defence against the cavalry; but so confident did he feel in the steadiness of his archers, that he ventured to detach from his force two bodies of men-at-arms, who were to creep round the woods and attack the French flank at the critical moment. stand on the defensive. When the battle began, Henry found that the French meant to . The fight. the huge French army. archers advanced, and planted them in the ground, and quietly sent their deadly arrows among the crowd of standing Frenchmen. Soon the dying men and struggling horses threw the first division into confusion, and then the English, slinging their bows behind them, rushed sword in hand upon the struggling mass. The first division was utterly routed, and forced to fall back on the second. A similar manœuvre discomfited that too, and then the English, confident of victory, marched to attack the third. At that moment a cry was raised that they were being attacked in the rear. The alarm was false, but the mistake was not discovered till orders had been given to kill the prisoners, lest they should take advantage of the danger to turn upon their captors. Then the third line was attacked, and a charge in flank completed its destruction. battle. The constable of France and the Count of Alençon were killed, the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon were taken prisoners. Overjoyed at their success, the English lost no time in Result of the marching to Calais and returning to England. Henry was received with tumultuous rejoicings, and Parliament, forgetting the importance of controlling the purse, voted him in gratitude a tax on wool and leather, not for a fixed time, but for life. of France. The next year Henry entered into a formal alliance with John, Duke of Burgundy, who since the battle of Agincourt New invasion had had the chief power in France, and in 1417 he again invaded Normandy. The Norman towns fell fast before him, and in 1419 Rouen, the capital, was taken. Hitherto the Murder of the Danger now made the French factions unite. queen, with her daughter Katharine, had been on the side of the Burgundians, and Charles, the dauphin, on that of the Orleanists; but hopes were now entertained that a reconciliation might be effected, Accordingly, a Treaty of meeting was arranged between the Duke of Burgundy and the dauphin at the bridge of Montereau-sur-Yonne. There a dreadful crime was committed, for the followers of the dauphin, pressing into the wooden cage reserved for the conference, murdered the duke. This crime was a gross blunder, for the duke's son Philip and the French queen threw themselves into the arms of the English, and an agreement was made that Henry should marry Katharine, and become King of France on the death of Charles. In the mean time he was to act as Regent of the realm, and levy war on the dauphin. This arrangement, made in 1420, is known as the treaty of Troyes. Henry at once married Katharine, and was received in Paris as heir to the throne, and then returned to England, leaving his brother Clarence to manage affairs in France. Troyes. Meanwhile the dauphin had gathered to his standard the forces of the south of France, where the Armagnacs, as the Orleanists are Alliance of the often called, were strongest; and called to his aid the Scots, who, as was usual during this war, invaded the north of England, and also sent troops to France. Clarence was foolish enough to attempt to surprise French and the allied army by leaving his archers behind and rapidly marching with men-at-arms only to Beaugé. There he met with a severe defeat, and was himself killed, in 1421. To repair this disaster Henry hurried back from England and besieged Meaux, a strong fortress near Paris. This he took after a Death of great effort, in 1421. The same year a son was born to him at Windsor; but before Henry could return, an attack of dysentery, then the scourge of armies, put an end to his life, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the ninth of his reign. Henry. Henry V.'s character has been much praised. There is no question that he was a great warrior and an able man; but he was terribly severe to the Lollards, and his ambition cost England many lives and much misery. A chronicler says of him, "He had been of high and great courage, valiant in arms, prudent, sage, great in justice, who without respect of persons did right for small and great. He was feared and revered of his relations, subjects, and neighbours." CHAPTER III. HENRY VI., 1422-[dethroned] 1461 (39 years), [died] 1471. Chief Characters of the Reign.-John, Duke of Bedford; Humphrey, for the minority of the king. Bedford's alliance. The late king wished the regency of France to be held by the Duke of Burgundy; but that prince declined it, and the post fell to the lot of Bedford. John, Duke of Bedford, was a man of noble character. He was thoroughly disinterested, and, though he was not as brilliant as the late king, he combined Henry's solid talents with some of the nobleness of character which distinguished the Black Prince. His first care was to secure the English dominions from attack. The English territory north of the Loire was something in the form of a wedge driven from the sea-coast into the centre of France, and having its point at Paris. To secure the sides of this wedge, Bedford drew close his alliance with Burgundy in the east and Brittany in the west, and, to strengthen the union, he and Arthur of Richemont, the brother of the Duke of Brittany, married sisters of the Duke of Burgundy. Two battles secured his communication with these allies. Crevant, in 1423, drove the French out of the district between Paris and Crevant and Burgundy, and Verneuil, in 1424, cleared the district Verneuil. between Paris and Brittany, so that the French were forced to confine themselves to the lands south of the river Loire. To deprive the French of Scottish aid, James, King of Scotland, was released and sent home with an English wife, Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt. (See p. 152). Folly of Gloucester. cause. Unfortunately, the imbecile Charles VI. died in 1422, very soon after Henry, and this deprived the English of the pretence of being the allies of the French king, and made the dauphin, now Charles VII., the rightful champion of the French A worse blow still was struck at the English power by the folly of the Duke of Gloucester. That nobleman married Jacqueline of Hainault, the divorced wife of a relation of the Duke of Burgundy. She had extensive lands in the Netherlands, to which the Duke of Burgundy hoped to succeed; and as Gloucester tried to push his wife's claims by arms, the Duke of Burgundy's friendship for England naturally cooled. At home, too, Gloucester caused trouble by quarrelling with his uncle Beaufort, and Bedford had to come over to England to arrange their differences. The old difficulties which had caused the loss of France in the time of Edward III. now began to tell upon the English. Men and Siege of money were more difficult to get, while the French Orleans. had given up their feudal armies and had hired professional soldiers, after the English fashion. The great want of the French was enthusiasm and belief in their own power, and this was supplied as follows. In 1428 Bedford decided to lay siege to Orleans. This town lies on the north bank of the river Loire, and, therefore, acted as a gate by which the French might at any time enter the English territory. In the siege the English were unlucky from the first. One of their best generals, the Earl of Salisbury, was killed by a cannon-shot while he was examining the defences, and though at Rouvray Sir John Fastolf cleverly beat off a party of French who attacked a convoy of herrings under his charge, the siege made slow progress. Just at this moment there arrived in Charles's camp a peasant girl of Domremy, Jeanne Darc, who was filled with a generous Jeanne Darc. enthusiasm for her country, and assured Charles that, if she were allowed to lead the soldiers, she would raise the siege and conduct him in triumph to be crowned at Rheims, like all the French kings before him. The appearance of Jeanne gave just the spark of enthusiasm that was needed; the French under her were a match for the English, and drove them from Orleans. The Earl of Suffolk was captured at Jargeau; Sir John Talbot was defeated and taken at Patay; and within the year Charles VII. was crowned at Rheims. The effort, however, died away; the Maid of Orleans was captured and burnt as a heretic, and seven years elapsed before the French made any further progress in their efforts to rid themselves of the invaders. At home the most important event of the time was the passing of an act of Parliament, in 1430, to restrict the right of voting for knights of the shire to persons possessing freeholds in the shire to the value of forty shillings a year. By this act all copyholders and villeins were disfranchised, and the forty-shilling freeholders were the only voters for the counties till the Reform Bill of 1832. The fortyshilling freeholders. Burgundy. Unfortunately, in 1433 Bedford himself made a great mistake. His Burgundian wife died, and he very soon afterwards married Jacquetta of Luxemburg, the sister of the Count of Quarrel with St. Pol. The lands of this nobleman lay between the possessions of Burgundy and those of France, and he was in the habit of playing off one against the other; the consequence was that the Duke of Burgundy became estranged from Bedford, and prepared to go over to the side of Charles VII. To make matters worse, Bedford's health declined, and he was less able to conduct the difficult struggle. Under these circumstances, in 1435 the pope arranged a congress at Arras to try and bring about peace. Most of the European states sent ambassadors, and the Duke of Burgundy secretly agreed that, if the English did not accept the French terms, he would take up arms against them. The French offered to give the English Normandy and Guienne in exchange for Death of their claim on the French crown. These terms were refused. Burgundy joined the French, and at the same moment Bedford, worn out by overwork and disappointment, died at Rouen. Bedford was succeeded by Richard, Duke of York, son of the Bedford. |