Chapter VII: The Betrayal of the Kingdom (2)

On Thursday, the 24th of October, the English having passed Blangy learned that the French were close at hand, and thought they were about to attack them. The men-at-arms dismounted from horseback, and all of them kneeling down, and lifting up their hands to heaven, prayed to God to take them into his keeping. Nothing, however, took place as yet, the constable not having reached the French army. The English proceeded to quarter themselves at Maisoncelle, still nearer to Agincourt. Henry V disencumbered himself of his prisoners, saying to them, “If your masters survive, you will present yourself again at Calais.”

At last, they discovered the huge French army, its fires and its banners. There were, according to the estimate of the eye-witness, Lefebvre de St. Rémy,[j] fourteen thousand men-at-arms, in all perhaps fifty thousand men; thrice the number of the English. The latter had eleven or twelve thousand men remaining of the fifteen thousand that had marched from Harfleur, ten thousand of them at least being archers.

The Welshman, David Gam, the first who brought word to the king of the enemy’s presence, being asked how many men the French might have, is said to have replied, “Enough to be killed, enough to be taken prisoners, enough to fly.” An Englishman, Sir Walter Hungerford, could not forbear from observing that it would not have been amiss to have brought ten thousand more stout archers; there were as many in England who would have desired no better. But the king replied peremptorily, “Now in our Lord’s name, I would not have one man more. The number we have is that which he has willed; these folks place their confidence in their multitude, and I in him who so often gave victory to Judas Maccabæus.”

The English having still a night at their disposal, employed it usefully in making their preparations, and providing as well as possible for both body and soul. First, they rolled up the banners for fear of the rain, and took off and folded up the handsome coats of arms they had put on for the fight. Then in order to pass the cold October night in comfort, they opened their baggage and laid straw under them, which they procured from the neighbouring villages. The men-at-arms fitted the rivets of their armour, the archers applied fresh strings to their bows. They had for several days employed themselves in cutting and sharpening the stakes which they usually planted before them to stop the advance of cavalry. Amidst all their preparations for victory, these brave men did not forget their souls’ weal, but set their accounts in order with God and their consciences. They confessed hastily, those at least whom the priests could attend, and all this was done without noise, in whispers. The king had commanded silence, under penalty of forfeiture of their horses for the gentlemen, and of loss of the right ear for those of lower degree.

It was otherwise on the French side, where the time was spent in making knights. In every direction there were great fires which showed everything to the enemy; a confused din of people shouting and calling to each other; a bustling mob of valets and pages. Many gentlemen passed the night on horseback in their heavy armour, no doubt to avoid soiling it in the deep mud, which with the cold rain chilled them to the bones.

MICHELET’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (OCTOBER 25TH, 1415)

On the morning of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian’s day, October 25th, 1415, the king of England heard three masses, bareheaded, but otherwise in full armour. “For it was his custom,” says John de Vaurin,[k] “to hear three masses each day, one after the other.” He then put on a magnificent helmet with an imperial gold crown. He rode without spurs on a gray palfrey, and made his men advance over a field of green corn, where the ground was less spoiled by the rain, the whole army forming one body, with the few lances he had in the centre, flanked by bodies of archers. He then rode slowly along the line, speaking a few brief sentences: “You have a good cause; I am come but to demand my right. Remember that you belong to old England; that your kindred, your wives and children are awaiting you there; see that you return to them with good cheer. The kings of England have always fared well in France. Look to the honour of the crown; look to yourselves. The French say they will cut off three fingers from each archer’s hand.”

(The dotted line indicates a doubtful part of the route.)]

The ground was in so bad a condition that no one was disposed to attack. The king of England parleyed with the French, offering to renounce the title of king of France, and to surrender back Harfleur, provided he were given Guienne, with some few convenient additions, Ponthieu, a daughter of the king, and 800,000 crowns. While this parleying between the two armies was going on the English archers were securing their stakes.

The two armies formed a strange mutual contrast. On the French side were three enormous squadrons, like so many forests of lances, following each other in lengthened file through the narrow plain; at their head the constable, the princes, the dukes of Orleans, Bar, and Alençon, the counts of Nevers, Eu, Richemont, and Vendôme, a multitude of lords, a dazzling iris of enamelled armour, escutcheons, banners, the horses fantastically disguised in steel and gold. The French, too, had archers, men of the commonalty; but where were they to be placed? Every post was numbered, and no one would give up his own; these men would have been a blot upon so noble an assemblage. There were cannon, but it does not appear that they were made use of; probably there was no place for them either.

The English army did not look handsome. The archers had no armour, often no shoes; for headpieces they had sorry caps of boiled leather, or even of willow with a crosspiece of iron; the axes and hatchets stuck in their belts gave them the appearance of carpenters. Many of these good workmen had taken off their breeches, in order to be at their ease and to work the better. It is a strange, incredible, and yet certain fact, that the French army really could not stir either to fight or to fly. The rear alone escaped.

At the decisive moment, when old Thomas of Erpingham, having drawn up the English army, threw his truncheon into the air, crying out, “Now strike!” and when the English had replied with a shout from ten thousand throats, the French army, to their great astonishment, still remained motionless. Horses and riders, all appeared enchanted, or dead in their steel cases. The fact was that the big war horses, loaded with their heavy riders and their steel caparisons, had sunk deep in the stiff soil, had become firmly fixed there, and only struggled out to advance slowly a few paces. Such is the acknowledgment of the English chroniclers; a modest acknowledgment, which does honour to their probity.

Lefebvre,[j] John de Vaurin[k] and Walsingham[m] expressly say that the field was nothing but viscid mud. “The place was soft and cut up by the horses, so that it was with great difficulty they could drag their feet out of the ground. The French were so loaded with harness that they could not advance. They had long and very weighty coats of mail, hanging below the knees; below these they had leg harness, and above them plate harness, and, moreover, helmets of proof. They were so much crowded together that they could not lift their arms to strike an enemy, except some of them in the front.”

Another historian of the English side, Titus Livy,[l] informs us that the French were drawn up thirty-two deep, whilst the English were ranged in but four ranks. This enormous depth of the French served no purpose; their thirty-two ranks consisted wholly, or almost so, of cavalry; the majority of whom, far from being able to act, did not even see the engagement; whereas every man of the English was efficient. Of the fifty thousand French, two or three thousand only could fight against the eleven thousand English, or at least might have done so if their horses could have extricated themselves from the mud.

To rouse those inert masses, the English archers discharged volleys of ten thousand arrows with extreme rapidity and pertinacity at their faces. The iron-clad horsemen stooped their heads, otherwise the arrows would have entered through their visors. Then, from the two wings of Tramecourt and Agincourt, two French squadrons began with much spurring to execute a clumsy charge, led by two excellent men-at-arms, Messire Clignet de Brabant and Messire William de Saveuse. The first squadron, advancing from Tramecourt, was unexpectedly taken in flank by a body of archers concealed in the woods; neither squadron reached the enemy.

Of twelve hundred men who began this charge, there remained not more than 120 when they came up with the English palisades. Most of them had fallen in the mud by the way, men and horses. Would to God that all had so fallen; but the others, whose horses were wounded, could no longer control the frantic animals, which rushed desperately back on the French ranks. The vanguard, far from being able to open and let them pass, was, as we have seen, so closely packed together that not a man could move. We may imagine the frightful accidents that took place in that dense mass, the horses wild with terror, backing and smothering each other, flinging off their riders, or crushing them under their armour as the iron masses clashed together. Then came the English to complete the havoc. Coming out from their line of stakes, and throwing down their bows and arrows, they advanced quite at their ease with axes, hatchets, heavy swords, and leaded clubs, to demolish that confused mountain of men and horses. In process of time they succeeded in clearing away the vanguard, and made their way, with the king at their head, to the second line of battle.

It was perhaps at this moment that eighteen French gentlemen made a dash at the king of England. They had made a vow, it was said, to die or bring down his crown; one of them struck off a point from it; all perished in the attempt. This _on dit_ is not enough for the historians, who further adorn the tale, and convert it into a Homeric scene, in which the king fights over the body of his wounded brother, like Achilles over that of Patroclus. Then it is the duke of Alençon, commander of the French army, who kills the duke of York and cleaves the king’s crown. Being speedily surrounded, he yields; Henry holds out his hand to him; but he was already slain.[33] What is more certain is that the duke of Brabant arrived in haste at the second stage of the engagement. He was the duke of Burgundy’s own brother, and seems to have sought the field to clear the honour of his family. He arrived very late, but time enough to die. The brave prince had left all his men behind him, and had not even put on his coat of arms: instead of which he took his banner, made a hole in it, passed his head through it, and charged the English, who slew him instantly.

There remained but the rearguard, which soon dispersed. A great number of cavaliers, dismounted, but raised up again by their servants, had made their way out of the throng of battle and surrendered to the English. At this moment, word was brought the king that a French corps was pillaging his baggage; and at the same time he saw some Bretons or Gascons in the French rear, that seemed about to return to the charge against him. He was alarmed for the moment, especially as he saw his men embarrassed with so many prisoners, and instantly ordered every man to kill his captive. Not one obeyed; those soldiers without shoes or breeches, who held the greatest lords of France in their hands, and thought they had made their fortunes, were now ordered to ruin themselves. As they refused to comply, the king appointed two hundred men to act as executioners. “It was a sad spectacle,” says Lefebvre,[j] “to see those poor disarmed wretches, who had just received promise of quarter, slaughtered in cold blood, cut and hewed, head and face!” The alarm was groundless. It was only some pillagers of the neighbourhood, people of Agincourt, who, in spite of their master, the duke of Burgundy, had taken advantage of the opportunity. The battle being ended, the archers made haste to strip the slain, whilst they were yet warm. Many were dragged forth alive from beneath the corpses; among others, the duke of Orleans. Next day the victor, on his departure, killed, or made prisoners, all that remained alive.[34] “It was a piteous sight to see the great nobles who had there been slain, and who were already stark naked, like those who were born of men of no account.” An English priest was not less affected by the spectacle. “If this sight,” he says, “excited pity and compunction in us, who were strangers, and but passed through the country, how great was the sorrow for the native inhabitants. Oh, may the French nation come to peace and union with the English, and depart from its iniquities and its evil ways!” Sternness then prevails over compassion, and he subjoins: “Meanwhile, let his grief be turned upon his head.”

The English lost 1,600 men; the French 10,000, almost all gentlemen, 120 lords having banners. The list fills six large pages in Monstrelet, beginning with seven princes (Brabant, Nevers, D’Albret, Alençon, the three De Bar); then come lords without number, Dampierre, Vaudemont, Marle, Roussy, Salm, Dammartin, etc., the bailiffs of Vermandois, Mâcon, Sens, Senlis, Caen, and Meaux, and Montaigu, the brave archbishop of Sens, who fought like a lion.[35]

The duke of Burgundy’s son bestowed the charity of a grave on all the dead that lay naked on the field of battle. Twenty-five square rods of ground were measured out, and in that huge pit were laid all the bodies that had not been carried away, fifty-eight hundred men by the tale. The ground was consecrated, and a thick thorn hedge was planted round it, for fear of the wolves. There were but fifteen hundred prisoners, including the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the counts d’Eu, de Vendôme, and de Richelieu, the marshal de Boucicaut, Messire James d’Harcourt, Messire John de Craon, etc.[p]

MASSACRE OF THE ARMAGNACS IN PARIS (1418 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1415-1418 A.D.]]

With this rich capture, Henry hastened to re-embark at Calais. His army, reduced to ten thousand men, was unable to consider any further enterprise. The duke of Burgundy had taken no part whatever in the battle of Agincourt;[36] it was his enemies that brought about that shameful defeat. If he had made haste, he might have entered Paris as its master. D’Armagnac, the new constable and successor of D’Albret, showed more promptitude; he took possession of the capital, of the king and the dauphin his son, who was still a minor; that is to say, of the entire government. To recall a little popularity to the side of the party he showed a praiseworthy activity, borrowing ships from the Genoese, raising troops in France, and besieging Harfleur (1416). But funds were lacking and he fell back on the great resource of the times, debasement of money and false loans.

John the Fearless was always the patron of the poor. Paris murmured, and John the Fearless, to increase the fermentation, prevented the arrival of provisions in the city. He succeeded in carrying off Queen Isabella from Tours and having her declared regent. He forbade the cities, in his name, to pay the taxes imposed by D’Armagnac, and he entered into negotiations with the English (1417).

The latter had now returned. Henry V had taken Caen (1417), and like a conqueror who is sure of himself had divided his army into four divisions, the more quickly to accomplish his purpose. What, in fact, did he have to fear? The dukes of Brittany, Anjou, and Burgundy had signed treaties of neutrality with him. D’Armagnac could do nothing, for he was reduced to “borrowing from the saints,” in melting their shrines, with the people of his party fast abandoning him because they were not paid enough; it was necessary to protect Paris with the Parisians who hated and betrayed him.

One Perrinet Leclerc, iron merchant on the Petit Pont, had charge of the small gate at St. Germain. “His son,” says Monstrelet, “and some reckless young companions, who formerly had been punished for their escapades,” plotted to deliver the city over to the Burgundians. On the night of May 29th, 1418, Perrinet entered his father’s chamber while the old man slept and stole the keys from under the pillow. The sire de l’Isle-Adam informed in advance, was on the other side of the moat. He entered with eight hundred men, and the former partisans of the faction, the butchers, the slaughterers--all the people of the market flocked around him. Some Armagnacs tried to escape, taking the dauphin with them; but the greater part including the constable were thrown into prison, where their lives were soon in peril. The mob, which in 1413 had made its first appearance, reappeared on the scene in 1418 exasperated and furious with misery and uneasiness. Provisions failed and Paris was threatened with famine at the same time that ugly rumours circulated in the crowd; the Armagnacs were coming to assail such a gate, such a faubourg; the English, another. The cause of these misfortunes, they cried on every side, were those Armagnacs they had in their keeping. Vengeance must be had upon them and an end put to their schemes.

Sunday the 12th of June, 1418, the mob got under way and rushed to the prisons, Hôtel-de-Ville, Temple, St. Éloi, St. Magloire, St. Martin, and the Grand and Petit Châtelet, to murder indiscriminately everyone they found there. Armagnacs or not, by Monday morning sixteen hundred people had perished, killed in the prisons and streets. Their bodies were left there and “bad children played with them and dragged them about.” With that of the constable they amused themselves by raising a large strip of skin “to represent the white scarf of Armagnac.”

THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY MASTER OF PARIS (1418 A.D.)

These dreadful occurrences had just taken place when John the Fearless returned with the queen to Paris, amidst the enthusiastic acclaims of the crowd, who believed he brought peace and abundance with him. Vain hope! Neither one nor the other was to come from the duke of Burgundy, but on the contrary to all preceding misfortunes there was added an epidemic which carried off in Paris and its environs fifty thousand persons. Again the fury of the mob became uncontrollable and wrought its vengeance on the wretched beings that had been overlooked in the prisons or sent there since June. The 31st of August an immense assemblage formed itself under the orders of the hangman Capeluche, and set out for the prisons. The duke of Burgundy hastened after them imploringly, and even went so far as to press the hand of Capeluche, but in vain. A new massacre took place. Some days after the duke sent the bloodthirsty mob after some Armagnacs, shut up, as he said, in Montlhéry, and as soon as they were gone he shut the gates of Paris behind them and had Capeluche beheaded.[b]

In becoming master of Paris, the duke of Burgundy had succeeded to all the embarrassments of the constable D’Armagnac. He had now in his turn to rule the great city, victual and maintain it, which could only be done by keeping the Armagnacs and the English at a distance--that is to say, by making war, re-establishing the taxes he had suppressed, and losing his popularity.

The equivocal part he had so long played, accusing others of treachery, while he himself was betraying his country, was now to come to a close. As the English were ascending the Seine and menacing Paris, he had no alternative but to forego his hold on the capital, or to give them battle. But by his eternal tergiversation and duplicity, he had enervated his own party, and was now powerless alike for peace or war.

The people of Rouen and Paris, who had chosen him for their leader, were Burgundians, indeed, and foes to the Armagnacs, but still more foes to the English. They were astonished, in their simplicity, to see that their good duke did nothing against the enemy of the kingdom. His warmest partisans began to say, as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] relates, that “he was, in all his proceedings, the slowest man that could be found.” The Armagnacs possessed the whole centre, Sens, Moret, Crécy, Compiègne, Montlhéry, a girdle of towns round Paris, Meaux, and Melun; that is to say, Marne and Haute Seine. The duke sent to Rouen all the forces he could spare without leaving Paris unprotected, namely, four thousand horse.

It had long been foreseen that Rouen would be invested. Henry V had approached it with extreme slowness. Not content with having two great English colonies in his rear, Harfleur and Caen, he had completed the conquest of lower Normandy by the capture of Falaise, Vire, St. Lô, Constance, and Évreux. He kept possession of the Seine, not only by Harfleur, but also by Pont de l’Arche. He had already re-established some degree of order, reassured the clergy, and invited the absentees to return, promising them support in case of their compliance, and declaring that otherwise he would dispose of their lands or their benefices. He reopened the exchequer and the other tribunals, and appointed his grand treasurer of Normandy supreme president over them. He reduced the tax on salt to almost nothing, “in honour,” says Rymer,[r] “of the Holy Virgin.”

SIEGE OF ROUEN (1418-1419 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1418-1419 A.D.]]

There were in Rouen fifteen thousand foot-soldiers and four thousand horse, in all, perhaps, sixty thousand souls--a whole people to feed. Henry, knowing he had nothing to fear, either from the dispersed Armagnacs, or from the duke of Burgundy, who had just besought of him another truce for Flanders, did not hesitate to divide his army into eight or nine bodies, so as to embrace the vast compass of Rouen. These bodies communicated with each other by means of trenches, which protected them from shot; whilst in the direction of the open country they were defended from a surprise by deep ditches set with thorns. He was prepared for an obstinate resistance, but his anticipation was surpassed. There was a strong Cabochian leaven in Rouen. Alain Blanchard, the chief of the arblast men, and the other Rouennese leaders, seem to have been connected with the Carmelite Pavilly, the Parisian orator of 1413. The Pavilly of Rouen was the canon Delivet. These men defended Rouen for seven months.

The king of England, thinking to terrify the inhabitants, had gibbets erected all round the town, and hanged the prisoners on them. He barred the Seine, too, with a wooden bridge, chains, and barges, so that nothing could pass. The Rouennese seemed reduced to extremities at an early period of the siege, and yet they held out six months longer; it was a miracle. They ate up the horses, dogs, and cats. When these were gone, those who could anywhere find a morsel of food, however filthy, took good care not to let it be seen; a thousand greedy wretches would otherwise have seized upon it. The most horrible necessity that befell the town was that of expelling all who could not fight, twelve thousand old men, women, and children. The piteous crowd presented themselves before the English intrenchments, and were received at the sword’s point. Repulsed alike by their friends and their enemies, they remained between the camp and the town, in the ditch, without any other food than the weeds they plucked. There they passed the whole winter, with nothing between them and the sky.

Meanwhile, the duke of Burgundy was beginning to put himself in motion. First, he went to Paris from St. Denis, where he made the king go through the solemn mockery of displaying the oriflamme, to remain a long while at Pontoise, and again a long while at Beauvais. There he received another message from Rouen by a man who had risked his life to convey it. It was the voice of an expiring town, and said merely that fifty thousand men had died of famine in Rouen and its environs. The duke of Burgundy was touched by this sad tale, and promised succour; then having got rid of the messenger, and feeling assured that he should hear no more of Rouen, he turned his back on Normandy, and took the king to Provins.

A surrender was then inevitable; but the king of England, desirous of making an example on account of so long a resistance, wished to have the inhabitants at his mercy. The Rouennese, who well knew what was the mercy of Henry V, resolved to undermine a wall, and to pass out that way by night with arms in their hands, trusting in God’s grace. The king and the bishops reconsidered the matter, and the archbishop of Canterbury personally offered the besieged the following terms of capitulation: (1) their lives to be spared, five men excepted (those of the five who were rich, or churchmen, got themselves out of the difficulty, and Alain Blanchard paid for all; the English were bent on an execution, in order to ratify the principle that the resistance had been rebellion against the lawful king); (2) for the same reason, Henry insured to the town all the privileges which the kings of France, his ancestors, had granted to it, “before the usurpation of Philip of Valois”; (3) it had to pay a tremendous fine--300,000 gold crowns--one-half before the end of January (it was already the 19th of that month), the other half in February, 1419. To squeeze all that from a depopulated, ruined town was no easy matter.

HENRY AND JOHN THE FEARLESS (1419 A.D.)

The king of England being occupied with the task of organising the country he had conquered, granted a truce to the two French parties, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. He felt it necessary to refit his army; and, above all, to collect money and discharge his debts to the bishops, who had lent him funds for his long expedition.

Henry was so far from apprehending danger from the dauphin, that he was not afraid to displease the duke of Burgundy. The latter sought an interview with him, and proposed to him a marriage with a daughter of Charles VI, with Guienne and Normandy for a dower; but Henry required also Brittany as a dependence of Normandy, besides Maine, Anjou, and Touraine.

But the duke of Burgundy had about him persons who besought him to treat with them. They were followers of the dauphin, Barbazan, and Tannegui Duchâtel, the commanders of his troops. It was full time France should become self-reconciled, when her ruin was so imminent. The parliament of Paris, and that of Poitiers, laboured equally to that end; so, too, did the queen, who talked, wept, and found means to move his hardened soul.

On the 11th of July was beheld, at the bridge of Pouilly, this singular spectacle: the duke of Burgundy surrounded by the old servants of the duke of Orleans, and by the brothers and kinsmen of the Agincourt prisoners, and of the victims butchered in Paris. Of his own accord he knelt before the dauphin. A treaty of amity and mutual aid was signed and submitted to by both parties. But on the 29th of July, less than three weeks after the signing of the treaty, the Burgundian garrison of Pontoise, near Paris, suffered themselves to be surprised by the English; the inhabitants fled to Paris, which they filled with consternation, and this augmented when, on the 30th, the duke of Burgundy, carrying away the king from Paris to Troyes, passed beneath the walls of the capital, without making any other provision for the defence of the distracted Parisians than naming his nephew, a boy of fifteen, captain of the town.

[Sidenote: [1419-1420 A.D.]]

Seeing all this, the dauphin’s followers believed, rightly or wrongly, that the duke had a secret understanding with the English, and his servants told him, it is alleged, that he would perish in an interview which the dauphin sought with him. The dauphin’s people had set about erecting on the bridge of Montereau the gallery in which it was to take place; a long, tortuous wooden gallery, without any barrier in the middle, contrary to the custom always observed in that suspicious age. In spite of all this he persisted in his resolution to meet the dauphin; such was the wish of Dame de Giac, who never quitted him.

As the duke did not come in time, Tannegui Duchâtel went to fetch him. The duke hesitated no longer, but slapped him on the shoulder, saying: “Here is the man I trust in.” Duchâtel made him hasten his pace, for the dauphin, he said, was waiting. In this way he separated him from his suite, so that he entered the gallery along with none but the sire de Noailles, brother of the captal de Buch, who was in the service of the English, and had just taken Pontoise. Neither of them came out alive (September 10th, 1419).

The altercation which took place is variously related. Tannegui Duchâtel, however, averred that he had not struck the duke. Others boasted that they had done so. One of them, Le Bouteiller, said: “I said to the duke of Burgundy: ‘Thou didst cut off the hand of the duke of Orleans, my master; I am going to cut off thine.’” However little worthy of regret was the duke of Burgundy, his death did the dauphin immense mischief. John the Fearless and his party had both fallen very low, and in a little time there would have been no more avowed Burgundians. Everyone was beginning to despise and hate him; but from the moment he was killed all were again Burgundians.

THE TREATY OF TROYES (1420 A.D.)

We must not suppose that Paris easily admitted the foreigner, but extreme lassitude and inexpressible suffering made everyone only too happy to find a pretext for a settlement with Henry. Each man exaggerated to himself his feelings of pity and indignation. The shame of calling in the stranger was veiled by a fair show of just vengeance; but the real fact was that Paris yielded, because it was perishing of hunger. The queen yielded, because, after all, if her son was not to be king, her daughter, at least, would be queen. The duke of Burgundy’s son, Philip the Good, was the only person who acted sincerely; he had his father’s death to avenge. But he, too, doubtless, thought to find his advantage in the new order of things; the Burgundy branch would thrive by the ruin of the elder branch, by placing on the throne a stranger, who would never have more than one foot on the continent, and who, if he were wise, would govern France through the duke of Burgundy.

Paris then left the Burgundians, who again possessed full authority in the town, to do as they thought fit. Young Saint-Pol, nephew to the duke of Burgundy, and captain of Paris, was sent, in November, to the king of England, with Maître Eustace Aloy, “in the name of the city, the clergy, and the commune.” He received them extremely well, declaring that he desired nothing but the independent possession of what he had conquered, and the hand of the princess Catherine; and he said graciously: “Am I not myself of the blood royal of France? If I become the king’s son-in-law, I will defend him against all men living.” He obtained more than he demanded. His ambassadors, encouraged by the inclinations of the new duke of Burgundy, asserted their master’s right to the crown of France, and that right the duke acknowledged. The king of England had spent three years in conquering Normandy; the death of John the Fearless seemed to give him France in one day.

The treaty concluded at Troyes, May 20th, 1420, in the name of Charles VI, secured to the king of England the hand of the daughter of the king of France, and the reversion of the kingdom: “It is agreed that immediately after our decease the crown and realm of France shall remain and be perpetually to our said son King Henry and his heirs. The faculty and exercise of governing and ordering the public affairs of the said realm shall be and remain, during our life, to our said son King Henry, with the counsel of the nobles and sages of the said realm. During our life the letters pertaining to matters of justice shall be written and shall proceed under our name and seal; nevertheless, for as much as extraordinary cases may occur, it shall be competent to our son to write his letters to our subjects, wherein he shall order, prohibit, and command, on our behalf, and on his own, as regent.” After this, was not the subsequent article a mockery? “All conquests which shall be made by our said son king, over the disobedient, shall be and shall be made to our profit.”

This monstrous treaty concluded worthily with these lines, in which the king proclaimed the dishonour of his family, the father proscribed his son: “Considering the enormous crimes and misdemeanours perpetrated upon the said realm of France by Charles, styling himself (_soi-disant_) dauphin of Viennois, it is agreed that we, our said son the king, and also our very dear son Philip, duke of Burgundy, will in no wise treat concerning peace or concord with the said Charles, nor will we treat by ourselves or others, except with the consent and counsel of all and each of us three, and of the three estates of the two realms aforesaid.”

The mother received prompt payment for the shameful phrase, _soi-disant dauphin_. Isabella immediately had 2,000 francs a month assigned to her, payable out of the mint at Troyes. For this price she denied her son, and gave up her daughter. The English took from the king of France, at one stroke, both his kingdom and his child. The poor girl was forced to wed a master, and brought him for dower her brother’s ruin.[p]

HENRY’S STRUGGLE WITH THE DAUPHIN (1420-1422 A.D.)

Such was the tenor of the Treaty of Troyes, so glorious to Henry, yet so impracticable of accomplishment, that it must be doubted whether there was any sincerity in the French signers of it. To be avenged of the dauphin, and to crush him by the assistance of England, was evidently the foremost thought, the first desire. But it is scarcely credible that the duke of Burgundy looked forward to continuing, after the accomplishment of his vengeance, the faithful vassal of the house of Lancaster. The arrangement of one king governing the two countries was plainly impracticable. And that Henry himself could have entertained it only shows how the most vigorous intellects may allow their perspicacity and sense to be clouded by success and superstition. He was well aware that his new position could only be preserved by force of arms. On the occasion of his marriage with the princess Catherine, which took place on June 2nd, the knights of both countries were for celebrating the event by a tournament. But he forbade the rival combat, and told those who proposed it to join him in the siege of Sens, where they might exercise their prowess against the Armagnacs. Sens made but a trifling resistance.[h] Next, this implacable hunter of men hurried to Montereau, and not being able to reduce the castle, he had his prisoners hanged by the ditch sides.

With all his impetuosity he was forced to have patience before Melun, where the brave Barbazan detained him many months. The king of England, employing all the means of which he could avail himself, took Charles VI and the two queens to the siege, presenting himself as the son-in-law of the king of France, speaking in his father-in-law’s name, and using his wife as a bait and a snare. All these clever devices were ineffectual. The besieged resisted valiantly; obstinate conflicts took place round the walls, and beneath them, in the mines and countermines, and Henry did not spare his own person. At last, however, provisions failed, and the garrison were constrained to surrender. Henry, according to his custom, accepted the capitulation, and put to death several citizens, all the Scotchmen who were in the place, and even two monks.

During the siege he had got the Burgundians to deliver up to him Paris and the four fortresses, Vincennes, the Bastille, the Louvre, and the Tour de Nesle. He made his entry in December, riding between the king of France and the duke of Burgundy. The latter was dressed in mourning, in token of grief and vengeance, perhaps also from a feeling of shame for the unworthy part he played in thus introducing the foreigner. The king of England was accompanied by his brothers, the dukes of Clarence and Bedford, the duke of Exeter, the earl of Warwick, and all his lords. The king of England was well received in Paris. He entered into formal possession as regent of France, by assembling the estates on the 6th of December, 1420, and making them sanction the Treaty of Troyes.

[Sidenote: [1420-1421 A.D.]]

That the son-in-law might be sure of inheriting, it was necessary that the son should be proscribed. The duke of Burgundy and his mother presented themselves before the king of France, sitting as judge in the Hôtel St. Pol, to make “great plaint and clamour of the piteous death of the late duke John of Burgundy.” The king of England was seated on the same bench as the king of France. Messire Nicholas Raulin demanded in the name of the duke of Burgundy and his mother that Charles, styling himself dauphin, Tannegui Duchâtel, and all the murderers of the duke of Burgundy, should be carted through the streets, with torches in their hands, to make _amende honorable_. The king’s advocate spoke to the same effect, and the university supported the demand. The king authorised the prosecution, and Charles was cried and cited at the Marble Table, to appear within three days before the parliament. He did not put in an appearance and was condemned by default, sentenced to banishment, and stripped of all right to the crown of France (January 3rd, 1421).

The cumbrous and devouring army which Henry brought with him was but too necessary to him. His brother Clarence was defeated and killed, with two or three thousand English, in Anjou (battle of Baugé, March 23rd, 1421). In the north even the count d’Harcourt had taken up arms against the English, and was overrunning Picardy. Saintrailles and La Hire were advancing by forced marches to combine with him. All the men of family were gradually going over to the side of Charles VII, to the party that made bold expeditions and adventurous forays. The peasants, it is true, who were the sufferers by these pillaging exploits, would in the long run declare for a master who could and would protect them.

The ferocity of the old Armagnac marauders was of service to Henry’s cause. He did a popular thing in besieging Meaux, the captain of which town, the bastard De Vaurus, a sort of ogre, had filled the country round with indescribable terror. But as the bastard and his men expected no mercy, they defended themselves with desperate determination. They detained the English the whole winter, eight long months, before Meaux, till cold, want, and pestilence consumed that fine army. The siege began on the 6th of October, and on the 18th of December, Henry, who already saw his forces diminishing, wrote urgently for fresh soldiers to Germany and Portugal. Englishmen were probably more costly to him than those foreigners. To induce the German mercenaries to take service with him rather than with the dauphin, he caused them to be told, among other things, that he would pay them in better coin.

He could not reckon on the duke of Burgundy. That prince appeared for a short while at the siege of Meaux, but soon withdrew, under pretence of going into Burgundy, and obliging the towns in his duchy to accept the Treaty of Troyes. Henry had good reason to believe that the duke himself had secretly instigated their resistance to a treaty which annulled the contingent rights of the house of Burgundy to the crown, as well as those of the dauphin, the duke of Orleans, and all the French princes. And why had young Philip made such a sacrifice to the friendship of the English? Because he thought he needed their aid to avenge his father and beat his enemy. But it was much rather they who had need of him. Fortune had forsaken them. Whilst the duke of Clarence was getting himself beaten in Anjou, the duke of Burgundy had been brilliantly successful in Picardy, where he had come up with the dauphin’s partisans, Saintrailles and Gamaches, before they could form a junction with d’Harcourt, and had defeated and made them prisoners.

[Sidenote: [1421-1422 A.D.]]

During that interminable siege of Meaux, whilst Henry was seeing his fine army dissolving away around him, word was brought him that the queen had been delivered of a boy at Windsor Castle. He evinced no joy, and comparing his own destiny with that of the child, he said, with prophetic sadness: “Henry of Monmouth will have had a short reign and will have conquered much; Henry of Windsor will reign long and will lose all. God’s will be done!”

Henry was still young, but he had toiled much in this world, his time for rest was come; he had never had any since his birth. He was attacked, after his winter campaign, with an acute irritation of the bowels, a malady very common in those days. Being warned by the physicians that his end was at hand, he commended his son to his brothers, and gave them two wise counsels; first, to conciliate the duke of Burgundy, and secondly, in any treaty that might be made, to manage always so as to keep Normandy.

He died at Vincennes on the 31st of August, 1422; Charles VI followed him on the 21st of October. The people of Paris shed tears for their poor mad king as freely as the English for their victorious Henry V. “The whole people,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[q] “were in the streets weeping and crying, as if each had lost the friend he most loved. Truly, their lamentations were like those of the prophet, ‘_Quomodô sedet sola civitas plena populo!_’ The petty folk of Paris cried, ‘Oh, most dear prince, never shall we have one so good! Never shall we see thee more! Cursed be death! We shall never have aught but war since thou hast left us. Thou art gone to rest; we remain in tribulation and sorrow.’”

Charles VI was carried to St. Denis, “poorly accompanied for a king of France. There were only his chamberlain, his chancellor, his confessor, and some subordinate officers.” One prince only attended the funeral, and that was the duke of Bedford. When the corpse was lowered into the grave, the ushers-at-arms broke their wands and threw them into the grave, and reversed their maces. Then Berri, king-at-arms of France, cried out, over the grave, “May it please God to have mercy on the soul of the very high and very excellent prince Charles, king of France, sixth of the name, our natural and sovereign lord.”[p] And then he added, “God grant long life to Henry, by the grace of God, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord.” About the same time at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, in Berri, some French knights unfurled the royal banner, crying, “Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God, king of France.”[b]

WOES OF THE PEOPLE--THE _DANSE MACABRE_

[Sidenote: [1418-1424 A.D.]]

After having spoken of the death of the king, we must mention that of the people. From 1418 to 1422, the depopulation was frightful. The history of those dismal years runs in a murderous circle; war leads to famine, famine to pestilence, and pestilence again brings round famine. It is like that night of the Exodus, in which the angel passes and repasses, touching each house with the sword.

When men have come to that pass they weep no more; there is an end to tears, or there mingle even with tears gleams of hellish joy and savage laughter. It was the most tragical characteristic of the times that in the gloomiest moments there were alternations of frantic gaiety. The beginning of that long series of evils, “of that woeful dance,” as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] says, was the madness of Charles VI, and contemporaneously therewith the too famous masquerade of the satyrs, the piously burlesque mysteries, and the _basoche_ farces.[37]

The year in which the duke of Orleans was murdered was distinguished by the organisation of the corporation of minstrels. That corporation, quite indispensable of course in so joyous a period, became important and respected. Treaties of peace were cried through the streets with a mighty strumming of violins; hardly any six months passed in which a peace was not cried and sung. The eldest son of Charles VI, the first dauphin, was an indefatigable player on the harp and the spinet. He had a great staff of musicians; and in addition to these, he used to call in the aid of the choir-boys of Notre Dame. He sang, danced, and “balled” (_balait_), night and day, and that even in the year of the Cabochians, whilst they were killing his friends. He killed himself, too, by dint of singing and dancing.

It seems an ascertained fact that in the fourteenth century dancing became involuntary and maniacal in many countries. The violent processions of the Flagellants set the first example. The great epidemics, and the terrible and lasting shock they gave to the nerves of the survivors, easily gave occasion to St. Vitus’ dance. These phenomena are, as we know, contagious. The spectacle of the convulsions acted with so much the more force, as there was nothing in men’s souls but convulsion and vertigo; and then the sick and the hale danced together promiscuously. They would catch each other violently by the hand, in the streets and the churches, and foot it round in a ring. Many a one who at first laughed at this sight, or looked on coldly, became at last bewildered, his head reeled, and he, too, reeled and danced with the rest. The rings went on multiplying, interlacing; they became bigger and bigger, more and more heady, fast, and furious, as though they were huge coiling reptiles, that momently swelled to view. There was no stopping the monster, but its joints might be lopped; the electric chain was broken by one falling with feet and fists on some one of the dancers. The rude dissonance interrupting the harmony, they found themselves free, otherwise they would have gone on reeling until utterly exhausted, and have danced themselves to death.

This phenomenon of the fourteenth century does not occur again in the fifteenth; but in the latter we find, in England, France, and Germany, a strange amusement, which reminds us of those great popular dances of the sick and dying. It was called the dance of the dead, or _danse macabre_. It was a great favourite with the English, who introduced it into France.

The spectacle of the dance of the dead was enacted in Paris in 1424, in the cemetery of the Innocents. That narrow space in which the enormous city for so many ages accumulated the remains of almost all its inhabitants had been at first both a cemetery and a laystall, haunted at night by robbers, and in the evening by wantons, who plied their trade among the tombs. Philip Augustus enclosed it with walls, and to purify it dedicated it to St. Innocent, a child crucified by the Jews. In the fourteenth century the churches were already very full, and it became the fashion among the good citizens to bury their dead in the cemetery. Such was the suitable theatre of the _danse macabre_. It was begun in September, 1424, when the heat had diminished, and the first rain had rendered the smell of the place less offensive. The performances lasted many months.

Whatever disgust both the place and the spectacle might inspire, it was matter suggestive of much thought to see in that fatal period, in a town so frequently and so cruelly visited by death, the hungry, sickly, scarce living multitude, merrily making death itself a matter of spectacle, attending with insatiable avidity to its moralising buffooneries, and enjoying them so heartily as to tread heedlessly upon the bones of their fathers, and on the gaping graves they were themselves about to fill.[p]

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE

[Sidenote: [1414-1424 A.D.]]

A very different phase of life which demands at least a passing notice is that which clustered about the wonderful University of Paris.[a] As early as the thirteenth century, the university shone in all its glory. Born in the shadow of the cloister of the bishopric, and primarily confounded with the ancient cathedral college of the town, it had obtained, little by little, immunities and privileges by favour of which it had grown and had reached a point where it was dependent upon no one but the court of Rome. Among the popes who conferred the most important privileges may be cited Alexander III, Innocent III, and his successor Honorius III, all promoters of the progress of knowledge, all jealously seeking to retain for the church that superiority of studies and learning to which its power was bound. The University of Paris rose rapidly above the universities of Italy, the only ones with which it was then in serious rivalry. It became the most important ecclesiastical and scientific college of Europe, the school whence the high clergy of France was recruited, as well as that of a large part of Christianity. It belonged to the church by its creation, by its studies in which theology predominated, and by its object, which was to prepare the learned candidates for the obtention of livings. For all its rights it depended on the holy see, which subjected it to visits and regulations. Meanwhile it formed in the bosom of the church itself a vast corporation (_universitas_), governing itself by its own laws with an extended liberty.

It was divided into four faculties: arts or philosophy which comprised nearly all the known sciences; theology; decree or canonical law; and medicine. The faculty of arts had a particular celebrity; it is to it that the capital of France owes its appellation of the Modern Athens. The faculty of theology was not less celebrated after the lectures of Roscellinus and Abelard. That of law was incomplete, since civil law, which restored to honour the work of the great Italian jurists, was taught in Paris only subsidiarily. It even ceased to exist at the beginning of the year 1220, although the laws of Justinian had found able interpreters in France as well as in Italy. The decree of the pope, Honorius III, to suppress its instruction in Paris, had probably its entire concentration in the college of Boulogne for an object. In any case, that suppression was only for a time, and a little later at Orleans a special university was founded, called the University of Law. As to the study and profession of medicine, it is well known that in the Middle Ages it was a prerogative of the religious orders almost exclusively.

Each faculty held special assemblies, in which the masters and graduates had deliberative voice. The four faculties met once a year to elect their rector, the formulæ of which elections, determined with infinite care, in order to guarantee liberty of vote and prevent intrigue, presented a great analogy to the election of a pope. Thus the University of Paris possessed a liberal government, with a regular hierarchy, where degrees conferred powers, and where superior intelligence ruled.

The pope gave it its highest protection. He made the rules of study, intervened in disputes with the civil authorities. The principal ecclesiastical privilege of the University of Paris was that of being dependent on no bishop, and having its own jurisdiction. Its members could not be excommunicated except by the court of Rome.[g]