But, as at the marriage festivities of Richard II. and Isabelle, a great storm came on during the conference, “and,” says the monk of St. Denis, “the heavens were black with clouds, there was thunder and lightning and torrents of rain and huge hailstones which destroyed the vines and crops. Some said this storm arose from natural causes, but it was most generally believed that the evil spirits could sometimes produce these disorders and that perhaps the interviews of the princes were disagreeable to them. Therefore people did not believe in the stability or durability of the treaty concluded. It was also the opinion of several of the learned astrologers. For my part I leave their judgment to Him who reigns in the heavens.”271

The truce with England expired and the war broke out again. The English troops took many towns and castles, the Duke of Burgundy retired with the King and Queen to Troyes, and no adequate measures were taken against the enemy. The Dauphin returned from Touraine in September, and sent Tanneguy du Chastel to Troyes to ask for another conference with the Duke of Burgundy, who at first refused, saying that there was peace between them and the Dauphin had much better come to Troyes to his father and mother. However, he allowed himself to be persuaded and consented to meet the Dauphin at Montereau, in spite of the entreaties and warnings of his own friends and followers who dreaded the vengeance of the Armagnacs for all his deeds, from the murder of Louis d’Orléans to the late massacres of their friends and relations in Paris, besides their fear of his gaining over the Dauphin the influence he already possessed over the King and Queen.

The interview was to take place on the bridge of Montereau, to which the Duke of Burgundy rode on the 10th of September, about three in the afternoon. As he dismounted to go on to the bridge, three of his servants who had been upon it examining the barrier across it, which they did not like the look of, came up to him and again begged him not to risk himself on it, but it was no use. At the barrier in the middle of the bridge he met the Dauphin, the one through which he himself passed having been locked behind him. After a few words of conversation, the Dauphin, as the Duke knelt before him, began to reproach him with having done nothing to oppose the English. At that moment one of the Armagnacs pushed him from behind, Burgundy laid his hand on his sword which had got behind him to pull it forward. Robert de Loir, who had pushed him, exclaimed, “Mettez-vous la main à vostre épée en la présence de Monseigneur le Dauphin?” Tanneguy du Chastel approached, made a sign, and saying “Il est temps” struck the Duke with an axe. He tried to draw his sword but it was too late, there was a cry of “Tuez! tuez!” a fierce scuffle; then Jean Sans-peur lay dead at the feet of the Dauphin, and Louis d’Orléans was avenged.

The rage, consternation, and mischief caused by this event throughout the country, just as every one thought there was going to be a little peace, cannot be described. The Queen and her son-in-law Philippe, Comte de Charolais, now Duke of Burgundy, prepared to take their revenge. Philippe, overwhelmed with grief, would scarcely see or speak to any one for days. To his wife he said, “Michelle, your brother has murdered my father”; and then finding that she was fretting and making herself miserable fearing to lose his affection he comforted and reassured her. The Queen and Duke of Burgundy sent proclamations to all the chief towns in France denouncing the Dauphin for the murder of Jean Sans-peur; and made a treaty with the King of England at Troyes, by which they agreed that he should marry the Princess Catherine and not only act as regent of France during the King’s illnesses but succeed to the crown to the exclusion of the Dauphin.

Isabeau, who was then at Troyes, sent the Bishop of Arras secretly to Henry to invite him to come there, and to take him a love-letter from the Princess Catherine, with which he was delighted.272 The young princess was deeply in love with Henry V. and very anxious to be Queen of England, and had all along persuaded her mother, whose great favourite she was, to help her in the matter and forward the alliance. Isabeau was glad enough to do so for she loved her daughter and hated her son, and this marriage fell in with her views regarding them both. The wedding was celebrated at Troyes, June 3, 1420, with extraordinary magnificence. The Kings and Queens of France and England and the young Duke of Burgundy entered Paris, and spent Christmas there; after which Henry and Catherine went on a visit to England. The young Queen seems to have felt bitterly the separation from her parents and country; an ancient chronicle says of her: “Item, ce jour party la fille de France nommée Catherine que le roy d’Engleterre avoit espousée et fut menée en Engleterre, et fut une piteuse départie, especialement du roy de France et de sa fille.”273

Just before Christmas, 1421, came the news of the birth of a son to the King and Queen of England. In Paris as in London bells rang and bonfires blazed in the streets; for the child, afterwards the unfortunate Henry VI., was born the heir of both England and France. The winter was an unusually cold one, the frost being so severe that no corn could be ground except in windmills, all the watermills being frozen up.

In May, 1422, Queen Catherine came back escorted in great pomp by a great body of English troops. She arrived at Vincennes, where she stayed some weeks with her parents and husband who received her, as an ancient chronicler observes, “as if she had been an angel.” The court kept Whitsuntide at Paris, Charles VI. and Isabeau at the hôtel St. Paul, Henry V. and Catherine at the Louvre. The people thronged to see the great banquets at which the King and Queen of England feasted in splendid robes, crowns, and jewels; while those of the King and Queen of France were neglected, and at neither were food and wine given away according to ancient custom, which caused much discontent. But these were the last great fêtes of the French court in the reigns of Charles and Henry. In the following August the King of England, who had for some time been suffering from a dangerous and, in those days, incurable malady, died at Vincennes, and his death was followed in October by that of Charles VI. at the hôtel St. Paul. Henry died at thirty-six, in the midst of a brilliant and victorious career King of England and almost King of France, leaving a widow of twenty-one overwhelmed with grief, an infant heir to two kingdoms, and a nation in mourning. Charles, whose reign began so magnificently, passed away in the half-deserted palace of St. Paul. Although Isabeau was living there at the time, only his confessor, almoner, and the first gentleman of his household were with him when he died, at the age of fifty-three.

The Queen does not seem to have been present at the funeral, the Dauphin was an exile and an enemy, and the chief mourner was the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France for Henry of Lancaster. The funeral waited till his arrival at Paris and there was much dispute as to what the arrangements should be, it having been so long since a King of France had been buried that very few people remembered, and there were no records on the subject.

The litter was so constructed, that it could be made narrower to pass through the doors of St. Paul, Notre Dame, and the narrow streets, and widened in the broader thoroughfares. On it was placed the coffin covered with a pall of cloth of gold and scarlet with deep border of blue velvet embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis, which fell down to the ground. It was surmounted by an image of the King dressed in royal robes, with mantle of ermine, crown, and sceptre. The litter was carried by the “varlets” of the King and followed by two hundred gentlemen of his household in black, bearing torches and shields with the arms of France. Next came the mendicant orders, Jacobins, Carmelites, Cordeliers, and Augustins, then the colleges, parochial clergy, ecclesiastics of the collegiate churches and university, bishops, abbots and nobles, members of Parliament, the four presidents in mantles of scarlet and vair holding the four corners of the pall, the King’s chamberlain, esquires, and many of the chief citizens; the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, rode behind the litter. The streets and windows were crowded with people mourning and lamenting, and so, at the hour of vespers the body of Charles le Bien-aimé was carried to Notre Dame. The church was hung with costly stuffs covered with fleurs-de-lis, and blazing with torches, the psalms and vigils for the dead were chanted “et fut nuict.” Next morning, after mass, the procession formed again and the body was carried in state to St. Denis, where all night the monks chanted psalms and vigils for the dead; and then next day, after a magnificent requiem, Charles VI. was buried by his father and mother, and through the dim aisles and cloister of the great abbey resounded the cry, “Pray for the soul of the most excellent prince, Charles VI., King of France.”

After the religious rites were over the Duke of Bedford dined in his own room, but there was a great dinner in the vast hall of the abbey to which crowded prelates, nobles, gentlemen, and officials, maîtres d’hôtel restraining those who were pressing to the chief table and had no right there, and alms being distributed while the banquet was going on to more than five thousand poor people.

Isabeau survived her husband twelve years, but this latter part of her life contains scarcely anything of sufficient interest to record. After the death of her son-in-law Henry V., with whom she always got on well, the departure of her daughter Catherine for England, and the death of Charles VI., she lived in the half-deserted palace of St. Paul with a diminished household and shattered fortune. Her daughter the Duchess of Burgundy died in 1423, and of her twelve children there only remained the son she hated, the Queen of England, now far away, and her second and third daughters, Jeanne, Duchesse de Bretagne, and Marie, Prioress of Poissy, whom it is to be supposed she sometimes saw.

Her brother, Ludwig of Bavaria, also survived her. But war and famine and pestilence had devastated the kingdom. Grass grew in the streets of Paris, and wolves came and attacked children outside the walls and even within the city.274 One event of interest happened in 1431, which was the state entry of her grandson Henry VI. into Paris. While Isabeau stood at the window of the hôtel St. Paul watching the pageant, the child looked up at her as he rode by, and, some one saying to him, “That is the Queen-dowager of France, your grandmother,” he took off his cap and saluted her. At the sight of the young King, the son of her favourite daughter, riding as she herself had done amid the acclamations of the people through the streets which had once been decorated and thronged to do her honour, Isabeau burst into tears and turned from the window. The King, then ten years old, afterwards went to visit his grandmother at the hôtel St. Paul.275

Isabeau died there in 1435, September 29th. She had a favourite old German lady who lived with her to the last and with her other ladies followed her funeral cortège to Notre Dame on the 13th of October. Very little pomp was displayed on that occasion, but the clergy of that cathedral came in procession to St. Paul, and spared nothing to make the office worthy of a sovereign, lending a crown, sceptre, and other royal ornaments. There were present the Chancellor of France, the Bishop of Paris, and certain French and English nobles. After the ceremony the body was placed in a boat by the presidents of Parliament and taken to St. Denis to be buried by her husband Charles VI.276

Paris was still in possession of the English, but just before the Queen’s death the treaty of Arras was signed between the Duke of Burgundy and Charles VII.