For thirty years, from 1392 to 1422, the crown remained on the head of this poor madman, whilst France was a victim to the bloody quarrels of the royal house, to national dismemberment, to licentiousness in morals, to civil anarchy, and to foreign conquest.

When, for the first time, in the forest of Le Mans, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy saw their nephew in this condition, their first feeling was one of sorrow and disquietude. The Duke of Burgundy especially, who was accessible to generous and sympathetic emotions, cried out with tears, as he embraced the king, “My lord and nephew, comfort me with just one word!” But the desires and the hopes of selfish ambition reappeared before long more prominently than these honest effusions of feeling. “All!” said the Duke of Berry, “De Clisson, La Mviere, Noviant, and Vilaine have been haughty and harsh towards me; the time has come when I shall pay them out in the same coin from the same mint.” The guardianship of the king was withdrawn from his councillors, and transferred to four chamberlains chosen by his uncles. The two dukes, however, did not immediately lay hands on the government of the kingdom; the constable De Clisson and the late councillors of Charles V. remained in charge of it for some time longer; they had given enduring proofs of capacity and fidelity to the king’s service; and the two dukes did not at first openly attack them, but labored strenuously, nevertheless, to destroy them. The Duke of Burgundy one day said to Sire de Noviant, “I have been overtaken by a very pressing business, for which I require forthwith thirty thousand crowns; let me have them out of my lord’s treasury; I will restore them at another time.” Noviant answered respectfully that the council must be spoken to about it. “I wish none to know of it,” said the duke. Noviant persisted. “You will not do me this favor?” rejoined the duke; “you shall rue it before long.” It was against the constable that the wrath of the princes was chiefly directed. He was the most powerful and the richest. One day he went, with a single squire behind him, to the Duke of Burgundy’s house; and, “My lord,” said he, “many knights and squires are persecuting me to get the money which is owing to them. I know not where to find it. The chancellor and the treasurer refer me to you. Since it is you and the Duke of Berry who govern, may it please you to give me an answer.” “Clisson,” said the duke, “you have no occasion to trouble yourself about the state of the kingdom; it will manage very well without your services. Whence, pray, have you been able to amass so much money? My lord, my brother of Berry and myself have not so much between us three. Away from my presence, and let me see you no more! If I had not a respect for myself, I would have your other eye put out.” Clisson went out, mounted his horse, returned to his house, set his affairs in order, and departed, with two attendants, to his strong castle of Montlhery. The two dukes were very sorry that they had not put him under arrest on the spot. The rupture came to a climax. Of the king’s four other councillors one escaped in time; two were seized and thrown into prison; the fourth, Bureau de la Riviere was at his castle of Auneau, near Chartres, honored and beloved by all his neighbors. Everybody urged him to save himself. “If I were to fly or hide myself,” said he, “I should acknowledge myself guilty of crimes from which I feel myself free. Here, as elsewhere, I am at the will of God; He gave me all I have, and He can take it away whensoever He pleases. I served King Charles of blessed memory, and also the king, his son; and they recompensed me handsomely for my services. I will abide the judgment of the parliament of Paris touching what I have done according to my king’s commands as to the affairs of the realm.” He was told that the people sent to look for him were hard by, and was asked, “Shall we open to them?” “Why not?” was his reply. He himself went to meet them, and received them with a courtesy which they returned. He was then removed to Paris, where he was shut up with his colleagues in the Louvre.

Their trial before parliament was prosecuted eagerly, especially in the case of the absent De Clisson, whom a royal decree banished from the kingdom “as a false and wicked traitor to the crown, and condemned him to ‘pay a hundred thousand marks of silver, and to forfeit forever the office of constable.’” It is impossible in the present day to estimate how much legal justice there was in this decree; but, in any case, it was certainly extreme severity to so noble and valiant a warrior who had done so much for the safety and honor of France. The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry and many barons of the realm signed the decree; but the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, refused to have any part in it. Against the other councillors of the king the prosecution was continued, with fits and starts of determination, but in general with slowness and uncertainty. Under the influence of the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, the parliament showed an inclination towards severity; but Bureau de la Riviere had warm friends, and amongst others, the young and beautiful Duchess of Berry, to whose marriage he had greatly contributed, and John Juvenal des Ursins, provost of the tradesmen of Paris, one of the men towards whom the king and the populace felt the highest esteem and confidence. The king, favorably inclined towards the accused by his own bias and the influence of the Duke of Orleans, presented a demand to parliament to have the papers of the procedure brought to him. Parliament hesitated and postponed a reply; the procedure followed its course; and at the end of some months further the king ordered it to be stopped, and Sires de la Riviere and Neviant to be set at liberty and to have their real property restored to them, at the same time that they lost their personal property and were commanded to remain forever at fifteen leagues’ distance, at least, from the court. This was moral equity, if not legal justice. The accused had been able and faithful servants of their king and country. Their imprisonment had lasted more than a year. The Dukes of Burgundy and Berry remained in possession of power.

They exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without any great dispute between themselves—the Duke of Burgundy’s influence being predominant—or with the king, who, save certain lucid intervals, took merely a nominal part in the government. During this period no event of importance disturbed France internally. In 1393 the King of England, Richard II., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of Charles VI., Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and in both countries there was a desire for peace. An embassy came in state to demand the hand of the princess. The ambassadors were presented, and the Earl of Northampton, marshal of England, putting one knee to the ground before her, said, “Madame, please God you shall be our sovereign lady and Queen of England.” The young girl, well tutored, answered, “If it please God and my lord and father that I should be Queen of England, I would be willingly, for I have certainly been told that I should then be a great lady.” The contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she should be free to assent to or refuse the union; and ten days after the marriage, the king’s uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a truce, which promised—but quite in vain—to last for eight and twenty years.

About the same time Sigismund, King of Hungary, threatened with an invasion of his kingdom by the great Turkish Sultan Bajazet I., nicknamed Lightning (El Derfr), because of his rapid conquests, invoked the aid of the Christian kings of the West, and especially of the King of France. Thereupon there was a fresh outbreak of those crusades so often renewed since the end of the thirteenth century. All the knighthood of France arose for the defence of a Christian king. John, Count of Nevers, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy, scarcely eighteen years of age, said to his comrades, “If it pleased my two lords, my lord the king and my lord and father, I would willingly head this army and this venture, for I have a desire to make myself known.” The Duke of Burgundy consented, and, in person, conducted his son to St. Denis, but without intending to make him a knight as yet. “He shall receive the accolade,” said he, “as a knight of Jesus Christ, at the first battle against the infidels.” In April, 1396, an army of new crusaders left France and traversed Germany uproariously, everywhere displaying its valiant ardor, presumptuous recklessness, and chivalrous irregularity. Some months elapsed without any news; but, at the beginning of December, there were seen arriving in France some poor creatures, half naked, dying of hunger, cold, and weariness, and giving deplorable accounts of the destruction of the French army. The people would not believe them: “They ought to be thrown into the water,” they said, “these scoundrels who propagate such lies.” But, on the 23th of December, there arrived at Paris James de Helly, a knight of Artois, who, booted and spurred, strode into the hostel of St. Paul, threw himself on his knees before the king in the midst of the princes, and reported that he had come straight from Turkey; that on the 28th of the preceding September the Christian army had been destroyed at the battle of Nicopolis; that most of the lords had been either slain in battle or afterwards massacred by the sultan’s order; and that the Count of Nevers had sent him to the king and to his father the duke, to get negotiations entered into for his release. There was no exaggeration about the knight’s story. The battle had been terrible, the slaughter awful. For the latter, the French, who were for a moment victorious, had set a cruel example with their prisoners; and Bajazet had surpassed them in cool ferocity. After the first explosion of the father’s and the people’s grief, the ransom of the prisoners became the topic. It was a large sum, and rather difficult to raise; and, whilst it was being sought for, James de Helly returned to report as much to Bajazet, and to place himself once more in his power. “Thou art welcome,” said the sultan; “thou hast loyally kept thy word; I give thee thy liberty; thou canst go whither thou wiliest.”

Terms of ransom were concluded; and the sum total was paid through the hands of Bartholomew Pellegrini, a Genoese trader. Before the Count of Nevers and his comrades set out, Bajazet sent for them. “John,” said he to the count through an interpreter, “I know that thou art a great lord in thy country, and the son of a great lord. Thou art young. It may be that thou art abashed and grieved at what hath befallen thee in thy first essay of knighthood, and that, to retrieve thine honor, thou wilt collect a powerful army against me. I might, ere I release thee, bind thee by oath not to take arms against me, neither thyself nor thy people. But no; I will not exact this oath either from them or from thee. When thou hast returned yonder, take up arms if it please thee, and come and attack me. Thou wilt find me ever ready to receive thee in the open field, thee and thy men-at-arms. And what I say to thee, I say for the sake of all the Christians thou mayest purpose to bring. I fear them not; I was born to fight them, and to conquer the world.” Everywhere and at all times human pride, with its blind arrogance, is the same. Bajazet saw no glimpse of that future when his empire would be decaying, and held together only by the interested protection of Christian powers. After paying dearly for their errors and their disasters, Count John of Nevers and his comrades in captivity re-entered France in February, 1398, and their expedition to Hungary was but one of the last vain ventures of chivalry in the great struggle that commenced in the seventh century between Islamry and Christendom.

While this tragic incident was taking place in Eastern Europe, the court of the mad king was falling a victim to rivalries, intrigues, and scandals which, towards the close of this reign, were to be the curse and the shame of France. There had grown up between Queen Isabel of Bavaria and Louis, Duke of Orleans, brother of the king, an intimacy which, throughout the city and amongst all honorable people, shocked even the least strait-laced. It was undoubtedly through the queen’s influence that Charles VI., in 1402, suddenly decided upon putting into the hands of the Duke of Orleans the entire government of the realm and the right of representing him in everything during the attacks of his malady. The Duke of Burgundy wrote at once about it to the parliament of Paris, saying, “Take counsel and pains that the interests of the king and his dominion be not governed as they now are, for, in good truth, it is a pity and a grief to hear what is told me about it.” The accusation was not grounded solely upon the personal ill-temper of the Duke of Burgundy. His nephew, the Duke of Orleans, was elegant, affable, volatile, good-natured; he had for his partisans at court all those who shared his worse than frivolous tastes and habits; and his political judgment was no better than his habits. No sooner was he invested with power than he abused it strangely; he levied upon the clergy as well as the people an enormous talliage, and the use he made of the money increased still further the wrath of the public. An Augustine monk, named James Legrand, already celebrated for his writings, had the hardihood to preach even before the court against abuses of power and licentiousness of morals. The king rose up from his own place, and went and sat down right opposite the preacher. “Yes, sir,” continued the monk, “the king your father, during his reign, did likewise lay taxes upon the people, but with the produce of them he built fortresses for the defence of the kingdom, he hurled back the enemy and took possession of their towns, and he effected a saving of treasure which made him the most powerful amongst the kings of the West. But now, there is nothing of this kind done; the height of nobility in the present day is to frequent bagnios, to live in debauchery, to wear rich dresses with pretty fringes and big cuffs. This, O queen,” he added, “is what is said to the shame of the court; and, if you will not believe me, put on the dress of some poor woman and walk about the city, and you will hear it talked of by plenty of people.” In spite of his malady and his affection for his brother, Charles VI., either from pure feebleness or because he was struck by those truths so boldly proclaimed, yielded to the counsels of certain wise men who represented to him “that it was neither a reasonable nor an honorable thing to intrust the government of the realm to a prince whose youth needed rather to be governed than to govern.” He withdrew the direction of affairs from the Duke of Orleans and restored it to the Duke of Burgundy, who took it again and held it with a strong grasp, and did not suffer his nephew Louis to meddle in anything. But from that time forward open distrust and hatred were established between the two princes and their families. In the very midst of this court-crisis Duke Philip the Bold fell ill and died within a few days, on the 27th of April, 1404. He was a prince valiant and able, ambitious, imperious, eager in the pursuit of his own personal interests, careful in humoring those whom he aspired to rule, and disposed to do them good service in whatever was not opposed to his own ends. He deserved and possessed the confidence and affection not only of his father, King John, but also of his brother, Charles V., a good judge of wisdom and fidelity. He founded that great house of Burgundy which was for more than a century to eclipse and often to deplorably compromise France; but Philip the Bold loved France sincerely, and always gave her the chief place in his policy. His private life was regular and staid, amidst the scandalous licentiousness of his court. He was of those who leave behind them unfeigned regret and an honored memory, without having inspired their contemporaries with any lively sympathy.

John the Fearless, Count of Nevers, his son and successor in the dukedom of Burgundy, was not slow to prove that there was reason to regret his father. His expedition to Hungary, for all its bad leadership and bad fortune, had created esteem for his courage and for his firmness under reverses, but little confidence in his direction of public affairs. He was a man of violence, unscrupulous and indiscreet, full of jealousy and hatred, and capable of any deed and any risk for the gratification of his passions or his fancies. At his accession he made some popular moves; he appeared disposed to prosecute vigorously the war against England, which was going on sluggishly; he testified a certain spirit of conciliation by going to pay a visit to his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, lying ill at his castle of Beaute, near Vincennes; when the Duke of Orleans was well again, the two princes took the communion together, and dined together at their uncle’s, the Duke of Berry’s; and the Duke of Orleans invited the new Duke of Burgundy to dine with him the next Sunday. The Parisians took pleasure in observing these little matters, and in hoping for the re-establishment of harmony in the royal family. They were soon to be cruelly undeceived.

On the 23d of November, 1407, the Duke of Orleans had dined at Queen Isabel’s. He was returning about eight in the evening along Vieille Rue du Temple, singing and playing with his glove, and attended by only two squires riding one horse, and by four or five varlets on foot, carrying torches. It was a gloomy night; not a soul in the streets. When the duke was about a hundred paces from the queen’s hostel, eighteen or twenty armed men, who had lain in ambush behind a house called Image de Notre-Dame, dashed suddenly out; the squires’ horse took fright and ran away with them; and the assassins rushed upon the duke, shouting, “Death! death!” “What is all this?” said he; “I am the Duke of Orleans.” “Just what we want,” was the answer; and they hurled him down from his mule. He struggled to his knees; but the fellows struck at him heavily with axe and sword. A young man in his train made an effort to defend him, and was immediately cut down; and another, grievously wounded, had but just time to escape into a neighboring shop. A poor cobbler’s wife opened her window, and, seeing the work of assassination, shrieked, “Murder! murder!” “Hold your tongue, you strumpet!” cried some one from the street. Others shot arrows at the windows where lookers-on might be. A tall man, wearing a red cap which came down over his eyes, said in a loud voice, “Out with all lights, and away!” The assassins fled at the top of their speed, shouting, “Fire! fire!” throwing behind them foot-trippers, and by menaces causing all the lights to be put out which were being lighted here and there in the shops.

The duke was quite dead. One of his squires, returning to the spot, found his body stretched on the road, and mutilated all over. He was carried to the neighboring church of Blancs-Manteaux, whither all the royal family came to render the last sad offices. The Duke of Burgundy appeared no less afflicted than the rest. “Never,” said he, “was a more wicked and traitorous murder committed in this realm.” The provost of Paris, Sire de Tignouville, set on foot an active search after the perpetrators. He was summoned before the council of princes, and the Duke of Berry asked him if he had discovered anything. “I believe,” said the provost, “that if I had leave to enter all the hostels of the king’s servants, and even of the princes, I could get on the track of the authors or accomplices of the crime.” He was authorized to enter wherever it seemed good to him. He went away to set himself to work. The Duke of Burgundy, looking troubled and growing pale, “Cousin,” said the King of Naples, Louis d’Anjou, who was present at the council, “can you know aught about it? You must tell us.” The Duke of Burgundy took him, together with his uncle, the Duke of Berry, aside, and told them that it was he himself who, tempted of the devil, had given orders for this murder. “O God!” cried the Duke of Berry, “then I lose both my nephews!” The Duke of Burgundy went out in great confusion, and the council separated. Research brought about the discovery that the crime had been for a long while in preparation, and that a Norman nobleman, Raoul d’Auquetonville, late receiver-general of finance, having been deprived of his post by the Duke of Orleans for malversation, had been the instrument. The council of princes met the next day at the Hotel de Nesle. The Duke of Burgundy, who had recovered all his audacity, came to take his seat there. Word was sent to him not to enter the room. Duke John persisted; but the Duke of Berry went to the door and said to him, “Nephew, give up the notion of entering the council; you would not be seen there with pleasure.” “I give up willingly,” answered Duke John; “and that none may be accused of putting to death the Duke of Orleans, I declare that it was I, and none other, who caused the doing of what has been done.” Thereupon he turned his horse’s head, returned forthwith to the Hotel d’Artois, and, taking only six men with him, he galloped without a halt, except to change horses, to the frontier of Flanders. The Duke of Bourbon complained bitterly at the council that an immediate arrest had not been ordered. The Admiral de Brabant, and a hundred of the Duke of Orleans’ knights, set out in pursuit, but were unable to come up in time. Neither Raoul d’Anquetonville nor any other of the assassins was caught. The magistrates, as well as the public, were seized with stupor in view of so great a crime and so great a criminal.

But the Duke of Orleans left a widow who, in spite of his infidelities and his irregularities, was passionately attached to him. Valentine Visconti, the Duke of Milan’s daughter, whose dowry had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry when she heard of her husband’s murder. Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, and in which a passion for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest winter, it was said, ever known for several centuries, taking with her all her children. The Duke of Berry, the Duke of Bourbon, the Count of Clermont, and the constable went to meet her. Herself and all her train in deep mourning, she dismounted at the hostel of St. Paul, threw herself on her knees before the king with the princes and council around him, and demanded of him justice for her husband’s cruel death. The chancellor promised justice in the name of the king, who added with his own lips, “We regard the deed relating to our own brother as done to ourself.” The compassion of all present was boundless, and so was their indignation; but it was reported that the Duke of Burgundy was getting ready to return to Paris, and with what following and for what purpose would he come? Nothing was known on that point. There was no force with which to make a defence. Nothing was done for the Duchess of Orleans; no prosecution began. As much vexed and irritated as disconsolate, she set out for Blois with her children, being resolved to fortify herself there. Charles had another relapse of his malady. The people of Paris, who were rather favorable than adverse to the Duke of Burgundy, laid the blame of the king’s new attack, and of the general alarm, upon the Duchess of Orleans, who was off in flight. John the Fearless actually re-entered Paris on the 20th of February, 1408, with a thousand men-at-arms, amidst popular acclamation, and cries of “Long live the Duke of Burgundy!” Having taken up a strong position at the Hotel d’Artois, he sent a demand to the king for a solemn audience, proclaiming his intention of setting forth the motives for which he had caused the Duke of Orleans to be slain. The 8th of March was the day fixed. Charles VI., being worse than ever that day, was not present; the dauphin, Louis, Duke of Guienne, a child of twelve years, surrounded by the princes, councillors, a great number of lords, doctors of the university, burgesses of note, and people of various conditions, took his father’s place at this assembly. The Duke of Burgundy had intrusted a Norman Cordelier, Master John Petit, with his justification. The monk spoke for more than five hours, reviewing sacred history, and the histories of Greece, Rome, and Persia, and the precedents of Phineas, Absalom the son of David, Queen Athaliah, and Julian the Apostate, to prove “that it is lawful, and not only lawful, but honorable and meritorious, in any subject to slay or cause to be slain a traitor and disloyal tyrant, especially when he is a man of such mighty power that justice cannot well be done by the sovereign.” This principle once laid down, John Petit proceeded to apply it to the Duke of Burgundy, “causing to be slain that criminal tyrant, the Duke of Orleans, who was meditating the damnable design of thrusting aside the king and his children from their crown;” and he drew from it the conclusion that “the Duke of Burgundy ought not to be at all blamed or censured for what had happened in the person of the Duke of Orleans, and that the king not only ought not to be displeased with him, but ought to hold the said lord of Burgundy, as well as his deed, agreeable to him, and authorized by necessity.” The defence thus concluded, letters were actually put before the king, running thus: “It is our will and pleasure that our cousin of Burgundy, his heirs and successors, be and abide at peace with us and our successors, in respect of the aforesaid deed, and all that hath followed thereon; and that by us, our said successors, our people and officers, no hinderance, on account of that, may be offered them, either now or in time to come.”

Charles VI., weak in mind and will, even independently of his attacks, signed these letters, and gave Duke John quite a kind reception, telling him, however, that “he could cancel the penalty, but not the resentment of everybody, and that it was for him to defend himself against perils which were probably imminent.” The duke answered proudly that “so long as he stood in the king’s good graces, he did not fear any man living.”

Three days after this strange audience and this declaration, Queen Isabel, but lately on terms of the closest intimacy with the Duke of Orleans, who had been murdered on his way home after dining with her, was filled with alarm, and set off suddenly for Melun, taking with her her son Louis, the dauphin, and accompanied by nearly all the princes, who, however, returned before long to Paris, being troubled by the displeasure the Duke of Burgundy testified at their departure. For more than four months, Duke John the Fearless remained absolute master of Paris, disposing of all posts, giving them to his own creatures, and putting himself on good terms with the university and the principal burgesses. A serious revolt amongst the Liigese called for his presence in Flanders. The first troops he had sent against them had been repulsed; and he felt the necessity of going thither in person. But two months after his departure from Paris, on the 26th of August, 1408, Queen Isabel returned thither from Melun, with the dauphin Louis, who for the first time rode on horseback, and with three thousand men-at-arms. She set up her establishment at the Louvre. The Parisians shouted “Noel,” as she passed along; and the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Bourbon, the Duke of Brittany, the constable, and all the great officers of the crown rallied round her. Two days afterwards, on the 28th of August, the Duchess of Orleans arrived there from Blois, in a black litter drawn by four horses caparisoned in black, and followed by a large number of mourning carriages. On the 5th of September, a state assembly was held at the Louvre. All the royal family, the princes and great officers of the crown, the presidents of the parliament, fifteen archbishops or bishops, the provost of Paris, the provost of tradesmen, and a hundred burgesses of note attended it. Thereupon Master Juvenal des Ursins, king’s advocate, announced the intention of Charles VI. in his illness to confer the government upon the queen, set forth the reasons for it, called to mind the able regency of Queen Blanche, mother of St. Louis, and produced royal letters, sealed with the great seal. Immediately the Duchess of Orleans came forward, knelt at the dauphin's feet, demanding justice for the death of her husband, and begged that she might have a day appointed her for refuting the calumnies with which it had been sought to blacken his memory. The dauphin promised a speedy reply. On the 11th of September, accordingly, a new meeting of princes, lords, prelates, parliament, the university, and burgesses was held in the great hall of the Louvre. The Duchess of Orleans, the Duke her son, their chancellor, and the principal officers of her household were introduced, and leave was given them to proceed with the justification of the late Duke of Orleans. It had been prepared beforehand; the duchess placed the manuscript before the council, as pledging herself unreservedly to all it contained, and Master Serisy, Abbot of St. Fiacre, a monk of the order of St. Benedict, read the document out publicly. It was a long and learned defence, in which the imputations made by the cordelier, John Petit, against the late Duke of Orleans, were effectually and in some parts eloquently refuted. After the justification, Master Cousinot, advocate of the Duchess of Orleans, presented in person his demands against the Duke of Burgundy. They claimed that he should be bound to come, “without belt or chaperon,” and disavow solemnly and publicly, on his knees before the royal family, and also on the very spot where the crime was committed, the murder of the Duke of Orleans. After several other acts of reparation which were imposed upon him, he was to be sent into exile for twenty years beyond the seas, and on his return to remain at twenty leagues’ distance, at least, from the king and the royal family. After reacting these demands, which were more legitimate than practicable, the young dauphin, well instructed as to what he had to say, addressed the Duchess of Orleans and her children in these terms: “We and all the princes of the blood royal here present, after having heard the justification of our uncle, the Duke of Orleans, have no doubt left touching the honor of his memory, and do hold him to be completely cleared of all that hath been said contrary to his reputation. As to the further demands you make, they shall be suitably provided for in course of justice.” At this answer the assembly broke up.

It had just been reported that the Duke of Burgundy had completely beaten and reduced to submission the insurgent Liegese, and that he was preparing to return to Paris with his army. Great was the consternation amongst the council of the queen and princes. They feared above everything to see the king and the dauphin in the Duke of Burgundy’s power; and it was decided to quit Paris, which had always testified a favorable disposition towards Duke John. Charles VI. was the first to depart, on the 3d of November, 1408. The queen, the dauphin, and the princes followed him two days afterwards, and at Gien they all took boat on the Loire to go to Tours. The Duke of Burgundy on his arrival at Paris, on the 28th of November, found not a soul belonging to the royal family or the court; and he felt a moment’s embarrassment. Even his audacity and lack of scruple did not go to the extent of doing without the king altogether, or even of dispensing with having him for a tool; and he had seen too much of the Parisian populace not to know how precarious and fickle was its favor. He determined to negotiate with the king’s party, and for that purpose he sent his brother-in-law the Count of Hainault, to Tours, with a brilliant train of unarmed attendants, bidden to make themselves agreeable, and not to fight.

A recent event had probably much to do with his decision. His most indomitable foe, she to whom the king and his councillors had lately granted a portion of the vengeance she was seeking to take on him, Valentine of Milan, Duchess of Orleans, died on the 4th of December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied with the moral reparation she had obtained in her enemy’s absence, and clearly foreseeing that against the Duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and present in person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. For spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman’s heart, impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear; and Valentine Visconti, beautiful, amiable, and unhappy even in her best days through the fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close of her life she had taken for device, “Nought have I more; more hold I nought” (Bien ne m ‘est plus; plus ne m ‘est rien); and so fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she had by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another still whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d’Enghien, wife of Sire de Cany-Dunois. “This one,” said she, “was filched from me; yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father’s death.” Twenty-five years later John was the famous Bastard of Orleans, Count Dunois, Charles VII.‘s lieutenant-general, and Joan of Arc’s comrade in the work of saving the French kingship and France.

The Duke of Burgundy’s negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. The result was, that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was concluded and an interview effected at Chartres between the duke on one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young Duke of Orleans, his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together to hear the king declare that he pardoned the Duke of Burgundy. The duke prayed “my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance;” and the princes of Orleans “assented to what the king commanded them, and forgave their cousin the Duke of Burgundy everything entirely.” On the way back from Chartres the Duke of Burgundy’s fool kept playing with a church-paten (called “peace”), and thrusting it under his cloak, saying, “See, this is a cloak of peace;” and, “Many folks,” says Juvenal des Ursins, “considered this fool pretty wise.” The Duke of Burgundy had good reason, however, for seeking this outward reconciliation; it put an end to a position too extended not to become pretty soon untenable; the peace was a cause of great joy at Paris; the king was not long coming back; and two hundred thousand persons, says the chronicle, went out to meet him, shouting, “Noel!” The Duke of Burgundy had gone out to receive him; and the queen and the princes arrived two days after-wards. It was not known at the time, though it was perhaps the most serious result of the negotiation, that a secret understanding had been established between John the Fearless and Isabel of Bavaria. The queen, as false as she was dissolute, had seen that the duke might be of service to her on occasion if she served him in her turn, and they had added the falsehood of their undivulged arrangement to that of the general reconciliation.

But falsehood does not extinguish the facts it attempts to disguise. The hostility between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy could not fail to survive the treaty of Chartres, and cause search to be made for a man to head the struggle so soon as it could be recommenced. The hour and the man were not long waited for. In the very year of the treaty, Charles of Orleans, eldest son of the murdered duke and Valentine of Milan, lost his wife, Isabel of France, daughter of Charles VI.; and as early as the following year (1410) the princes, his uncles, made him marry Bonne d’Armagnac, daughter of Count Bernard d’Armagnac, one of the most powerful, the most able, and the most ambitious lords of Southern France. Forthwith, in concert with the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Brittany, and several other lords, Count Bernard put himself at the head of the Orleans party, and prepared to proceed against the Duke of Burgundy in the cause of dominion combined with vengeance. From 1410 to 1415 France was a prey to civil war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and to their alternate successes and reverses brought about by the unscrupulous employment of the most odious and desperate means. The Burgundians had generally the advantage in the struggle, for Paris was chiefly the centre of it, and their influence was predominant there. Their principal allies there were the butchers, the boldest and most ambitious corporation in the city. For a long time the butcher-trade of Paris had been in the hands of a score of families the number had been repeatedly reduced, and at the opening of the fifteenth century, three families, the Legoix, the St. Yons, and the Thiberts, had exercised absolute mastery in the market district, which in turn exercised mastery over nearly the whole city. “One Caboche, a flayer of beasts in the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and Master John de Troyes, a surgeon with a talent for speaking, were their most active associates. Their company consisted of ‘prentice-butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every kind of lewd fellows. When anybody caused their displeasure they said, ‘Here’s an Armagnac,’ and despatched him on the spot, and plundered his house, or dragged him off to prison to pay dear for his release. The rich burgesses lived in fear and peril. More than three hundred of them went off to Melun with the provost of tradesmen, who could no longer answer for the tranquillity of the city.” The Armagnacs, in spite of their general inferiority, sometimes got the upper hand, and did not then behave with much more discretion than the others. They committed the mistake of asking aid from the King of England, “promising him the immediate surrender of all the cities, castles, and bailiwicks they still possessed in Guienne and Poitou.” Their correspondence fell into the hands of the Burgundians, and the Duke of Burgundy showed the king himself a letter stating that “the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Bourbon had lately conspired together at Bourges for the destruction of the king, the kingdom, and the good city of Paris.” “Ah!” cried the poor king with tears, “we quite see their wickedness, and we do conjure you, who are of our own blood, to aid and advise us against them.” The duke and his partisans, kneeling on one knee, promised the king all the assistance possible with their persons and their property. The civil war was passionately carried on. The Burgundians went and besieged Bourges. The siege continued a long while without success. Some of the besiegers grew weary of it. Negotiations were opened with the besieged. An interview took place before the walls between the Duke of Berry and the Duke of Burgundy. “Nephew,” said the former, “I have acted ill, and you still worse. It is for us to try and maintain the kingdom in peace and prosperity.” “I will be no obstacle, uncle,” answered Duke John. Peace was made. It was stipulated that the Duke of Berry and the Armagnac lords should give up all alliance with the English, and all confederacy against the Duke of Burgundy, who, on his side, should give up any that he might have formed against them. An engagement was entered into mutually to render aid, service, and obedience to the king against his foe of England, as they were bound by right and reason to do; and lastly a promise was made to observe the articles of the peace of Chartres, and to swear them over again. There was a special prohibition against using, for the future, the words Armagnacs and Burgundians, or any other term reflecting upon either party. The pacification was solemnly celebrated at Auxerre, on the 22d of August, 1412; and on the 29th of September following, the dauphin once more entered Paris, with the Duke of Burgundy at his side. The king, queen, and Duke of Berry arrived a few days afterwards. The people gave a hearty reception to them, even to the Armagnacs, well known as such, in their train; but the butchers and the men of their faction murmured loudly, and treated the peace as treason. Outside, it was little more than nominal; the Count of Armagnac remained under arms and the Duke of Orleans held aloof from Paris. A violent ferment again began there. The butchers continued to hold the mastery. The Duke of Burgundy, all the while finding them very much in the way, did not cease to pay court to them, Many of his knights were highly displeased at seeing themselves mixed up with such fellows. The honest burgesses began to be less frightened at the threats and more angry at the excesses of the butchers. The advocate-general, Juvenal des Ursins, had several times called without being received at the Hotel d’Artois, but one night the Duke of Burgundy sent for him, and asked him what he thought of the position. “My lord,” said the magistrate, “do not persist in always maintaining that you did well to have the Duke of Orleans slain; enough mischief has come of it to make you agree that you were wrong. It is not to your honor to let yourself be guided by flayers of beasts and a lot of lewd fellows. I can guarantee that a hundred burgesses of Paris, of the highest character, would undertake to attend you everywhere, and do whatever you should bid them, and even lend you money if you wanted it.” The duke listened patiently, but answered that he had done no wrong in the case of the Duke of Orleans, and would never confess that he had. “As to the fellows of whom you speak,” said he, “I know my own business.” Juvenal returned home without much belief in the duke’s firmness. He himself, full of courage as he was, durst not yet declare himself openly. The thought of all this occupied his mind incessantly, sleeping and waking. One night, when he had fallen asleep towards morning, it seemed to him that a voice kept saying, Surgite cum sederitis, qui manducatis panem doloris (Rise up from your sitting, ye who eat the bread of sorrow). When he awoke, his wife, a good and pious woman, said to him, “My dear, this morning I heard some one saying to you, or you pronouncing in a dream, some words that I have often read in my Hours;” and she repeated them to him. “My dear,” answered Juvenal, “we have eleven children, and consequently great cause to pray God to grant us peace; let us hope in Him, and He will help us.” He often saw the Duke of Berry. “Well, Juvenal,” the old prince would say to him, “shall this last forever? Shall we be forever under the sway of these lewd fellows?” “My lord,” Juvenal would answer, “hope we in God; yet a little while and we shall see them confounded and destroyed.”

Nor was Juvenal mistaken. The opposition to the yoke of the Burgundians was daily becoming more and more earnest and general. The butchers attempted to stein the current; but the carpenters took sides against them, saying, “We will see which are the stronger in Paris, the hewers of wood or the fellers of oxen.” The parliament, the exchequer-chamber, and the Hotel-de-Ville demanded peace; and the shouts of Peace! peace! resounded in the streets. A great crowd of people assembled on the Greve; and thither the butchers came with their company of about twelve hundred persons, it is said. They began to speak against peace, but could not get a hearing. “Let those who are for it go to the right,” shouted a voice, “and those who are against it to the left!” But the adversaries of peace durst not risk this test. The Duke of Burgundy could not help seeing that he was declining rapidly; he was no longer summoned to the king’s council; a watch was kept upon his house; and he determined to go away. On the 23d of August, 1413, without a word said, even to his household, he went away to the wood of Vincennes, prevailing on the king to go hawking with him. There was a suspicion that the duke meant to carry off the king. Juvenal des Ursins, with a company of armed burgesses, hurried off to Vincennes, and going straight to the king, said, “Sir, come away to Paris; it is too hot to be out.” The king turned to go back to the city. The Duke of Burgundy was angry, saying that the king was going a-hawking. “You would take him too far,” rejoined Juvenal; “your people are in travelling dress, and you have your trumpeters with you.”

The duke took leave of the king, said business required his presence in Flanders, and went off as fast as he could.

When it was known that he had gone, there was a feeling of regret and disquietude amongst the sensible and sober burgesses at Paris. What they wanted was peace; and in order to have it the adherence of the Duke of Burgundy was indispensable. Whilst he was present, there might be hope of winning him or forcing him over to it; but, whilst he was absent, headstrong as he was known to be, a renewal of war was the most probable contingency. And this result appeared certain when it was seen how the princes hostile to the Duke of Burgundy, above all, Duke Charles of Orleans, the Count of Armagnac and their partisans hastened back to Paris, and resumed their ascendency with the king and in his council. The dauphin, Louis Duke of Aquitaine, united himself by the ties of close friendship with the Duke of Orleans, and prevailed upon him to give up the mourning he had worn since his father’s murder; the two princes appeared everywhere dressed alike; the scarf of Armagnac re-placed that of Burgundy; the feelings of the populace changed as the fashion of the court; and when children sang in the streets the song but lately in vogue, “Burgundy’s duke, God give thee joy!” they were struck and hurled to the ground. Facts were before long in accordance with appearances. After a few pretences of arrangement the Duke of Burgundy took up arms and marched on Paris. Charles VI., on his side, annulled, in the presence of Parliament, all acts adverse to the Duke of Orleans and his adherents; and the king, the queen, and the dauphin bound themselves by oath not to treat with the duke of Burgundy until they had destroyed his power. At the end of March, 1414, the king’s army was set in motion; Compiegne, Soissons, and Bapaume, which held out for the Duke of Burgundy, were successively taken by assault or surrendered; the royal troops treated the people as vanquished rebels; and the four great communes of Flanders sent a deputation to the king to make protestations of their respect and an attempt to arrange matters between their lord and his suzerain. Animosity was still too lively and too recent in the king’s camp to admit of satisfaction with a victory as yet incomplete. On the 28th of July began the siege of Arras; but after five weeks the besiegers had made no impression; an epidemic came upon them; the Duke of Bavaria and the constable, Charles d’Albret, were attacked by it; weariness set in on both sides; the Duke of Burgundy’ himself began to be anxious about his position; and he sent the Duke of Brabant, his brother, and the Countess of Hainault, his sister, to the king and the dauphin, with more submissive words than he had hitherto deigned to utter. The Countess of Hainault, pleading the ties of family and royal interests, managed to give the dauphin a bias towards peace; and the dauphin in his turn worked upon the mind of the king, who was becoming more and more feeble and accessible to the most opposite impressions. It was in vain that the most intimate friends of the Duke of Orleans tried to keep the king steadfast in his wrath from night to morning. One day, when he was still in bed, one of them softly approaching and putting his hand under the coverlet, said, plucking him by the foot, “My lord, are you asleep?” “No, cousin,” answered the king; “you are quite welcome; is there anything new?” “No, sir; only that your people report that if you would assault Arras there would be good hope of effecting an entry.” “But if my cousin of Burgundy listens to reason, and puts the town into my hands without assault, we will make peace.” “What! sir; you would make peace with this wicked, this disloyal man who so cruelly had your brother slain?” “But all was forgiven him with the consent of my nephew of Orleans,” said the king mournfully. “Alas! sir, you will never see that brother again.” “Let me be, cousin,” said the king, impatiently; “I shall see him again on the day of judgment.”

Notwithstanding this stubborn way of working up the irreconcilable enmities which caused divisions in the royal family, peace was decided upon and concluded at Arras, on the 4th of September, 1414, on conditions as vague as ever, which really put no end to the causes of civil war, but permitted the king on the one hand and the Duke of Burgundy on the other, to call themselves and to wear an appearance of being reconciled. A serious event which happened abroad at that time was heavily felt in France, reawakened the spirit of nationality, and opened the eyes of all parties a little to the necessity of suspending their own selfish disagreements. Henry IV., King of England, died on the 20th of March, 1413. Having been chiefly occupied with the difficulties of his own government at home, he, without renouncing the war with France, had not prosecuted it vigorously, and had kept it in suspense or adjournment by a repetition of truces. Henry V., his son and successor, a young prince of five and twenty, active, ambitious, able, and popular, gave, from the very moment of his accession, signs of having bolder views, which were not long coming to maturity, in respect of his relations with France. The Duke of Burgundy had undoubtedly anticipated them, for, as soon as he was cognizant of Henry IV.‘s death, he made overtures in London for the marriage of his daughter Catherine with the new King of England, and he received at Bruges an English embassy on the subject. When this was known at Paris, the council of Charles VI. sent to the Duke of Burgundy Sire de Dampierre and the Bishop of Evreux bearing letters to him from the king “which forbade him, on pain of forfeiture and treason, to enter into any treaty with the King of England, either for his daughter’s marriage or for any other cause.” But the views of Henry V. soared higher than a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Burgundy. It was to the hand of the King of France’s daughter, herself also named Catherine, that he made pretension, flattering himself that he would find in this union aid in support of his pretences to the crown of France. These pretences he put forward, hardly a year after his accession to the throne, basing them, as Edward III. had done, on the alleged right of Isabel of France, wife of Edward II., to succeed King John. No reply was vouchsafed from Paris to this demand. Only the Princess Catherine, who was but thirteen, was presented to the envoys of the King of England, and she struck them as being tall and beautiful. A month later, in August, 1414, Henry V. gave Charles VI. to understand that he would be content with a strict execution of the treaty of Bretigny, with the addition of Normandy, Anjou, and Maine, and the hand of the Princess Catherine with a dowry of two million crowns. The war between Charles VI. and John the Fearless caused a suspension of all negotiations on this subject; but, after the peace of Arras, in January, 1415, a new and solemn embassy from England arrived at Paris, and the late proposals were again brought forward. The ambassadors had a magnificent reception; splendid presents and entertainments were given them; but no answer was made to their demands; they were only told that the King of France was about to send an embassy to the King of England. It did not set out before the 27th of the following April; the Archbishop of Bourges, the most eloquent prelate in the council, was its spokesman; and it had orders to offer the King of England the hand of the Princess Catherine with a dowry of eight hundred and forty thousand golden crowns, besides fifteen towns in Aquitaine and the seneschalty of Limoges. Henry V. rejected these offers, declaring that, if he did not get Normandy and all the districts ceded by the treaty of Bretigny, he would have recourse to war to recover a crown which belonged to him. To this arrogant language the Archbishop of Bourges replied, “O king, what canst thou be thinking of that thou wouldst fain thus oust the King of the French, our lord, the most noble and excellent of Christian kings, from the throne of so powerful a kingdom? Thinkest thou that it is for fear of thee and of the English that he hath made thee an offer of his daughter together with so great a sum and a portion of his land? Nay, verily; he was moved by pity and the love of peace; he would not that the innocent blood should be spilt and Christian people destroyed in the hurly-burly of battle. He will invoke the aid of God Almighty, of the blessed virgin Mary, and of all the saints. Then by his own arms and those of his loyal subjects, vassals, and allies, thou wilt be driven from his kingdom, and, peradventure, meet with death or capture.”

On returning to Paris the ambassadors, in presence of the king’s council and a numerous assembly of clergy, nobility, and people, gave an account of their embassy and advised instant preparation for war without listening to a single word of peace. “They loudly declared,” says the monk of St. Denis, “that King Henry’s letters, though they were apparently full of moderation, had lurking at the bottom of them a great deal of perfidy, and that this king, all the time that he was offering peace and union in the most honeyed terms, was thinking only how he might destroy the kingdom, and was levying troops in all quarters.” Henry V., indeed, in November, 1414, demanded of his Parliament a large subsidy, which was at once voted without any precise mention of the use to be made of it, and merely in the terms following: “For the defence of the realm of England and the security of the seas.” At the commencement of the following year, Henry resumed negotiations with France, renouncing his claims to Normandy, Anjou, and Maine; but Charles VI. and his council adhered to their former offers. On the 16th of April, 1415, Henry announced to a grand council of spiritual and temporal peers, assembled at Westminster, his determination “of setting out in person to go and, by God’s grace, recover his heritage.” He appointed one of his brothers, the Duke of Bedford, to be regent in his absence, and the peers, ecclesiastical and laical, applauded his design, promising him their sincere co-operation. Thus France, under a poor mad king and amidst civil dissensions of the most obstinate character, found the question renewed for her of French versus English king-ship and national independence versus foreign conquest.

On the 14th of August, 1415, an English fleet, having on board, together with King Henry V., six thousand men-at-arms, twenty-four thousand archers, powerful war-machines, and a multitude of artisans and “small folk,” came to land near Harfleur, not far from the mouth of the Seine. It was the most formidable expedition that had ever issued from the ports of England. The English spent several days in effecting their landing and setting up their siege-train around the walls of the city. “It would have been easy,” says the monk of St. Denis, “to hinder their operations, and the inhabitants of the town and neighborhood would have worked thereat with zeal, if they had not counted that the nobility of the district and the royal army commanded by the constable, Charles d’Albret, would come to their aid.” No one came. The burgesses and the small garrison of Harfleur made a gallant defence; but, on the 22d of September, not receiving from Vernon, where the king and the dauphin were massing their troops, any other assistance than the advice to “take courage and trust to the king’s discretion,” they capitulated; and Henry V., after taking possession of the place, advanced into the country with an army already much reduced by sickness, looking for a favorable point at which to cross the Somme and push his invasion still farther. It was not until the 19th of October that he succeeded, at Bethencourt, near St. Quentin. Charles VI., who at that time had a lucid interval, after holding at Rouen a council of war, at which it was resolved to give the English battle, wished to repair with the dauphin, his son, to Bapaume, where the French army had taken position; but his uncle, the Duke of Berry, having still quite a lively recollection of the battle of Poitiers, fought fifty-nine’ years before, made opposition, saying, “Better lose the battle than the king and the battle.” All the princes of the royal blood and all the flower of the French nobility, except the king and his three sons, and the Dukes of Berry, Brittany, and Burgundy, joined the army. The Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, and the Constable d’Albret, who was in command, sent to ask the King of England on what day and at what place he would be pleased to give them battle. “I do not shut myself up in walled towns,” replied Henry; “I shall be found at any time and any where ready to fight, if any attempt be made to cut off my march.” The French resolved to stop him between Agincourt and Framecourt, a little north of St. Paul and Hesdin. The encounter took place on the 25th of October, 1415. It was a monotonous and lamentable repetition of the disasters of Crecy and Poitiers; disasters almost inevitable, owing to the incapacity of the leaders and ever the same defects on the part of the French nobility, defects which rendered their valorous and generous qualities not only fruitless, but fatal. Never had that nobility been more numerous and more brilliant than in this premeditated struggle. On the eve of the battle, Marshal de Boucicaut had armed five hundred new knights; the greater part passed the night on horse-back, under arms, on ground soaked with rain; and men and horses were already distressed in the morning, when the battle began. It were tedious to describe the faulty manoeuvres of the French army and their deplorable consequences on that day. Never was battle more stubborn or defeat more complete and bloody. Eight thousand men of family, amongst whom were a hundred and twenty lords bearing their own banners, were left on the field of battle. The Duke of Brabant, the Count of Nevers, the Duke of Bar, the Duke of Alencon, and the Constable d’Albret were killed. The Duke of Orleans was dragged out wounded from under the dead. When Henry V., after having spent several hours on the field of battle, retired to his quarters, he was told that the Duke of Orleans would neither eat nor drink. He went to see him. “What fare, cousin?” said he. “Good, my lord.” “Why will you not eat or drink?” “I wish to fast.” “Cousin,” said the king, gently, “make good cheer: if God has granted me grace to gain the victory, I know it is not owing to my deserts; I believe that God wished to punish the French; and, if all I have heard is true, it is no wonder, for they say that never were seen disorder, licentiousness, sins, and vices like what is going on in France just now. Surely, God did well to be angry.” It appears that the King of England’s feeling was that also of many amongst the people of France. “On reflecting upon this cruel mishap,” says the monk of St. Denis, “all the inhabitants of the kingdom, men and women, said, ‘In what evil days are we come into this world that we should be witnesses of such confusion and shame!’” During the battle the eldest son of Duke John the Fearless, the young Count of Charolais (at that time nineteen), who was afterwards Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was at the castle of Aire, where his governors kept him by his father’s orders and prevented him from joining the king’s army. His servants were leaving him one after another to go and defend the kingdom against the English.