424.
While this great event was taking place, the Duke of Bedford was engaged in active warfare. The Count of Richemont and several Burgundian nobles had gone over to Charles; and, thus encouraged, his partisans had surprised Compeigne and Crotoy, and then the garrison of Ivry, which consisted of Bretons, opened the gates to the French. The duke procured fresh troops from England, re-took Compeigne and Crotoy, and sat down before Ivry with 2,000 men-at-arms and 7,000 archers. Charles collected, by great exertion, an army of 14,000 men, half of which were Scots. They were under the command of the Earl of Buchan, Constable of France, attended by the Earl of Douglas, the Duke of Aleçon, the Marshal La Fayette, the Count of Aumale, and the Viscount of Narbonne. On reaching Ivry, he found it surrounded, and the position of the English too strong for attack; he therefore marched to Verneuil, which opened its gates to him.
Bedford did not allow them much time to enjoy their good fortune. Leaving a garrison in Ivry, he marched on to Verneuil. At his approach Buchan called a council of war, to determine what course of action they should adopt. The more prudent portion of the council advised a retreat, representing that all the past misfortunes of France had resulted from their rashness in giving battle when there was no necessity for it; and that this was the last army of the king, the only force remaining to enable him to defend the few provinces which were left him. But there were a great number of young French noblemen, who, precisely as at Azincourt, insisted upon fighting, and that counsel prevailed.
The French army possessed many advantages in the fight. They were greatly superior to Bedford in numbers, but they were an ill-assorted crowd of French, Italians, and Scotch, the last the only staunch portion of the host. They had, however, the town defending one of their flanks, and for them, if necessary, to fall back upon. They took the precaution to leave their horses and baggage in the city, and to fight on foot, with the exception of about 2,000 men-at-arms, chiefly Italians, on horseback.
The English had, as usual, adopted the tactics of Creçy and Azincourt. The duke had ordered them to post the horses and baggage in the rear, to plant their pointed stakes in front, and wait.
The Earl of Douglas, aware of the mischief of attacking these archers thus posted, also advised to wait, and provoke, if possible, the English to attack him. But here, again, the characteristic impatience of the French defeated his wise caution. The Count of Narbonne rushed on with his division, shouting, "Mountjoye! St. Denis!" and the rest were obliged to follow and support him. The whole body of the French army came down upon the English front, which stood firm under the shock, shouting, "St. George for Bedford!" The weight and impetuosity of the enemy broke in some degree the ranks of the archers, and forced them back towards their baggage, which they found attacked by La Hire and Saintraille, with their cavalry. The archers let fly at these, and, after repeated charges, put the whole to flight, the Italians being the first to flinch under the deadly shower of arrows, and gallop off the field. The archers then turned again, accompanied by their rear division, and fell furiously on the van of the enemy. Here they came upon the Scots, who were fighting like lions, and for three hours they maintained a deadly struggle against the archers in front, and the Duke of Bedford thundering on their flank with his men-at-arms. The French well supported their Scottish allies, but at length the whole were compelled to give way, and were pursued with great slaughter. The carnage was terrible. There were about 4,000 French, Scots, and Italians left on the field, and 1,600 of the English. The Earl of Buchan, the Earl of Douglas and his son Lord James Douglas, Sir Alexander Meldrum, and many other Scots of rank and distinction, were slain. Of the French, four counts, two viscounts, eight barons, and nearly 300 knights fell; amongst them, the Viscount Narbonne, chief author of the mischief, the Counts Tonnere and Ventalour, with Sieurs Roche-baron and Gamaches. The Duke of Alençon, Marshal La Fayette, and 200 gentlemen, were made prisoners. Bedford, as his brother Henry had done at Azincourt, called his officers around him, and returned thanks to God on the field. In everything the duke had kept in view the military maxims of his illustrious brother, and the battle of Verneuil was long compared to that of Azincourt. It was fought on the 17th of August, 1424. But it was the last great victory of this able commander, whose prudence and ability were destined henceforth to be crippled and eventually crushed by the reckless ambition and fatal quarrels of his relatives, above all by the conduct of his brother Gloucester.
This great overthrow appeared to annihilate the power of Charles VII. His last army was dispersed and demoralised. The Scots were so decimated that they never again could form a distinct corps in the French army, for ​they could no longer draw fresh troops from their own country, where now James I. reigned in strict alliance with England. Charles was so straitened that he had not even money for his personal needs, much less for subsisting his troops. It was all that he could do to get his table supplied with the plainest fare for himself and his few followers. Day after day brought him the news of some fresh loss or disaster. Towns most important to him were compelled to surrender for want of supplies. All the country north of the Loire was lost to him, and his enemies were preparing to drive him out of the last remains of his hereditary kingdom.
But it was the singular fortune of this prince, when reduced by his demerits to the lowest condition, always to find himself raised again by circumstances, which no merit or talent of the ablest or most prudent man could originate. He was, spite of his weaknesses, his follies, and his repeated overthrows, always saved by something little short of a miracle, and reserved to triumph over all his enemies, and to secure to the French crown provinces which it had lost for ages.
This time the dissensions of the English council turned the scale in his favour. Instead of the Duke of Gloucester exerting himself to maintain concord at home, and sending over fresh forces and supplies to his brother the regent in France, he had plunged himself into violent altercations with Henry Beaufort, which produced anger, dissensions, and partisanship in the Government, and threatened the worst consequences. But still more startling and pregnant with calamity was the rash marriage of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Bavaria. Nothing so mischievous as this to the ascendency of England in France could have been devised by the subtlest enemy; and Gloucester appears to have been of so headstrong and impetuous a temper, that he set at nought all considerations of policy and all sound advice.
Jacqueline of Bavaria was the heiress of Hainault, Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. This heiress of whole kingdoms was, moreover, handsome, high-spirited, and of a bold and masculine understanding. The court of France had early cast its eyes upon her desirable domains, and secured her for the dauphin John. After the death of the dauphin, her uncle, called John the Merciless, who had formerly waged fierce war to deprive her of her heritage, now sought to marry her to the Duke of Brabant, whose stepfather he was. Henry V. had sought her hand for his brother Bedford; but the immense advantage which the possession of Hainault and Holland would give to the English, already on the eve, as it appeared, of becoming masters of France, no doubt excited the strongest, if not the most open opposition on the part of her near relative, the Duke of Burgundy, and others who dreaded such a contingency. Jacqueline was worried into the marriage with the Duke of Brabant. It was an ill-starred union. The duke was a mere boy of sixteen, and a sickly and wilful boy. Jacqueline was of ripe womanly age, and had, too, a will of her own. She began with despising her husband, and ended by hating him. Their life was diversified chiefly by quarrels. The favourite of her husband, William le Bégue, had insulted Jacqueline, and, at her instigation, her half-brother, called the Bastard of Hainault, proceeded to punish him, and, in truth, killed him. Her husband, in his revenge, drove away all the ladies and the servants who had accompanied her from Holland; and soon after the people rose and massacred the favourites of the duke. Jacqueline got away to her mother at Valenciennes, and from Valenciennes she made her way over to England, where she was received with a warm welcome, and had a pension of £100 per month conferred on her by the king.
While in England she is said to have fallen in love with the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke returned the sentiment with the promptitude which his own ardent character and the extent of the lady's lands made very natural. Henry V., however, saw instantly how destructive would be any such alliance to all his hopes in France. The Duke of Brabant was the near relative of the Duke of Burgundy, and Burgundy was his heir. It was inevitable that the duke would view with profound alarm a marriage which would not only deprive him of the reversion of Holland and Hainault, but place the English on almost every side of his paternal lands, with an extension of power and influence perfectly overwhelming. Henry, therefore, not only did all in his power to discourage this ominous connection, but it no doubt lay very much at the bottom of his earnest injunctions on his deathbed to his brothers to cultivate with all their energy the friendship of Burgundy.
But all sentiments of policy or prudence were lost on Gloucester. His ambition, if not his love, fired at the idea of possessing such a splendid territory in right of his wife, made him disregard every other consideration. He resolved to marry Jacqueline, contending that the Duke of Brabant was within the prescribed degrees of consanguinity, though a dispensation had been obtained for that very purpose. A second dispensation was requisite before Gloucester could marry the duchess, and this the Pope, Martin V., refused, in consequence of the representations of the Duke of Burgundy. Resolved not to be defeated, Gloucester applied to Benedict XIII., who, though he had been deposed from the papal chair by the Council of Constance, refused to submit to its dictum. He was only too happy to oblige where Martin had disobliged, and Gloucester married the heiress of Holland.
Cardinal Beauforts Chantry, Winchester Cathedral.
Joan of Arc
Meantime, the effect of this quarrel was most disastrous to the campaign of Bedford. Not only had the Duke of Burgundy withdrawn his troops to oppose Gloucester, but Gloucester, on his part, also intercepted the troops and supplies intended for Bedford, and diverted them to ​his own contest in Hainault. In a great council at Paris it was at length, decided that the legitimacy of the two marriages should be submitted to the Pope, and that the contest should pause till his decision was received. The Duke of Brabant consented, but Gloucester refused. The Duke of Burgundy thereupon prosecuted the war against Gloucester with redoubled determination; and, to add to Bedford's embarrassment, the Count of Richemont, flattered by Charles with the appointment of Constable of France, vacant by the death of the Earl of Buchan at Verneuil, prevailed on his brother, the Duke of Brittany, also to go over to Charles. Nay, the Burgundians, brought into contact with the enemies of England, began to listen to their representations of the English ambition, and suggestions were even made to the duke from various quarters for a reconciliation with the rightful King of France. Luckily, the murder of his father was still strong in his remembrance, and he remained for eight years longer the ally of his brother-in-law, Bedford, but not the same cordial and efficient one.
Gloucester maintained the contest against his combined foes for about a year and a half, when the exhaustion of his resources, and his jealousy of the growing influence of his uncle Beaufort in the government at home, drew him to England. His departure was fatal to all his views on Hainault. No sooner was he gone than Valenciennes, Conde, and Bouchain opened their gates to Burgundy. Jacqueline, at Gloucester's departure, had entreated him not to leave her behind. But the people of Mons insisted on her remaining there to head the resistance to Brabant and Burgundy. It was only in tears that she consented to remain, predicting the fatal consequences of their separation. Her fears were speedily confirmed. Mons was invested by Burgundy, and the perfidious citizens delivered up Jacqueline to him. She was conducted by the Prince of Orange to Ghent, where she was to be detained till the Pope had decided on the validity of the marriage.
The adventurous Jacqueline did not feel herself bound to wait for the decree of the pontiff. She planned, with a woman's ingenuity, escape from her prison. She seized her opportunity, dressed herself and her maid in male attire, stole unobserved, in the dusk of the evening, out of her place of detention, mounted on horseback, and, passing the city gates, continued her flight till she reached the borders of Holland, where her subjects received her with enthusiasm. But the Duke of Burgundy was not inclined thus to let her escape. He pursued her to Holland; her subjects refused to betray her, and a war was prosecuted in that country for two years. The Duke of Gloucester sent her a reinforcement of 500 men, and would have sent her more, but was prevented by Bedford and the council.
In 1426, the Pope pronounced the validity of the marriage with the Duke of Brabant; but that feeble personage died soon after, and Jacqueline, who now certainly, according to all the laws of God and man, was free, became the wife of Gloucester. But right was of little importance in that age, and especially in the case of a woman. The Duke of Burgundy, called the Good—for what reason we never could discover—was determined to reduce her by force of arms, and compel her to acknowledge him as her heir. Had England not been engaged in the conquest of France, the Duke of Gloucester would have been victoriously supported in his claim as it was, these claims were destructive of the greater object of ambition. Little, however, as the Duke of Gloucester was able to contribute to the support of his wife, who now assumed the title of the Duchess of Gloucester, it enabled her to maintain the contest till 1428, when the power of Burgundy bore her down; and he compelled her to sign a treaty nominating him her heir, admitting him to garrison her towns and fortresses in security of that claim, and pledging her word never to marry without his consent.
The war in Hainault and Holland, created by the marriage of Gloucester and Jacqueline of Bavaria, whose life more resembles a romance than a piece of real history, perfectly crippled the proceedings of Bedford. He lost the grand opportunity of following up the impression of the battle of Verneuil, and thus putting an end to the war. For three years the war was almost at a standstill. Neither the regent nor Charles were in a condition to make further demonstrations than slight skirmishes and sieges, which, without advancing one party or the other, tended to sink the people still deeper in misery. This interval presented in the court of Charles a series of the most disgraceful and bloody intrigues, and in tie court of London the most bitter dissensions.
Charles VII., during three years, in which the Duke of Bedford's hands were completely tied by the circumstances related, had, notwithstanding his late severe disasters, a fair opportunity of gathering new strength, and making head against the embarrassed English. The Duke of Brittany was eventually prevailed upon by the Earl of Richemont to go over to Charles. There were various other symptoms of the good-will of the people and of different nobles to his cause. But the opportunity was wasted, and worse than wasted; fresh follies and crimes exposed him to the contempt of his subjects.
The place of favovurite was now occupied by Camues de Beaulieu. Him Richemont dispatched with promptitude and audacity. His assassins fell upon him in a field immediately after quitting the presence of the king, and stabbed him to death. Charles, on seeing the favourite's horse come galloping back covered with blood, was excessively enraged at this murder of his favourite, and vowed vengeance; but, as in the case of the death of Burgundy, he remained perfectly passive. To console him, and to answer his own ends, Richemont recommended the very assassin, De la Tromoille, to his good graces. He calculated on Tremoille's devotion to him; but he was in this case mistaken. De la Tremoille was as crafty as he was devoid of conscience. He immediately consoled, not only the king, but Madame de Giac, whose husband he had drowned. Assisted by the genius of his wife, he soon exerted the most unlimited power over Charles, and set Richemont at defiance. The deluded and enraged constable determined to destroy the traitor. He entered into a conspiracy with several other noblemen to seize Tremoille by force and kill him. But Tremoille was more knowing than the Duke of Burgundy. He laughed at all the smooth overtures of Richemont, refused to meet him and his friends, kept close with, the king in the castle, maintained a strong guard, and saw his enemies, who laid open siege to the fortress, obliged by the winter to retire.
​In the spring the conspirators returned, and took the town of Bourges, but the king and his favourite had already abandoned the place, and sought a fresh stronghold. Richemont's allies made their submission, and he himself was compelled to retire; when he made an ineffectual war on Charles in Poitou and Saintonge. Do la Tremoille and his wife maintained their ascendancy, but often the misorablo king was surrounded by embarrassments. Marshal Severac, who had fought so long and bravely far him, had become outrageous for the arrears of pay for himself and soldiers. He threatened that, if the king did not pay him, ho would desolate and plunder the whole of Languedoc. On examining the state of the royal coffers there were found only two crowns. In another quarter, the Count of Faix seized Beziers, and the queen's brother, René of Anjou, went over to the English. Such was the condition to which Charles VII. was reduced.
On the other hand, Bedford was equally incapacitated from availing himself of the opportunity to crush this last feeble remains of the royalty of France. The court of London was torn by the dissensions of his brother Gloucester and Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. That prelate was not more ambitious than he was politic. He carefully hoarded the large revenues of his see and of his private estate, and gave an air of patriotism to his wealth, by lending it to the crown in its need. He had furnished to the late king £28,000, and to the present £11,000. He had thrice held the high office of chancellor; he had been the ecclesiastical representative at the Council of Constance, and bad acquired a good character for sanctity by having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem
Every act of his ambition wore an air of patriotism. He had, in his character of guardian of the young king and of chancellor, opposed with all his energy the attempt of Gloucester on Hainault. When the duke persisted in proceeding on that expedition, he took advantage of his absence to garrison the Tower, and committed it to the keeping of Richard Wydville, with the significant injunction "to admit no one more powerful than himself." On the return of Gloucester he was accordingly refused a lodging in the Tower; and rightly attributing the insult to the secret orders of his uncle Beaufort, he instantly took counter-measures by ordering the lord mayor to close the city gates, and to furnish him with 500 horsemen, as a guard, with which he might in safety pay his respects to his nephew, the king, at Eltham. The followers of Beaufort, on the other hand, posted themselves at the foot of London Bridge, of which they sought to take forcible possession. They barricaded the street, placed archers at all the windows on both sides, and declared that, as the duke had excluded the chancellor from going into the city, they would prevent the duke going out. The country was on the very edge of civil war. In vain the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of Coimbra, the second son of the King of Portugal, by Philippa, sister of the late monarch, rode to and fro between the hostile relatives, endeavouring to effect a pacification. The bishop wrote off post haste to Bedford, entreating him to come instantly to prevent the effusion of blood. "For, by my troth," he said, "if ye tarry long, we shall put this land in jeopardy with a field, such a brother ye have here! God make him a good man!"
Bedford left his now greatly weakened post in France with a groan over the folly and the obstinacy of his brother; and landing in England a little before Christmas, summoned a Parliament to meet at Leicester in February. In the meantime ho strove hard to reconcile the antagonists. Ho sent the Archbishop of Canterbury and a deputation of the lords to request Gloucester to meet the council at Northampton towards the end of January, representing that there could be no reasonable objection on his part to meet his uncle, who, as the accused party, had just right to be heard; and assuring him that efficient measures should be taken to prevent any. collision between their followers.
Gloucester, in his fierce resentment, was not to be persuaded; he was, therefore, summoned to attend in his place in Parliament. There Gloucester presented a bill of impeachment against Beaufort, in which, after stating his own grievances, he preferred two serious charges, which he swore had been communicated to him by the late king, his brother. These were nothing less than that Beaufort had exhorted Henry V. to usurp the crown during the life of his father; and, secondly, that he, Beaufort, had hired assassins to murder Henry while he was Prince of Wales.
Beaufort replied to these charges that, so far as they related to the late king, they were false, and ho instanced, in proof of his innocence, the confidence Henry V. had reposed in him on coming to the throne, and his constant employment of him. He denied having given just cause of offence to Gloucester, and complained of Gloucester's behaviour towards him. The Duke of Bedford and the other lords took an oath to judge impartially between the opponents, and then they on their part agreed to leave the decision to the Archbishop of Canterbury and eight other arbitrators. After Beaufort had solemnly declared that he had no ill-will to Gloucester, and besought his reconciliation, Gloucester appeared to consent. They shook hands, the bishop resigned his seals of office, and requested permission to travel.
It was thought, however, that Gloucester was by no means in a mood for submitting even to the council. Ho was reported to say, "Let my brother govern as him listeth while he is in this land; after his going over into France I will converse as me seometh." Out of doors the followers of the two antagonists being forbidden to bring arms to the neighbourhood of the Parliament, they came with bats upon their shoulders, whence it was called the Parliament of Bats. These being also forbidden, they put stones and lumps of lead in their pockets, so ready were they for an affray.
The council, apprehensive of mischief, and especially from Gloucester after the departure of Bedford, called upon both of the dukes to swear that, during the minority of the king, and for the peace and security of his throne, they would "be advised, demeaned, and ruled by the lords of the council; and obey unto the king and to them as lowly as the least and poorest of his subjects."
Bedford, after a sojourn of eight months, returned to France. The Duke of Brittany was severely punished for his defection. The English poured their troops into his province, and overran it with fire and sword to the very walls of Eennes. The duke solicited an armistice; it was denied him: again the war went on, and ​again he was everywhere discomfited. At length he was compelled to accept the terms dictated by Bedford, and swore once more, with all his barons, prelates, and commonalty, to observe the treaty of Troyes, and do homage to Henry for his territories, and to no other prince whatever.
Flushed with this success, the leaders of the army in the following year, 1428, were urgent to make a grand descent on the country south of the Loire, and to drive Charles from the provinces yet adhering to him. Bedford, conscious of the suspicious character of some of his allies, was strongly opposed to the measure. Several councils were hold in Paris to discuss the propriety of this undertaking, and Bedford in vain opposed it; he was overwhelmed by a majority of voices. Of this circumstance he afterwards complained in one of his letters to the king. "Alle things prospered for you," he wrote, "till the time of the seige of Orleans, taken in hand God knoweth by what advice." It was now Orleans that the commanders were eager to attack. Montague, Earl of Salisbury, had just brought over from England a reinforcement of 6,000 men. He was regarded only inferior in the field to the Earl of Warwick, and was, therefore, unanimously elected general on the occasion.
Orleans was one of the most important places in the kingdom; it commanded the great road to the southern provinces. It was one of the few places which still could show some remaining vestiges of prosperity. Its fall would be fatal to the independence of the whole realm. On the part of the French everything was done which could enable it to hold out a siege. Abundant stores and ammunition were collected into the city; batteries were erected on all sides upon the walls; and, to afford the enemy no shelter, the beautiful suburbs," containing twelve churches, various monasteries, and mansions of the citizens, wore razed to the ground. The vineyards, gardens, and fields for a league round were laid as bare as a highway. The inhabitants of the neighbouring country, and of the towns of Bourges, Poictiers, Rochelle, and other places, sent money, troops, and stores. The Parliament at Chinon voted 400,000 francs in aid of the city. Charles VII. himself appeared to be roused from his torpor by the imminent danger of this quiet town, and sent thither all the troops that he could spare, under some of his most famous commanders, Saintrailles, De Guitry, and Villars. He appointed the Count de Gancourt governor, and many brave Scots—encouraged by a treaty which Charles had made with their sovereign, James I., binding himself to marry the dauphin to a daughter of his, and give him the county of Evreux or the Duchy of Berri—throw themselves into it. There was every prospect of a desperate defence.
Salisbury, reducing Meun, Jeuville, and other places on the way, advanced towards Orleans, and sat down before it on the 12th of October. He pitched his tent amid the ruins of a monastery on the left bank of the river, and directed his first attack against the Tournelles, a tower built at the extremity of the bridge leading into the city. This he took by assault; but the garrison retreating, broke down an arch of the bridge behind them, and there was another defence erected at the city end of the bridge. From the windows of the evacuated Tournelles, Salisbury directed the attack on the city. His post was discovered, and a huge stone ball was discharged from a cannon at the window. He observed the flash, and started aside; but the window was dashed in, the officer who had been standing behind him was killed, and the iron-work of the window driven in different directions with such force, that Salisbury was so wounded in the face by it that he died in about a week.
The command devolved on the Earl of Suffolk, who endeavoured to convert the siege into a blockade. He erected huts at intervals all round the city, covered from the enemy's fire by banks of earth, throwing up lines of entrenchments from one of these posts, or bastiles, as they were called, to the other. But the circuit which they had thus to occupy was so vast that the intervals between the bastiles were too great for his amount of forces to secure. The Bastard of Orleans, a natural son of the Duke of Orleans who was killed by Burgundy, made his way into the city with numerous bodies of French, Scots, Spaniards, and Italians. De Culant, whom Charles had named Admiral of France, did the like by moans of the river, and thus Orleans continued during the winter to set the besiegers at defiance.
Early in February, the Duke of Bedford sent aid from Paris—Sir John Fastolfe, with 1,500 men, and 400 wagons and carts laden with stores and provisions for the army before Orleans. Sir John had reached Rouvrai-en-Beausse, when he received the alarming intelligence that the Count Charles of Bourbon, the Count of Clermont, and Sir John Stewart, Constable of Scotland, had thrown themselves with 4,000 or 5,000 cavalry betwixt him and Orleans. They were, moreover, in full march upon him. This intelligence reached him at midnight, and he lost no time in preparing for the attack. He drew up all his wagons and carts in a circle, enclosing his troops, leaving an opening at each end, where he posted his archers in great force. Every moment he expected the attack, but the enemy was disputing as to the best mode of making the assault. The French were for charging on horseback, the Scots were for dismounting and fighting on foot. It was not till three o'clock in the morning that the disputants resolved each to fight in their own way. The attack was made simultaneously at both openings, but the archers sent such well-directed volleys of arrows amongst the assailants, that the French speedily galloped off the field, leaving nearly all the Scots dead upon it. Sis hundred of the united, or rather disunited, force were slain; and Sir John marched in triumph into the camp before Orleans with the stores which the French had confidently counted upon possessing. The Constable of Scotland, the Sieurs D'Albret and Rochechouart were amongst the slain, and the Count of Dunois was severely wounded. This battle, from the salted fish and provisions which Sir John was conveying for the use of the army during Lent, was called the Battle of Herrings.
This was a severe blow to Charles VII. There appeared only one way of preventing the almost immediate loss of his crown. The English commander was actively pressing the siege. He had cast up a still more complete line round the city, fresh reinforcements enabled him to make the bastiles more numerous, and famine began to menace the place with all its horrors. To avoid the fall of Orleans, Charles engaged the Duke of Orleans, who had been so long a prisoner in England, to exert himself with ​the Protector and council in England to guarantee the neutrality of his demesnes, and for greater security to consign them during the war to their ally, the Duke of Burgundy. To this the council consented, as placing the duchy in a manner in the hands of England. The Duke of Burgundy readily accepted this trust, and waited on Bedford in Paris to apprise him of it. But Bedford, by no means flattered by the expected prey being thus adroitly taken out of his hands, coolly said that he was not of a humour to beat the bushes while others ran away with the game. Burgundy affected to smile at the apt simile, and retired; but it was with a resolve in his breast, to be made apparent in due time.
Foiled in this attempt, Charles now gave way to despair. The city of Orleans could not possibly long hold out, and he determined to retire with the miserable remainder of his forces into Languedoc and Dauphiny, and there await the last attacks of the conquering foe. This cowardly resolve was, however, vehemently resisted by the queen, who declared that it would be the total ruin of his affairs; and his mistress, Agnes Sorel, who was living on the best of terms with the queen, supported her in this protest vigorously, threatening, if he made so pusillanimous a retreat, to go over to England and seek a better fortune in the British court. This decided the weak prince not to throw away the sceptre of his kingdom; and while affairs were bringing on this critical situation, help, and eventually triumph, were sent from a quarter which no human sagacity could have discovered.
On the borders of Lorraine, but just within the province of Champagne, lies the hamlet of Domremy, situate between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs. In this hamlet lived a small farmer of the name of James d'Arc; and his daughter Joan, whilst a little girl, was accustomed to shepherd his small flock of sheep in the fields and heaths around. The scene of her most favourite haunt was near an old spreading beech-tree, beneath which the fairies were said to dance at night, on the banks of a clear little stream, the waters of which were reputed to be especially efficacious in the cure of diseases. Further towards the forest was a solitary chapel of the Virgin where Joan was accustomed to say her daily prayers; and every Saturday, accompanied by some of her companions, she used to hang up in the chapel a garland of flowers, or burn a taper in honour of the mother of Christ. These facts show a great susceptibility of the imagination, and they, no doubt, nourished it, and confirmed her deep feelings of piety. When about five years of age, whilst walking in her father's garden on a Sunday, she declared that she saw a bright light in the air near her, and turning towards it saw a figure, who said that he was the archangel Michael, and commanded her to be good and dutiful, and that God would protect her. The need of this exhortation was supposed to proceed from the hardness and severity of her father, who, on hearing this, became so unkind that Joan left her home and engaged herself to a widow, an innkeeper at Neufchateau, where she acted as hostler, as young women in France still do. In this capacity she showed herself active and intrepid, riding the horses to water, and even making journeys for her mistress. But in her conduct she was still distinguished for her deep and unaffected piety. De Serres says: "She had a modest countenance, sweet, civil, and resolute; her discourse was temperate, reasonable, and retired; her actions cold, showing great chastity."
After remaining five years with her mistress at the inn, she returned to her father, and again tended his flock. Probably the society into which she was thrown at the inn was becoming too repulsive to her growing seriousness and the spiritual communionship to which she believed herself admitted. She had now reached the age of eighteen. The fortunes of France were at their lowest ebb. The inhabitants of Domremy were royalists, but those of Marcy, the next village, were Burgundians. The spirit of faction raged between these little places as violently as in the armies themselves. Thence arose constant feuds, and the bitterness descended to the children as fiercely as it lived in the hearts of the adults. When they met they fought and pelted each other with stones. Joan saw all this, and heard the insults of the Burgundians when the king was defeated and disgraced. At this moment came the terrible news of the great battle of Verneuil, and she saw the distress and despair of her friends and neighbours. The visions and the heavenly voices came now still oftener, and comforted her, till the siege, the famine, and the expected fall of Orleans renewed the general trouble. With the archangel Michael she now regularly saw the saints Catherine and Margaret, who were the patronesses of her parish church. They exhorted her to devote herself to the salvation of her country. She represented that she was a poor peasant maiden, and did not know anything of such great matters; but the archangel Michael assured her that strength and wisdom would be given her, and that the saints Catherine and Margaret would go with her, and that all would be well. The two female saints then appeared to her, surrounded by a great light, their heads crowned with jewels, and their voices gentle and sweet as music. Joan know that there was a prophecy abroad that, as France had been ruined by a wicked woman—Isabella of Bavaria—so it should be restored by a virgin, spotless, and devoted to the rescue of her country. Nay, this saviour of France was to come out of the neighbouring forest of oaks, Boischesnu.
The heavenly voices became more and more frequent, more and more urgent, as the affairs of France approached a crisis, announcing that she was the maid who was appointed to save France. Joan became greatly distressed, and was often found weeping when the visions left her, and longing that the angels of paradise would carry her away with them. Her parents had no faith in her visions, and, to prevent her going off to the army, they endeavoured to force her into a marriage; but Joan had voluntarily taken a vow of perpetual chastity, and she revolted with horror from the proposal. Just then a party of Burgundians fell on the village of Domremy, plundered it, and burnt down the church. Joan, with her parents, was compelled to flee and seek refuge in Neufchateau. When they returned to Domremy, and beheld the scene of desolation, the indignation of Joan was roused to the highest pitch. The voices now commanded her, on pain of the forfeiture of her salvation, to go at once to Baudricourt, the Governor of Vaucouleurs, and demand an escort to the court of the king. There she was to announce to him that she was sent to raise ​the siege of Orleans, and to crown him, the rightful King of France, in the city of Rheims. Joan now gave way; there was nothing to he hoped from her parents but opposition; she therefore hastened secretly to Vaucouleurs, to an uncle there, who was a simple, pious man, and who had often excited her childish feelings by taking her on his knee, and telling her sorrowful stories of the wars of France. The old man, a wheelwright by trade, at once went with her to the governor. Baudricourt at first refused to see her; when she was, at length, through her importunity, admitted, he looked upon her as crazed, and told her uncle that he should send her back to her parents again, and that she ought to be well whipped. Joan said, "It was her Lord's work, and she must do it." "Who is your lord?" asked Baudricourt. "The King of Heaven!" replied Joan. This satisfied the governor of her insanity, and he rudely dismissed her. But Joan still remained at Vaucouleurs, daily praying before the high altar in the church, and asserting that the voices urged her day and night to proceed and execute her mission. The rumour of this strange maiden flew rapidly through the town and the surrounding country; the sight of her modesty and piety, and the fame of her past pure and devout life, brought numbers of people to see her, and amongst others men of high note. The Duke of Lorraine, who was labouring under an incurable disease, sent to seek her art, as a woman possessed of supernatural powers; but Joan, with that clearness and simplicity which marked her throughout, replied, "That she had no mission to him; he had never been named to her by her voices." On all such occasions her language and conduct were the same. She was totally devoid of anything like wildness and extravagance; clear in intellect; self-possessed and single in her one purpose—to relieve Orleans and crown the king. When afterwards one Friar Richard told her he could bring a woman to her who possessed supernatural powers, and who might help her, she replied, "I have nothing to do with her: the Lord has given me my work, and he will enable me to do it." She added, "Since the Sieur de Baudricourt will not listen to me, I will set out to King Charles on foot, though I should wear my legs down to my knees on the road; for neither dukes nor kings, nor yet the daughter of the King of Scotland, can raise up this suffering France. There is no help but in me. And yet, in sooth, how much rather would I stay at home and spin by my mother's side, for this is work that I am not used to; but I must do it, since my Lord wills it."
Baudricourt was compelled by the public voice to take charge of her; but not before he had tested her by a priest and the sprinkling of holy water, that she was no sorceress, nor possessed of the devil. The Seigneurs de Metz and Bortrand de Poulengi, who had conceived full faith in her, offered to accompany her, with her brother Peter, two servants, a king's messenger, and Richard, an archer of the royal guard. The journey thus undertaken in the middle of February, 1429, was, according to ordinary ideas, little short of an act of madness. The distance from Vaucouleurs to Chinon in Tourraine, where Charles's court lay, was 150 leagues, through a country abounding with hostile garrisons, and, where they were absent, with savage marauders. But Joan declared that they should go in perfect safety, and they did so. Joan rode boldly, in man's attire, and with a sword by her side, but they saw not even a single enemy. In ten days they arrived at Fierbois, a few miles from Chinon, and she sent to inform the king of her desire to wait upon him.
When the advent of so singular a champion was announced to the frivolous Charles, he burst into a loud fit of laughter. Though he was in the condition in which men catch at straws, there was something in this affair which appeared to him ludicrous, and, if he entertained it, likely to cast ridicule upon him and his cause. Some of his counsellors advised him to see her; others treated the proposition as the height of absurdity. For three days the court continued divided, and Charles unable to decide. At length it was agreed that she should be admitted; and, to test her pretensions to superhuman direction, Charles was to pass for a private person, and one of the princes to represent him. But Joan discovered the king at a glance; and, walking up to him with serious and unembarrassed all, through all the crowd of staring courtiers, bent her knee, and said, "God give you good life, gentle king!" Charles was surprised, but replied, pointing to another part of the hall, "I am not the king: he is there."
"In the name of God," rejoined Joan, "it is not they, but you who are the king. I am, most noble king, Joan the maid, sent of God to aid you and the kingdom, and by his name I announce to you that you will be crowned in the city of Rheims."
Charles took her aside; and, after an earnest conversation with her, he declared that she had told him things which were known to no one but himself and God, and that he believed that she was really sent for the delivery of France. Probably the monarch—who was not of a nature to be impressed with anything of an elevated order—had now caught the idea that the peasant girl was shrewd enough to use as a political engine. The nest day she was shown in public on horseback. She appeared about seventeen; her figure was slender and graceful, and her hair fell in rich jetty locks on her shoulders. She ran a course with a lance, and managed her horse with the utmost address. The people were struck with admiration, and with loud shouts testified their belief in her.
But the timid Charles again hesitated, and conveyed her to Poictiers to be examined before the Parliament by the most learned doctors and subtle theologians. For three weeks she was interrogated and cross-questioned in all ways. Every kind of erudite trap was laid for her, but in vain. She had but one story—that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleans, and to crown the king at Rheims, now in the hands of his enemies. When asked for a miracle, she replied, "Send me to Orleans, with an escort of men-at-arms, and you shall soon see the true sign of the truth of my mission—the raising of the siege." "When not before the council, she passed her time in retirement and prayer. Having passed the most searching ordeal of the prelates and doctors, and the repeated application of holy water, she was once more brought out, armed cap-à-pie, with her banner borne before her, and equipped at all points like a knight. Mounted on a white charger, she ran a tilt with a lance, keeping such a firm seat, and displaying so steady an eye, that the soldiers and watching multitudes were enraptured.
Joan of Arc at the Assault of the Tournelles.(See page 578.)
​The people of Orleans sent express for instant aid, and implored that the maid should lead the reinforcement. She demanded an ancient sword which, she said, lay in a tomb in the church of St. Catherine, at Fierbois, which was sought for, found, and brought to her, having five crosses upon its blade. Thus armed, receiving the staff and rank of general, a brave knight, of the name of John Daulon, being appointed her esquire, with two pages and two heralds, the maid of Domremy set out with a body of troops conveying provisions to Orleans, and accompanied by some of the most famous commanders of France—Santrailles, Gaucourt, La Hire, and others. No sooner did she come into their camp, than she instituted the most rigorous discipline. She expelled all the low women who followed it, and insisted on every soldier confessing his sins and taking the sacrament.
The famishing people of Orleans received Joan of Arc with enthusiastic acclamations and blazing torches. They believed that deliverance was come to them from Heaven, and they were right. A splendid banquet was offered to Joan, but she declined it, retiring to the house of Bouchier, the treasurer to the Duke of Orleans, where she supped simply on bread dipped in wine; and there she remained during her stay in Orleans, keeping the wife and daughter of Bouchier constantly about her, to prevent any aspersions on her fair fame.
The strangest terror fell over the English soldiers. They had heard of nothing for two months but the coming of this maid, who had written to their commanders, telling them she was ordained by God to drive them out of France. The French had proclaimed her as sent by Heaven; the English officers, with curses, had sworn that she came from the devil. This, which they thought would completely destroy her with the soldiers, was the very thing which fixed her power over them. They would probably have cared nothing for her professed divine mission; but they at once gave credit to her alliance with Satan, and declared that flesh and blood they did not fear, but they were no match for the arch-fiend. In vain the commanders, who saw their error, endeavoured to remove this impression by representing Joan as a low-born, ignorant wench, and no better than she should be, who was got up by the French to frighten them: the mischief was done; in their eyes Joan was a witch of the first order, and wherever she appeared the soldiers fled. The subjects of Burgundy, who was himself no longer cordial in the cause, stole away from the camp on all sides; and the numbers necessary for the blockade of the town became deficient. The French now went in and out with impunity. A large store of provisions had arrived at Blois, which Charles constituted a depôt for the supply of Orleans. Joan marched out at the head of a very strong body, attended by the Bastard of Orleans, the Sieur Daulon, La Hire, and other generals. Her banner of white silk, bordered with fleur-de-lis of silver, and on one side bearing an image of the Almighty, on the other the words "Jhesus Maria," was borne before her After came a body of priests bearing another banner, and chanting their anthems; and in this manner, glittering in her bright armour, and mounted on her milk-white steed, the maid rode forth in the very face of the English, who lay still, as if stricken into stone. Thus she went to Blois, and returned with fresh troops and means of defence.
Joan now mounted a tower opposite to the Tournelles, and called to the English, bidding them begone from France, or worse would befall them. Sir William Gladisdale replied from the Tournelles, abusing her for a, witch and an abandoned woman, bidding her go back to her cows. "Base knight!" said Joan, "thou thyself shalt never pass hence, but shalt surely be slain." She now commanded a general assault on the bastiles; but the generals, who were becoming jealous of Joan's fame, resolved to try their fortune without her. They told her they would commence the attack the next day, and Joan retired to lie down and take some repose. Soon she started up, and called for her arms, saying the voices summoned her to fight, and rushing forth she met the soldiers returning from a sortie, which had been made without her knowledge, and in which the French were repulsed with slaughter.
Joan was greatly enraged, and now led on the forces herself. Successively the bastiles of St. Loup, St. Jean le Blanc, and Augustus fell. before her. The attack was then led against the main fortress, the Tournelles. Joan led the way, severely reprimanding Gaucourt, the governor of the city, for his disobedience to her orders, and threatening to put him or any one to death who opposed her. The people and soldiers, who worshipped her, and whom she would not allow to follow her unless they had confessed and observed due decorum, stood to a man in her support, and she led the way to the Tournelles, sword in hand. Three times the French attacked the tower with all their force and engines, but the English this time defended themselves manfully, and with their artillery and arrows mowed down the French, clearing the bridge and river bank of them. Nothing daunted by the terrible carnage, and declaring that the English were given by God into the hands of the French, Joan seized a scaling-ladder, and, amid a hail of shot and flying shafts, advanced to the foot of the tower, planted her ladder, and began to ascend. An arrow struck her, piercing her armour between the chest and shoulder, and she fell into the ditch. The English gave a great shout at the sight, and Joan, supposed to be dead, was borne away into the rear. Finding that the maid was alive, the arrow was extracted, and, feeling all the weakness of the woman during the operation, Joan cried in agony; but, once over, she fell on her knees in prayer, and rose up as if wholly refreshed, declaring it was not blood but glory that flowed from her wound, and that the voices called her to finish her victory. The combat re-commenced with augmented fury; the English, confounded at the reappearance of the maid, gave way, and Gladisdale and all his knights were put to the sword, as Joan had predicted.
That night Suffolk held a council of war, and such appeared the discouragement of his troops, that it was resolved to abandon the siege and man all the fortresses along the river. Accordingly, the next day he drew out all his forces, and placed them in battle array. Determining to make a show of resistance while in the very act of drawing off, he sent a challenge into the city, bidding the French, now so much superior in numbers as they were, to come with their Joan, and, were she harlot, ​witch, or prophetess, they would fight her in a fair field. It was Sunday; Joan forbade the French to quit the city, but to spend the day in worshipping God, who had given them the victory. Suffolk waited for some hours in vain, when he gave the concerted signal, and all the long line of forts, the creation of such months of labour, burst into flames, and the soldiers, dejected and crestfallen, marched away. Joan forbade any pursuit that day.
Thus the first of the two great things which Joan had promised was accomplished—the siege of Orleans was raised; and the maid, now honoured with the title of the Maid of Orleans, rode forth to meet the king at Blois. As she advanced through the country, the peasantry flocked on all sides to behold her, and crowded forward to touch her feet, her very garments, and, if unable to do that, were happy to touch her horse. By the court she was received with great honour, and the king proposed to entertain her with a magnificent banquet. But Joan told him that it was no time for feasting and dancing; she had much yet to do for France, and but little time to do it in, for her voices told her that she should die within two years. She called on Charles now to advance with her to Rheims, where she must crown him, and leave the English and Burgundians, who were safe in the hand of God.
Charles put himself at the head of his forces, and collected all his power on the banks of the Loire. He proposed, however, first to clear the enemy from their strongholds, and afterwards to march to Rheims. His army, led on by the maid, invested the town of Jargeau, where Suffolk, the commander-in-chief, lay, and within ten days the place was carried by storm, and Suffolk himself taken prisoner. In this triumphant action Joan, as usual, led the way. She was the first to scale the wall of the city; but on her head appearing above it she received a blow which precipitated her into the ditch. She was severely bruised, but not killed; and as she lay on the ground, unable to raise herself, she cried, "Forward, countrymen! fear nothing; the Lord has delivered them into our hands." The soldiers, fired to enthusiasm by her heroism and her confident words, rushed out and took the place. Three hundred of the garrison lay dead. Six thousand of the English had fallen at Orleans, and a panic seized them everywhere. The Lord Talbot, who was now left in command, hastily evacuated the different ports and towns, and retreated towards Paris.
At Patay he was met by a reinforcement of 4,000 men, and made a stand. Sir John Fastolfe, who had brought these troops, advised further retreat, but Talbot refused. While the commanders debated the point, the French were upon them; and Talbot, who saw himself on a flat, open country, endeavoured, but too late, to secure his rear by a village and fenced enclosures. On the other side, the French commanders, dreading an attack of the English in the open field, remembering Aziucourt and Verneuil, advised waiting for additional cavalry, but Joan indignantly exclaimed, "Have you not good spears? Ride on, in the name of the Lord; the English are delivered into my hands—you have only to smite them!" So saying, she led the way in charge, and the men clamoured to follow. La Hire and Saintrailles dashed on with the maid, and broke into the very midst of the English before they had time to form. Never, for many a day, had the French beheld such a sight. The archers, those terrible men, who on all occasions had mowed them down like corn before the scythe, had not time now to fix their stakes. They were driven pell-mell amongst the horse; all was confusion. Sir John Fastolfe, without striking a blow, led off his division; and the brave Talbot, fighting amid heaps of his slain soldiers, was taken, with the Lords Scales and Hungerford, and the bulk of the officers. Twelve hundred of the English lay dead on the field. The French were in ecstasies at their wonderful success, and Bedford, enraged at the conduct of Fastolfe, stripped him of the honour of the garter, and pronounced him disgraced and degraded. But Fastolfe, who had shown on too many occasions his valour, and who was probably influenced by his prudent counsel having been rejected by Suffolk, declared that to have led men so thoroughly bewitched as his were, by their fears of the maid, into action, was just to submit them to infamy and butchery; and Bedford, growing cooler, forgave him.
In this moment of victory Joan again urged on Charles to march to Rheims, and be crowned. At this the contemptible king, who on all occasions of danger kept aloof, shrank back. The distance was great, the whole way was full of strong towns in the hands of the English and Burgundians. All his officers supported him in this view, but the undaunted maid upbraided them with their want of faith, after so many wondrous proofs of the truth of her promises. They had never dared to think of relieving Orleans till she recommended it, but they had now done it; they had feared to fight at Patay, but they had followed her and won the battle; and now they had only to advance, for the powers of Heaven went before them, and unmanned their enemies.
She strove wisely to reconcile Charles to the Constable, the Count of Richemont, whom Tremoille, the king's favourite, hated and feared; but in vain. Not only Richemont with his troops, but many other knights, were refused attendance in the court, and with these diminished forces Charles set forward on the road to Rheims. But everywhere the fortified towns fell before them. Auxerre made a treaty of submission, but Troyes for a time held out. As the soldiers suffered greatly in the siege for want of provisions, they began to lose faith in Joan, and openly to insult her as a foul witch. The murmurs of the base soldiery were quickly seized upon by the Archbishop of Rheims, who had always expressed his disbelief in Joan's inspiration, and the poor maid was summoned before the council, and interrogated like a criminal. But with a simple and undaunted eloquence she made the leaders feel ashamed of their doubts. She challenged them to follow her to the walls, and see them surmounted, and she prevailed. With bags of earth and fagots the soldiers filled up the ditch, and were preparing with scaling-ladders to pour over the walls in a frenzy of enthusiasm, when a parley was demanded by the besieged, and the notorious Friar Richard, who figured so much in the camp from this time, made terms of surrender. As Joan was in the act of passing the city gate at the head of the troops, the friar, still believing that he had to do with an imp of Satan, crossed himself in great agitation with many crosses, and sprinkled holy water on the threshold of the gate. Instead of seeing the maid resolve herself into a hideous demon and vanish away, or find ​herself unable to cross the threshold, he beheld her march on calm and unmoved; and at once he pronounced her an angel, and all the people flocked round with admiring wonder. From that hour Friar Richard became a zealous ally of the king, though often relapsing into doubt of the maid and into bigoted opposition to her. He now, however, went on preaching to the people of the neighbouring towns to rise in defence of the king, and drive out the Burgundians. Chalons sent Charles the keys of the town, and on arriving at Rheims, he found that the people had risen at the approach of the celestial maid, had driven out the adherents of Bedford and Burgundy, and received him with open arms. A grand procession of priests waited to accompany the king and the maid into the city, and on the 15th of July, 1429, Charles and Joan, attended by all the chief officers, marched into the city, preceded by the banners of the Church, and amid the sound of its hymns. Two days after this, Charles VII. was crowned in the cathedral, as the maid had promised him.
Not one of the peers of France was present, for the pusillanimous conduct of the king, and the shameless reign of the favourite Tremoille, had disgusted them; but the people flocked round in joy, and anticipation of better days. They had unbounded faith in the maid, and wherever she appeared, it was said, they saw hosts of beautiful white butterflies hovering around her standard, and they knelt in devout awe of the sacred words and devices painted upon it. With that banner in her hand, Joan stood beside the king, while the archbishop placed the crown upon his head. When that was done she prostrated herself at his feet, embraced them with tears, and reminded him that there and then her mission was terminated. All that she had promised in the name of God, God had performed; her work, she declared, was done, and she implored permission to retire at once to her father's house, and her old way of life.
But in entering on so stupendous a mission as the salvation of the nation, an humble village girl like Joan had inevitably entered on the field of martyrdom. No person, however dignified by station or by talents, could, on the ground of a divine ordination, have long—however complete her success—stood safe amid the jealousies of courts and the meaner passions of human nature. From such a career there could be no retreat but through death. The same voices which she invariably avowed had called her to the enterprise, had pronounced her early doom. The enthusiasm of the multitude is short-lived; the envy and the hatred of the military chiefs, scarcely suppressed during the hour of triumph, were eternal in their nature. Before the victorious maid all their honours had been prostrated in the dust. In a few short months she had done what all their united talents and exertions had failed to do in a generation. She had snatched the prestige of invincibility from the English, and raised the spirit of France. That must be inevitably avenged.
Meantime she was too indispensable to the completion of the conquest of France. Charles resolutely refused to listen to her tears and prayers to be permitted to withdraw. But from that hour the maid was no longer the same. The spirit had departed from her. The voices ceased, and the clear, bold, and unerring judgment which had borne her on was gone. She was dejected, and full of distress. When importuned to direct what should next be done, she was uncertain and confused, which she never had been before. Acting now on her own suggestions, she ordered, doubted her orders, and retracted them. Again and again she declared, with tears and violent emotion, that she had nothing more to do, her work was finished, and she prayed for her dismissal. The officers did not neglect to make their advantage out of this. They treated her with harshness and undisguised insult. They encouraged the soldiers to call her foul names, and they did not hesitate to make the most infamous attempts on her honour, in order to ruin her influence for ever. These attempts Joan repelled with the fury of a woman who felt that she had deserved far different treatment. In all her camp life she had invariably kept female companions of the strictest character about her. She always had a female friend to share her bed; if during assaults that was impossible, she lay down in her complete armour. So jealous was she of her reputation, so inviolable in her adherence to her vow of chastity.
Sad and woeful was now the condition of the maid who had done such wonders for France. Bedford was exerting himself to the utmost to check this unexampled progress of the French. Cardinal Beaufort came over with 2,000 archers and 250 men-at-arms. Every means was used to fix the alliance of the wavering Burgundy, who, however, gave no essential assistance. He had withdrawn his garrisons from Normandy, and the constable had seized them. Bedford was compelled to march himself from Paris to recover them; and the maid, who had hung up her arms in the Church of St. Denis, at Rheims, as the sign that her mission was over, was induced by the king to assume them again. Once in her old panoply, her courage, if not her confidence, seemed to revive. She advised the monarch to march on Paris while Bedford was absent. She led the way, and Soissons, Senlis, Beauvais, and St. Denis opened their gates. At the assault on the Faubourg St. Honore, Joan was again wounded, and left in the ditch for hours. Charles, mortified at the repulse, retired in dudgeon to Bourges; and Joan, again hanging up her armour, implored her dismissal. Charles refused, and endeavoured to fix her in his interest by granting her a patent of nobility, with an income equal to that of an earl, and freed her native parish of Domremy from all taxation for ever. The unhappy maid went on; but her voices were gone, and she was no longer a safe oracle. During the winter, indeed. Friar Richard had brought forward his rival prophetess—one Catherine of Rochelle—who undertook, not to fight, but to raise money for the king, by preaching to the populace and revealing hidden treasures. Joan refused any connection with her, declaring that success lay at the point of the lance.
In May, 1430, Joan was sent to raise the siege of Compeigne, which was invested by the Duke of Burgundy. She fought her way into the city with her accustomed valour, but, in making a sortie, was deserted by her followers, and bravely fighting her way back to the city, just as she approached the gates, she was dragged from her horse by an archer, and, as she lay on the ground, she surrendered to the Bastard of Vendôme.
The news of the capture of the terrible maid flew like ​lightning through the Burgundian camp. All the officers of the army ran to gaze at her, the duke himself amongst them. Monstrelet, the historian, who recounts these transactions, was present on the occasion.
And now came the dark termination to this brilliant and wonderful episode in the history of these wars of France—even that which Joan herself had foretold. The base King of France, for whom she had wrought such incredible advantages, abandoned her to the tender mercies of her enemies without an effort. When the news reached the English quarters, they sang Te Deum in their exultation. Their joy we can conceive, but it is difficult in these times to comprehend the savage and ungenerous vengeance of all parties, which simultaneously displayed itself against the noble heroine. It might have been supposed that the admiration of a brave foe would have been felt in the bosoms of brave warriors; and, above all, that a young and pure woman, who had achieved such unexampled deeds, would, at least, have met with respect. But to comprehend the feelings with which the captive damsel was regarded on all hands, we must descend into the gloom of a dark and bitter age—an age when the moral standard was sunk to the lowest degree by a long course of unparalleled vices, atrocities, and meannesses. England had been cut short at the very moment of her apparent attainment of her long-cherished views in France. Her proudest nobles and generals had been defeated by a simple shepherdess; the Church had been equally shorn of its proud assumptions; for Joan had avowedly not gone to bishops, but to God. Army, Church, and State were all, therefore, on flame to wreak their vengeance on this poor, unfortunate little maiden.
The Pope Martin demanded her that he might consign her to the benign offices of the Holy Inquisition. But the Bastard of Vendôme had sold his captive to John of Luxembourg, and he sold her to the English for 10,000, francs. During the winter she lay in prison, her friends seeming wholly to have forgotten her, and her enemies on every side ravening for her destruction. It might have been thought that she had been guilty of some enormous crime, instead of the salvation of her country. There was one general cry for her being burnt as a witch; and so fierce was the popular feeling in Paris against her, that a poor woman was actually burnt for merely saying that she believed Joan had been sent by Heaven. She was carried from one dungeon to another, to Beaurevoir, to Arras, to Crotoy, and, finally, to Rouen. There the Bishop of Beauvais, a man devoted to the English interests, claimed to conduct her trial. He was a servile tool of Bedford, through him hoping for preferment; and Bedford had long declared that Joan was "a disciple and limb of the fiend;" and, therefore, the result was quite certain. Her trial was opened on the 13th of February, 1431.
On sixteen different days Joan was brought before the court, and interrogated with all the subtlety of the most celebrated priests, doctors, and lawyers that could be found. There were upwards of a hundred of these grave, learned men arrayed against this simple girl. They tried every means of entrapping her into admissions of the evil agency of her spiritual prompters; but the noble damsel remained calm, clear, and undaunted in her demeanour. It was in vain that they sought to induce her to confess that she had been misled or mistaken: she adhered throughout to her one simple story; maintained her firm opinion that it was God, and God only, who had directed her; and often puzzled and confounded her judges. When they interrogated her as to her attachment to the Church, she reminded them of her constant resort to its altars and services; but she made the fatal confession that when her voices gave different advice she followed them, as of higher authority than the Church.
The court condemned her as an impious heretic and imposter; and the Parliament of Paris and the university, besides various eminent prelates who were consulted, confirmed the justice of the sentence.
The treatment of poor Joan in prison was still more infamous than in open court. When condemned as a heretic to be burned, her cell was haunted by monks and confessors, who described her death to her in the most terrible language, and wearied her with entreaties to confess and escape so frightful a death. A woman's fears at length got the better of her: she consented, and was brought out publicly in the cemetery of St. Ouen, where a friar addressed her before the assembled English and Burgundians, and the crowded citizens of Rouen, describing the enormity of her crimes, and the infamy of her conduct as a woman. Joan bore all this in patience; but when he proceeded to defame the king, her loyalty broke out, and she warmly defended him. Her punishment was commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and to be fed "on the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction."
But this did not satisfy the vengeful longings of her enemies. To her mitigated sentence was attached an oath which she swore, never, on penalty of death, again to assume male attire. This was made a snare for her. During sleep her own garments were taken away, and those of a man put in their place. On awaking, she put on a portion of the only attire left her, and no sooner was that the case, than her guards, who were on the watch, rushed in, and conducted her, thus arrayed, to the officers. On this forced breach of her oath, judgment of death by fire, as a relapsed heretic, was at once pronounced; and on the 30th of May she was brought to the stake in the little market-place, since called the Place de la Pucelle, in memory of her.
When she had been conducted back to her cell, after her second condemnation, she confessed her guilt to God in that she had been weak enough to deny the power by which he had led her to do his will for France. Her "voices" came back to her; she was filled with new courage, and with beautiful visions. When she was brought out, and saw the horrible apparatus of death, her fortitude failed her, and she was led, struggling and sobbing, to the stake. When she saw the fire kindled, she grasped a crucifix, with which she was furnished, convulsively, and called loudly on the Almighty for support, and she was thus seen, when the dense smoke enveloped her, praying fervently to Christ for mercy. Even the austere Cardinal Beaufort, who was present, seated in a gallery opposite, could not bear the scene, but rose hastily and rushed away, with his attendant bishops, in tears.
Thus perished the most pure, noble, and remarkable heroine in history, for the crime of saving her country, ​when little more than twenty years of age. Numbers of her companions, of all ranks, were living when her history was written, who all united in testimony to the purity of her life and the wonder of her deeds. Her ashes were scattered on the Seine; but twenty-five years later, the infamous judgment which had been passed upon her was reversed by the Archbishop of Rheims and the Bishop of Paris. Montaigne saw the house where she was born in 1580, the whole of its front emblazoned with paintings of her history. After the Revolution it was converted into a stable. The infamy of her death rests with imperishable blackness upon all parties who permitted or perpetrated it—French, English, and Burgundians. The very historians who deny her mission are so impressed by her greatness, that they declare that antiquity would have erected altars and statues to her.
Burning of Joan of Arc
Death of Cardinal Beaufort.
​petuous Gloucester and the ambitious Beaufort, paralysing his proceedings and disuniting the nation. The new soul which Joan of Arc had awakened in France was soon visible enough in its effects, and, aided by the growing embarrassments in England, never ceased till it had done what Joan predicted—driven the English entirely out of France.
The ceremony of the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims appearing to give him a more confirmed title to the crown of France in the eyes of the people, Bedford resolved to crown Henry of England also there. Henry was now in his tenth year, a boy amiable but weakly, both in body and mind. He had received the royal unction in Westminster; and from that moment the title of protector was dropped, and that of prime counsellor only given to Gloucester. Both France and England had at this period so completely exhausted themselves by their wars, that it was six months before money could be raised sufficient to defray the expenses of Henry's coronation journey. It was then procured by loan. Gloucester was appointed the king's lieutenant during his absence; and Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester, accompanied him. Henry proceeded to Rouen; but the boast of Bedford that he would crown him in Rheims appeared every day farther from any prospect of accomplishment; and, after eighteen months' abode of the king at Rouen, it was resolved to crown him in Paris. From Pontoise to Paris the youthful king, accompanied by the principal English nobles and 3,000 horse, advanced in state; and great processions of the clergy, the members of Parliament, the magistrates, and citizens came out to meet him. Triumphal arches were erected, and various devices were exhibited, mysteries enacted, and a show of festivity presented; but the whole was hollow. These was no real joy on such a ceremony, which, to the Parisians, was but a mark of subjugation to a foreign yoke. The whole aspect of the affair was English, not French. The Cardinal of Winchester, an English prelate, performed the ceremony; the great officers of state surrounding the throne were English. Not a single prince or pear of France condescended to attend on the occasion—not even Burgundy, the ally of the young monarch. When crowned, there was no loyal desire to retain the monarch amongst them. Henry was evidently not at home there, and, in a few days, went back to Rouen, where he resided a year, and, after a visit to Calais, returned to London.
Meantime, the disposition of the French people to return to the allegiance of their own prince became still more conspicuous in the provinces than in the capital. The atrocious cruelty of the English to their heroine, though it had been passively permitted by the Government, revolted and incensed the people. Everywhere the new spirit which she had evoked showed itself in the greater daring and success of the French generals. Dunois surprised and took Chartres. Lord Willmighby was defeated at St. Celerin-sur-Sarthe. The fair of Caen, the capital of Normandy itself, was pillaged by Do Lore, a French officer; and Dunois, emboldened by his success, even compelled the Duke of Bedford to raise the siege of Lagni.
But, far beyond these petty advantages, every day demonstrated that the unnatural alliance of the Duke of Burgundy with England against his own sovereign was hastening to an end. Nothing but the duke's resentment against Charles for the murder of his father could have led him to this alliance; and nothing but the decided ascendancy of the English could have retained him. in it. That ascendancy was evidently shaken; the English influence was on the wane; the spirit of the French people was rising in bolder form against it; and Charles, who seemed at length to acquire a politic character, made earnest overtures to the duke for reconciliation. Charles did not hesitate to express his deep regret for the death of the duke's father. His envoys pleaded his youth at the time—the overgrown power of those about him—his inability to guide or prevent their actions. He made the most solemn assurances that that base deed had been planned wholly without his knowledge, and was regarded by him with disgust and abhorrence. In proof of his sincerity it was shown that he had dismissed and banished the bloody perpetrator of the deed, Tannegui du Chastel, and all his accomplices, and he offered to make every atonement in his power.
The humiliations and distresses to which Charles had long been subjected had gratified the revenge of Burgundy, and he was now sufficiently cool to perceive as clearly as any one that nothing in reality could be more fatal to his interests than the union of France and England under one crown. The English had already given him more than one cause of offence; he did not forget that Bedford had refused to surrender the government of the Duchy of Orleans to him when it had been given him by the English council. And now, while Charles was assiduously courting him, and he was in this tone of mind, Bedford unluckily added fresh and deep cause of resentment.
Ann of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford, sister of Philip, died at Paris, in November, 1432. Here was snapped a bond of union which, by the judicious endeavours of the duchess, had proved a strong one. In two months after her death, Bedford, who could not plead the impetuosity or thoughtlessness of youth, married Jaquetta of Luxembourg, a vassal of Burgundy, and that without giving the slightest announcement of his intention to the duke. Burgundy felt the proceeding a direct insult to the memory of his sister, and probably Bedford was quite as conscious of the fact, and, therefore, had omitted to communicate his intention to Philip. Philip expressed his resentment in no measured terms, and Bedford retorted with equal indignation. There were numerous individuals at the Burgundian court ready to fan the flame of dissension. The Count of Richemont and the Duke of Brittany had long been striving to carry over Philip to the French side. The Duke of Bourbon, who had also married a sister of Philip, threw his weight most joyfully into the scale.
The Cardinal of Winchester, who, whatever his feuds with Gloucester, had long been giving the most prudent counsel, in the exhausted state of the finances of both countries, to attempt a, peace, now saw with consternation this quarrel, which threatened to throw Burgundy into the arms of Charles, and thus augment immensely the difficulties of England. He hastened to interpose his good offices, and prevailed upon the two incensed princes to consent to a meeting at St. Omer But here ​the old proverb of bringing a horse to water was seen in its full force. Each duke expected that the other should make the first visit. Bedford stood upon his being the son, brother, and uncle to a king, and Philip upon the greatness of his own independent dominions. Neither would condescend to make the first move, and they parted with only increased bitterness. Bedford, in this case, permitted his pride to sway him from his usual prudence, and, though he did not live long, it was long enough to cause him deeply to repent his folly.
The Duke of Burgundy was now quite prepared to reconcile himself to Charles. A point of honour only stood in the way, and diplomacy is never at a loss to get rid of such little obstacles. By the treaty of Troyes he was solemnly sworn never to make peace with Charles without consent of the English. To surmount this difficulty either by establishing an actual peace between the three parties, or by so far putting the English in the wrong as to justify in the eyes of the world a peace without it, it was suggested by his brothers-in-law, Richemont and Bourbon, to endeavour to get up a congress under the mediation of the Pope, as the common friend and father of all Christian princes. Eugenius IV. set himself with alacrity to effect this desirable but difficult work, and prevailed so far as to have a grand congress summoned to meet at Arras, in August, 1435.
To give effect to this assembly, care was taken to render it the most illustrious convocation of princes and diplomatists which Europe had yet seen. The Pontiff sent as his representative the Cardinal of Santa Croce; the Council of Basil, then sitting, also delegated the Cardinal of Cyprus. The Duke of Burgundy, one of the most powerful, and by far the most magnificent prince of the age, came attended by all the nobility of his states. Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester, represented his relative, the King of England, attended by twenty-sis nobles, half English and half French. Charles VII. appointed as his plenipotentiaries the Duke of Bourbon and the Constable Richemont, who were attended by twenty-nine peers and ministers. Besides these there came envoys from Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Sicily, from many of the German and Italian states, and from the cities of Flanders, and of the Hanseatic League.
If the object was to exhibit the hauteur and unreasonableness of England rather than that of showing the enormous difficulties in the way, the stratagem fully succeeded. All Europe, almost, was brought together with much cost and with much parade to note the result, and the feeling would, of consequence, be proportionate. This brilliant gathering of princes and delegates opened their proceedings by a series of fêtes, tournaments, and galas; but even in these the good understanding between the French and Burgundians was so undisguised as to augur no favourable termination of the affairs which brought the congress together. The conference was opened in the Abbey of St. Vaast by the Cardinal of Santa Croce, with the usual lamentations over the horrors of war, and eulogies on the blessings of peace. But when the propositions on both sides came to be laid before the assembly they were found to be wide as the poles asunder. The French plenipotentiaries offered to code Guienne and Normandy to the English, but subject to all the conditions of homage and vassalage. The English, who were not disposed to abate a jot their demands of independent possession of all the lands they now hold in France, were so indignant at what they considered the arrogance of this proposal, that they abruptly refused to submit any counter-proposition of their own, but rose and left the assembly. On this there was a general outcry against the intolerable pride and unreasonableness of the English. The fact was, that the two cardinals, who came openly as mediators, wore in reality the decided partisans of France and Burgundy. Every means was now used to represent the conduct of the English in the most odious light, and a draft of a treaty ready prepared between Burgundy and France was openly produced, considered, and signed on the 21st of September. The English had already left Arras on the 6th.
No sooner was the ratification of this treaty made known, than universal rejoicings took place all over France and Burgundy. On the other hand, the English loaded the Duke of Burgundy with the bitterest reproaches, as a perjured violator of the treaty of Troyes. In London the indignation of the people was so intense that they fell on the Flemings, a numerous body of traders there, because they were subjects of Philip, and cruelly abused and murdered some of them. When Philip sent, pro formâ, a herald to London to announce this treaty, and to apologise for his abandonment of that of Troyes, the council received him with great marks of indignity, and, in studied insult, assigned him his lodgings at a shoemaker's. These violent proceedings were as unworthy of a great country as they were propitious to the cause of Burgundy. His breach of a solemn treaty was notorious; these outrages went to justify him. He had felt the odium of his own movement so much as to obtain from the cardinals, in full assembly of the congress, a solemn absolution from all his oaths to the English. So notorious had been the repeated perjuries of almost all concerned in that new alliance, that the Lord of Lannoy, when it came to his turn to swear, exclaimed, "This is the sixth peace to which I have sworn since the commencement of the war. The others are all broken; but as for this, whatever others do, I declare before God I will observe it."
Charles, on his part, had been compelled not only to implore Philip's forgiveness of the murder of his father, but to surrender to Burgundy all the towns of Picardy lying between the Somme and the Low Countries, with other territories, to be held for life without fealty or homage. The sacrifices of honour and domain had been enough between the parties to lay the foundation for future heart-burnings, had the English but acted with tolerable policy; but their violent conduct tended to draw off a too scrutinising glance from the new allies, and to cement their union. To add to the mischief, Bedford died at Rouen immediately after receiving the news of this disastrous treaty. Bedford had, in the main, been an able and prudent manager of the English affairs in Franco, but he had not been a successful one. Circumstances had fought against him. The distractions of the council at home, and the consequent diminution of his resources, had crippled him. The strange apparition of the Maid of Orleans had set at defiance all human counsels. His horrible execution of that innocent and most meritorious ​damsel had sullied his reputation for humanity, and his haughty conduct to the Duke of Burgundy had equally injured the estimation of his political wisdom. The sudden lending of that old tie, and the power with which it invested France, probably hastened, as it undoubtedly darkened, his end. He was buried on the right hand of the high altar of the Cathedral of Rouen, where his grave yet meets the eye of the English traveller; and the reputation which he won amongst his enemies in France is evidenced by the reply of Louis XL, who was entreated to remove his bones from so honourable a sepulchre:—"I will not war with the remains of a prince who was once a match for your fathers and mine; and who, were he now living, would make the proudest of us tremble. Let his ashes rest in peace, and may the Almighty have mercy on his soul!"
Three days after the signing of the treaty of Arras, died also Isabella of Bavaria, one of the most infamous women who ever figured in history. The deed which united her old ally Burgundy with her own son, whom she hated with a most unnatural hatred, was to her the crowning point of her deserved misfortunes. She left a memory equally abhorred by French and English.
The affairs of England in France demanded the utmost promptitude and address, but this important moment was wasted through the violence of the factions of Gloucester and Beaufort. The cardinal endeavoured to secure the appointment of his nephew Edmund Beaufort, afterwards Duke of Somerset, as regent of France; but the Duke of Gloucester insisted on the choice of Richard, Duke of York, who was finally adopted; but not till six months of most invaluable time had been wasted. Before his arrival the French had profited by the delay to recover Meulon, Pontoise, and other places on the Seine. Richemont had been active in Normandy, exciting the people to revolt, and Dieppe was surprised. The Duke of Burgundy—though his subjects, who had much commerce with England, were averse to a war with that country, and the people of Picardy, who had been made over to him, were in rebellion—still was actively preparing for an attack on Calais. Paris had thrown off the English yoke. The Parisians had always been attached to the Duke of Burgundy, and equally ready to renew their allegiance to Charles. In the night they opened the gates to Lisle Adam and the Count Dunois; threw chains across the streets to prevent the entrance of the English; and the Lord Willoughby, first retreating with his garrison to the Bastile, then made terms to evacuate the city.
The turn which was given to affairs immediately on the arrival of the Duke of York showed what might have been done by a more prompt occupation of his post. The Duke landed in Normandy with 8,000 men. He soon reduced the towns which had revolted or surrendered to the enemy. Talbot defeated a considerable army near Rouen; he retook Pontoise in the midst of a fall of snow by dressing a body of men in white, and concealing them in a ditch. He then advanced to Paris, and carried desolation to its very walls, but failed to take it.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Burgundy had invested Calais. The Duke of Gloucester, with a fleet of 500 sail, and carrying 15,000 men, set out to raise the siege, and landed at Calais on the 2nd of August, 1436. Philip did not wait for this army; he hastily abandoned the siege, or rather his troops—a wretched rabble of militia from Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and other Flemish towns—abandoned him. They had fought too much with the English to venture to fight against them, and, at the first approach of Gloucester, they ran in a wild panic. The contagion became general, and the whole army, men-at-arms, archers, everything, 30,000 in number, decamped with such precipitation as to leave behind them all their artillery, ammunition, and baggage. The Count of Richemont, the Constable of France, who had come to witness the recovery of Calais from the English, was borne away in the rueful flight, to his infinite chagrin. Gloucester, who arrived four days after this disgraceful retreat, made instant pursuit, sending messengers to Philip to beg him to stop, as he had promised, and measure lances with him; but the humbled duke made no halt. The English now rushed furiously into Flanders, plundering town and country, the soldiers making a rich booty, and Gloucester pa3-ing the duke off the old scores incurred by his conduct to Gloucester's quondam wife, Jacqueline of Holland.
On the 3rd of January, 1437, died Queen Catherine, the widow of Henry V. Soon after the death of Catherine's illustrious husband she retired to an obscurity which was scarcely broken during the remaining fifteen years of her life. She had fixed her affections on a handsome yeoman of the guard, Owen Tudor, a Welshman. This fortunate fellow, who thus became the father of a race of England's kings, was originally, it is believed, a common soldier. His father had been one of the followers of Owen Glendower, and he himself was at Azincourt with Henry V., where, for his bravery in repelling the fiery charge of the Duke of Alençon, Henry made him one of the squires of his body. It was in this post, keeping guard at Windsor when Catherine retired there with the infant Henry VI., that he attracted the queen's attention. Spite of his humble origin and condition—for he could not then be worth forty pounds a year, or he must have taken up his knighthood—Catherine, the proud daughter of the kings of France, did not disdain to bestow upon him her favour, and eventually her hand. This marriage was, of course, concealed with all possible care. So completely was this the case, that no proof of it whatever exists, or has been discovered; not even the research of Henry VII., her grandson, with all his boast of royal descent, could obtain it. Yet no doubt whatever seems to have existed of the reality of the marriage. Gloucester, the protector, was highly incensed at this act of Catherine, regarding it as a disgrace to the royal family. It appears clearly that, thought he was aware that the husband of Catherine was a plebeian, he was not aware of his identity, for Tudor continued to reside with the queen till about six months previous to her death.
Tudor and Catherine had four children—a daughter, who died in infancy, and three sons. These sons were torn from her at the instigation of Gloucester; and the queen was forced to seek refuge in the abbey of Bermondsey. After the queen's death, which occurred when she was only thirty-six, and in consequence, it is supposed, of the persecutions and troubles which her marriage brought upon her, Tudor was seized and imprisoned in Newgate, but escaped into Wales; he was again dishonourably seized by Gloucester, notwithstanding a ​conduct from the king, and thrown into the dungeon of Wallingford Castle. Thence he was remanded again to Newgate, whence he once more escaped. He was admitted to some small favour by Henry VI., and made keeper of his parks in Denbigh, Wales; and was finally taken, fighting against him, by Edward IV., and beheaded in the market-place of Hereford. Such is the history of the origin of the royal line of Tudor, corrupted from Theodore, the original family name.
The three sons of Owen Tudor and Catherine were acknowledged and ennobled by Henry VI. The eldest, Edmund, was made Earl of Richmond, married to Margaret Beaufort, the heiress of the house of Somerset, and took precedence of all peers. He died at the early age of twenty, yet left one infant son, afterwards Henry VII. The second son of Catherine, Jasper Tudor, was created Earl of Pembroke. The third son became a monk of Westminster.
In France the English still continued to wage a various war, but not sufficiently brilliant to give interest to a detailed account of it. In 1437 Philip of Burgundy again ventured abroad, and laid siege to Crotoy, at the mouth of the Somme. Talbot marched from Normandy with a small army of 4,000 men. Reaching St. Velery over night, the next morning they plunged into the ford of Blanche-taque, so well known since Edward III. crossed it at Creçy, and attacked its besiegers, who hastily drew off to Abbeville. Talbot ravaged the country round, and returned into Normandy laden with spoil.
In May of this year the Duke of York was recalled, and was succeeded by Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who achieved nothing remarkable, and died at Rouen in less than two years. During his government both England and France were exempt from war, but ravaged by famine and pestilence.
In 1439 the Count of Richemont, the Constable of France, recovered the city of Meaux from Talbot; and Talbot, on his part, accompanied by the Earl of Somerset, besieged Harfleur, and took it after a difficult siege. Talbot was, in fact, at this time, the brave supporter of the English power in France. Two years after this time he raised the siege of Pontoise, which was invested by an army of 12,000 men; but all his valour could not preserve it. In 1442 and 1443 there were some advantages gained by the French in Guienne, and these were counterpoised by greater successes of the English in Maine, Picardy, and Anjou. Both parties were weary of the war, yet neither would recede from its high claims. The Pope from time to time urged the combatants, as Christians, to lay aside their animosities, and make peace; and to this desirable object Isabella, Duchess of Burgundy, a descendant of John of Gaunt, lent her persuasions, and succeeded, by the co-operation of Cardinal Beaufort, in obtaining a cessation of hostilities for an indefinite period. The Duke of Orleans, after a captivity of twenty-five years, was now liberated on condition of paying a ransom of 200,000 crowns by fixed instalments. Returning to France, he added his endeavours to those of the advocates for peace, and a truce was at length signed on the 28th of May, 1444, for two years, and by subsequent treaties it was prolonged till April, 1450. It was high time that some respite was given to the wretched people of France, who for so many years had borne the brunt of these deadly contests. Franco, almost from end to end, was become a scene which defies all description, and almost all imagination. Cardinal Beaufort said that more perished in these wars than there wore now in the two kingdoms. The late famine and plague had depopulated France still further; and the wasted country was infested by bands of thieves, vagabonds, cut-throats of every description, chiefly deserted soldiers, who committed the most horrible crimes.
Henry of England was now in his twenty-fourth year. His character was that of a mild, kind-hearted, and pious youth, but weak; and, like all weak princes, prone to surround himself with favourites. From all the accounts that have reached us it is clear that, as a private man, he would have been a good and happy one; as a king, he was destined to become the dupe of some stronger mind, and the victim of faction. During the whole of his minority, his two powerful kinsmen, the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, had kept up round the throne a fierce contest for pre-eminence. Gloucester was warmtempered but generous, and greatly beloved by the people, who called him the "good Duke Humphrey." He id said to have been better educated than most princes of his time, to have been fond of men of talent, and to have founded one of the first public libraries in England. The cardinal was a man of a more calculating and politic temperament. He was well known to be cherishing the hope of grasping the pontifical tiara. Each of these nobles was in daily strife for the possession of the king's person, and, through it, for the chief power in the realm. The duke was a great advocate for the vigorous prosecution of the war, and pleased the people by advocating au ascendancy over the French. Beaufort was as earnest for peace, and thence his popularity with the Church on the Continent. This feud was brought to a climax in 1439 by the debate on the question of the release of the Duke of Orleans. Gloucester opposed it on the ground that his brother, Henry V., had left it as a solemn command that none of the captives of Azincourt should ever be ransomed. Beaufort advocated it on the plea that Orleans would use his influence in France for peace. Beaufort prevailed, and Gloucester, in chagrin, delivered to the king a list of heavy political charges against the cardinal.
Things were at this pass when a charge of sorcery and high treason was got up against the Duchess of Gloucester. It will be recollected that the Duke had married Eleanor Cobham, the daughter of Lord Reginald Cobham, who had been his mistress. Though he had thus made her his wife, her enemies never forgot the circumstances of the duchess's prior situation. It was kept alive as a source of mortification to the duke. Instead of her legitimate title, they persisted in calling her Dame Eleanor Cobham. She is represented as a bold, ambitious, dissolute, and avaricious woman. That is the portraiture drawn by her enemies, and they did not stop there. The last attack of the duke on the cardinal, which aimed at once, as it seemed, at his life and honour, roused the crafty churchman to a deadly scheme of revenge. He called in that ecclesiastical machinery which in those days could so readily be brought to bear on an object of aversion. He is represented as having spies in the household of Gloucester, who kept strict watch on all proceedings, and who reported to him that the duchess had ​private meetings with one Roger Bolingbroke, a priest, who was a reputed necromancer, and with Marjory Jourdemain, the celebrated witch of Eye. On this fact Beaufort resolved to found a charge which should strike the most cruel blow possible at the domestic peace and honour of Gloucester.
The fact was that Bolingbroke was the duke's chaplain, a man of great science, and especially addicted to astronomy, and its then common accompaniment, astrology, with the casting of nativities and the like. The duke was extremely fond of the society of learned men, and held frequent discourse with his chaplain on the sciences then popular. Suddenly, and immediately following his accusation of the cardinal, he found his wife, to whom he was greatly attached, accused of high treason, "for that she, by sorcery and enchantment, intended to destroy the king, to the intent to advance and to promote her husband to the crown." Bolingbroke was arrested, and being accused of necromancy, he was exhibited on a platform in St. Paul's Churchyard, with the instruments of his art, for he is declared by a writer of the time to have been the most celebrated astronomer and necromancer in the world. He was dressed in a wondrous robe, supposed to be that in which he practised his art, bearing in his right hand a sword, and in his left a sceptre, and seated on a chair on the four corners of which were fixed four swords, and on the points of the swords four images of copper.
On the arrest of Bolingbroke the Duchess of Gloucester, aware of the real direction of the intended blow, took refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster. There she was brought face to face with Bolingbroke, who is made to say that it was at her instigation that he first applied to the study of magic—a very improbable circumstance, the more natural one being that his knowledge of astrology had tempted the duchess to make dangerous inquiries. The inquiries appeared to be these: Henry was a weakly youth, and Gloucester was the next heir to the crown, and she had a woman's curiosity to learn whether the stars could tell the relative terms of the king's and Gloucester's lives, and the consequent prospect of the envied and maligned Dame Eleanor Cobham wearing a crown.
Beside the duchess and Bolingbroke, there were arrested as accomplices, Southwell, a canon of St. Paul's, Hum, a priest, and Marjory Jourdemain, the witch. The duchess was examined in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and charged with having obtained love-philters to secure the affection of her husband. But a much more horrible and absurd charge was that she had procured from Southwell and Bolingbroke a wax figure, which was so moulded by art, that when placed before the fire, as it melted away, the flesh of the king would melt away also, his marrow dry up, and his health fade. Eight-and-twenty such charges were preferred against Dame Eleanor and her companions, some of which she is said to have admitted, but the majority and the worst to have denied; and on such ridiculous pleas she was condemned on three days of the week to walk bareheaded, and bearing a lighted taper in her hand, through the streets of London, and afterwards to be confined for life in the Isle of Man, in the custody of Sir John Stanley. The unfortunate men of science were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. Bolingbroke suffered the sentence, stoutly protesting his innocence, Southwell died in prison; and Hum received a royal pardon. Marjory Jourdemain was burnt as a witch in Smithfield.
As for the duchess, the people, who attributed the whole of this atrocious proceeding to the cardinal and the other enemies of the duke, instead of insulting her in her penance, followed her with deep sympathy and respect, and only the more attached themselves to the duke as the victim of so ruthless a conspiracy. Gloucester himself, prostrated, as it were, by this stunning blow, said little, let it take its course, and brooded over it in secret grief.
At this crisis the marriage of the king was resolved upon. Each party put forth all its energy to secure such a partner as should be likely to incline to its interests, for if the queen should be a woman of ability, she would, with the king's peculiar character, be certain to establish a permanent influence over him; and this circumstance would decide for ever the long contest between them. Gloucester recommended a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, on the ground that Armagnac was the enemy of Charles VII., and, in alliance with England, would add greatly to the strength of the province of Guienne. But no sooner did the proposal reach the ears of Charles than, to prevent so disastrous an occurrence, he invaded the territory of the count, and made him and his family prisoners. The Beaufort party now pressed on their advantage, and strongly represented the benefits to be hoped from the choice of Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of Bene, titular King of Sicily and Jerusalem, and Duke of Anjou, Maine, and Bar. Margaret had a great reputation for beauty and talent. She was said to be one of the most superior women of the age, and besides this, she was cousin to the Queen of France, greatly admired by Charles himself, and generally resident at his court. It was urged that in these circumstances lay the chief hope of an adjustment of the conflicting claims of the two kingdoms and of a substantial peace.
The people from the first marked their dislike of the alliance. They were not fond of French princesses, and Gloucester, who always represented the popular idea, opposed it with all his eloquence. But the Beaufort party carried it against him. The prime mover of the scheme was William da la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk. He was a sworn partisan of Beaufort, with Somerset and Buckingham. He had been residing at the French court, was in high favour there, and there were not wanting rumours of a too familiar intimacy betwixt himself and the proposed queen. Strongly seconded by the Beaufort party in opposition to Gloucester, he was commissioned to negotiate this marriage; and to give him absolute and irresponsible power in the matter, a most singular and unusual guarantee was given by the King, and approved by Parliament, against any future penalties for his proceedings in the matter. Armed with this dangerous and. suspicious document, Suffolk hastened to France, met the Duke of Orleans at Tours, and concluded a truce, during which the question of the marriage might be discussed, and which, if the issue were successful, might terminate in a peace.
The conduct of Suffolk throughout the negotiation was ​such as made it obvious that he had not secured a previous indemnity for nothing. The father of Margaret, though titular King of Sicily and Jerusalem, was in reality a pauper. He did not possess a single foot of land in the countries over which his royal title extended. Maine and Anjou, his hereditary dukedoms, were in the hands of the English. Under these circumstances, the most that could be expected was that England should be willing to receive the princess without a dower. But Suffolk not only waived any claim of dower, but resigned, as a condition of the marriage, the duchies of Maine and Anjou to Margaret's father. This was a direct act of high treason. These duchies were the very keys of Normandy, and their cession highly endangered all the English possessions in France. Nothing but the most consummate folly, or, what was more probable, the blinding influence which the daughter of King Réné already exerted over Suffolk, could have induced him to perpetrate such a deed. This condition appears to have been kept in the background as long as possible. Whether Beaufort had been a party to this disgraceful measure, or whether he was duped himself by Suffolk, does not appear. He was now an old man of eighty, and since his signal vengeance on Gloucester, by the disgrace and punishment of his wife, had retired to his diocese, as if apprehensive that there might come a repayment of the injury from Gloucester or his staunch admirers, the people.
Queen Margaret, From a Tapestry in St. Henry's Hall, Coventry.
Suffolk for his success in this negotiation was created a marquis, he married Margaret as proxy for Henry at Nanci on the 28th of October. 1444. Jousts and tournaments were celebrated by the French court in its joy over this event, from which it expected no ordinary ​. Suffolk does not appear to have been in any haste to return to England with the fair bride; for, though contracted in October, they remained in France all the winter, and only landed at Porchester on the 8th of April, 1445. Great ceremony had been made by the French court on Margaret's departure. The king himself, with a splendid retinue, accompanied her some miles on her way from the city, and separated from her in tears. Her father continued with her to Bar-le-Duc.
On the 22nd of April she was married in Titchfield Abbey to Henry; and on the 30th of May she was crowned with much splendour at Westminster, and very soon showed that she was prepared to exercise to the full her royal authority. The king, charmed with her beauty and address, resigned himself a willing creature into her hands. She formed an immediate and close intimacy with the Beaufort party; her constant counsellors were Somerset, Buckingham, and Suffolk. Suffolk appeared to the people much more the husband of Margaret than Hem-y. One of the first acts of the queen's party was to procure a repeal of the Act of Henry V., that no peace should be made with France without the consent of the three estates of Parliament. They obtained ample supplies, and from both Houses the most profuse thanks to Suffolk for his services in accomplishing this happy union.
The people meantime looked on with grumbling distrust. They told Gloucester that they knew he would have obtained them a better queen. But Gloucester saw that a power hostile to him was now in the ascendant. He had struggled against this match so long as it was of use. He had even represented to Henry during its progress that the Count of Armagnac was once more at liberty, and that nothing now prevented his marriage with his daughter, to whom he was, in fact, affianced. All those things had been duly communicated to Margaret by Gloucester's enemies, who surrounded her; and he was marked for the summary vengeance of that woman, whose soul concealed a fount of haughty passion, pride, and vindictiveness which was ere long to justify the expressive epithet, "the wolf of France," which Shakespeare bestowed upon her.
Probably Gloucester was became well aware of this, for he now carefully avoided any public opposition. He went so far as to join in Parliament in expressing approval of Suffolk's management of the marriage treaty; and he was one of the first to pay his respects to the queen on landing by meeting her at Blackheath with 500 men in livery, and conducting her to his palace at Greenwich, where a banquet awaited her. But the rival party, in conjunction with their new ally, the queen, who could never forgive Gloucester his endeavours to prevent her mounting the throne of England, did not abate their enmity any more on account of Gloucester's quiescence. The cardinal came forth again, and took the lead in the councils. He paid the most marked and flattering court to the queen. He was enormously wealthy, and the king was as notoriously poor. Beaufort supplied the needy court with money; and through the medium of the queen now held the most undisputed power over the king.
All things now concurred to favour a blow which should at once gratify the malice of the queen, the cardinal, and the whole party. By some means they contrived to infuse into the mind of Henry a suspicion of the loyalty of his uncle Gloucester. Probably they might extend to him the charges which they had made to tell so fatally already against his duchess, of a design to make away with the king and usurp the throne. Perhaps the repeated instances in which Gloucester had brought forward the Duke of York, in opposition to the cardinal's party, might be made the instrument of their vengeance. The Duke of York was the claimant of the throne in right of the Earl of Marche, a right superior to the usurped claim of the present line, and which he afterwards asserted. Whatever the cause, or the combination of causes, the destruction of Gloucester was determined. Henry summoned a Parliament to meet, not, as usual, at Westminster, but at Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, where the conspirators would be in the midst of the favourite's retainers. The measures which were adopted were ominous of some serious design. The knights of the shire were ordered to come in arms. The king was conveyed to the town under strong escort, and the men of Suffolk were placed in numerous bodies round the royal lodgings. All the avenues to the town were guarded during the night by pickets of soldiers.
The Duke of Gloucester, clearly suspecting no harm, went from his castle of Devizes to the opening of the Parliament, where everything was conducted with the usual form, and nothing took place at all calculated to excite suspicion. But the next day, the 11th of February, 1447, the Lord Beaumont, Constable of England, attended by the Duke of Buckingham, and several of the peers of Suffolk's party, arrested Gloucester, seizing, at the same time, all his attendants, and consigning them to different prisons. The Suffolk party now openly avowed that Gloucester had formed a scheme to kill the king, to usurp the throne, liberate his duchess, and make her queen. The story was too palpably improbable to receive the slightest credence; it was therefore dropped, and Gloucester remained seventeen days in prison, awaiting his trial.
When summoned, at length, to attend the council, he was found dead in his bed, to the great horror of the king, who was obviously unprepared for such a catastrophe. The body was exposed to the view of the Parliament and the people, to convince them that there had been no violence used. There were no marks of violence, indeed, upon it; but this had no weight with the people, who recollected that such had been the case in the mysteriously sudden deaths of Edward II., Richard II., and of the former unfortunate Duke of Gloucester, who had, under precisely similar circumstances, perished in the prison of Calais in Richard II.'s time. This case was the fac-simile of that; when the prisoner, before in perfect health, was called for by the king, he was found to be dead. Nothing, therefore, could convince the incensed people that their favourite had died naturally, and their undisguised suspicion fell on the cardinal, the queen, and Suffolk. One historian only of the time, Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans, has avowed his belief that the duke died from natural causes, and great weight has been given to his opinion, because he was attached to the duke, and loud in his abuse of his enemies. It is, however, but one opinion against a host; and all the circumstances tend to support the popular belief that Gloucester was murdered, though with great cunning and skill.
​Nothing contributed more to confirm this belief in the public than the unseemly haste with which Suffolk and the queen rushed to seize on the estates and substance of Gloucester, who died without an heir. His duchess was declared incapable of claiming as the duke's widow on account of "her former misgovernment of herself;" and the ample territories of the duke were distributed amongst the creatures of Suffolk. The friends and partisans of Gloucester loudly denounced this shameless proceeding, and never ceased their efforts from year to year till they obtained from Parliament a full declaration of his innocence. Meantime, a number of the attendants of Gloucester were brought to trial by Suffolk, who now was all in all at court, on the charge of plotting the release of the Duchess of Gloucester and the murder of the king, in order to set upon the throne the duke their master. They were condemned to be hanged; but after being tied up, they were immediately cut down again; and before the executioner could quarter them as customary in cases of treason, Suffolk produced the king's pardon, and the miserable half-dead men were allowed to recover. Such barbarity, so far from being regarded as mercy by the people, only added to the horror of these transactions.
The Cardinal Beaufort only survived his great rival six weeks. Every reader recalls the celebrated death-scene of this ambitious prelate as described by Shakespeare—King Henry at his bedside, exclaiming—
"Lord cardinal, if thou think'st on heaven's bliss Hold up thy hand; make signal of thy hope.— He dies, and makes no sign! O God, forgive him!"
The situation and invocation are undoubtedly those of the poet; but they are founded on the wide-spread belief at the time that Beaufort had the blood of Gloucester on his soul. Whether he deserved it or not, he had the odium of it; and though Roman Catholic writers have laudably endeavoured to vindicate his memory, yet Hall, the chronicler, assures us that his chaplain, John Baker, reported that on his deathbed he lamented that money could not purchase life, and that death should overtake him, now that, Gloucester being dead, he might still hope for the papal tiara. So far as concerned the disposition of his wealth, it was noble, being chiefly devoted to public and charitable purposes. He left £4,000—equal to £40,000 now—for the relief of poor prisoners in London. He gave £2,000 to two colleges founded by the king at Eton and Cambridge; and the rest founded the hospital of St. Cross at Winchester, now of immense value. He was buried in the cathedral of Winchester, in the beautiful chantry which still elicits so much admiration from the beholder.
The article in the marriage treaty of the queen, which stipulated for the cession of Anjou and Maine, had been kept as secret as possible during the life of the cardinal; but circumstances now rendered it impossible to keep it longer in the background. The court of France insisted on their surrender. When these demands could be no longer resisted—for Charles prepared to invade the provinces—an order under the hand of the king was sent to Sir Francis Surienne, the Governor of Mans, commanding him to surrender the place to Charles of Anjou. Surienne refused to retire, and the Count Dunois invested the city. Surienne was then compelled to surrender, and the Bishop of Chichester was dispatched from England to give up the whole province, with the exception of Fresnoi. It was stated, however, that the King of England did not cede his right to the sovereignty of those states, but merely their enjoyment by the father and uncle of his wife for their natural lives; and it was promised that the grantees of the English crown should receive from France a sum of money equal to ten years' value of the lands they lost.
The consequences were very speedily seen. Maine was filled with French troops, and the Duke of Somerset, the regent, announced to the council that the three estates of Normandy, encouraged by this change, had refused all supplies, and that unless immediate and effectual assistance were afforded from England, these provinces would all be lost. To make matters worse, Surienne, who had reluctantly surrendered Mans, and was refused by Somerset admittance into Normandy, as a dangerous and insubordinate officer, marched into Brittany, seized the town of Fougéres, repaired the fortifications of Pontorson and St. James de Beuvron, and levied subsistence on the whole province at will. The Duke of Brittany complained to Charles; Charles demanded prompt damages to the amount of 1,600,000 crowns, and instead of truce, which had been concluded for two years, the whole war was opened again.
These transactions occasioned a violent outbreak at home. The Earl of Suffolk was vehemently denounced by the people as a traitor, for the wanton surrender of Maine and Anjou to the French. Suffolk was compelled to demand to be brought face to face with his accusers before the king and council. The demand was granted. Both parties were heard, and, as might have been expected, Suffolk, the favourite of both king and queen, was not only acquitted of all blame, but pronounced to have done effectual service to the state, and all cavillers were silenced by the threat of forfeiture of all offices and privileges which they held under the crown.
The English exchequer was empty, and Charles of France, aware not only of that, but of the miserable feebleness of the Government, put forth all his energies to profit by the opportunity. A striking change seemed to have come over him with the advance of years. As if the wondrous Maid of Orleans had left some of her spirit with him, he now exerted himself, with great industry and sagacity, to repair the evils which so long had afflicted his country. He attacked the corruption of the courts and magistracy; he rigorously reformed the discipline of the army; he set himself to restore order and vigour into the finances; he repressed with a bold hand the factions which had so long raged at court; and he took every means of reviving the arts and protecting and encouraging agriculture. It was with astonishment that those who had seen France a few years before now beheld the prosperity which was springing up, and the strength which was becoming visible.
The Duke of Somerset found himself destitute of money, for the Government at home was poor, and the people discontented; and Charles, putting himself at the head of his troops, fell upon Normandy, while the Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Alençon, and the Count Dunois, marched upon it simultaneously from different points. Wherever the French commanders appeared, the people threw open their gates, showing on which side their hearts lay. Verneuil, Nogent, Chateau-Gaillard, Ponteau ​de Mer, Giaors, Mantes, Vernon, Argentin, Lisieux, Fécamp, Coutances, Belesme, and Pont de l'Arche fell with astonishing rapidity into their hands. The Duke of Somerset, so far from possessing an army capable of taking the field, had not even enough to man the garrisons, or provisions to support them; to such a condition had feuds and mismanagement at home reduced the English affairs on the Continent.
The duke threw himself into Rouen, his sole trust there being in timely relief from England. He quickly found himself surrounded by an army 50,000 strong, led by the king himself. The spirit of revolt was not less active there than in other towns. A number of the citizens, pretending to be desirous to aid in the defence, were permitted to mount guard on the walls, which they at once betrayed into the hands of the French. The valour of Lord Talbot rescued them from that danger, but it was only to delay for awhile the surrender. Somerset capitulated on the 4th of November, 1449, consenting to pay 56,000 francs, and to give up Arques, Tancarville, Caudebec, Honfleur, and other places in High Normandy, and deliver Talbot as one of the hostages, thus depriving the English of the only general capable of rescuing them from their present dilemma. Harfleur made a stouter defence under Sir Thomas Curson, the governor, but was eventually compelled to yield to Dunois.
The indignation of the people in England at these alarming reverses compelled Suffolk to send some forces to Normandy, but in no proportion to the need. Sir Thomas Kyriel landed at Cherbourg with about 3,000 men, and, collecting about as many more, advanced towards Caen, to which the regent Somerset had retreated. But he was met on the way, near Fourmigni, by the Earl of Clermont. He gave battle with the ancient confidence in the superior valour of his countrymen, but after a severe contest of three hours, he was attacked by a second army, under Richemont, the constable, which took him in the flank and rear. The numbers were now utterly overwhelming, independent of the freshness of the new troops, and the surprise. Some of his ranks broke and fled, and others remained fighting hardily till they were cut down or made prisoners. The exultation of the French over this victory was excessive. It was the first which they had won for two generations in the open field, and they spread the tidings all over France with an alacrity which told like lightning. The moral effect was immense. It was clear that the prediction of the inspired maid was drawing near its fulfilment; the English were about to be driven out of France. The terror which had surrounded them—a shadow of death and dismay—was now gone. Avranches, Bayeux, and Valogne immediately opened their gates; the regent was besieged in Caen, and compelled to surrender. Cherbourg alone remained; that was soon after taken, and within twelve months the whole of the beautiful country of Normandy, which had been won by the valour of Henry V., with its seven bishoprics and hundred fortified towns, was lost to England for ever.
Charles VII., encouraged by his success, inspired with over augmenting confidence by the marvellous turn which affairs had taken, no longer appeared the same prince who, before the days of the Maid of Orleans, wasted his years in indolence and vice, surrounded himself by the worst and most ferocious of men, drove from him the able, and disgusted the wise; he was now prompt, active, farseeing, and indefatigable in knitting up the national forces, physical and moral, into an irresistible potency. No sooner was Normandy his own than he turned vigorously upon Guienne, a province far more English in its people and its feelings; a region which had belonged to England from the days of its heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Henry II. But the present miserable condition of England, where a factious nobility were quarrelling, seeking each others' destruction, instead of the good of the nation, and where a feeble king was guided by a self-willed and un-English queen, gave the people of Guienne no hope of effectual aid in their struggle. The mass of the inhabitants was discouraged, and the nobles, fearing to forfeit their estates by opposition to the French invaders, were prepared to submit on the first arrival of the enemy. Charles sent on before him the brave and experienced Count Dunois and the Count Penthièvre; and immediately after the submission of Normandy he followed with a large army. There was no opposition from the castles, the nobles came over to him at once; and the towns only held out till they had stipulated for their charters and privileges. Charles promised everything, and the gates flew open. The English, no longer the proud and insolent race of the days of the Black Prince, retired before the advancing French, and took refuge in Bordeaux. The enemy was not long in following. Castillon, St. Emilion, Libourne, Rions, were successively carried by assault, and now the armies of France were swarming round the walls of Bordeaux, that large and flourishing city, which had witnessed such festive and military magnificence in the proud days of the Edwards, and over whose towers the flag of England had waved for three hundred years. Here the last remains of the ancient lion spirit blazed up. The English commander assembled the troops which had collected thither from the various quarters of the evacuated country, and followed by the mayor and 10,000 citizens, who dreaded the fiscal impositions of the rapacious French court, made a determined sally on the enemy. But they were gallantly received. The Sieur d'Orval with his cavalry charged furiously upon the un-disciplined citizens, who gave way, and carried confusion through the whole body of the soldiery. There was a terrible slaughter, the French made a great number of prisoners, and the English were glad to make good their retreat into the city. There, however, they held out till the advancing winter compelled the enemy to draw off.
At any other period the winter would have been seized upon by the English Government to send out a sufficient army to recover the lost honour of the nation. Bordeaux would, in the days of the Edwards or the last Henry, have been glutted with troops and stores. There would have been a spirit burning through the whole British army, with the ardour of a furnace, to wipe off past disgrace, and snatch fresh honours; but that time and spirit were gone. Imbecility sat enthroned in London, and the reign of England beyond the Channel was over for ever.
The campaign of 1452 was opened with some show of spirit. The people of Guienne, already groaning under the load of taxation which Charles, consulting his necessity rather than his word, had laid upon them—had ​dispatched a deputation to London, entreating that an army might he sent to their relief, and offering to renew their allegiance. The brave Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who had so long fought in France, was sent over with 4,000 men, and his son, Lord Lisle, followed with as many more. Talbot was now eighty years of age, but full of a spirit and activity which seemed to know no decay. He very soon recovered Bordelais and Châtillon. In the spring of 1153 ho opened the campaign by the capture of Fronsac, where the French army, under Loheac and Jalenges, advanced against him, and Count Penthièvre invested Châtillon. Hastening to relieve that town, Talbot fell upon the French lines very early in the morning, and created such confusion that he ordered a general assault on the camp, the entrenchments of which were lined with 300 pieces of cannon. While dashing forward on this formidable battery, his troops were attacked in the rear by another body of French which came up. Talbot had his horse killed under him. His leg was broken in the fall, and he was dispatched with a spear as he lay on the ground. His son fell in the vain endeavour to rescue his father; and the army, on learning the death of its commander, dispersed in every direction. A thousand men, who had already penetrated into the camp, were made prisoners.
Charles, who now arrived, took the command of his victorious army, and led it to the gates of Bordeaux. That city, with Fronsac and Bayonne, still held out; but famine at length compelled them to surrender. Bayonne was the last to yield, but the Count Gaston de Fois besieging it with a large army of Basques and Bearnese, it was compelled to open its gates. And thus, in the autumn of 1453, closed all the English dreams of empire in France, and the possession of the last fragments of the territories which came to us with the Norman conquest, except Calais, and a strip of marshy land around it. In that dream of a century what oceans of blood have been spilled, what crimes and horrors perpetrated! And that was the finale? The predictions of Joan of Arc and of Henry V. had received their full and distinct accomplishment, that in a very few years the English would be driven out of France, and that Henry of Windsor should lose all that his father had acquired. This loss, however, great as it was, was only the beginning of losses to Henry; he had yet to lose everything.
It is not to be supposed that this disgraceful termination of our French dominion, this melancholy antithesis to the glories of Creçy and Azincourt, were borne with indifference by the people of England. With Bedford and Talbot the military genius of the nation seemed to have disappeared. Somerset, who was ambitious of ruling at home, had shown in his character of Regent of France only a faculty for sitting still in fortified towns, so long as the enemy was not very urgent to drive him out. At the head of the Government now stood Suffolk and the queen; and, while their administration afforded no support to our commanders abroad, their folly and despotism at home incensed the whole nation. As loss after loss was proclaimed, the public exasperation had increased. The cession of Maine and Anjou had excited the deepest indignation; but when month after month had brought only news of the invasion of Normandy and the loss of town after town, the whole population appeared stung to madness. Every one was indignantly deploring the fallen glory of England, and demanding vengeance on the minister who had so traitorously relinquished the first firm hold on our French possessions. Suffolk was denounced as the queen's minion, as a man who was so besotted by the charms of a foreign woman as to sacrifice for his pleasure, and to her relations, our fairest inheritance. On his head they plied, not only his fair share of those transactions, but the full odium of the release of the Duke of Orleans, contrary to the solemn injunction of the sagacious Henry V.; the murder of the popular Duke of Gloucester; the deplorable emptiness of the state coffers, and all the consequent defeats and disasters.
To calm the public mind and to take measures for the defence of Normandy, a Parliament was summoned, but scarcely did it meet when the news of the fall of Rouen arrived, adding fresh fury to the popular wrath, and confusion to the counsels of the Government. Stormy debates and altercations continued in Parliament for six weeks, whilst succour should have been dispatched to our army in Normandy. When at length Sir Thomas Kyriel was sent with a small force to relieve Somerset, it was, as we have seen, only to be defeated and dispersed on its very first landing. In the midst of the ever-growing irritation of the people, and the bitterness of the opposition from these causes, the Duke of Suffolk was accused of an attempt to cut off his most formidable enemies by actual assassination. A notorious outlaw, William Tailbois, was discovered lurking near the door of the council chamber, accompanied by several armed ruffians. Lord Cromwell, the leader of the opposition in Parliament and in the council, accused Tailbois of an intention to murder him, and the man was committed to the Tower, and condemned to pay a fine of £3,000 to Lord Cromwell. Suffolk most unwisely defended Tailbois to the utmost of his power, and thus, in public opinion, identified himself with him in the attempt.
Soon after, the Bishop of Chichester, keeper of the privy seal, who had been employed to complete the surrender of Maine to the French, was sent to Portsmouth to pay the soldiers and sailors about to embark for Guienne their then stipulated amount. No sooner did the people hear his name than, crying, "That is the traitor who delivered Maine to the French!" they rose en masse, and seized him. In appealing to them to spare his life, he was reported to have bade the populace reflect that it was not he, but Suffolk, who had sold that province to France; that he himself was but the humble instrument employed to personally deliver what ho had no power to keep; that it was Suffolk who was the traitor, and that he had boasted that he was as powerful in the French as in the English Government.
This explanation did not save the prelate's life, but it raised the fury of the people to the culminating point against Suffolk. They now, in their undiscriminating resentment, not only accused him of what was justly attributable to him, but of all sorts of impossible crimes. He was not only represented as insolent and rapacious, being the open paramour of the queen, and thus keeping the king as a mere puppet in his hands; as having not only murdered Gloucester and seized his possessions; but as having obtained exorbitant grants from the crown, embezzled the public money, perverted justice, screened ​notorious offenders, supported iniquitous causes, and tilled the offices of state with his vilest creatures. The powerful party which prosecuted the revenge of Gloucester's injuries, and now allied itself to the ambitious Duke of York, were the more numerously backed by the nobility, who regarded Suffolk with envy, as a man who, being but the grandson of a merchant, had risen over their heads, and made himself all but monarch.
This universal clamour against him compelled him to rise in his place immediately on the opening of Parliament, and endeavour to defend himself. He alluded to the report, industriously circulated, that he intended to marry his son to a daughter of Somerset, and through that alliance to aspire to the crown. He treated the rumour as most ridiculous, as no doubt it was, reminding the House of the deaths of his father and three brothers in the service of the country, at Azincourt, Jargeau, &c., and of his own long and severe service there. But his appeal had no other result than to induce the Commons to demand that, as on his own showing he lay under suspicions of treason, he should be impeached and committed to the Tower, in order to his trial. They asserted that he had invited the King of France to come over and make himself master of this country, and had furnished the castle of Wallingford with stores and provisions for the purpose of aiding him.
Probably Suffolk had made some such preparation in anticipation of some popular outbreak—an event which ere long took place; but the idea of his deliberate betrayal of his country to France was too absurd for anything but a party cry. It did its work, however. On that ludicrous charge he was committed to the Tower; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had shown himself a servile partisan of Suffolk, and presided at the scandalous trial of Gloucester's wife, surrendered the seals of the chancellorship in trepidation.
The Tower of London
In the course of the trial the Commons appear to have grown sensible of the futility of the bulk of these charges against the favourite, and a month after its commencement concentrated the force of their complaints on the waste and embezzlement of the public revenue, and the odious means to which he had resorted for its replenishment. This was an accusation which would be echoed by every class and person almost in the nation. It was a very sore subject indeed. During the minority of the king, the rapacity of the courtiers bad been, as usual in such cases, unbounded. The king's uncles had been utterly helpless to restrain it. It had crippled the resources for the war, and consequently led to its opprobrious termination. The royal demesnes were dissipated, and there was a debt against the king of £372,000, equal to nearly £4,000,000 of present money. This the Parliament protested that it neither could nor would pay. The consequence of this bankruptcy of the crown was, that all the old horrors and outrages of purveyance, in direct breach of Magna Charta, had been renewed. The country groaned under a system of universal robbery, which the public endured with an impatience and an outcry which menaced revolution; and all these offences were now, as is wont in such impeachments, heaped on the devoted head of Suffolk.
Death of the Earl of Shrewsbury.
​Maine and Anjou, that was not simply his act, but that of the whole council. He spread the majority of the charges in this manner over the whole ministry; the rest he denied, and appealed to the peers around him for their knowledge of the fact that, so far from marrying his son to a daughter of Somerset, he was affianced to a daughter of Warwick.
Whatever was the amount of Suffolk's guilt, the people were resolved to listen to one penalty alone, that of his death; and to prevent him falling under the judgment of Parliament, the king, or rather the queen, acting in his name, adopted a bold and startling expedient. He announced to him, through the lord chancellor, that, as he had not claimed to be tried by his peers, the king would exercise his prerogative, and holding him neither guilty nor innocent of the treasons with which he had been charged, would and did banish him from the kingdom for five years, on the second impeachment, for waste of the revenues. The House of Lords, astonished, at this invasion of their prerogative to try those of their own body, immediately protested that this act of the king should form no precedent in bar of their privileges hereafter. With this the peers contented themselves in their corporate capacity, as some historians have suggested, from a secret compromise between the two parties.
But the ferment out of doors was terrible. The people looked upon the whole as a trick of the court to screen the favourite, and defraud them of the satisfaction of witnessing his just punishment. There was a buzz of indignation from one end of the kingdom to the other. The most inflammatory placards were stuck on the doors of the churches, and the death of the duke was openly sworn. Two thousand people were assembled in St. Giles's to seize him on his discharge; but the intended victim escaped, for that time, the vengeance of the mob falling on his retainers. He got down to his estates in Suffolk, and after assembling the knights and squires of his neighbourhood, and before them swearing on the sacrament that he was innocent of the crimes laid to his charge, and writing a letter to his son which Lingard, the historian, says it is difficult to read without being convinced of his truthfulness, he embarked at Ipswich in a small vessel for Calais. But his enemies had resolved that he should not thus escape them. The Nicholas of the Tower, one of the largest ships of the navy, bore down upon him on his passage, and ordered him to come on board. He was received by the captain as he stepped on deck with the ominous salutation, "Welcome, traitor!" Two nights he was kept on board this vessel, while his capture was announced on shore, and further instructions awaited. It was clear, from a ship of the navy being used, that persons of no common influence were arrayed against him; and after a mock trial by the sailors, he was conducted to near Dover, where a small boat camp alongside with a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner. The duke was lowered into the boat, and there beheaded in a bungling and barbarous manner. His remains were laid on the sands near Dover, and there guarded by the sheriff of Kent, till the king commanded them to be delivered to his widow, who was no other than the granddaughter of Chaucer, the poet. She deposited the body in the collegiate church' of Wingfield, in Suffolk.