Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 71
CHAPTER LXXI.
The surrender of Rouen was a shock to the whole kingdom of France, sufficient, one would have thought, to bring the contending factions to a pause, and unite them for the protection of their common country; but for a time it appeared to produce little effect on the rival parties themselves. The people at large were struck with consternation, and loudly complained that they were made the victims of the vices and jealousies of their rulers. The people of Paris saw with indignation the Duke of Burgundy and the queen flee out of the city, carrying the king with them, and establish their headquarters at Lagny. They looked upon themselves as basely betrayed, and that the capital was left exposed to the arms of the victor, who, it was well known, was preparing to march along the Seine and invest the city with all his forces. They represented that the people of the provincial towns had been left to fight their own battles, but in vain; and now Paris was abandoned to its fate in the same scandalous manner. The most vehement representations were made to (he heads of the hostile factions to settle their quarrels and combine to repulse the invader. This wise counsel was wholly thrown away. Neither party showed any disposition to reconciliation, but each hastened to open negotiations with Henry of England, in order, by his means; to be able to crush the other.
The Duke of Burgundy, who always courted popularity, endeavoured to pacify the Parisians by issuing a proclamation, assuring them that he was doing all in his power to remove the impediments to peace and the settlement of the country. All, however, that was visible, was that he sent an embassy to Henry at Rouen, proposing to attempt terms of agreement betwixt him and France. The dauphin, on his part, went further, and offered to meet Henry, and endeavour personally to accommodate matters. Henry listened courteously to both parties, accepting their proposals with the utmost frankness, at the same time that he promised nothing. The dauphin, however, himself of a treacherous disposition, hesitated to put himself into the power of Henry, and failed to keep his appointment. Burgundy was no sooner informed of this, than availing himself of it, as a favourable opportunity on his side, he sent a fresh deputation to Rouen; armed, as he believed, with peculiar temptations. These were a beautiful portrait of the Princess Catherine, accompanied by a message from the queen, her mother, significantly asking whether so charming a princess really needed so great a dowry as he demanded with her. The ambassadors reported on their return that they found the young conqueror at Rouen, "as proud as a lion;" that he took the portrait of Catherine, gazed long and earnestly upon it, acknowledged that it certainly was beautiful; but refused to abate a jot of his demands. What was still more decisive was the news that he had left Rouen, recrossed the Seine, and had advanced along its banks already as far as Mantes, within fifty miles of Paris.
No time was to be lost. Burgundy and Isabèlla sent off a fresh embassy, proposing to meet Henry, accompanied by Catherine, from whose personal charms they hoped much, being apprised that the mere picture of her had made an obvious impression on the victor's imagination.
Henry acceded promptly to the proposal; but as promptly made another advance to Vernon. Meantime he dispatched the Earl of Warwick to Burgundy and the queen at Proving. High and imbending as were the demands of Henry, it was not a time for the Burgundians to boggle at them. The conqueror was in full march on the undefended capital; they had no forces able to cope with his victorious troops; and the dauphin was watching with the most jealous anxiety this attempt to forestall him in an alliance with the dominant power of England. The dauphin attempted to cut off the bearers of the English king's despatches. The fierce Tannegui du Chastel lay in wait for the Earl of Warwick on the road, and made an impetuous attack upon him; but he was repidsed with great loss.
Warwick was received with marked attention. Both Burgundy and Isabella held out every hope of an accommodation; and it was arranged that the Kings of England and France, accompanied by Burgundy, Isabella, and Catherine, on the part of France, and the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester on that of England, should meet on the banks of the Seine, near Meulau. The rendezvous of the French court was to be at Pontoiso, on the Oise; and that of the English one at Mantes. The time fixed was the 30th of May. The ground selected for the conference was a square, one side of which was washed by the Seine, and the other three wore enclosed by a strong ditch and palisades. Two magnificent pavilions were erected for the two kings, and between them was a third, which was to be the place of conference. All these pavilions were of green and blue, worked with gold; and from the centre of the tent of conference rose a tall flagstaff. There were opposite entrances, well defended by barriers; and the ground before the entrance on the right was allotted to the attendants of Henry, that before the entrance on the left to the attendants of the French court.
At the hour appointed the two cavalcades were seen approaching from the opposite quarters; each attended by banners, by bands of music, and about 1,000 men-at-arms. After the principal persons had taken possession of their respective tents, at the concerted signal of trumpets and clarions, the King of England and the Queen of France left their tents at the same moment, and advanced into the central ground towards each other with an air of great ceremony and dignity. It was found that the poor King of France was unable to present himself, as it was alleged, from indisposition; but the queen was followed by the Princess Catherine and the Duke of Burgundy; Henry by his two brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, and the Earl of Warwick.
Henry was at this time in the flower of his prime; one of the most handsome, graceful, and accomplished men in Europe. Catherine, his proposed bride, was, notwithstanding the long nose and peculiar features of the House of Valois, reputed to be one of the handsomest women of the age. Henry found her even to surpass her picture; and it was well known that Catherine had set her resolve on being the Queen of England. Under these circumstances Henry advanced with marked respect towards the queen, bowed profoundly, and then embraced and kissed her; repeating the same royal compliment to the princess. He then gave his hand to Isabella, and conducted her into the tent of conference, whither they were followed by the immediate princely members of the conference. Henry took his place directly opposite to the queen and Catherine; the fair damsel being carefully arrayed to produce the most striking effect. She wore an arched crown, and a veil trimmed on each side with ermine, which reached to the shoulders. She had on a mantle of regal form, beneath which appeared a close-fitting gown, tight to the throat, and with a strip of ermine passing down the front, studded with diamonds. Henry was visibly struck with the charms of the princess; and this, no doubt, was the grand achievement of this opening conference. For the rest, the Earl of Warwick, as secretary or president of the conference, delivered a long speech in French, which chiefly related to the mode in which the business was to be conducted, and the topics to be discussed. These formalities settled, the parties adjourned for a couple of days, and each returned as they had come to their respective camps.
At the second meeting Henry looked in vain for the princess. The wily old mother, deeply versed in every scheme and practice of intrigue, had satisfied herself of the perfect produced by her daughter on the young king, and she now studiously kept her out of sight, as a means of exciting his impatience, and inducing him to lower his demands. In vain. Chagrined as Henry obviously was, this chagrin only made him the more obstinate. He now presented his demands in writing, abating not one item of all that he had at first insisted upon. These were, first and foremost, the hand of the princess; then the full possession of Normandy, with all his other conquests, in addition to the territories ceded by the peace of Bretign; the whole to be hold in absolute independence of the crown of France.
The queen and Burgundy demanded four days to deliberate on these sweeping requisitions. When they met again they made no decided objection to them, but they brought forward a string of counter-claims, eight in number, regarding the relinquishment of these territories, the amount of dowry, and the payment of debts. Henry began to flatter himself that the necessities of the French court were in reality about to compel them to concede to his extraordinary terms. He set himself earnestly to work to meet these objections, to modify, and even to contract, in some degree, his demands. But he was not long in perceiving that no progress was made. Difficulties were started at each conference, which were seized upon to seek further consultation, further explanations; and he perceived at the end of a mouth that only seven meetings had been held, between each of which the intervals were growing longer and longer. The princess, in spite of his inquiries, was never again permitted to appear, and the indignant monarch at length broke out in wrathful language to Burgundy, the only person now sent to the conference, saying—"I tell you, fair cousin, that we will have the daughter of your king to wife, and will have her on our own terms, or we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom."
The astute Burgundy replied, "Sire, you are pleased to say so; but I make no doubt that, before you have succeeded in driving us out, you will be heartily tired."
All this denoted that a new game was playing behind the scenes. The fact was, that the dauphin and the Armagnacs had become greatly alarmed at the apparent progress making towards an alliance between the royal party and Henry of England. If it succeeded they were to be crushed. Every engine was instantly put in motion to defeat this object. Overtures for reconciliation were made to Burgundy and the queen; means had been found to purchase the interest of an artful and abandoned woman, a Madame de Giac, the mistress of Burgundy, who, attended by several of the leaders of the Armagnac party, had been going to and fro between the dauphin's retreat and Pontoiso. It was represented that it was far better for the French princes to arrange their own differences than to admit the great enemy of the nation, who would only cajole one party in order to destroy both. Accordingly, when Henry, determined to dally no longer, insisted on a final meeting, he went to the tent of conference at the day and hour appointed, and found—nobody. The queen. Burgundy, and the dauphin, had patched up a reconciliation, and dropped the mask unceremoniously at the feet of the insulted King of England. The reconciled princes met on the road at Poilly-le-Fort, and there, with all outward signs of affection, embraced and vowed eternal amity for the good of France.
The indignation and chagrin of Henry may be imagined. Independently of the promised bride, and sovereignty over a vast portion of France, being thus rudely snatched from him, his position was by no means encouraging. He had only about 25,000 men to enable him to hold his conquests and to pursue them to completion. Whilst Burgundy and the dauphin were uniting all the power of France to oppose him, his own subjects at home were beginning to grumble at the expenditure of the war; and as they saw it likely to succeed in reducing France, to look with dismay on such a result as likely to remove the seat of government to Paris, and make a province of England. The Scots, he found, were at the same time entering into treaty with the dauphin against him, and the Kings of Castle and Arragon had already fitted out a great armament, with which they scoured the coasts of Guienne and menaced Bayonue.
The French were in ecstacies of delight at the turn which affairs had taken; in every quarter of the kingdom vigorous efforts were making to take advantage of it, and the army of Henry was proportionably depressed.
But Henry, though, in addition to this insulting display of the perfidy of his enemies, his treasury was very low, never for a moment suffered an air of doubt or despondency to shade his countenance, much less an expression of it to escape him. He immediately ordered his army to advance on Paris, crossed the Seine, fell on the town of Pontoise, and took it. The leaders of the Burgundian party, after accomplishing their agreement with the dauphin, had quitted it, and Burgundy himself was at St. Denis; but even there he did not deem himself safe, and hastily retreated to Troyes, carrying the poor King of France with him.
Henry had recruited his coffers for the present by the discovery of a grand hoard which L'Isle-Adam had accumulated from the plunder of the Armagnacs during the late massacre. St. Denis was left by Burgundy in charge of the Marshal Chastelluc, whose rude and debauched soldiers expelled the monks of the celebrated abbey, and took up their quarters there with their lewd women. The people were greatly enraged. They exclaimed, "Are these the fruits of the union of our rulers? What could the English do worse?" and they began to call to mind that when Burgundy and the dauphin proclaimed their reconciliation there fell a fierce tempest, in which the thunder and lightning were of a terrible and ominous kind.
Meantime, the victorious troops of Henry appeared before the very gates of the capital, which was left almost wholly destitute of soldiers, and must soon fall into the hands of the enemy if not relieved. The English beat up the whole neighbourhood, and seized all the supplies which should have entered the city, where famine and fever were the only reigning powers. So far from any real union having taken place betwixt the Burgundians and the dauphin, they were paralysed by the rapid pursuit of Henry, and were too conscious of their own internal hatred and treachery to approach each other. Two months had already elapsed since the much-vaunted union, and Burgundy was still unavailingly entreating the dauphin to join his father's council at Troyes, and the dauphin recommending Burgundy and the queen to meet him at Montoreau-sue-Yonue. As neither would move, the influence of Madame do Giac was again employed, who succeeded in prevailing on the duke to go as far as Bray-sur-Seine, only two leagues from Montereau. Having succeeded so far, fitting instruments wore then chosen to induce the unfortunate Burgundy to proceed to Montereau to an interview with the dauphin, for that base prince would not budge a step out of his safe quarters to bring about this necessary interview. The notorious Tannegui du Chastel was set to complete the work of the equally notorious Madame de Giac. He took with him some companions of his own stamp, and with them the Bishop of Valence, whose brother, the Bishop of Langres, either a weak dupe, or a traitor inferior to none of them, was with the duke.
This ominous deputation used all their influence to persuade the duke to meet the dauphin, for a conference of their affairs at this pressing crisis, on the bridge of Montereau, not requiring him to advance into the town. The duke knew the character both of the dauphin and of those about him; and could not expel from his memory his own murder of the Duke of Orleans twelve years before. These deadly suspicions of each other, based on too much well-grounded experience of each other's utter destitution of honour, did not augur much blessing to the country from their co-operation. When all arguments and protestations proved incapable of moving the duke, recourse was once more had to the influence of Madame de Giac, and the all-powerful mistress won from him the fatal consent to the meeting on the 10th of September.
Every apparent precaution was taken for the peace of the interview and the security of the leaders. Tannegui du Chastel, on the day previous to the meeting, took an oath from the followers of the duke to observe strictly the alliance pledged between the parties, and Burgundy sent the husband of Madame de Giac and another of his officers to impose the same oath on the followers of the dauphin. But no precautions or formalities can bind men without honour or principle, and when the duke was himself ready to go, his most experienced friends strongly dissuaded him from it, reminding him that around the dauphin were his most deadly enemies. Whatever might bo his own internal feelings. Burgundy now appeared resolved to go. He talked of the great advantages to be obtained by gaining the command of the brave captains and men in the service of the dauphin, and boasted that once united, it would soon be seen which was the better man, "Hannotin of Flanders," a nickname given him by his Flemish subjects, or "Henry of Lancaster."
His astrologer declared that if he went he would never return, and at the moment of starting his friends once more crowded round him, and urged him to give up the hazardous enterprise. Resisting, if not despising these warnings, the doomed duke rode away, attended by 400 men-at-arms.
On approaching the town, Burgundy sent to announce to the dauphin his arrival, when he was speedily attended by Tannegui du Chastel, who brought him from the dauphin the most solemn assurances, "on the word of a prince," that no injury should be offered to him or his. It was agreed that he should take only ten knights with him, and that the dauphin should only bring the same number on his side. The meeting was to take place on the bridge, which was to be guarded at the end by which he entered by his own troops, and at the other by those of the dauphin. Before proceeding, the duke learned that three barriers were drawn across the bridge with a gate in each; this appeared to excite his suspicion, and at this moment one of his valets, who had been into the castle to make preparations for the reception of the duke and his train, came in haste and warned him not to go upon the bridge, as ho would assuredly be slain or taken prisoner. On this the duke, turning to Tannegui, said, "How is this? You have pledged your honour for our safety, but do you say true?" The traitor swore he would die himself rather than permit any injury to the duke, and the victim went on.
Yet again, as he had dismounted, and was walking to the bridge, another of his servants rushed up and implored him to remain, for he had seen throngs of armed men collecting on the other side of the river. On this the duke paused, and sent forward the Sieur do Giac to see if it were so, but the false man reported that the whole was a fiction: and Tannegui urged the duke to make haste, for his master had been waiting for him more than an hour. This decided the matter; the duke hurried forward, and no sooner had he passed the first gate on the bridge with his attendants, than it was closed and secured behind him, and so the second. Once more the suspicious of the duke being roused, he laid his hand on Tannegui, and said, "Here is what I trust in." It was a deadly trust. "Let us hasten," said Tannegui, "to my lord the dauphin." They pushed forward towards the next banner, where the dauphin was standing, and on the duke kneeling with his velvet cap in his hand, he was suddenly struck down from behind by the villain who had lured him on by every sacred assurance. He was speedily dispatched; one of his followers, the Sieur do Navailles, was killed also by Tannegui as he attempted to defend his master. The Lord of Neuchatel darted away, sprang over the barriers, and escaped; the rest of the attendants were surrounded, overpowered, and seized. While this was going on, the soldiers of the dauphin, of whom Burgundy had been warned by his faithful servants, rushed from their hiding-place, scoured over the bridge, and fell upon the duke's followers. These, thus taken by surprise, fled, and got back to Bray.
Nothing could demonstrate the dreadful state of moral turpitude in France at this period more clearly than this studied and most impolitic murder. At the very moment when the most imminent danger to the country from foreign invasion called upon them to put forth all their energies for its defence, to forgot all past differences, and, in fact, everything but the national welfare, these wretched princes thus deliberately sought each other's lives, and stabbed their country through their party antagonists.
The savage troops of the dauphin stripped the body of the duke of everything of value, and would have thrown it into the river, but a priest resisted their design, and had it convoyed to the church of Montereau. The honour which this most detestable deed excited throughout France, familiar as it was with crimes and tragedies, was intense. One burst of execration was heard throughout the country against the dauphin. That a young man of seventeen could stand calmly and see so vile a murder perpetrated—a murder which, it was plain, had been planned in his own councils—promised but a gloomy future to France. The people vowed to renounce all allegiance to him, or regard for his power. The Parisians in particular swore vengeance on him and his accomplices. They demanded a truce of the English, sent in all haste for the Count of Charolais, the son of their murdered leader, and demanded immediate alliance with the English, as the most certain means of exterminating the diabolical faction of the dauphin.
Armour of the Fifteenth Century. (Interior View of the Great Hall, Brougham Hall, Westmoreland.)
This storm of indignant contempt aroused the dauphin to vindicate his concern in the affair. He issued a proclamation, declaring that the Duke of Burgundy had made an attempt upon his (the dauphin's) life, and had been slain by his attendants in defence of their prince. Bat this was so notoriously false that it only deepened the scorn of the public against him; and his more honest followers went about boasting of the deed as a grand stratagem and a truly glorious exploit.
Meantime, Philip, the new Duke of Burgundy, afterwards so well known by the title of Philip the Good, received the news of his father's assassination at Ghent, and immediately set out to take vengeance for it. He was married to a sister of the dauphin, and exclaimed bluntly, on learning the bloody fact, "Michelle, your brother has murdered my father!" The duke had been very popular with his Flemish subjects, and with one voice they vowed to support his heir in punishing to the utmost the assassins. At Arras the new duke was met by deputations from Isabella, from the city of Paris, and from his own Burgundian subjects, all offering alliance and support in his righteous work of retribution.
The duke at once made overtures to Henry of England, as the certain means of crushing the dauphin and his furious partisans. Henry proposed, as the price of his co-operation, the hand of the Princess Catherine, that he should be announced as regent of the kingdom, and as the successor to Charles, setting wholly aside the dauphin. These terms were at once accepted, placing Henry at the height of his ambition, for nothing was too dear for the vengeance required. Within two weeks these preliminaries were signed, but the minor points occupied five months, and, in fact, were the business of the whole winter. These were, that Henry should settle on Catherine 20,000 nobles, the usual income of an English queen; that during his regency he should govern with the advice of a council of Frenchmen; lay aside the title of King of Franco during the present king's life; should re-annex Normandy to the crown of France on ascending the throne, and conquer the territories held by the dauphin for the benefit of the king, his father. He was bound to preserve the Parliaments and nobles, the charters of all cities, and the liberties and privileges of all classes of subjects, as they then existed; and to administer justice according to the laws and customs of the realm.
It was, moreover, stipulated between Henry and the Duke of Burgundy, that the Duke of Bedford, one of the king's brothers, should marry a sister of Burgundy; that together the king and the duke should pursue the dauphin and the other murderers; and that Henry should on no account allow the dauphin to go out of his hands, if ho took him, without the consent of the duke. Besides this, Henry was to settle on Burgundy and his 
Assassination of the Duke of Burgundy.(See page 551.)
Accompanied by 16,000 men-at-arms, Henry entered Troyes, where the French court was, on the 30th of May, 1419, and the next day "the perpetual peace" was ratified by Isabella and Philip of Burgundy as the commissioners of Charles. The treaty was accepted with the most apparent alacrity and unanimity by the Parliament, the nobles, the heads of the church, the municipality, and all the corporate bodies of Paris. The highest eulogiums were pronounced by the Government authorities on Henry. He was declared, in addresses to the public bodies, to be a most wise and virtuous prince, a lover of peace and justice; a prince who maintained the most admirable discipline in his army, driving thence all lewd women, and protecting the women and the poor of the country from injury and insult; that he was a fast friend of the Church and of learning. Equal laudation was bestowed on his piety and the graces of his person. In short, there was no virtue and no advantage which they did not attribute to him; and though much of this was true, the whole had such an air of the sycophancy of an unprincipled court, as deprived it of any real value. Under all this yet lurked the feeling, especially in the people, that Henry was still a foreigner, and that France had ceased to be an independent country.
The young monarch was introduced to his intended bride, whom he found enthroned with her mother in the church of Notre Dame. Henry appeared, as became his warrior character, in a magnificent suit of burnished armour, and instead of a plume he wore in his helmet a fox's tail, ornamented with precious stones. This same fox's tail he had had carried on a spear before him when he entered Rouen as conqueror, from what whim or circumstance no historian has satisfactorily stated. The queen apologised for the absence of the king on account of his infirm health; but probably the real cause was that he had not nerve enough to go through the duty of depriving his own son of the succession.
Henry conducted the queen and princess to the high altar, and the young couple were there affianced, and "on the 3rd of June, Trinity Sunday," says Monstrelet, "the King of England wedded the Lady Catherine, at Troyes, in the parish church, near which he lodged. Great pomp and magnificence were displayed by him and his princes, as if he had been king of the whole world." The next day he gave a splendid entertainment, where, the knights of both nations preparing a series of tournaments in honour of the marriage, Henry, continues Monstrelet, said, "I pray my lord the king to permit, and I command his servants and mine to be all ready by to-morrow morning to go and lay siege to Sens, wherein are our enemies. There every man may have jousting and tourneying enough, and may give proof of his prowess; for there is no finer prowess than that of doing justice on the wicked, in order that poor people may breathe and live."
The concluding sentiment of this royal address is very noble, and the glory of it was, that in Henry, as we have already stated, it was the genuine sentiment and practice of his life. In all his campaigns he protected the poor and defenceless.
On the second day after his marriage he accordingly set out on his march to Sens, carrying his young queen with him. In two days Sens opened its gates, and the king and queen entered it in great state. The Archbishop of Sens, who married him, had been expelled from his diocese by the Armagnacs, and Henry had the pleasure of reinstating him, which he did in this graceful manner:—"Now, Monseigneur Archévesque, we are quits; you gave me my wife the other day, and I this day restore you to yours."
From Sens he marched upon Montereau, accompanied by the Duke of Burgundy, who was particularly anxious to reduce and punish the governor, who had assisted at the murder of his father. Montereau made a desperate, but not a long resistance. During this siege, Henry's bride resided with her father and mother and their court at Bray-sur-Seine, where Henry visited them.
On entering the town, the first care of the Duke of Burgundy was to visit the tomb of his father. The poor women of the place showed him the way, and the next day he caused the grave to be opened, and gazed in horror and indignation on the mangled corpse. The body was taken out and removed to the family mausoleum at Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, and the body of the bastard of Croy, who had just been slain in the siege, was placed in the vacant grave. The castle of Montereau still held out, and here Henry gave an example of one of his occasional acts of severity. As the governor was not only immovable, but insulted his herald who was sent to summon him to surrender, Henry brought before the castle some of the Armagnac prisoners, whom he had taken in the town, and declared that he would hang them up there if De Guitry, the governor, would not yield. No notice was taken of the threat, and Henry proceeded to erect gibbets: still the governor was unmoved, though the prisoners knelt down on the edge of the castle moat, and implored him to open his gates and save their lives, as it was clear he could not hold out long. The governor was as impassable as his walls; the threat of Henry was carried into execution, and the poor fellows having been sacrificed to his obstinacy, in eight days afterwards the governor flung open his gates.
From Montereau the united forces of England and France proceeded to Villeneuve-le-Roy, and thence to Melun, which resisted all their efforts for four months. The dauphin had escaped into Languedoc, where he joined the young Count Armagnac, who had a strong party there. But Barbazan, the governor of Melun, was one of the men suspected of being engaged in the murder of the Duke of Burgundy, and the present duke was eager to secure him and other of his accomplices. Henry, therefore, excepted in the terms of capitulation all such as were participators in the guilt of that deed; but, of surrender, he interceded for Barbazan, and saved his life.
During this obstinate siege, which continued till the 18th of November, the court resided at Corbeil, where the poor old King of France was accustomed to have his melancholy soothed by the fine military band of his English son-in-law—the first expressly mentioned in history. The siege over, the two courts and all their attendants returned in a species of triumph to Paris. Henry and his father-in-law went first, as a matter of precaution, and made their entry into the city accompanied by a strong body of troops. The place was in a state of absolute starvation—to such a condition had the protracted civil war and the many massacres and émeutes which had taken place within and around its walls reduced it. Children wore running through the streets in the agonies of famine, and old and young were actually perishing on the pavement. Yet, amid all its horrors and miseries, this strange capital put on an air of high rejoicing. The streets and houses were hung with tapestry and gay carpets, and if there was little to eat, the conduits were made to run with wine. The entrance of the two kings side by side was something like that of Saul and David into Jerusalem. The acclamations of the multitude were chiefly directed towards the hero of Azincourt. At the sight of him the people seemed to think themselves almost in possession of the wealth and the fat beeves of England. The principal citizens appeared wearing the red cross, the badge of the English; and the clergy in solemn procession chanted, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." The next day the two queens made their entrée amid similar pageants and acclamations.
Tomb of Henry V. in Westminster Abbey.
Charles summoned the three estates of the kingdom, and explained to them in a long speech the reasons which had induced him to make "a final and perpetual peace with his dear son, the King of England." The assembly gave its unanimous approbation to the treaty, and after that the Duke of Burgundy, apparelled in deep mourning, appeared before them, and demanded justice on the assassins of his father. The king pronounced judgment against them, as guilty of high treason, and they were proclaimed incapable of holding any office or property, their vassals, at the same time, being absolved from all their oaths of fealty and obligations of service. The dauphin was mentioned as Charles, calling himself dauphin; but he was not directly implicated as the author or abettor of the crime.
At this assembly Isabella was also proclaimed regent of France during the absence of Henry, who now proceeded to England, there to introduce his queen to his subjects and to see her crowned. The whole of this journey and the coronation were like the ovation of an ancient conqueror. After spending their Christmas at Paris, Henry and his young queen sot out at the head of 6,000 men, commanded by the Duke of Bedford. They were received with great festivity at the different towns on their way; and on the 1st of February they left Calais, and landed at Dover, where, according to Monstrelet; "Catherine was received as if she had been an angel of God." The whole reception of the young conqueror and his beautiful bride was of the most enthusiastic kind.
They proceeded first to Eltham, and thence, after due rest, to London, where Catherine was crowned with high state, on the 24th of February.
She was conducted on foot from Westminster Palace to the Abbey by two bishops; "and after the coronation was ended," says Holinshed, "Queen Catherine was conveyed into the groat hall of Westminster, and there sat at dinner. Upon her right hand sat, at the end of the table, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Beaufort. Upon the left hand of the queen sat James I., King of Scotland, under his canopy, who was served with messes in covered silver dishes, but after the aforesaid bishops. By the King of Scots sat the Duchess of York and the Countess of Huntingdon. The Countess of Kent Sit under the table, at the queen's feet, holding a napkin. The Earl of Marche, holding the queen's sceptre in his band, kneeled on the stops of the dais at her right side; the earl-marshal, holding her other sceptre, knelt on her left. The Duke of Gloucester was that day overseer of the feast, and stood before Queen Catherine bare-headed. Sir Richard Neville was her cup-bearer; Sir James Stuart, server; the Lord Clifford pantler, in the Earl of Warwick's stead; the Lord Grey of Ruthin was her napere; and the Lord Audley her almoner."
In such proud royalty did the hero of Azincourt crown his queen—a subject king sitting at table at once as captive and guest; and the circumstance seems to have made its due impression on the daughter of the house of Valois, for it is stated that the only instance of active benevolence ever recorded of Catherine was now exhibited in favour of the King of Scots. He had been at this court a captive from his boyhood. Catherine engaged Henry to promise him his liberation on condition that he should bear arms under him in the succeeding campaign in France. She did more—she took in hand the love-suit of the young poet-king, and Stowe assures us that James of Scotland was affianced to the beautiful Joanna Beaufort before the festival of Catherine's coronation ended.
After the coronation, the royal pair made a progress northward as far as the shrine of St. John of Beverley. They celebrated the spring festival at Leicester, and advanced, visiting the shrine of every saint on their-way. The object of Henry was to prepare his subjects for the extraordinary demands he was about to make upon them for the completion of his French conquests. Yet, in one respect, his conduct was not calculated to render him popular. He was so assiduous in his devotions to the saints, and so severe in his suppression of the writings of the Lollards against the clergy, that he obtained from the reformers the name of the "Prince of the Priests." In another respect, however, his conduct was more palatable. He harangued the corporation of every town on his way, and, introducing to the delighted officials his fair young queen as a proof of the standing he had gained in France, he exerted all his eloquence to make them sensible of the money and the troops which ho should require to accomplish this great object. He did not hesitate to carry his wife to the castle of Pontefract, so notorious as the scene of his father's murder of Richard II., and where he himself now kept confined his brother-in-law, the poet-Duke of Orleans, captured at the battle of Azincourt.
But here Henry's gay progress was cut short by the disastrous news of the defeat of his troops in France at the battle of Beaujé. Henry had left his brother, the Duke of Clarence, in command of his forces in Normandy, and Clarence, intending to strike a blow at the power of the dauphin in Anjou, marched into that country, and fell in, not only with the Armagnacs, but with a body of 6,000 or 7,000 auxiliary Scots, near the town of Beaujé. These Scots had been engaged by the Armagnac party to serve against the English as a fitting counterpart. They were commanded by the Earl of Buchan, second son of the Duke of Albany, the Regent of Scotland. He had under him the Earl of Wigton, Lord Stuart of Darnley, Sir John Swinton, and other brave officers.
The Duke of Clarence, deceived by the false report of some prisoners, hastened to surprise what he considered this inconsiderable body of troops. In his rash haste, and in opposition to the earnest advice of his officers, Le loft behind him his archers, and thus gave another convincing proof that in that force, and not in his men-at-arms, lay the secret of the English victories. He was assured that the Scots were keeping very indifferent watch and discipline, and made sure of securing an easy conquest. Having forced the passage of a bridge, Clarence was dashing on at the head of his cavalry, distinguished by a magnificent suit of armour, and a coronet of gold set with jewels, when he was met by the Scottish knights in full charge. Sir John Swinton spurred his horse right upon the duke, and bore him from his saddle with his lance, and the Earl of Buchan, as he fell, dashed out his brains with his battle-axe. The archers, however, came up in time to prevent the Scots carrying off the body, and they speedily cleared the field of them with their clothyard shafts. In this encounter the English lost about 1,200 men, and had 300 taken prisoners; the Scots and French lost together about 1,000 men.
The moral effect of this battle was immense. Though the victory actually remained with the English, yet the impression which the Scots made before the arrival of the archers, and their having killed the royal duke, the brother of the victorious Henry, and the Governor of Normandy, and having taken prisoner the Earls of Somerset, Dorset, and Huntingdon, seemed to point out the only soldiers in the world callable of contending with the English. Pope Martin V., when this news reached him, exclaimed, "Ha! the Scots are the only antidote to the English!"
The joy of the dauphin's party at this first small gleam of success for many years over the dreaded islanders, was ecstatic. He created the Earl of Buchan Constable of France, the highest office of the kingdom, and Count of Aubigny.
The fame of this exploit on the field of Beaujé, and of the rewards showered in consequence on their countrymen, roused the martial Scots, and they poured over in great numbers into France. The spell of England's invincibility seemed for a moment broken, and enemies began to start up in various quarters. Jacques do Harcourt issued from his castle of Crotoy, in Picardy, and harassed the English both at sea and on shore. Poitou de Saintraille and Vignolles, called La Hire, also infested Picardy. The fickle Parisians, who so lately shouted and carolled on the entrance of Henry into their city, now openly expressed their discontent, and proceeded to such lengths, that the English commander there, the Duke of Exeter, was compelled to drive them from the streets with his inimitable archers. The dauphin, taking courage from all those circumstances, began to advance from the south towards the capital.
Henry, greatly chagrined at these events—calculated, if not checked, to add infinitely to the difficulties in the path of his ambition—lost no time in preparing to reach the scene of action. He ordered troops to assemble with all celerity at Dover. He called together Parliament and Convocation, both of which met his views with the greatest alacrity. Parliament ratified at once the treaty of Troyes, and authorised his council to raise loans on its own security. The clergy granted him a tenth. To take a signal vengeance on the Scots, whose valour and the rashness of Clarence had thus broken in on his triumphs and enjoyments at home, he called on the young King of Scots to fulfil his engagement to serve in France under his banners; the condition being his return to Scotland three months after the termination of the campaign. Henry deemed that by this measure he should not only put Scot against Scot, but should, by having the Scottish king with him, deter any of his subjects from taking arms on the other side, and thus actually fighting against their own monarch. In this hope he was disappointed; but as the Scots had entered the French service without any declaration of war made by Scotland against England, the presence of the Scottish king on his side furnished him with the plea of treating every Scot who did battle on the other side as a traitor; and he sullied his fair fame when he came into the field by hanging every such Scot as foil into his hands.
Besides having the person of James I. in his army, Henry also prevailed on Archibald, Earl Douglas, to engage in his service with 200 men-at-arms and 200 foot-soldiers. Earl Douglas had been for some years a prisoner in England in the reign of Henry IV., and he had his causes of discontent with Albany, the regent, who had sent out his son, the Earl of Buchan, and the Scots army to aid the dauphin. The estates of the expatriated Earl of Marche, who figured so conspicuously in England in the last reign, had been granted to Douglas; but Albany, without consulting Parliament, had recalled Marche, and restored to him all his forfeited estates. Douglas, therefore, readily took arms against the army of Albany in France. He agreed to serve Henry on the usual terms of pay for his men, and an annuity of £200. Besides this, the fact of their young monarch going out with Henry speedily brought to his standard, at Dover, Alexander, Lord Forbes, Alexander de Seton, Lord of Gordon, Sir William Blair, and other Scottish knights and gentlemen.
Henry saw there collected under his banner a gallant army of 4,000 men-at-arms and 24,000 archers. With these he landed at Calais by the 12th of June, sent on 1,200 men-at-arms by forced marches to Paris, to strengthen the garrison of the Duke of Exeter, and followed himself at more leisure. At Montreuil he met the Duke of Burgundy, and arranged the plans of action. Burgundy, in consequence, marched into Picardy, attacked and defeated the dauphinites at Mons-en-Vimou, and took Saintraille and others of their bravest leaders prisoners. This revived the spirit of the royalists, and they speedily reduced various other places in the north-west.
Henry left the army under command of the Earl of Dorset, and hastening to Paris, paid a hasty visit to his father-in-law at the Bois de Vincennes. He then joined the army and advanced against Chartres, which was besieged by the dauphin. The siege of Chartres was raised at Henry's approach, Beaugency was next taken, and the dauphin retreated, beyond the Loire. Meantime, the King of Scots, to whom Henry had assigned the siege of Dreux, prosecuted his mission with equal zeal and talent, and brought that strong place to capitulate on the 30th of August.
The whole of France, from the north to Paris, and from Paris to the Loire, was almost entirely in the hands of the English and their allies the Burgundians. The dauphin, unable to stand a moment before the superior genius and troops of Henry, fell back successively from post to post, till he took refuge in the well fortified city of Bourges. The troops of Henry had suffered considerably by their rapid marches and from scarcity of provisions. Henry, therefore, quitted the pursuit of the dauphin for a space; the country, from its past calamities, still lying a desert, and the miserable people perishing of hunger. He sought out sufficiently good quarters for his army, and left them to refresh themselves while he paid a short visit to Paris. He was very soon, however, in the field again, and by the 6th of October had sat down before the city of Meaux on the Mame. He was induced to undertake this siege from the earnest solicitations of the people of Paris. They represented that it was the stronghold of one of the most ferocious monsters who in those fearful times spread horror through afflicted France. This was an old companion of the late Count of Armagnac, called the Bastard of Vaurus, who had become so infuriated by the murder of his master, that the whole of mankind hardly seemed sufficient to appease, by death and suffering, his revenge. Meaux was his place of retreat. It was reputed to be one of the very strongest towns of France, about twenty-five miles distant only from Paris. One part of the town in particular, called the Marketplace, was deemed impregnable. Sallying forth, ever and anon, from this fortress, the Bastard of Varurus swept the whole country, and up to the very gates of Paris. He plundered and murdered the poor people of both town and country; and such of the farmers and tradesmen as were worth a ransom, he tied to the tails of his horses and dragged them after him to Meaux. Here he kept them till they wore ransomed by their friends, occasionally applying torture to quicken the motions of their families on their behalf. Against the English and the Burgundians his rage and cruelty knew no bounds. He often massacred them on the spot with the most incredible barbarities; but his favourite pastime was to hang them, and all such unlucky wretches as were not redeemed with a good sum, on a great tree outside Meaux, thence called the Oak of Varurs. This man and his companions became the terror of Paris.
It cost Henry ten weeks to carry the town; and then the monster of Vaurus retired with his garrison to the Market-place, which defied all the efforts of the English and their allies. The siege was carried on with sanguinary fury; no quarter was given on either side. On the 10th of May, 1422, the Market-place was compelled to surrender from absolute famine; though the dauphin had dispatched the Sieur d'Affemont to endeavour to throw supplies into this fortress. Affemont was taken prisoner, and the place fell. The Bastard of Vaurus was beheaded, his body hung up on his own oak, and his banner, surmounted with his head, was attached to its highest bough. Three of his chief companions, who had vied with him in their violence and ferocity, were executed with him; and a number of persons suspected of being accessory to the death of the Duke of Burgundy, were marched to Paris to take their trials.
Henry had spent seven months in these operations. They had cost him a great number of his brave soldiers, and some of his most tried officers—amongst them the Earl of Worcester and Lord Clifford, who fell before the walls of Meaux. Sickness swept away many others; but the advantages of the reduction of Meaux were as distinguished as the costs; for it laid all the north of France as far as the Loire, with the exception of Maine, Anjou, and a few castles in Picardy, under his dominion. Whilst he lay before Meaux, however, he received the joyful intelligence of the safe delivery of his queen of a son, who had received his own name; the Duke of Bedford, the Bishop of Winchester, and Jacqueline Countess of Hainault and Holland—who proved the cause of many misfortunes to the infant prince—being sponsors at his baptism.
Paris in the Fifteenth Century.
One thing, however, troubled his joy on this auspicious event. Henry had probably studied the so-called science of astrology at Oxford, for it was part of the heap of rubbish regarded as real knowledge at that time. On leaving England, therefore, he strictly enjoined Catherine not to lie-in at Windsor, for he had ascertained that the planets cast forward a lowering shadow upon Windsor, in the week when she might expect her confinement. From waywardness, or some other cause, Catherine especially chose as the place of her accouchement the forbidden spot—a conduct which she lived bitterly to rue. On the news being brought to Henry at Meaux, he eagerly demanded where the boy was born, and on being told it was at Windsor, he appeared greatly struck and chagrined, and repeated to his chamberlain, Lord Fitzhugh, the following lines:—
"I, Henry, born at Monmouth,
Shall small time reign and much get;
But Henry of Windsor shall long reign., and lose all
But as God wills, so be it."
Funeral Procession of Henry V.(See page 561.)
It is probable that these were sentiments which the king expressed, and that they owe their sibylline form to some chronicler or astrologer of the time. It is certain that Speed, Stowe, Fabyn, and Holinshed concur in saying that the king "prophesied the calamities of Henry VI." The boy was born on the 6th of December, 1421. On hearing of the fall of Meaux, Catherine left her infant to the care of its uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and hastened to join Henry in France. She was escorted by the Duke of Bedford and 20,000 fresh troops, to enable Henry to complete the conquest of her brother and his unhappy country. She landed at Harfleur on the 21st of May, where she was received with great state and rejoicing by numbers of noblemen and gentlemen, who accompanied her on her route to Paris by Rouen to the Bois de Vincennes, where her father's court resided. Henry set out from Meaux to meet her there, and thence the two courts proceeded together to Paris to spend the festival of Whitsuntide.
But in the midst of these gay though unsatisfactory rejoicings, there came a pressing message from the Duke of Burgundy to Henry, entreating him to hasten to his assistance against the dauphin. Those sturdy Scots who had made such havoc amongst Henry's troops at Beaujé, were still in the country; and the dauphin, collecting 20,000 men in the south, had put them under the command of the Earl of Buchan, the leader of those troops. They had crossed the Loire, taken La Charité, and proceeded to invest Cosne. At Cosne the dauphin joined Buchan; and the Duke of Burgundy, to whom these towns belonged, seeing that his hereditary duchy of Burgundy would next be menaced, was most urgent in his appeal to Henry to fly to his assistance.
Henry, in the midst of his glory and his good fortune, had for some time felt the approaches of an illness that no exercise in the field or festivities in the city enabled him to shake off. In vain he resisted the insidious disease. It seized relentlessly on his constitution, and defied all the science of his physicians. At the call of Burgundy, however, he roused himself, and set out from Paris at the end of July. Cosne had agreed to surrender if not relieved by the 16th of August, and Henry was impatient to come up in time. But a greater conqueror than himself was now come out against him. Death had laid his hand upon him; and he had only reached Sonlis, about twenty-eight miles from Paris, when he was seized with such debility that he was obliged to be carried thence to Corbeil in a horse-litter. There, spite of his determined attempt to go on, his malady assumed such feverish and alarming symptoms that he was compelled to give up, and surrender the command of the army to the Duke of Bedford. He had left the queen at Senlis, but she was now returned to the Bois de Vincennes, and thither he caused himself to be conveyed by water.
In the castle of Vincennes, which had witnessed many a strange passage in the history of France and her sovereigns, the great conqueror now lay helpless and hopeless of life, tended by Catherine and her mother. His very name had scared once more the dauphin from the field. No sooner did he hear that Henry was on the way, than he hastily abandoned the siege of Cosne, re-crossed the Loire, and threw himself again into Bourses. The Duke of Bedford, who found no enemy in the field, was preparing to cross the Loire in pursuit of him, when he was recalled to the dying bed of his royal brother.
If there ever was a combination of circumstances to make a death-bed hard, and cause the heart to cling tenaciously to life, they were those which surrounded Henry of Monmouth. But never, in the most trying hour of his existence, not even when he contemplated the vast hosts hemming him in on the eve of the great fight of Azincourt, did he display such unbroken firmness. For himself he expressed no anxiety and no regrets; his only solicitude was for his son and successor, still only nine months old. He called to his bedside his brother the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Warwick, and others of his lords, and to them he gave the most solemn injunctions to be faithful guardians of their infant sovereign. He expressed no remorse for the blood which he had shed in his wars, unquestionably believing all that he had so often, asserted, that he was the chosen instrument of Providence for the chastisement and renovation of France.
To the Duke of Bedford he said, "Comfort my dear wife—the most afflicted creature living." He most earnestly recommended, both to him and all his commanders, to cultivate the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy; never to make peace with Charles, who called himself dauphin, except on condition of his total renunciation of the crown; never to release the Duke of Orleans or any of the French princes of the blood taken at Azincourt, nor in any way to yield the claims of his son on France. He appointed his brother the Duke of Gloucester protector in England during his son's minority, and his brother the Duke of Bedford regent in France, who should avail himself on all occasions of the counsel of the Duke of Burgundy. Being assured by his physicians that he had not more than two hours to live, he then sent for his spiritual counsellors; and while they were chanting the seven penitential psalms he stopped them at the verse, "Build thou the walls of Jerusalem," and assured them that when he had completed the settlement of France he had always intended to undertake a crusade. This was precisely what his father had done on his death-bed; and this appeared still a favourite idea of the European princes.
Having thus systematically concluded all his affairs, temporal and spiritual, he calmly expired on the last day of August, 1422, amid the sobs and deep grief of all around him.
The contemporary writer, Titus Livius, who had seen him, thus describes his person:—"In stature he was a little above the middle size; his countenance was beautiful, his neck long, his body slender, and his limbs most elegantly formed. He was very strong; and so swift, that, with two companions, without either dogs or missive weapons, he caught a doe, one of the fleetest animals. He was a lover of music, and excelled in all martial and manly exercises."
The qualities of his mind were in no respect inferior to those of his body. He was generous, aspiring, undaunted, and far-seeing. He has been compared disingenuously, by some historians, with the two great Edwards, but in nothing was he their inferior. In a far shorter career, he equalled, if he did not surpass, their military genius; and in all that related to humanity of conduct while prosecuting his wars, he was immeasurably their superior. It is only necessary to recollect the carnage and devastation which they carried everywhere in their march, the towns they relentlessly sacked, the lands and villages which they burnt and plundered, to perceive how far Henry exceeded them both in feeling and sound policy. They died detested by those whose cities and fields they had ruthlessly destroyed; Henry was remembered with affection for his protection to the invaded, and especially to women, and to the weak and aged. He exhibited instances of partial severity; theirs was general, and continued to the last.
Towards his own subjects he was constitutionally just. He was, as we have said, especially of a military genius, a warrior by ambition and from impulse. Martial fame was his grand fascination, and his imagination coloured all his aspirations, and justified to himself all his enterprises. He believed that the path of his honour was, at the same time, the path of duty; and, contented with the liberal supplies of his subjects, he made no attempt at encroachment on their rights. No monarch ever more fully realised the beau ideal of a great prince to his subjects, and four centuries have not availed to withdraw from his memory the splendour which his conquests throw around him in his life.
There was one circumstance in which the death of Henry V. differed greatly from that of many kings mighty and dreaded in their lifetime. His corpse was not abandoned the moment the breath had departed, and what had been a king was only a carcase. There was not a revolting exhibition of the baseness of courtiers, as in the cases of William the Conqueror and Edward III. On the contrary, his officers determined that he should, though dead, depart from France with as much regal state as he entered it. They had the body embalmed, and carried in great ceremony to the Church of Notre Dame, where the funeral service was performed with all the pomp that the Roman Catholic Church knows so well how to employ on such occasions.
The queen, it appears, was not present at his death, and was kept in ignorance of it for some days. On its being communicated to her, she was attended by some of the nobles to the city of Rouen, and thither the body of the king was carried in solemn procession, and there lay in state for several days. "The body was then laid on a chariot drawn by four noble horses. Just above the dead body they placed a figure made of boiled leather, representing his person as nigh as might be devised, painted curiously to the semblance of a living creature, on whose head was put an imperial diadem of gold and precious stones; on its body a purple robe furred with ermine; in the right hand a sceptre royal; in the left an orb of gold with a cross fixed thereon. And thus adorned was this figure laid in a bed on the same chariot, with the visage uncovered towards the heavens; and the coverture of this bed was of red, beaten with gold; and besides, when the body should pass through any good town, a canopy of marvellous value was borne over it by men of great worship. In this manner he was accompanied by the King of Scots as the chief mourner, and by all the princes, lords, and knights of his house, in vestures of deep mourning. At a distance from the corpse of about two English miles, followed the widow, Queen Catherine, right honourably accompanied. The body rested in the Church of St. Wolfran, in Abbeville, where masses were sung by the queen's order for the repose of Henry's soul, from the dawning of morning till the closing of night. The procession moved through Abbeville with increased pomp. The Duke of Exeter, the Earl of Marche, Sir Louis Robsart, the queen's knight, and many nobles, bore the banners of the saints. The hatchments were carried by twelve renowned captains; and around the bier-car rode 400 men-at-arms in black armour, their horses barbed black, their lances held with the point downwards. A great company clothed in white, bearing wax-torches, lighted, encompassed the procession. The queen, with a mighty retinue, followed."
Thus this vast procession kept on its way from town to town, through Hesdin, Montreuil, Boulogne, to Calais, where it arrived on the 12th of October, and found vessels ordered by the privy council waiting to convey the corpse and the company over. From Dover the great funeral procession advanced slowly through Canterbury and Rochester to London. On the way it was met by fifteen bishops in their pontifical habits, and by many abbots in their mitres and vestments, and a great assemblage of priests and people. The priests chanted their solemn anthems for the dead all the way from Blackheath and through the streets of London, where they arrived on Martinmas day. Thus they went on to St. Paul's, and, after the obsequies there performed, to Westminster Abbey. All the way every householder stood at his door with a torch in his hand; and all London seemed to follow after: The princes of the family rode in open carriages immediately after the bier, so that their grief might be manifest to all the people, who were greatly edified thereby, and especially by the deep sorrow of the queen. The body was interred near the shrine of the Confessor. The queen had a splendid tomb there erected for him, on which was inscribed that it was done by his queen, Catherine. Before it was extended a silver-plated effigy, with the head of solid silver, gilt.
During Henry's reign the long schism which had prevailed in the Church was terminated. It had lasted forty years, during which time there were two rival Popes; and towards the end of the time three. The Emperor Sigismund then set himself to remove this scandal, and by his exertions all the leading governments of Europe were brought to combine for the purpose. At the Council of Constance they compelled one Pope to resign, and excommunicated the two others; a new one, under the name of Martin V., being elected at the next conclave.
The reign of Henry V. is also remarkable for a fact which demonstrated that the old feudal system was at an end so far as it regarded the constitution of the army. The kings could no longer calculate on the nobles supplying their proper quotas of men. Henry, therefore, in 1415, before setting out for France, empowered commissioners to take in each county a registration of all the free men capable of bearing arms; to divide them into companies, and keep them in a state of discipline, ready to resist any invader. Thus arose a fixed militia, and this left him more at liberty to obtain contracts with powerful barons to serve with their vassals under his banners, or to enlist men. To keep his armies efficient he paid very high wages—two shillings per day to men-at-arms, equal to thirty shillings now; and from six to nine pence per day to archers—equal to from seven to ten shillings now. Yet, notwithstanding this, Henry was never supplied with a force capable of carrying out his designs of permanent conquest, but owed his success rather to the disunion of his enemies. The whole of his royal revenue was only about £45,000—equal in value to about £600,000 of our present money.
Henry IV. had never ventured, like the Edwards, to impose taxes without consent of Parliament, because he felt the weakness of his title to the throne. But Henry V., whose doubtful claims to the usurped power were forgotten in his fame and his popularity, appeared to grant popular privileges with a good will, resulting from a more generous nature. The Commons complained that their petitions, after being delivered to the king, were so altered by the nobles or the legal advisers of the crown, as often to become laws directly opposite to their intentions; upon which Henry instantly ordained that the Commons should in no way be bound by anything which had been put into the laws contrary to their petitions. On the whole, therefore, whether we regard the foreign or the domestic career of Henry V., we may in a great measure concur in the opinion of the historian Henry, "that he was one of the best, bravest, and most fortunate princes that ever wore the diadem of England."