According to the laws, ideas, and practices of the time the legal

question was decided. Joan, declared heretic and rebellious by the

Church, was liable to have sentence pronounced against her; but she had

persisted in her statements, she had shown no submission. Although she

appeared to be quite forgotten, and was quite neglected by the king whose

coronation she had effected, by his councillors, and even by the brave

warriors at whose side she had fought, the public exhibited a lively

interest in her; accounts of the scenes which took place at her trial

were inquired after with curiosity. Amongst the very judges who

prosecuted her, many were troubled in spirit, and wished that Joan, by an

abjuration of her statements, would herself put them at ease and relieve

them from pronouncing against her the most severe penalty. What means

were employed to arrive at this end? Did she really, and with full

knowledge of what she was about, come round to the adjuration which there

was so much anxiety to obtain from her? It is difficult to solve this

historical problem with exactness and certainty. More than once, during

the examinations and the conversations which took place at that time

between Joan and her judges, she maintained her firm posture and her

first statements. One of those who were exhorting her to yield said to

her one day, “Thy king is a heretic and a schismatic.” Joan could not

brook this insult to her king. “By my faith,” said she, “full well dare

I both say and swear that he is the noblest Christian of all Christians,

and the truest lover of the faith and the Church.” “Make her hold her

tongue,” said the usher to the preacher, who was disconcerted at having

provoked such language. Another day, when Joan was being urged to submit

to the Church, brother Isambard de la Pierre, a Dominican, who was

interested in her, spoke to her about the council, at the same time

explaining to her its province in the church. It was the very time when

that of Bale had been convoked. “Ah!” said Joan, “I would fain surrender

and submit myself to the council of Bale.” The Bishop of Beauvais

trembled at the idea of this appeal. “Hold your tongue in the devil’s

name!” said he to the monk. Another of the judges, William Erard, asked

Joan menacingly, “Will you abjure those reprobate words and deeds of

yours?” “I leave it to the universal Church whether I ought to abjure or

not.” “That is not enough: you shall abjure at once or you shall burn.”

Joan shuddered. “I would rather sign than burn,” she said. There was

put before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations

and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith,

and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the document she made the

mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long

and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the

trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial

undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been

present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher

Massieu and the registrar Taquel, declared that the form of abjuration

read out at that time to Joan and signed by her contained only seven or

eight lines of big writing; and according to another witness of the scene

it was an Englishman, John Calot, secretary of Henry VI., King of

England, who, as soon as Joan had yielded, drew from his sleeve a little

paper which he gave to her to sign, and, dissatisfied with the mark she

had made, held her hand and guided it so that she might put down her

name, every letter. However that may be, as soon as Joan’s abjuration

had thus been obtained, the court issued on the 24th of May, 1431, a

definitive decree, whereby, after some long and severe strictures in the

preamble, it condemned Joan to perpetual imprisonment, “with the bread of

affliction and the water of affliction, in order that she might deplore

the errors and faults she had committed, and relapse into them no more

henceforth.”

The Church might be satisfied; but the King of England, his councillors

and his officers, were not. It was Joan living, even though a prisoner,

that they feared. They were animated towards her by the two ruthless

passions of vengeance and fear. When it was known that she would escape

with her life, murmurs broke out amongst the crowd of enemies present at

the trial. Stones were thrown at the judges. One of the Cardinal of

Winchester’s chaplains, who happened to be close to the Bishop of

Beauvais, called him traitor. “You lie,” said the bishop. And the

bishop was right; the chaplain did lie; the bishop had no intention of

betraying his masters. The Earl of Warwick complained to him of the

inadequacy of the sentence. “Never you mind, my lord,” said one of Peter

Cauchon’s confidants; “we will have her up again.” After the passing of

her sentence Joan had said to those about her, “Come, now, you churchmen

amongst you, lead me off to your own prisons, and let me be no more in

the hands of the English.” “Lead her to where you took her,” said the

bishop; and she was conducted to the castle prison. She had been told by

some of the judges who went to see her after her sentence, that she would

have to give up her man’s dress and resume her woman’s clothing, as the

Church ordained. She was rejoiced thereat; forthwith, accordingly,

resumed her woman’s clothes, and had her hair properly cut, which up to

that time she used to wear clipped round like a man’s. When she was

taken back to prison, the man’s dress which she had worn was put in a

sack in the same room in which she was confined, and she remained in

custody at the said place in the hands of five Englishmen, of whom three

staid by night in the room and two outside at the door. “And he who

speaks [John Massieu, a priest, the same who in 1431 had been present as

usher of the court at the trial in which Joan was condemned] knows for

certain that at night she had her legs ironed in such sort that she could

not stir from the spot. When the next Sunday morning, which was Trinity

Sunday, had come, and she should have got up, according to what she

herself told to him who speaks, she said to her English guards, ‘Uniron

me; I will get up.’ Then one of then took away her woman’s clothes; they

emptied the sack in which was her man’s dress, and pitched the said dress

to her, saying, ‘Get up, then,’ and they put her woman’s clothes in the

same sack. And according to what she told me she only clad herself in

her man’s dress after saying, ‘You know it is forbidden me; I certainly

will not take it.’ Nevertheless they would not allow her any other;

insomuch that the dispute lasted to the hour of noon. Finally, from

corporeal necessity, Joan was constrained to get up and take the dress.”

The official documents drawn up during the condemnation-trial contain

quite a different account. “On the 28th of May,” it is there said,

“eight of the judges who had taken part in the sentence [their names are

given in the document, t. i. p. 454] betook themselves to Joan’s prison,

and seeing her clad in man’s dress, ‘which she had but just given up

according to our order that she should resume woman’s clothes, we asked

her when and for what cause she had resumed this dress, and who had

prevailed on her to do so. Joan answered that it was of her own will,

without any constraint from any one, and because she preferred that dress

to woman’s clothes. To our question as to why she had made this change,

she answered, that, being surrounded by men, man’s dress was more

suitable for her than woman’s. She also said that she had resumed it

because there had been made to her, but not kept, a promise that she

should go to mass, receive the body of Christ, and be set free from her

fetters. She added that if this promise were kept, she would be good,

and would do what was the will of the Church. As we had heard some

persons say that she persisted in her errors as to the pretended

revelations which she had but lately renounced, we asked whether she had

since Thursday last heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret;

and she answered, Yes. To our question as to what the saints had said

she answered, that God had testified to her by their voices great pity

for the great treason she had committed in abjuring for the sake of

saving her life, and that by so doing she had damned herself. She said

that all she had thus done last Thursday in abjuring her visions and

revelations she had done through fear of the stake, and that all her

abjuration was contrary to the truth. She added that she did not herself

comprehend what was contained in the form of abjuration she had been made

to sign, and that she would rather do penance once for all by dying to

maintain the truth than remain any longer a prisoner, being all the while

a traitress to it.”

We will not stop to examine whether these two accounts, though very

different, are not fundamentally reconcilable, and whether Joan resumed

man’s dress of her own desire or was constrained to do so by the soldiers

on guard over her, and perhaps to escape from their insults. The

important points in the incident are the burst of remorse which Joan felt

for her weakness and her striking retractation of the abjuration which

had been wrung from her. So soon as the news was noised abroad, her

enemies cried, “She has relapsed!” This was exactly what they had hoped

for when, on learning that she had been sentenced only to perpetual

imprisonment, they had said, “Never you mind; we will have her up again.”

“_Farewell, farewell_, my lord,” said the Bishop of Beauvais to the Earl

of Warwick, whom he met shortly after Joan’s retractation; and in his

words there was plainly an expression of satisfaction, and not a mere

phrase of politeness. On the 29th of May the tribunal met again. Forty

judges took part in the deliberation; Joan was unanimously declared a

case of relapse, was found guilty, and cited to appear next day, the

30th, on the Vieux-Marche to hear sentence pronounced, and then undergo

the punishment of the stake.

When, on the 30th of May, in the morning, the Dominican brother Martin

Ladvenu was charged to announce her sentence to Joan, she gave way at

first to grief and terror. “Alas!” she cried, “am I to be so horribly

and cruelly treated that this my body, full pure and perfect and never

defiled, must to-day be consumed and reduced to ashes! Ah! I would

seven times rather be beheaded than burned!” The Bishop of Beauvais at

this moment came up. “Bishop,” said Joan, “you are the cause of my

death; if you had put me in the prisons of the Church and in the hands of

fit and proper ecclesiastical warders, this had never happened; I appeal

from you to the presence of God.” One of the doctors who had sat in

judgment upon her, Peter Maurice, went to see her, and spoke to her with

sympathy. “Master Peter,” said she to him, “where shall I be to-night?”

“Have you not good hope in God?” asked the doctor. “O! yes,” she

answered; “by the grace of God I shall be in paradise.” Being left alone

with the Dominican, Martin Ladvenu, she confessed and asked to

communicate. The monk applied to the Bishop of Beauvais to know what he

was to do. “Tell brother Martin,” was the answer, “to give her the

eucharist and all she asks for.” At nine o’clock, having resumed her

woman’s dress, Joan was dragged from prison and driven to the Vieux-

Marche. From seven to eight hundred soldiers escorted the car and

prohibited all approach to it on the part of the crowd, which encumbered

the road and the vicinities; but a man forced a passage and flung himself

towards Joan. It was a canon of Rouen, Nicholas Loiseleur, whom the

Bishop of Beauvais had placed near her, and who had abused the confidence

she had shown him. Beside himself with despair, he wished to ask pardon

of her; but the English soldiers drove him back with violence and with

the epithet of traitor, and but for the intervention of the Earl of

Warwick his life would have been in danger. Joan wept and prayed; and

the crowd, afar off, wept and prayed with her. On arriving at the place,

she listened in silence to a sermon by one of the doctors of the court,

who ended by saying, “Joan, go in peace; the Church can no longer defend

thee; she gives thee over to the secular arm.” The laic judges, Raoul

Bouteillier, baillie of Rouen, and his lieutenant, Peter Daron, were

alone qualified to pronounce sentence of death; but no time was given

them. The priest Massieu was still continuing his exhortations to Joan,

but “How now! priest,” was the cry from amidst the soldiery, “are you

going to make us dine here?” “Away with her! Away with her!” said the

baillie to the guards; and to the executioner, “Do thy duty.” When she

came to the stake, Joan knelt down completely absorbed in prayer. She

had begged Massieu to get her a cross; and an Englishman present made one

out of a little stick, and handed it to the French heroine, who took it,

kissed it, and laid it on her breast. She begged brother Isambard de la

Pierre to go and fetch the cross from the church of St. Sauveur, the

chief door of which opened on the Vieux-Marche, and to hold it “upright

before her eyes till the coming of death, in order,” she said, “that the

cross whereon God hung might, as long as she lived, be continually in her

sight;” and her wishes were fulfilled. She wept over her country and the

spectators as well as over herself. “Rouen, Rouen,” she cried, “is it

here that I must die? Shalt thou be my last resting-place? I fear

greatly thou wilt have to suffer for my death.” It is said that the aged

Cardinal of Winchester and the Bishop of Beauvais himself could not

stifle their emotion--and, peradventure, their tears. The executioner

set fire to the fagots. When Joan perceived the flames rising, she urged

her confessor, the Dominican brother, Martin Ladvenu, to go down, at the

same time asking him to keep holding the cross up high in front of her,

that she might never cease to see it. The same monk, when questioned

four and twenty years later, at the rehabilitation trial, as to the last

sentiments and the last words of Joan, said that to the very latest

moment she had affirmed that her voices were heavenly, that they had not

deluded her, and that the revelations she had received came from God.

When she had ceased to live, two of her judges, John Alespie, canon of

Rouen, and Peter Maurice, doctor of theology, cried out, “Would that my

soul were where I believe the soul of that woman is!” And Tressart,

secretary to King Henry VI., said sorrowfully, on returning from the

place of execution, “We are all lost; we have burned a saint.”

A saint indeed in faith and in destiny. Never was human creature more

heroically confident in, and devoted to, inspiration coming from God, a

commission received from God. Joan of Arc sought nothing of all that

happened to her and of all she did, nor exploit, nor power, nor glory.

“It was not her condition,” as she used to say, to be a warrior, to get

her king crowned, and to deliver her country from the foreigner.

Everything came to her from on high, and she accepted everything without

hesitation, without discussion, without calculation, as we should say in

our times. She believed in God, and obeyed Him. God was not to her an

idea, a hope, a flash of human imagination, or a problem of human

science; He was the Creator of the world, the Saviour of mankind through

Jesus Christ, the Being of beings, ever present, ever in action, sole

legitimate sovereign of man whom He has made intelligent and free, the

real and true God whom we are painfully searching for in our own day, and

whom we shall never find again until we cease pretending to do without

Him and putting ourselves in His place. Meanwhile one fact may be

mentioned which does honor to our epoch and gives us hope for our future.

Four centuries have rolled by since Joan of Arc, that modest and heroic

servant of God, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For four and

twenty years after her death, France and the king appeared to think no

more of her. However, in 1455, remorse came upon Charles VII. and upon

France. Nearly all the provinces, all the towns, were freed from the

foreigner, and shame was felt that nothing was said, nothing done, for

the young girl who had saved everything. At Rouen, especially, where the

sacrifice was completed, a cry for reparation arose. It was timidly

demanded from the spiritual power which had sentenced and delivered over

Joan as a heretic to the stake. Pope Calixtus III. entertained the

request preferred, not by the King of France, but in the name of Isabel

Romee, Joan’s mother, and her whole family. Regular proceedings were

commenced and followed up for the rehabilitation of the martyr; and, on

the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court assembled at Rouen quashed

the sentence of 1431, together with all its consequences, and ordered

“a general procession and solemn sermon at St. Ouen Place and the Vieux-

Marche,” where the said maid had been cruelly and horribly burned; besides

the planting of a cross of honor (crucis honestee) on the Vieux-Marche,

the judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision

“throughout the cities and notable places of the realm.” The city of

Orleans responded to this appeal by raising on the bridge over the Loire

a group in bronze representing Joan of Arc on her knees before Our Lady

between two angels. This monument, which was broken during the religious

wars of the sixteenth century and repaired shortly afterwards, was

removed in the eighteenth century, and, Joan of Arc then received a fresh

insult; the poetry of a cynic was devoted to the task of diverting a

licentious public at the expense of the saint whom, three centuries

before, fanatical hatred had brought to the stake. In 1792 the council

of the commune of Orleans, “considering that the monument in bronze did

not represent the heroine’s services, and did not by any sign call to

mind the struggle against the English,” ordered it to be melted down and

cast into cannons, of which “one should bear the name of Joan of Arc.”

It is in our time that the city of Orleans and its distinguished bishop,

Mgr. Dupanloup, have at last paid Joan homage worthy of her, not only by

erecting to her a new statue, but by recalling her again to the memory of

France with her true features, and in her grand character. Neither

French nor any other history offers a like example of a modest little

soul, with a faith so pure and efficacious, resting on divine inspiration

and patriotic hope.

During the trial of Joan of Arc the war between France and England,

without being discontinued, had been somewhat slack: the curiosity and

the passions of men were concentrated upon the scenes at Rouen. After

the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though without any

great events. By way of a step towards solution, the Duke of Bedford, in

November, 1431, escorted to Paris King Henry VI., scarcely ten years old,

and had him crowned at Notre-Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for

pomp, but not for warmth. The Duke of Burgundy was not present; it was

an Englishman, the Cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the young

Englander King of France; the Bishop of Paris complained of it as a

violation of his rights; the parliament, the university, and the

municipal body had not even seats reserved at the royal banquet; Paris

was melancholy, and day by day more deserted by the native inhabitants;

grass was growing in the court-yards of the great mansions; the students

were leaving the great school of Paris, to which the Duke of Bedford at

Caen, and Charles VII. himself at Poitiers, were attempting to raise up

rivals; and silence reigned in the Latin quarter. The child-king was

considered unintelligent, and ungraceful, and ungracious. When, on the

day after Christmas, he started on his way back to Rouen, and from Rouen

to England, he did not confer on Paris “any of the boons expected, either

by releasing prisoners or by putting an end to black-mails, gabels, and

wicked imposts.” The burgesses were astonished, and grumbled; and the

old queen, Isabel of Bavaria, who was still living at the hostel of St.

Paul, wept, it is said, for vexation, at seeing from one of her windows

her grandson’s royal procession go by.

Though war was going on all the while, attempts were made to negotiate;

and in March, 1433, a conference was opened at Seineport, near Corbeil.

Everybody in France desired peace. Philip the Good himself began to feel

the necessity of it. Burgundy was almost as discontented and troubled as

Ile-de-France. There was grumbling at Dijon as there was conspiracy at

Paris. The English gave fresh cause for national irritation. They

showed an inclination to canton themselves in Normandy, and abandon the

other French provinces to the hazards and sufferings of a desultory war.

Anne of Burgundy, the Duke of Bedford’s wife and Philip the Good’s

sister, died. The English duke speedily married again without even

giving any notice to the French prince. Every family tie between the two

persons was broken; and the negotiations as well as the war remained

without result.

An incident at court caused a change in the situation, and gave the

government of Charles a different character. His favorite, George de la

Tremoille, had become almost as unpopular amongst the royal family as in

the country in general. He could not manage a war, and he frustrated

attempts at peace. The Queen of Sicily, Yolande d’Aragon, her daughter,

Mary d’Anjou, Queen of France, and her son, Louis, Count of Maine, who

all three desired peace, set themselves to work to overthrow the

favorite. In June, 1433, four young lords, one of whom, Sire de Beuil,

was La Tremoille’s own nephew, introduced themselves unexpectedly into

his room at the castle of Coudray, near Chinon, where Charles VII. was.

La Tremoille showed an intention of resisting, and received a

sword-thrust. He was made to resign all his offices, and was sent under

strict guard to the castle of Alontresor, the property of his nephew,

Sire de Beuil. The conspirators had concerted measures with La

Tremoille’s rival, the constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, a man

distinguished in war, who had lately gone to help Joan of Arc, and who

was known to be a friend of peace at the same time that he was firmly

devoted to the national cause. He was called away from his castle of

Parthenay, and set at the head of the government as well as of the army.

Charles VII. at first showed anger at his favorite’s downfall. He asked

if Richemont was present, and was told no: where-upon he seemed to grow

calmer. Before long he did more; he became resigned, and, continuing all

the while to give La Tremoille occasional proofs of his former favor, he

fully accepted De Richemont’s influence and the new direction which the

constable imposed upon his government.

War was continued nearly everywhere, with alternations of success and

reverse which deprived none of the parties of hope without giving victory

to any. Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely

had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun. The

constable De Richemont’s return to power led to fresh overtures. He was

a states-man as well as a warrior; and his inclinations were known at

Dijon and London, as well as at Chinon. The advisers of King Henry VI.

proposed to open a conference, on the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais.

They had, they said, a prisoner in England, confined there ever since the

battle of Agincourt, Duke Charles of Orleans, who was sincerely desirous

of peace, in spite of his family enmity towards the Duke of Burgundy. He

was considered a very proper person to promote the negotiations, although

he sought in poetry, which was destined to bring lustre to his name, a

refuge from politics which made his life a burden. He, one day meeting

the Duke of Burgundy’s two ambassadors at the Earl of Suffolk’s, Henry

VI.’s prime minister, went up to them, affectionately took their hands,

and, when they inquired after his health, said, “My body is well, my soul

is sick; I am dying with vexation at passing my best days a prisoner,

without any one to think of me.” The ambassadors said that people would

be indebted to him for the benefit of peace, for he was known to be

laboring for it. “My Lord of Suffolk,” said he, “can tell you that I

never cease to urge it upon the king and his council; but I am as useless

here as the sword never drawn from the scabbard. I must see my relatives

and friends in France; they will not treat, surely, without having

consulted with me. If peace depended upon me, though I were doomed to

die seven days after swearing it, that would cause me no regret.

however, what matters it what I say? I am not master in anything at all;

next to the two kings, it is the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of

Brittany who have most power. Will you not come and call upon me?” he

added, pressing the hand of one of the ambassadors. “They will see you

before they go,” said the Earl of Suffolk, in a tone which made it plain

that no private conversation would be permitted between them. And,

indeed, the Earl of Suffolk’s barber went alone to wait upon the

ambassadors in order to tell them that, if the Duke of Burgundy desired

it, the Duke of Orleans would write to him. “I will undertake,” he

added, “to bring you his letter.” There was evident mistrust; and it was

explained to the Burgundian ambassadors by the Earl of Warwick’s remark,

“Your duke never once came to see our king during his stay in France.

The Duke of Bedford used similar language to them. Why,” said he, “does

my brother the Duke of Burgundy give way to evil imaginings against me?

There is not a prince in the world, after my king, whom I esteem so much.

The ill-will which seems to exist between us spoils the king’s affairs

and his own too. But tell him that I am not the less disposed to serve

him.”

In March, 1435, the Duke of Burgundy went to Paris, taking with him his

third wife, Isabel of Portugal, and a magnificent following. There were

seen, moreover, in his train, a hundred wagons laden with artillery,

armor, salted provisions, cheeses, and wines of Burgundy. There was once

more joy in Paris, and the duke received the most affectionate welcome.

The university was represented before him, and made him a great speech on

the necessity of peace. Two days afterwards a deputation from the city

dames of Paris waited upon the Duchess of Burgundy, and implored her to

use her influence for the re-establishment of peace. She answered, “My

good friends, it is the thing I desire most of all in the world; I pray

for it night and day to the Lord our God, for I believe that we all have

great need of it, and I know for certain that my lord and husband has the

greatest willingness to give up to that purpose his person and his

substance.” At the bottom of his soul Duke Philip’s decision was already

taken. He had but lately discussed the condition of France with the

constable, De Richemont, and Duke Charles of Bourbon, his brother-in-law,

whom he had summoned to Nevers with that design. Being convinced of the

necessity for peace, he spoke of it to the King of England’s advisers

whom he found in Paris, and who dared not show absolute opposition to it.

It was agreed that in the month of July a general, and, more properly

speaking, a European conference should meet at Arras, that the legates of

Pope Eugenius IV. should be invited to it, and that consultation should

be held thereat as to the means of putting an end to the sufferings of

the two kingdoms.

Towards the end of July, accordingly, whilst the war was being prosecuted

with redoubled ardor on both sides at the very gates of Paris, there

arrived at Arras the pope’s legates and the ambassadors of the Emperor

Sigismund, of the Kings of Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Naples, Sicily,

Cyprus, Poland, and Denmark, and of the Dukes of Brittany and Milan. The

university of Paris and many of the good towns of France, Flanders, and

even Holland, had sent their deputies thither. Many bishops were there

in person. The Bishop of Liege came thither with a magnificent train,

mounted, says the chroniclers, on two hundred white horses. The Duke of

Burgundy made his entrance on the 30th of July, escorted by three hundred

archers wearing his livery. All the lords who happened to be in the city

went to meet him at a league’s distance, except the cardinal-legates of

the pope, who confined themselves to sending their people. Two days

afterwards arrived the ambassadors of the King of France, having at their

head the Duke of Bourbon and the constable De Richemont, together with

several of the greatest French lords, and a retinue of four or five

hundred persons. Duke Philip, forewarned of their coming, issued from

the city with all the princes and lords who happened to be there. The

English alone refused to accompany him, wondering at his showing such

great honor to the ambassadors of their common enemy. Philip went

forward a mile to meet his two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Bourbon and

the Count de Richemont, embraced them affectionately, and turned back

with them into Arras, amidst the joy and acclamations of the populace.

Last of all arrived the Duchess of Burgundy, magnificently dressed, and

bringing with her her young son, the Count of Charolais, who was

hereafter to be Charles the Rash. The Duke of Bourbon, the constable De

Richemont, and all the lords were on horseback around her litter; but the

English, who had gone, like the others, to meet her, were unwilling, on

turning back to Arras, to form a part of her retinue with the French.

Grand as was the sight, it was not superior in grandeur to the event on

the eve of accomplishment. The question was whether France should remain

a great nation, in full possession of itself and of its independence

under a French king, or whether the King of England should, in London and

with the title of King of France, have France in his possession and under

his government. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was called upon to

solve this problem of the future, that is to say, to decide upon the fate

of his lineage and his country.

[Illustration: Philip the Good of Burgundy----144]

As soon as the conference was opened, and no matter what attempts were

made to veil or adjourn the question, it was put nakedly. The English,

instead of peace, began by proposing a long truce, and the marriage of

Henry VI. with a daughter of King Charles. The French ambassadors

refused, absolutely, to negotiate on this basis; they desired a

definitive peace; and their conditions were, that the King and people of

England making an end of this situation, so full of clanger for the whole

royal house, and of suffering for the people. Nevertheless, the duke

showed strong scruples. The treaties he had sworn to, the promises he

had made, threw him into a constant fever of anxiety; he would not have

any one able to say that he had in any respect forfeited his honor. He

asked for three consultations, one with the Italian doctors connected

with the pope’s legates, another with English doctors, and another with

French doctors. He was granted all three, though they were more

calculated to furnish him with arguments, each on their own side, than

to dissipate his doubts, if he had any real ones. The legates ended by

solemnly saying to him, “We do conjure you, by the bowels of our Lord

Jesus Christ, and by the authority of our holy father, the pope, of the

holy council assembled at Bale, and of the universal Church, to renounce

that spirit of vengeance whereby you are moved against King Charles in

memory of the late Duke John, your father; nothing can render you more

pleasing in the eyes of God, or further augment your fame in this world.”

For three days Duke Philip remained still undecided; but he heard that

the Duke of Bedford, regent of France on behalf of the English, who was

his brother-in-law, had just died at Rouen, on the 14th of September. He

was, besides the late King of England, Henry V., the only English-man who

had received promises from the duke, and who lived in intimacy with him.

Ten days afterwards, on the 21th of September, the queen, Isabel of

Bavaria, also died at Paris; and thus another of the principal causes of

shame to the French kingship, and misfortune to France, disappeared from

the stage of the world. Duke Philip felt himself more free and more at

rest in his mind, if not rightfully, at any rate so far as political and

worldly expedience was concerned. He declared his readiness to accept

the proposals which had been communicated to him by the ambassadors of

Charles VII.; and on the 21st of September, 1435, peace was signed at

Arras between France and Burgundy, without any care for what England

might say or do.

There was great and general joy in France. It was peace, and national

reconciliation as well; Dauphinizers and Burgundians embraced in the

streets; the Burgundians were delighted at being able to call themselves

Frenchmen. Charles VII. convoked the states-general at Tours, to

consecrate this alliance. On his knees, upon the bare stone, before the

Archbishop of Crete, who had just celebrated mass, the king laid his

hands upon the Gospels, and swore the peace, saying that “It was his duty

to imitate the King of kings, our divine Saviour, who had brought peace

amongst men.” At the chancellor’s order, the princes and great lords,

one after the other, took the oath; the nobles and the people of the

third estate swore the peace all together, with cries of “Long live the

king! Long live the Duke of Burgundy!” “With this hand,” said Sire de

Lannoy, “I have thrice sworn peace during this war; but I call God to

witness that, for my part, this time it shall be kept, and that never

will I break it (the peace).” Charles VII., in his emotion, seized the

hands of Duke Philip’s ambassadors, saying, “For a long while I have

languished for this happy day; we must thank God for it.” And the Te

Deum was intoned with enthusiasm.

Peace was really made amongst Frenchmen; and, in spite of many internal

difficulties and quarrels, it was not broken as long as Charles VII. and

Duke Philip the Good were living. But the war with the English went on

incessantly. They still possessed several of the finest provinces of

France; and the treaty of Arras, which had weakened them very much on the

Continent, had likewise made them very angry. For twenty-six years, from

1435 to 1461, hostilities continued between the two kingdoms, at one time

actively and at another slackly, with occasional suspension by truce, but

without any formal termination. There is no use in recounting the

details of their monotonous and barren history. Governments and people

often persist in maintaining their quarrels and inflicting mutual

injuries by the instrumentality of events, acts, and actors that deserve

nothing but oblivion. There is no intention here of dwelling upon any

events or persons save such as have, for good or for evil, to its glory

or its sorrow, exercised a considerable influence upon the condition and

fortune of France.

The peace of Arras brought back to the service of France and her king the

constable De Richemont, Arthur of Brittany, whom the jealousy of George

de la Tremoille and the distrustful indolence of Charles VII. had so long

kept out of it. By a somewhat rare privilege, he was in reality, there

is reason to suppose, superior to the name he has left behind him in

history; and it is only justice to reproduce here the portrait given of

him by one of his contemporaries who observed him closely and knew him

well. “Never a man of his time,” says William Gruet, “loved justice more

than he, or took more pains to do it according to his ability. Never was

prince more humble, more charitable, more compassionate, more liberal,

less avaricious, or more open-handed in a good fashion and without

prodigality. He was a proper man, chaste and brave as prince can be; and

there was none of his time of better conduct than lie in conducting a

great battle, or a great siege, and all sorts of approaches in all sorts

of ways. Every day, once at least in the four and twenty hours, his

conversation was of war, and he took more pleasure in it than in aught

else. Above all things he loved men of valor and good renown, and he

more than any other loved and supported the people, and freely did good

to poor mendicants and others of God’s poor.”

Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful

again, confirm the truth of this portrait. His first thought and his

first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king. The unhappy

city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and

ruin. “The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it,” says

an eye-witness, “twenty-four thousand houses empty.” The Duke of

Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted

to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses);

but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy. In 1425, there

was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance

of Death: Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by

the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them

dance. In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from

its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people. “Four blind men,

armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock. They had

to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they

were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another.” The constable

resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital

of France. In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself

apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there

and plundered the church. He at once gave orders to march. The

Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and

would not mount. Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun

to St. Denis. “You know the country?” said the constable to Marshal

Isle-Adam. “Yes, my lord,” answered the other; “and by my faith, in the

position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them,

though you had ten thousand fighting men.” “Ah! but we will,” replied

Richemont; “God will help us. Keep pressing forward to support the

skirmishers.” And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English. The

population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved

and encouraged. One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of

the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were

ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an

engagement were entered into in the king’s name for a general amnesty and

the prevention of all disorder. The constable, on the king’s behalf,

entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day,

the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate. The

enterprise was discovered. A man posted on the wall made signs to them

with his hat, crying out, “Go to the other gate; there’s no opening this;

work is going on for you in the Market-quarter.” The picked force

followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate. “Who

goes there?” demanded some burghers who had the guard of it. “Some of

the constable’s people.” He himself came up on his big charger, with

satisfaction and courtesy in his mien. Some little time was required for

opening the gate; a long ladder was let down; and Marshal Isle-Adam was

the first to mount, and planted on the wall the standard of France. The

fastenings of the drawbridge were burst, and when it was let down, the

constable made his entry on horseback, riding calmly down St. Jacques

Street, in the midst of a joyous and comforted crowd. “My good friends,”

he said to them, “the good King Charles, and I on his behalf, do thank

you a hundred thousand times for yielding up to him so quietly the chief

city of his kingdom. If there be amongst you any, of whatsoever

condition he may be, who hath offended against my lord ‘the king, all is

forgiven, in the case both of the absent and the present.”

[Illustration: The Constable Made his Entry on Horseback----150]

Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the

streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as

to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to

use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any. At sight

of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the

constable was disposed to besiege them. “My lord,” said the burghers to

him, “they will surrender; do not reject their offer; it is so far a fine

thing enough to have thus recovered Paris; often, on the contrary, many

constables and many marshals have been driven out of it. Take

contentedly what God hath granted you.” The burghers’ prediction was not

unverified. The English sallied out of the Bastille by the gate which

opened on the fields, and went and took boat in the rear of the Louvre.

Next day abundance of provisions arrived in Paris; and the gates were

opened to the country folks. The populace freely manifested their joy at

being rid of the English. “It was plain to see,” was the saving, “that

they were not in France to remain; not one of them had been seen to sow a

field with corn or build a house; they destroyed their quarters without a

thought of repairing them; they had not restored, peradventure, a single

fireplace. There was only their regent, the Duke of Bedford, who was

fond of building and making the poor people work; he would have liked

peace; but the nature of those English is to be always at war with their

neighbors, and accordingly they all made a bad end; thank God there have

already died in France more than seventy thousand of them.”

Up to the taking of Paris by the constable the Duke of Burgundy had kept

himself in reserve, and had maintained a tacit neutrality towards

England; he had merely been making, without noisy demonstration,

preparations for an enterprise in which he, as Count of Flanders, was

very much interested. The success of Richemont inspired him with a hope,

and perhaps with a jealous desire, of showing his power and his

patriotism as a Frenchman by making war, in his turn, upon the English,

from whom he had by the treaty of Arras effected only a pacific

separation. In June, 1436, he went and besieged Calais. This was

attacking England at one of the points she was bent upon defending most

obstinately. Philip had reckoned on the energetic cooperation of the

cities of Flanders, and at the first blush the Flemings did display a

strong inclination to support him in his enterprise. “When the

English,” they said, “know that my lords of Ghent are on the way to

attack them with all their might they will not await us; they will leave

the city and flee away to England.” Neither the Flemings nor Philip had

correctly estimated the importance which was attached in London to the

possession of Calais. When the Duke of Gloucester, lord-protector of

England, found this possession threatened, he sent a herald to defy the

Duke of Burgundy and declare to him that, if he did not wait for battle

beneath the walls of Calais, Humphrey of Gloucester would go after him

even into his own dominions. “Tell your lord that he will not need to

take so much trouble, and that he will find me here,” answered Philip

proudly. His pride was over-confident. Whether it were only a people’s

fickleness or intelligent appreciation of their own commercial interests

in their relations with England, the Flemings grew speedily disgusted

with the siege of Calais, complained of the tardiness in arrival of the

fleet which Philip had despatched thither to close the port against

English vessels, and, after having suffered several reverses by sorties

of the English garrison, they ended by retiring with such precipitation

that they abandoned part of their supplies and artillery. Philip,

according to the expression of M. Henri Martin, was reduced to covering

their retreat with his cavalry; and then he went away sorrowfully to

Lille, to advise about the means of defending his Flemish lordships

exposed to the reprisals of the English.

Thus the fortune of Burgundy was tottering whilst that of France was

recovering itself. The constable’s easy occupation of Paris led the

majority of the small places in the neighborhood, St. Denis, Chevreuse,

Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon spontaneous surrender or

allowing themselves to be taken after no great resistance. Charles VII.,

on his way through France to Lyon, in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and

along the Loire, recovered several other towns, for instance, Chateau-

Landon, Nemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an

important military post with which a recent and sinister reminiscence was

connected. A great change now made itself apparent in the king’s

behavior and disposition. He showed activity and vigilance, and was

ready to expose himself without any care for fatigue or danger. On the

day of the assault (10th of October, 1437) he went down into the

trenches, remained there in water up to his waist, mounted the scaling-

ladder sword in hand, and was one of the first assailants who penetrated

over the top of the walls right into the place. After the surrender of

the castle as well as the town of Montereau, he marched on Paris, and

made his solemn re-entry there on the 12th of November, 1437, for the

first time since in 1418 Tanneguy-Duchatel had carried him away, whilst

still a child, wrapped in his bed-clothes. Charles was received and

entertained as became a recovered and a victorious king; but he passed

only three weeks there, and went away once more, on the 3d of December,

to go and resume at Orleans first, and then at Bourges, the serious cares

of government. It is said to have been at this royal entry into Paris

that Agnes Sorel or Soreau, who was soon to have the name of Queen of

Beauty, and to assume in French history an almost glorious though

illegitimate position, appeared with brilliancy in the train of the

queen, Mary of Anjou, to whom the king had appointed her a maid of honor.

It is a question whether she did not even then exercise over Charles VII.

that influence, serviceable alike to the honor of the king and of France,

which was to inspire Francis I., a century later, with this gallant

quatrain:

“If to win back poor captive France be aught,

More honor, gentle Agnes, is thy weed,

Than ere was due to deeds of virtue wrought

By cloistered nun or pious hermit-breed.”

It is worth while perhaps to remark that in 1437 Agnes Sorel was already

twenty-seven.

[Illustration: Agnes Sorel----175]

One of the best informed, most impartial, and most sensible historians of

that epoch, James Duclercq, merely says on this subject, King Charles,

before he had peace with Duke Philip of Burgundy, led a right holy life

and said his canonical hours. But after peace was made with the duke,

though the king continued to serve God, he joined himself unto a young

woman who was afterwards called Fair Agnes.

Nothing is gained by ignoring good even when it is found in company with

evil, and there is no intention here of disputing the share of influence

exercised by Agnes Sorel upon Charles VII.’s regeneration in politics and

war after the treaty of Arras. Nevertheless, in spite of the king’s

successes at Montereau and during his passage through Central and

Northern France, the condition of the country was still so bad in 1440,

the disorder was so great, and the king so powerless to apply a remedy,

that Richemont, disconsolate, was tempted to rid and disburden himself

from the government of France and between the rivers [Seine and Loire, no

doubt] and to go or send to the king for that purpose. But one day the

prior of the Carthusians at Paris called on the constable and found him

in his private chapel. “What need you, fair father?” asked Richemont.

The prior answered that he wished to speak with my lord the constable.

Richemont replied that it was he himself. “Pardon me, my lord,” said the

prior, “I did not know you; I wish to speak to you, if you please.”

“Gladly,” said Richemont. “Well, my lord, you yesterday held counsel and

considered about disburdening yourself from the government and office you

hold hereabouts.” “How know you that? Who told you?” “My lord, I do

not know it through any person of your council, and do not put yourself

out to learn who told me, for it was one of my brethren. My lord, do not

do this thing; and be not troubled, for God will help you.” “Ah! fair

father, how can that be? The king has no mind to aid me or grant me men

or money; and the men-at-arms hate me because I have justice done on

them, and they have no mind to obey me.” “My lord, they will do what you

desire; and the king will give you orders to go and lay siege to Meaux,

and will send you men and money.” “Ah! fair father, Meaux is so strong!

How can it be done? The King of England was there for nine months before

it.” “My lord, be not you troubled; you will not be there so long; keep

having good hope in God and He will help you. Be ever humble and grow

not proud; you will take Meaux ere long; your men will grow proud; they

will then have somewhat to suffer; but you will come out of it to your

honor.”

The good prior was right. Meaux was taken; and when the constable went

to tell the news at Paris the king made him “great cheer.” There was a

continuance of war to the north of the Loire; and amidst many

alternations of successes and reverses the national cause made great way

there. Charles resolved, in 1442, to undertake an expedition to the

south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, where the English were still dominant;

and he was successful. He took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever,

Marmande, La Reole, Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John

d’Armagnac, submitted to the King of France. These successes cost

Charles VII. the brave La Hire, who died at Montauban of his wounds.

On returning to Normandy, where he had left Dunois, Charles, in 1443,

conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English leaders were getting

weary of a war without any definite issue; and they had proposals made to

Charles for a truce, accompanied with a demand on the part of their young

king, Henry VI., for the hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou,

daughter of King Rena, who wore the three crowns of Naples, Sicily, and

Jerusalem, without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The truce and the

marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. Neither of the arrangements

was popular in England; the English people, who had only a far-off touch

of suffering from the war, considered that their government made too many

concessions to France. In France, too, there was some murmuring; the

king, it was said, did not press his advantages with sufficient vigor;

everybody was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered. “But a joy

that was boundless and impossible to describe,” says Thomas Bazin, the

most intelligent of the contemporary historians, “spread abroad through

the whole population of the Gauls. Having been a prey for so long to

incessant terrors, and shut up within the walls of their towns like

convicts in a prison, they rejoiced like people restored to freedom after

a long and bitter slavery. Companies of both sexes were seen going forth

into the country and visiting temples or oratories dedicated to the

saints, to pay the vows which they had made in their distress. One fact

especially was admirable and the work of God Himself: before the truce so

violent had been the hatred between the two sides, both men-at-arms and

people, that none, whether soldier or burgher, could without risk to life

go out and pass from one place to another unless under the protection of

a safe-conduct. But, so soon as the truce was proclaimed, every one went

and came at pleasure, in full liberty and security, whether in the same

district or in districts under divided rule; and even those who, before

the proclamation of the truce, seemed to take no pleasure in anything but

a savage outpouring of human blood, now took delight in the sweets of

peace, and passed the days in holiday-making and dancing with enemies who

but lately had been as bloodthirsty as themselves.”

But for all their rejoicing at the peace, the French, king, lords, and

commons, had war still in their hearts; national feelings were waking up

afresh; the successes of late years had revived their hopes; and the

civil dissensions which were at that time disturbing England let

favorable chances peep out. Charles VII. and his advisers employed the

leisure afforded by the truce in preparing for a renewal of the struggle.

They were the first to begin it again; and from 1449 to 1451 it was

pursued by the French king and nation with ever-increasing ardor, and

with obstinate courage by the veteran English warriors astounded at no

longer being victorious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to

be called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and the

chief theatre of war. Amongst the greatest number of fights and

incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two provinces,

the recapture of Rouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the battle of

Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15th of April, 1450, by the constable De

Richemont, and the twofold capitulation of Bordeaux, first on the 28th of

June, 1451, and next on the 9th of October, 1453, in order to submit to

Charles VII., are the only events to which a place in history is due, for

those were the days on which the question was solved touching the

independence of the nation and the kingship in France. The Duke of

Somerset and Lord Talbot were commanding in Rouen when Dunois presented

himself beneath its walls, in hopes that the inhabitants would open the

gates to him. Some burgesses, indeed, had him apprised of a certain

point in the walls at which they might be able to favor the entry of the

French. Dunois, at the same time making a feint of attacking in another

quarter, arrived at the spot indicated with four thousand men. The

archers drew up before the wall; the men-at-arms dismounted; the

burgesses gave the signal, and the planting of scaling-ladders began; but

when hardly as many as fifty or sixty men had reached the top of the wall

the banner and troops of Talbot were seen advancing. He had been warned

in time and had taken his measures. The assailants were repulsed; and

Charles VII., who was just arriving at the camp, seeing the abortiveness

of the attempt, went back to Pont-de-l’Arehe. But the English had no

long joy of their success. They were too weak to make any effectual

resistance, and they had no hope of any aid from England. Their leaders

authorized the burgesses to demand of the king a safe-conduct in order to

treat. The conditions offered by Charles were agreeable to the

burgesses, but not to the English; and when the archbishop read them

out in the hall of the mansion-house, Somerset and Talbot witnessed an

outburst of joy which revealed to them all their peril. Fagots and

benches at once began to rain down from the windows; the English shut

themselves up precipitately in the castle, in the gate-towers, and in the

great tower of the bridge; and the burgesses armed themselves and took

possession during the night of the streets and the walls. Dunois, having

received notice, arrived in force at the Martainville gate. The

inhabitants begged him to march into the city as many men as he pleased.

“It shall be as you will,” said Dunois. Three hundred men-at-arms and

archers seemed sufficient. Charles VII returned before Rouen; the

English asked leave to withdraw without loss of life or kit; and “on

condition,” said the king “that they take nothing on the march without

paying.” “We have not the wherewithal,” they answered; and the king gave

them a hundred francs. Negotiations were recommenced. The king required

that Harfleur and all the places in the district of Caux should be given

up to him. “Ah! as for Harfleur, that cannot be,” said the Duke of

Somerset; “it is the first town which surrendered to our glorious king,

Henry V., thirty-five years ago.” There was further parley. The French

consented to give up the demand for Harfleur; but they required that

Talbot should remain as a hostage until the conditions were fulfilled.

The English protested. At last, however, they yielded, and undertook to

pay fifty thousand golden crowns to settle all accounts which they owed

to the tradesmen in the city, and to give up all places in the district

of Caen except Harfleur. The Duchess of Somerset and Lord Talbot

remained as hostages; and on the 10th of November, 1449, Charles entered

Rouen in state, with the character of a victor who knew how to use

victory with moderation.

The battle of Formigny was at first very doubtful. In order to get from

Valognes to Bayeux and Caen the English had to cross at the mouth of the

Vire great sands which were passable only at low tide. A weak body of

French under command of the Count de Clermont had orders to cut them off

from this passage. The English, however, succeeded in forcing it; but

just as they were taking position, with the village of Formigny to cover

their rear, the constable De Richemont was seen coming up with three

thousand men in fine order. The English were already strongly

intrenched, when the battle began. “Let us go and look close in their

faces, admiral,” said the constable to Sire de Coetivi. “I doubt whether

they will leave their intrenchments,” replied the admiral. “I vow to God

that with His grace they will not abide in them,” rejoined the

constable; and he gave orders for the most vigorous assault. It lasted

nearly three hours; the English were forced to fly at three points, and

lost thirty-seven hundred men; several of their leaders were made

prisoners; those who were left retired in good order; Bayeux, Avranches,

Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other into the hands of

Charles VII.; and by the end of August, 1450, the whole of Normandy had

been completely won back by France.

The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately after that of

Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more speedy. Amongst the lords

of Southern France several hearty patriots, such as John of Blois, Count

of Perigord, and Arnold Amanieu, Sire d’Albret, of their own accord began

the strife, and on the 1st of November, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe

reverse upon the English, near Blanquefort. In the spring of the

following year Charles VII. authorized the Count of Armagnac to take the

field, and sent Dunois to assume the command-in-chief. An army of twenty

thousand men mustered under his orders; and, in the course of May, 1451,

some of the principal places of Guyenne, such as St. Emillon, Blaye,

Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Libourne, and Dax were taken by assault or

capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne held out for some weeks; but, on the

12th of June, a treaty concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured

to the three estates of the district the liberties and privileges which

they had enjoyed under English supremacy; and it was further stipulated

that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succored by English

forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the sovereignty of King

Charles. When the 24th of June came, a herald went up to one of the

towers of the castle and shouted, “Succor from the King of England for

them of Bordeaux!!” None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux

surrendered, and on the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the

name of the King of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the

6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar treaty.

Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still had a

considerable following there. They had held it for three centuries;

and they had always treated it well in respect of local liberties,

agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering it, was less

wise. He determined to establish there forthwith the taxes, the laws,

and the whole regimen of Northern France; and the Bordelese were as

prompt in protesting against these measures as the king was in employing

them. In August, 1452, a deputation from the three estates of the

province waited upon Charles at Bourges, but did not obtain their

demands. On their return to Bordeaux an insurrection was organized; and

Peter de Montferrand, Sire de Lesparre, repaired to London and proposed

to the English government to resume possession of Guyenne. On the 22d of

October, 1452, Talbot appeared before Bordeaux with a body of five

thousand men; the inhabitants opened their gates to him; and he installed

himself there as lieutenant of the King of England, Henry VI. Nearly all

the places in the neighborhood, with the exception of Bourg and Blaye,

returned beneath the sway of the English; considerable reenforcements

were sent to Talbot from England; and at the same time an English fleet

threatened the coast of Normandy. But Charles VII. was no longer the

blind and indolent king he had been in his youth. Nor can the prompt and

effectual energy he displayed in 1453 be any longer attributed to the

influence of Agnes Sorel, for she died on the 9th of February, 1450.

Charles left Richemont and Dunois to hold Normandy; and, in the early

days of spring, moved in person to the south of France with a strong army

and the principal Gascon lords who two years previously had brought

Guyenne back under his power. On the 2d of June, 1453, he opened the

campaign at St. Jean-d’Angely. Several places surrendered to him as soon

as he appeared before their walls; and on the 13th of July he laid siege

to Castillon, on the Dordogne, which had shortly before fallen into the

hands of the English. The Bordelese grew alarmed and urged Talbot to

oppose the advance of the French. “We may very well let them come nearer

yet,” said the old warrior, then eighty years of age; “rest assured that,

if it please God, I will fulfil my promise when I see that the time and

the hour have come.”

On the night between the 16th and 17th of July, however, Talbot set out

with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon. He marched all night

and came suddenly in the early morning upon the French archers, quartered

in an abbey, who formed the advanced guard of their army, which was

strongly intrenched before the place. A panic set in amongst this small

body, and some of them took to flight. “Ha! you would desert me then?”

said Sire de Rouault, who was in command of them; “have I not promised

you to live and die with you?” They thereupon rallied and managed to

join the camp. Talbot, content for the time with this petty success,

sent for a chaplain to come and say mass; and, whilst waiting for an

opportunity to resume the fight, he permitted the tapping of some casks

of wine which had been found in the abbey, and his men set themselves to

drinking. A countryman of those parts came hurrying up, and said to

Talbot, “My lord, the French are deserting their park and taking to

flight; now or never is the hour for fulfilling your promise.” Talbot

arose and left the mass, shouting, “Never may I hear mass again if I put

not to rout the French who are in yonder park.” When he arrived in front

of the Frenchmen’s intrenchment, “My lord,” said Sir Thomas Cunningham,

an aged gentleman who had for a long time past been his standard-bearer,

“they have made a false report to you; observe the depth of the ditch and

the faces of yonder men; they don’t look like retreating; my opinion is,

that for the present we should turn back; the country is for us, we have

no lack of provisions, and with a little patience we shall starve out the

French.” Talbot flew into a passion, gave Sir Thomas a sword-cut across

the face, had his banner planted on the edge of the ditch, and began the

attack. The banner was torn down and Sir Thomas Cunningham killed.

“Dismount!” shouted Talbot to his men-at-arms, English and Gascon. The

French camp was defended by a more than usually strong artillery; a body

of Bretons, held in reserve, advanced to sustain the shock of the

English; and a shot from a culverin struck Talbot, who was already

wounded in the face, shattered his thigh, and brought him to the ground.

Lord Lisle, his son, flew to him to raise him. “Let me be,” said Talbot;

“the day is the enemies’; it will be no shame for thee to fly, for this

is thy first battle.” But the son remained with his father, and was

slain at his side. The defeat of the English was complete. Talbot’s

body, pierced with wounds, was left on the field of battle. He was so

disfigured that, when the dead were removed, he was not recognized.

Notice, however, was taken of an old man wearing a cuirass covered with

red velvet; this, it was presumed, was he; and he was placed upon a

shield and carried into the camp. An English herald came with a request

that he might look for Lord’ Talbot’s body. “Would you know him?” he was

asked. “Take me to see him,” joyfully answered the poor servant,

thinking that his master was a prisoner and alive. When he saw him, he

hesitated to identify him; he knelt down, put his finger in the mouth of

the corpse, and recognized Talbot by the loss of a molar tooth. Throwing

off immediately his coat-of-arms with the colors and bearings of Talbot,

“Ah! my lord and master,” he cried, “can this be verily you? May God

forgive your sins! For forty years and more I have been your

officer-at-arms and worn your livery, and thus I give it back to you!”

And he covered with his coat-of-arms the stark-stripped body of the

old hero.

The English being beaten and Talbot dead, Castillon surrendered; and at

unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emillon, Chateau-Neuf de Medoc,

Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed the example. At the

commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux alone was still holding out. The

promoters of the insurrection which had been concerted with the English,

amongst others Sires de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance

rather in their own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the

population; the king’s artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea

a king’s fleet from Rochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the

Gironde. “The majority of the king’s officers,” says the contemporary

historian, Thomas Basin, “advised him to punish by at least the

destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled the English to

their city; but Charles, more merciful and more soft-hearted, refused.”

He confined himself to withdrawing from Bordeaux her municipal

privileges, which, however, she soon partially recovered, and to imposing

upon her a fine of a hundred thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to

thirty thousand; he caused to be built at the expense of the city two

fortresses, the Fort of the Ila and the Castle of Trompette, to keep in

check so bold and fickle a population; and an amnesty was proclaimed for

all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these conditions

the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th of October; the

English re-embarked; and Charles, without entering Bordeaux, returned to

Touraine. The English had no longer any possession in France but Calais

and Guines; the Hundred Years’ War was over.

And to whom was the glory?

Charles VII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, twenty-four

years after the death of Joan of Are, he at Rome and at Rouen prosecuted

her claims for restoration of character and did for her fame and her

memory all that was still possible, he was but relieving his conscience

from a load of ingratitude and remorse which in general weighs but

lightly upon men, and especially upon kings; and he was discharging

towards the Maid of Domremy the debt due by France and the French

kingship when he thus proclaimed that to Joan above all they owed their

deliverance and their independence. Before men and before God Charles

was justified in so thinking; the moral are not the sole, but they are

the most powerful forces which decide the fates of people; and Joan had

roused the feelings of the soul, and given to the struggles between

France and England its religious and national character. At Rheims, when

she repaired thither for the king’s coronation, she said of her own

banner, “It has a right to the honor, for it has been at the pains.”

She, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had been the

first to contribute to the success.

Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richemont was the most effective

and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France and of the king.

He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous and pitiless towards his

enemies, especially towards such as he despised, severe in regard to

himself, dignified in his manners, never guilty of swearing himself and

punishing swearing as a breach of discipline amongst the troops placed

under his orders. Like a true patriot and royalist, he had more at heart

his duty towards France and the king than he had his own personal

interests. He was fond of war, and conducted it bravely and skilfully,

without rashness, but without timidity: “Wherever the constable is,” said

Charles VII., “there I am free from anxiety; he will do all that is

possible!” He set his title and office of constable of France above his

rank as a great lord; and when, after the death of his brother, Duke

Peter II., he himself became Duke of Brittany, he always had the

constable’s sword carried before him, saying, “I wish to honor in my old

age a function which did me honor in my youth.” His good services were

not confined to the wars of his time; he was one of the principal

reformers of the military system in France by the substitution of regular

troops for feudal service. He has not obtained, it is to be feared, in

the history of the fifteenth century, the place which properly belongs to

him.

Dunois, La Hire, Xaintrailles, and Marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette

were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of the

king and of Fiance; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it is

questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De Richemont,

amongst the liberators of national independence. There are degrees of

glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute it too readily and

as it were by handfuls.

Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., at

first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his diplomatic

service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of quite a

different origin and quite another profession, but one who nevertheless

acquired by peaceful toil great riches and great influence, both brought

to a melancholy termination by a conviction and a consequent ruin from

which at the approach of old age he was still striving to recover by

means of fresh ventures. Jacques Coeur was born at Bourges at the close

of the fourteenth century. His father was a furrier, already

sufficiently well established and sufficiently rich to allow of his son’s

marrying, in 1418, the provost’s daughter of his own city. Some years

afterwards Jacques Coeur underwent a troublesome trial for infraction of

the rules touching the coinage of money; but thanks to a commutation of

the penalty, graciously accorded by Charles VII., he got off with a fine,

and from that time forward directed all his energies towards commerce.

In 1432 a squire in the service of the Duke of Burgundy was travelling in

the Holy Land, and met him at Damascus in company with several Venetians,

Genoese, Florentine, and Catalan traders with whom he was doing

business. “He was,” says his contemporary, Thomas Basin, “a man

unlettered and of plebeian family, but of great and ingenious mind, well

versed in the practical affairs of that age. He was the first in all

France to build and man ships which transported to Africa and the East

woollen stuffs and other produce of the kingdom, penetrated as far as

Egypt, and brought back with them silken stuffs and all manner of spices,

which they distributed not only in France, but in Catalonia and the

neighboring countries, whereas heretofore it was by means of the

Venetians, the Genoese, or the Barcelonese that such supplies found their

way into France.”

[Illustration: Jacques Coeur----165]

Jacques Coeur, temporarily established at Montpellier, became a great and

a celebrated merchant. In 1433 Charles VII. put into his hands the

direction of the mint at Paris, and began to take his advice as to the

administration of the crown’s finances. In 1440 he was appointed

moneyman to the king, ennobled together with his wife and children,

commissioned soon afterwards to draw up new regulations for the

manufacture of cloth at Bourges, and invested on his own private account

with numerous commercial privileges. He had already at this period, it

was said, three hundred manufacturing hands in his employment, and he was

working at the same time silver, lead, and copper mines situated in the

environs of Tarare and Lyons. Between 1442 and 1446 he had one of his

nephews sent as ambassador to Egypt, and obtained for the French consuls

in the Levant the same advantages as were enjoyed by those of the most

favored nations. Not only his favor in the eyes of the king, but his

administrative and even his political appointments, went on constantly

increasing. Between 1444 and 1446 the king several times named him one

of his commissioners to the estates of Languedoc and for the installation

of the new parliament of Toulouse. In 1446 he formed one of an embassy

sent to Italy to try and acquire for France the possession of Genoa,

which was harassed by civil dissensions. In 1447 he received from

Charles VII. a still more important commission, to bring about an

arrangement between the two popes elected, one under the name of Felix

V., and the other under that of Nicholas V.; and he was successful. His

immense wealth greatly contributed to his influence. M. Pierre Clement

[Jacques Coeur et Charles WE, ou la France au quinzieme siecle; t. ii.,

pp. 1-46] has given a list of thirty-two estates and lordships which

Jacques Coeur had bought either in Berry or in the neighboring provinces.

He possessed, besides, four mansions and two hostels at Lyons; mansions

at Beaucaire, at Beziers, at St. Pourcain, at Marseilles, and at

Montpellier; and he had built, for his own residence, at Bourges, the

celebrated hostel which still exists as an admirable model of Gothic and

national art in the fifteenth century, attempting combination with the

art of Italian renaissance.

[Illustration: Jacques Coeur’s Hostel at Bourges----169]

M. Clement, in his table of Jacques Coeur’s wealth does not count either

the mines which he worked at various spots in France, nor the vast

capital, unknown, which he turned to profit in his commercial

enterprises; but, on the other hand, he names, with certain et ceteras,

forty-two court-personages, or king’s officers, indebted to Jacques Coeur

for large or small sums he had lent them. We will quote but two

instances of Jacques Coeur’s financial connection, not with courtiers,

however, but with the royal family and the king himself. Margaret of

Scotland, wife of the _dauphin_, who became Louis XI., wrote with her own

hand, on the 20th of July, 1445, “We, Margaret, dauphiness of Viennois,

do acknowledge to have received from Master Stephen Petit, secretary of

my lord the king, and receiver-general of his finances for Languedoc and

Guienne, two thousand livres of Tours, to us given by my said lord, and

to us advanced by the hands of Jacques Coeur, his moneyman, we being but

lately in Lorraine, for to get silken stuff and sables to make robes for

our person.” In 1449, when Charles VII. determined to drive the English

from Normandy, his treasury was exhausted, and he had recourse to Jacques

Coeur. “Sir,” said the trader to the king, “what I have is yours,” and

lent him two hundred thousand crowns; “the effect of which was,” says

Jacques Duclercq, “that during, this conquest, all the men-at-arms of the

King of France, and all those who were in his service, were paid their

wages month by month.”

An original document, dated 1450, which exists in the “cabinet des

titres” of the National Library, bears upon it a receipt for sixty

thousand livres from Jacques Coeur to the king’s receiver-general in

Normandy, “in restitution of the like sum lent by me in ready money to

the said lord in the month of August last past, on occasion of the

surrendering to his authority of the towns and castle of Cherbourg, at

that time held by the English, the ancient enemies of this realm.” It

was probably a partial repayment of the two hundred thousand crowns lent

by Jacques Coeur to the king at this juncture, according to all the

contemporary chroniclers.

Enormous and unexpected wealth excites envy and suspicion at the same

time that it confers influence; and the envious before long become

enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Coeur were raised in the king’s

own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune--the

coinage of questionable money--furnished some specious ground for them.

There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to

give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the

gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles

VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all

at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To

accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters was added

one of even more importance. Agnes Sorel had died eighteen months

previously (February 9, 1450); and on her death-bed she had appointed

Jacques Coeur one of the three executors of her will. In July, 1451,

Jacques was at Taillebourg, in Guyenne, whence he wrote to his wife that

“he was in as good case and was as well with the king as ever he had

been, whatever anybody might say.” Indeed, on the 22d of July Charles

VII. granted him a “sum of seven hundred and seventy-two livres of Tours

to help him to keep up his condition and to be more honorably equipped

for his service;” and, nevertheless, on the 31st of July, on the

information of two persons of the court, who accused Jacques Coeur of

having poisoned Agnes Sorel, Charles ordered his arrest and the seizure

of his goods, on which he immediately levied a hundred thousand crowns

for the purposes of the war. Commissioners extraordinary, taken from

amongst the king’s grand council, were charged to try him; and Charles

VII. declared, it is said, that “if the said moneyman were not found

liable to the charge of having poisoned or caused to be poisoned Agnes

Sorel, he threw up and forgave all the other cases against him.” The

accusation of poisoning was soon acknowledged to be false, and the two

informers were condemned as calumniators; but the trial was,

nevertheless, proceeded with. Jacques Coeur was accused “of having sold

arms to the infidels, of having coined light crowns, of having pressed on

board of his vessels, at Montpellier, several individuals, of whom one

had thrown himself into the sea from desperation, and lastly of having

appropriated to himself presents made to the king, in several towns of

Languedoc, and of having practised in that country frequent exaction, to

the prejudice of the king as well as of his subjects.” After twenty-two

months of imprisonment, Jacques Coeur, on the 29th of May, 1453, was

convicted, in the king’s name, on divers charges, of which several

entailed a capital penalty; but “whereas Pope Nicholas V. had issued a

rescript and made request in favor of Jacques Coeur, and regard also

being had to services received from him,” Charles VII. spared his life,

“on condition that he should pay to the king a hundred thousand crowns by

way of restitution, three hundred thousand by way of fine, and should be

kept in prison until the whole claim was satisfied;” and the decree ended

as follows: “We have declared and do declare all the goods of the said

Jacques Coeur confiscated to us, and we have banished and do banish this

Jacques Coeur forever from this realm, reserving thereanent our own good

pleasure.”

After having spent nearly three years more in prison, transported from

dungeon to dungeon, Jacques Coeur, thanks to the faithful and zealous

affection of a few friends, managed to escape from Beaucaire, to embark

at Nice and to reach Rome, where Pope Nicholas V. welcomed him with

tokens of lively interest. Nicholas died shortly afterwards, just when

he was preparing an expedition against the Turks. His successor,

Calixtus III., carried out his design, and equipped a fleet of sixteen

galleys. This fleet required a commander of energy, resolution, and

celebrity. Jacques Coeur had lived and fought with Dunois, Xaintrailles,

La Hire, and the most valiant French captains; he was known and popular

in Italy and the Levant; and the pope appointed him captain-general of

the expedition. Charles VII.’s moneyman, ruined, convicted, and banished

from France, sailed away at the head of the pope’s squadron and of some

Catalan pirates to carry help against the Turks to Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos,

Lemnos, and the whole Grecian archipelago. On arriving at Chios, in

November, 1456, he fell ill there, and perceiving his end approaching,

he wrote to his king “to commend to him his children, and to beg that,

considering the great wealth and honors he had in his time enjoyed in the

king’s service, it might be the king’s good pleasure to give something to

his children, in order that they, even those of them who were secular,

might be able to live honestly, without coming to want.” He died at

Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John

d’Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur’s

children, “he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that

island, at the centre of the choir.”

We have felt bound to represent with some detail the active and energetic

life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and

hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the

close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe,

Africa, and Asia the commercial relations of France, and, after the

example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine

politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the

material interests of his country and the influence of his government.

There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and

frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was

inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the

utmost, he contributed a great deal to develop, in the ways of peace, the

commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France.

In his relations towards his king, Jacques Coeur was to Charles VII. a

servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often

also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of

difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful

patron, who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains he had sucked,

and ruined him pitilessly after having himself contributed to enrich him

unscrupulously.

We have now reached the end of events under this long reign; all that

remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII.’s

government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his latter years with his

son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born-conspirator, who was

to succeed him under the name of Louis XI.

One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush

appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first

nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very

frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of Northern France,

or Langue d’oil, at another of Southern France, or Langue d’oc.

Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period at Bourges,

at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Mean-sur-Yevre, at Chinon,

at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Nevers, at Carcassonne,

and at different spots in Languedoc. It was the time of the great war

between France on the one side and England and Burgundy allied on the

other, the time of intrigues incessantly recurring at court, and the time

likewise of carelessness and indolence on the part of Charles VII., more

devoted to his pleasures than regardful of his government. He had

incessant need of states-general to supply him with money and men, and

support him through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating

from the peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles VII., having become

reconciled with the Duke of Burgundy, was deliverer from civil war, and

was at grips with none but England alone already half beaten by the

divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan of Arc, his

posture and his behavior underwent a rare transformation. Without

ceasing to be coldly selfish and scandalously licentious king he became

practical, hard-working, statesman-like king, jealous and disposed to

govern by himself, but at the same time watchful and skilful in availing

himself of the able advisers who, whether it were by a happy accident or

by his own choice, were grouped around him. “He had his days and hours

for dealing with all sorts of men, one hour with the clergy, another with

the nobles, another with foreigners, another with mechanical folks,

armorers, and gunners; and in respect of all these persons he had a full

remembrance of their cases and their appointed day. On Monday, Tuesday,

and Thursday he worked with the chancellor, and got through all claims

connected with justice. On Wednesday he first of all gave audience to

the marshals, captains, and men of war. On the same day he held a

council of finance, independently of another council which was also held

on the same subject every Friday.” It was by such assiduous toil that

Charles VII., in concert with his advisers, was able to take in hand and

accomplish, in the military, financial, and judicial system of the realm,

those bold and at the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country

from the state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it

had been a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical

administration, which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was

destined to be, during more than three centuries, the government of

France. The constable De Richemont and marshal De la Fayette were, in

respect of military matters, Charles VII.’s principal advisers; and it

was by their counsel and with their co-operation that he substituted for

feudal service and for the bands of wandering mercenaries (routiers),

mustered and maintained by hap-hazard, a permanent army, regularly

levied, provided for, paid, and commanded, and charged with the duty of

keeping order at home, and at the same time subserving abroad the

interests and policy of the state. In connection with, and as a natural

consequence of this military system, Charles VII., on his own sole

authority, established certain permanent imposts with the object of

making up any deficiency in the royal treasury, whilst waiting for a vote

of such taxes extraordinary as might be demanded of the states-general.

Jacques Coeur, the two brothers Bureau, Martin Gouge, Michel Lailler,

William Cousinot, and many other councillors, of burgher origin, labored

zealously to establish this administrative system, so prompt and freed

from all independent discussion. Weary of wars, irregularities, and

sufferings, France, in the fifteenth century, asked for nothing but peace

and security; and so soon as the kingship showed that it had an intention

and was in a condition to provide her with them, the nation took little

or no trouble about political guarantees which as yet it knew neither how

to establish nor how to exercise; its right to them was not disputed in

principle, they were merely permitted to fall into desuetude; and Charles

VII., who during the first half of his reign had twenty-four times

assembled the states-general to ask them for taxes and soldiers, was able

in the second to raise personally both soldiers and taxes without drawing

forth any complaint hardly, save from his contemporary historian, the

Bishop of Lisieux, Thomas Basin, who said, “Into such misery and

servitude is fallen the realm of France, heretofore so noble and free,

that all the inhabitants are openly declared by the generals of finance

and their clerks taxable at the will of the king, without anybody’s

daring to murmur or even ask for mercy.” There is at every juncture, and

in all ages of the world, a certain amount, though varying very much, of

good order, justice, and security, without which men cannot get on; and

when they lack it, either through the fault of those who govern them or

through their own fault, they seek after it with the blind eyes of

passion, and are ready to accept it, no matter what power may procure it

for them, or what price it may cost them. Charles VII. was a prince

neither to be respected nor to be loved, and during many years his reign

had not been a prosperous one; but “he re-quickened justice, which had

been a long while dead,” says a chronicler devoted to the Duke of

Burgundy; “he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the

men-at-arms, and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed

men of resolution and honest life; he made regular paths in murderous

woods and forests, all roads safe, all towns peaceful, all nationalities

of his kingdom tranquil; he chastised the evil and honored the good, and

he was sparing of human blood.”

Let it be added, in accordance with contemporary testimony, that at the

same time that he established an all but arbitrary rule in military and

financial matters, Charles VII. took care that “practical justice, in the

case of every individual, was promptly rendered to poor as well as rich,

to small as well as great; he forbade all trafficking in the offices of

the magistracy, and every time that a place became vacant in a parliament

he made no nomination to it, save on the presentations of the court.”

Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were not the

only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. He attacked also

ecclesiastical questions, which were at that period a subject of

passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the councils of the

Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated ordinance, known by

the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which Charles VII. issued at Bourges on

the 7th of July, 1438, with the concurrence of a grand national council,

laic and ecclesiastical, was directed towards the carrying out, in the

internal regulations of the French Church, and in the relations either of

the State with the Church in France, or of the Church of France with the

papacy, of reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers

and interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult

and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed upon

the writer of this history. All that can be said is, that there was no

lack of a religious spirit, or of a liberal spirit, in the Pragmatic

Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the measures contained

in it were adopted with the approbation of the greater part of the French

clergy, as well as of educated laymen in France.

In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VII. in the

latter part of his reign brought him not only in France, but throughout

Europe, a great deal of fame and power. When he had driven the English

out of his kingdom, he was called Charles the Victorious; and when he had

introduced into the internal regulations of the state so many important

and effective reforms, he was called Charles the Well-served. “The sense

he had by nature,” says his historian Chastellain, “had been increased to

twice as much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and

perilous dangers, which sharpened his wits perforce.” “He is the king of

kings,” was said of him by the Doge of Venice, Francis Foscari, a good

judge of policy; “there is no doing without him.”

Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his reign,

Charles VII. was, in his individual and private life, the most desolate,

the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his kingdom. In 1442 and

1450 he had lost the two women who had been, respectively, the most

devoted and most useful, and the most delightful and dearest to him, his

mother-in-law, Yolande of Arragon, Queen of Sicily, and his favorite,

Agnes Sorel. His avowed intimacy with Agnes, and even, independently of

her and after her death, the scandalous licentiousness of his morals, had

justly offended his virtuous wife, Mary of Anjou, the only lady of the

royal establishment who survived him. She had brought him twelve

children, and the eldest, the _dauphin_ Louis, after having from his very

youth behaved in a factious, harebrained, turbulent way towards the king

his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a venomous

conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth in 1423, he had been

named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor, St. Louis, and in hopes that

he would resemble him. In 1440, at seventeen years of age, he allied

himself with the great lords, who were displeased with the new military

system established by Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by

them into the transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. When

the king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favor, the

_dauphin_ said to his father, “My lord, I must go back with them, then;

for so I promised them.” “Louis,” replied the king, “the gates are open,

and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of

wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you.”

Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that

charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of

France that, coming one day upon the poet Alan Chartier asleep upon a

bench, she kissed him on the forehead in the presence of her mightily

astonished train, for he was very ugly. The _dauphin_ rendered his wife

so wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with

these words upon her lips: “O! fie on life! Speak to me no more of it!”

In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to drive the

English out of Normandy, the _dauphin_ Louis, who was now living entirely

in Dauphiny, concluded at Briancon a secret league with the Duke of Savoy

“against the ministers of the King of France, his enemies.” In 1456, in

order to escape from the perils brought upon him by the plots which he,

in the heart of Dauphiny, was incessantly hatching against his father,

Louis fled from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the

Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the

same time excusing himself to Charles VII. “on the ground of the respect

he owed to the son of his suzerain,” and putting at the disposal of

Louis, “his guest,” a pension of thirty-six thousand livres. “He has

received the fox at his court,” said Charles: “he will soon see what will

become of his chickens.” But the pleasantries of the king did not chase

away the sorrows of the father. “Mine enemies have full trust in me,”

said Charles, “but my son will have none. If he had but once spoken with

me, he would have known full well that he ought to have neither doubts

nor fears. On my royal word, if he will but come to me, when he has

opened his heart and learned my intentions, he may go away again

whithersoever it seems good to him.” Charles, in his old age and his

sorrow, forgot how distrustful and how fearful he himself had been. “It

is ever your pleasure,” wrote one of his councillors to him in a burst of

frankness, “to be shut up in castles, wretched places, and all sorts of

little closets, without showing yourself and listening to the complaints

of your poor people.” Charles VII. had shown scarcely more confidence to

his son than to his people. Louis yielded neither to words, nor to

sorrows of which proofs were reaching him nearly every day. He remained

impassive at the Duke of Burgundy’s, where he seemed to be waiting with

scandalous indifference for the news of his father’s death. Charles sank

into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. He had his

doctor, Adam Fumee, put in prison; persuaded himself that his son had

wished, and was still wishing, to poison him; and refused to take any

kind of nourishment. No representation, no solicitation, could win him

from his depression and obstinacy. It was in vain that Charles, Duke of

Berry, his favorite child, offered to first taste the food set before

him. It was in vain that his servants “represented to him with tears,”

says Bossuet, “what madness it was to cause his own death for fear of

dying; when at last he would have made an effort to eat, it was too late,

and he must die.” On the 2nd of July, 1461, he asked what day it was,

and was told that it was St. Magdalen’s day. “Ah!” said he, “I do laud

my God, and thank Him for that it hath pleased Him that the most sinful

man in the world should die on the sinful woman’s day! Dampmartin,” said

he to the count of that name, who was leaning over his bed, “I do beseech

you that after my death you will serve so far as you can the little lord,

my son Charles.” He called his confessor, received the sacraments, gave

orders that he should be buried at St. Denis beside the king his father,

and expired. No more than his son Louis, though for different reasons,

was his wife, Queen Mary of Anjou, at his side. She was living at

Chinon, whither she had removed a long while before by order of the king

her husband. Thus, deserted by them of his own household, and disgusted

with his own life, died that king of whom a contemporary chronicler,

whilst recommending his soul to God, re-marked, “When he was alive, he

was a right wise and valiant lord, and he left his kingdom united, and in

good case as to justice and tranquillity.”