Chapter XXIII: The Hundred Years' War--Charles VI. and the Dukes of (4)

Of the twenty-eight articles in this treaty, five contained its essential points and fixed its character: 1st. The King of France, Charles VI., gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to Henry V., King of England. 2d. "Our son, King Henry, shall place no hinderance or trouble in the way of our holding and possessing as long as we live, and as at the present time, the crown, the kingly dignity of France, and all the revenues, proceeds, and profits which are attached thereto for the maintenance of our state and the charges of the kingdom. 3d. It is agreed that immediately after our death, and from that time forward, the crown and kingdom of France, with all their rights and appurtenances, shall belong perpetually and shall be continued to our son King Henry and his heirs. 4th. Whereas we are, at most times, prevented from advising by ourselves and from taking part in the disposal of the affairs of our kingdom, the power and the practice of governing and ordering the commonweal shall belong and shall be continued, during our life, to our son King Henry, with the counsel of the nobles and sages of the kingdom who shall obey us and shall desire the honor and advantage of the said kingdom. 5th. Our son King Henry shall strive with all his might, and as soon as possible, to bring back to their obedience to us, all and each of the towns, cities, castles, places, districts, and persons in our kingdom that belong to the party commonly called of the _dauphin_ or Armagnac."

This substitution, in the near future, of an English for the French kingship; this relinquishment, in the present, of the government of France to the hands of an English prince nominated to become before long her king; this authority given to the English prince to prosecute in France, against the _dauphin_ of France, a civil war; this complete abdication of all the rights and duties of the kingship, of paternity and of national independence; and, to sum up all in one word, this anti-French state-stroke accomplished by a king of France, with the co-operation of him who was the greatest amongst French lords, to the advantage of a foreign sovereign--there was surely in this enough to excite the most ardent and most legitimate national feelings. They did not show themselves promptly or with a blaze. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after so many military and civil troubles, had great weaknesses and deep-seated corruption in mind and character. Nevertheless the revulsion against the treaty of Troyes was real and serious, even in the very heart of the party attached to the Duke of Burgundy. He was obliged to lay upon several of his servants formal injunctions to swear to this peace, which seemed to them treason. He had great difficulty in winning John of Luxembourg and his brother Louis, Bishop of Therouenne, over to it. "It is your will," said they; "we will take this oath; but if we do, we will keep it to the hour of death." Many less powerful lords, who had lived a long while in the household of Duke John the Fearless, quitted his son, and sorrowfully returned to their own homes. They were treated as Armagnacs, but they persisted in calling themselves good and loyal Frenchmen. In the duchy of Burgundy the majority of the towns refused to take the oath to the King of England. The most decisive and the most helpful proof of this awakening of national feeling was the ease experienced by the _dauphin_, who was one day to be Charles VII., in maintaining the war which, after the treaty of Troyes, was, in his father's and his mother's name, made upon him by the King of England and the Duke of Burgundy. This war lasted more than three years. Several towns, amongst others, Melun, Crotoy, Meaux, and St. Riquier, offered an obstinate resistance to the attacks of the English and Burgundians. On the 23d of March, 1421, the _dauphin_'s troops, commanded by Sire de la Fayette, gained a signal victory over those of Henry V., whose brother, the Duke of Clarence, was killed in action. It was in Perche, Anjou, Maine, on the banks of the Loire, and in Southern France, that the _dauphin_ found most of his enterprising and devoted partisans. The sojourn made by Henry V. at Paris, in December, 1420, with his wife, Queen Catherine, King Charles VI., Queen Isabel, and the Duke of Burgundy, was not, in spite of galas and acclamations, a substantial and durable success for him. His dignified but haughty manners did not please the French; and he either could not or would not render them more easy and amiable, even with men of note who were necessary to him. Marshal Isle-Adam one day went to see him in camp on war-business. The king considered that he did not present himself with sufficient ceremony. "Isle-Adam," said he, "is that the robe of a marshal of France?" "Sir, I had this whity-gray robe made to come hither by water aboard of Seine-boats." "Ha!" said the king, "look you a prince in the face when you speak to him?" "Sir, it is the custom in France, that when one man speaks to another, of whatever rank and puissance that other may be, he passes for a sorry fellow, and but little honorable, if he dares not look him in the face." "It is not our fashion," said the king; and the subject dropped there. A popular poet of the time, Alan Chattier, constituted himself censor of the moral corruption and interpreter of the patriotic paroxysms caused by the cold and harsh supremacy of this unbending foreigner, who set himself up for king of France, and had not one feeling in sympathy with the French. Alan Chartier's _Quadriloge invectif_ is a lively and sometimes eloquent allegory, in which France personified implores her three children, the clergy, the chivalry, and the people, to forget their own quarrels and unite to save their mother whilst saving themselves; and this political pamphlet getting spread about amongst the provinces did good service to the national cause against the foreign conqueror. An event more powerful than any human eloquence occurred to give the _dauphin_ and his partisans earlier hopes. Towards the end of August, 1422, Henry V. fell ill; and, too stout-hearted to delude himself as to his condition, he thought no longer of anything but preparing himself for death. He had himself removed to Vincennes, called his councillors about him, and gave them his last royal instructions. "I leave you the government of France," said he to his brother, the Duke of Bedford, "unless our brother of Burgundy have a mind to undertake it; for, above all things, I conjure you not to have any dissension with him. If that should happen God preserve you from it! --the affairs of this kingdom, which seem well advanced for us, would become bad." As soon as he had done with politics he bade his doctors tell him how long he had still to live. One of them knelt down before his bed and said, "Sir, be thinking of your soul; it seemeth to us that, saving the divine mercy, you have not more than two hours." The king summoned his confessor with the priests, and asked to have recited to him the penitential psalms. When they came to the twentieth versicle of the _Miserere,--Ut oedificentur muri Hierusalem_ (that the walls of Jerusalem may be built up),--He made them stop. "Ah!" said he, "if God had been pleased to let me live out my time, I would, after putting an end to the war in France, reducing the _dauphin_ to submission or driving him out of the kingdom in which I would have established a sound peace, have gone to conquer Jerusalem. The wars I have undertaken have had the approval of all the proper men and of the most holy personages; I commenced them and have prosecuted them without offence to God or peril to my soul." These were his last words. The chanting of the psalms was resumed around him, and he expired on the 31st of August, 1422, at the age of thirty-four. A great soul and a great king; but a great example also of the boundless errors which may be fallen into by the greatest men when they pursue with arrogant confidence their own views, forgetting the laws of justice and the rights of other men.

On the 22d of October, 1422, less than two months after the death of Henry V., Charles VI., King of France, died at Paris in the forty-third year of his reign. As soon as he had been buried at St. Denis, the Duke of Bedford, regent of France according to the will of Henry V., caused a herald to proclaim, "Long live Henry of Lancaster, King of England and of France!" The people's voice made very different proclamation. It had always been said that the public evils proceeded from the state of illness into which the unhappy King Charles had fallen. The goodness he had given glimpses of in his lucid intervals had made him an object of tender pity. Some weeks yet before his death, when he had entered Paris again, the inhabitants, in the midst of their sufferings and under the harsh government of the English, had seen with joy their poor mad king coming back amongst them, and had greeted him with thousand-fold shouts of "Noel!" His body lay in state for three days, with the face uncovered, in a hall of the hostel of St. Paul, and the multitude went thither to pray for him, saying, "Ah! dear prince, never shall we have any so good as thou Wert; never shall we see thee more. Accursed be thy death! Since thou dost leave us, we shall never have aught but wars and troubles. As for thee, thou goest to thy rest; as for us, we remain in tribulation and sorrow. We seem made to fall into the same distress as the children of Israel during the captivity in Babylon."

The people's instinct was at the same time right and wrong. France had yet many evil days to go through and cruel trials to endure; she was, however, to be saved at last; Charles VI. was to be followed by Charles VII. and Joan of Arc.