That proud and wicked French nobility
who dragged their country to destruction, and who
were every day and every year regarded with deeper
hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French
people, learnt nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt.
So far from uniting against the common enemy, they
became, among themselves, more violent, more bloody,
and more false if that were possible than
they had been before. The Count of Armagnac persuaded
the French king to plunder of her treasures Queen
Isabella of Bavaria, and to make her a prisoner.
She, who had hitherto been the bitter enemy of the
Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge.
He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed
herself Regent of France, and made him her lieutenant.
The Armagnac party were at that time possessed of
Paris; but, one of the gates of the city being secretly
opened on a certain night to a party of the duke’s
men, they got into Paris, threw into the prisons all
the Armagnacs upon whom they could lay their
hands, and, a few nights afterwards, with the aid
of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the
prisons open, and killed them all. The former
Dauphin was now dead, and the King’s third son
bore the title. Him, in the height of this murderous
scene, a French knight hurried out of bed, wrapped
in a sheet, and bore away to Poitiers. So, when
the revengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered
Paris in triumph after the slaughter of their enemies,
the Dauphin was proclaimed at Poitiers as the real
Regent.
King Henry had not been idle since
his victory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave
attempt of the French to recover Harfleur; had gradually
conquered a great part of Normandy; and, at this crisis
of affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after
a siege of half a year. This great loss so alarmed
the French, that the Duke of Burgundy proposed that
a meeting to treat of peace should be held between
the French and the English kings in a plain by the
river Seine. On the appointed day, King Henry
appeared there, with his two brothers, Clarence and
Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate
French King, being more mad than usual that day, could
not come; but the Queen came, and with her the Princess
Catherine: who was a very lovely creature, and
who made a real impression on King Henry, now that
he saw her for the first time. This was the most
important circumstance that arose out of the meeting.
As if it were impossible for a French
nobleman of that time to be true to his word of honour
in anything, Henry discovered that the Duke of Burgundy
was, at that very moment, in secret treaty with the
Dauphin; and he therefore abandoned the negotiation.
The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin,
each of whom with the best reason distrusted the other
as a noble ruffian surrounded by a party of noble
ruffians, were rather at a loss how to proceed after
this; but, at length they agreed to meet, on a bridge
over the river Yonne, where it was arranged that there
should be two strong gates put up, with an empty space
between them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should
come into that space by one gate, with ten men only;
and that the Dauphin should come into that space by
the other gate, also with ten men, and no more.
So far the Dauphin kept his word,
but no farther. When the Duke of Burgundy was
on his knee before him in the act of speaking, one
of the Dauphin’s noble ruffians cut the said
duke down with a small axe, and others speedily finished
him.
It was in vain for the Dauphin to
pretend that this base murder was not done with his
consent; it was too bad, even for France, and caused
a general horror. The duke’s heir hastened
to make a treaty with King Henry, and the French Queen
engaged that her husband should consent to it, whatever
it was. Henry made peace, on condition of receiving
the Princess Catherine in marriage, and being made
Regent of France during the rest of the King’s
lifetime, and succeeding to the French crown at his
death. He was soon married to the beautiful Princess,
and took her proudly home to England, where she was
crowned with great honour and glory.
This peace was called the Perpetual
Peace; we shall soon see how long it lasted.
It gave great satisfaction to the French people, although
they were so poor and miserable, that, at the time
of the celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers
of them were dying with starvation, on the dunghills
in the streets of Paris. There was some resistance
on the part of the Dauphin in some few parts of France,
but King Henry beat it all down.
And now, with his great possessions
in France secured, and his beautiful wife to cheer
him, and a son born to give him greater happiness,
all appeared bright before him. But, in the
fulness of his triumph and the height of his power,
Death came upon him, and his day was done. When
he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he could
not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke
serenely to those who wept around his bed. His
wife and child, he said, he left to the loving care
of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and his other
faithful nobles. He gave them his advice that
England should establish a friendship with the new
Duke of Burgundy, and offer him the regency of France;
that it should not set free the royal princes who
had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel
might arise with France, England should never make
peace without holding Normandy. Then, he laid
down his head, and asked the attendant priests to
chant the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn
sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand
four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth
year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King Henry
the Fifth passed away.
Slowly and mournfully they carried
his embalmed body in a procession of great state to
Paris, and thence to Rouen where his Queen was:
from whom the sad intelligence of his death was concealed
until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying
on a bed of crimson and gold, with a golden crown
upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying
in the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais,
with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road
black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner,
all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore
black armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds
of men bore torches, making the night as light as
day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all.
At Calais there was a fleet of ships to bring the
funeral host to Dover. And so, by way of London
Bridge, where the service for the dead was chanted
as it passed along, they brought the body to Westminster
Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.