In this break in the line of succession, England saw an opportunity.
The mother of Edward III., King of England, was Isabella, daughter of
Philip IV. Edward claimed that he, as grandson of the French king, had
a claim superior to that of the nephew. A strict interpretation of the
Salic Law certainly vitiated his claim of heirship through the female
line. But Edward did not stand upon such a trifle as that. The stake
was great, and so was the opportunity. Now England might not alone
recover her lost possessions in France, but might establish a
legitimate claim to the whole.
So it was that an English army was once more upon French soil, and in
1346 Edward, with his toy cannon, had won the battle of Crécy, followed
by the siege and capture of Calais, which for two hundred years was to
remain an English port--a thorn in the side of France.
A part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, which was called Dauphiny,
dropped into the lap of Philip, this first Valois king, during his
reign. The old duke, being without an heir, offered to sell this bit
of territory to the King of France upon the condition that it should be
kept as the personal possession of the eldest sons of the kings of
France. Thenceforth the title of _Dauphin_ was worn by the heir to the
throne, until it became extinct with the son of Louis XVI. And when
the feeble Philip VI. died in 1350, his son John, the first dauphin,
assumed the crown of France.
John, this second Valois king, was an anachronism. A man intended for
the eleventh century had been set down in the fourteenth. The
restoration of knightly ceremonial, tournaments at the Louvre, the
details of a new Crusade which he was planning, and the distribution of
new titles, these were the things occupying the mind of the king, while
his kingdom, rent by factions within, was in a death-struggle with foes
from without.
A fantastic Don Quixote, on a tottering throne, was fighting the most
practical statesman and the strongest-armed warrior Europe held at the
time.
With this weakness at the centre, France was again falling into
fragments. There was even a resumption of private wars between nobles;
and, most paralyzing of all, an empty treasury. Such time as he could
spare from his main projects John gave to the affairs of the kingdom.
First of all, taxes must be levied; and when the first tax was upon
salt, King Edward condescended to make an historic witticism, saying
"he had at last discovered who was the author of the _Salic Law_!"
In the various plans for raising money, it was important that the taxes
should be levied so that the burden would fall upon those who could,
and who would, pay. This meant the dwellers in the towns and cities;
the bourgeoisie. They were the capitalists. But what if they should
refuse? In order to secure the success of the measure, it was
considered wise to obtain their consent in advance.
When King John asked permission of the States-General to tax them, a
critical line was passed. That body for the first time realized its
power. It might make its own terms. It demanded that the moneys
collected, and their expenditure, should be under the direction of its
officers. Then, growing bolder, it demanded reforms: Private wars must
cease; the meetings of the States-General must be at appointed
intervals, without being summoned by the king.
These meetings at Paris grew stormy. Gradually re-enforced with a
vicious element, they were soon led by demagogues, became violent and
revolutionary, and finally red caps and barricades, characteristic of
Parisian mobs of a later period, brought the whole movement into the
hands of the agents of "Charles the Bad," evil genius of his time, who
saw his opportunity to use it in his own ambitious designs upon the
throne. But France was to hear from the _Tiers État_ again!
In 1356, Edward's son, the Black Prince, won a still greater victory
than Crécy, at _Poitiers_, in which king John was captured and carried
to London.
But Edward found that, while victories were comparatively easy,
conquest was difficult. A generation had passed since the war began.
So in 1360 both kingdoms were ready to consider terms of peace. By the
treaty of Bretigny, Edward renounced the claim to the French throne,
and received in full sovereignty the great inheritance Queen Eleanor
had brought to Henry II. King John was to be released and his son held
as hostage until the enormous ransom was paid. Of course the money
could not be paid by impoverished France, for such a doubtful benefit,
at least; and so the son and hostage made his escape. Then King John,
faithful to his chivalrous creed, returned to London and captivity,
dying in 1364.
The dauphin, who had now become Charles V., came to the throne with the
determination of restoring France to herself. His attention had been
drawn to the military talents of a Breton youth--Bertrand du Guesclin.
Poor, diminutive in stature, deformed, he had raised himself to
military positions usually reserved as a reward for sons of nobles. In
the reopening of a war with England, which Charles was planning, du
Guesclin was to be the sword and he the brain.
The Black Prince had gone to Spain to fight the battles of Peter the
Cruel, in a civil war in which the Prince was involved by inheritance,
and was levying taxes for this Castilian war upon his new subjects in
Aquitaine. The people in this province turned to Charles to deliver
them from this oppression. He immediately summoned Prince Edward
before the Court of Peers; to which the Black Prince replied that he
would accept the invitation, but would come with his helmet on his head
and sixty thousand men in his party.
So successfully did Charles and du Guesclin meet this renewal of the
war that Prince Edward and his sixty thousand men were gradually driven
north until the English possessions were reduced to a few towns upon
the coast. The Black Prince, under the weight of responsibility and
defeat, succumbed to disease, and died, 1377. The death of Edward III.
occurred soon after that of his son, and Richard II. was King of
England.
The expulsion of the English was not the only benefit bestowed by
Charles V. The revolting States-General were restrained and were
firmly held in the king's hand. Still more important was the
reorganization of the military system, by placing it under the command
of officers appointed by the Crown, who might or might not belong to
the order of nobility. No more effective blow could have been aimed at
feudalism, which was nothing if not militant. Indeed, every act of
this brief reign was a protest against the purposes and ideals of his
father, King John, who was the embodiment of the ancient spirit. It
was a needed breathing-spell between a half-century of disaster behind
and another half-century of still greater disaster before.
The death of Charles V. (1380) left the throne to a delicate boy of
twelve years, who was to reign under the successive regencies of three
uncles. These brothers of Charles, and sons of the romantic King John,
seem to represent all the traits and passions which can degrade
humanity. The oldest, the Duke of Anjou, was driven from the regency
after stealing everything which was movable in the king's palace and
vaults. The Duke of Burgundy, who succeeded him, had nobler objects,
and needed a larger field for his ambitious soul. He had an eye on the
throne itself. And when he and the Duke Berri, at the instigation of
the archbishop, were compelled to resign the reins to the young King
Charles VI., they carried with them to their own castles all that Anjou
had left. Of course the archbishop was mysteriously murdered, and then
the boy king was married to Isabella of Bavaria, said to be the most
beautiful and the wickedest woman in Europe.
Charles had always been a frail, delicate boy. As he was riding one
evening, a strange, wild-looking being sprang out of the darkness and
seized the bridle of his horse, crying, "Fly, fly! you are betrayed."
The astonished youth after the shock, became melancholy; then was
suddenly seized with a fit of frenzy, in which he killed four of his
pages. A mad king was on the throne of France, the worst woman in
Europe regent, and three uncles waiting like vultures around a dying
man, ready to seize anything from a golden candlestick to a throne!
In the chaos of misrule and villainy into which France was falling, the
determining factor was the deadly feud which existed between the house
of Burgundy and that of Orleans. Upon the death of the first Duke of
Burgundy, his son John seized the regency for himself, snatching it
from the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother. At this point started
the feud which was to tear France asunder from end to end. While the
Orleanists were gathering their adherents to drive him out, John was
intrenching himself in Paris. Like many another villain, this Duke of
Burgundy posed as the friend of the people. He could doff his cap and
speak smilingly to starving men. He knew how to work upon their
passions, and to please by torturing and executing those they believed
had wronged them. He told them how he pitied them for the extortions
of the Duke of Orleans and Queen Isabella, kindly giving them pikes to
defend themselves, and iron chains to barricade their streets, if they
should be needed. Then, extending his hand to his enemy of Orleans,
brother of the king, they were reconciled: the past was to be buried.
Then it is a pleasant picture we behold of the period: the two friends
partaking together of communion, and dining, and then embracing at
parting with effusive words and promises to meet at a dance on the
morrow, the unsuspecting Duke of Orleans going out into the dark, where
hired assassins were waiting to hack him in pieces. Then a court of
justice trying and acquitting this confessed murderer of the king's
brother, upon the ground that tyrannicide is a duty; the sad, crazed
wraith of a king saying the words he had been taught: "Fair cousin, we
pardon you all." And the tragedy and comedy were over!
There was now no check upon the Burgundian power. In the worst days of
English occupation of her land, France had been in less danger from
Edward III. than she now was from the Duke of Burgundy, champion and
defender of the people! The immediate object of the Burgundian or
people's party, and the Orleans and aristocratic party, was the
possession of the person of the king, and control of his acts during
his few lucid moments.
There was civil war in a land divested of every vestige of government.
England would have been blind had she not seen her opportunity; but,
too much occupied with her own revolution, she had to wait. And when
Henry IV., the first Lancastrian, was king, he needed both hands to
hold his crown firmly on his head. But when the young Henry V. came to
the throne, with the energy and ambition of youth, the time was ripe
for the recovery of the lost possessions in France.
The battle of Agincourt (1415) reopened the war with a great defeat for
the French chivalry, which represented the Orleanist party. The
wholesale slaughter of princes, bishops, and knights on this fatal day
was clear gain for the traitor Burgundy, the champion of the people!
The climax of his villainy was at hand.
Henry V., at Rouen, was openly holding his court as King of France.
John, Duke of Burgundy, accompanied by Queen Isabella, presented
himself to the invading king, and formally pledged his support and that
of his followers to the cause of the English!
The infamous treaty of Troyes was signed, 1420. It provided that Henry
should act as regent to Charles VI. while he lived; that upon the death
of that unhappy being he should be Henry V. of England and Henry II. of
France; and that the two kingdoms should thereafter exist under one
crown. The romantic marriage of Henry with the Princess Katharine,
daughter of Charles and Isabella, which was part of the agreement, was
solemnized in that old palace on the island in the Seine. And the same
vaulted ceilings which we may see to-day, looked down upon this
historic marriage, as they also did upon the condemnation of Marie
Antoinette, three and a half centuries later. We know of this union of
Henry and the fair Katharine chiefly through the pen of Shakespeare, in
his play of Henry V.
But Henry was destined never to wear the crown of France, nor even to
see his own land again. There were only two more years of life for
him. His death occurred in his palace of the Louvre, a few weeks
before that of Charles VI., and the crown he expected to wear upon this
event passed to his infant son, who was by the Burgundian party
recognized as King of France.
A careless, pleasure-loving dauphin, just twenty, apparently
indifferent to the loss of a kingdom, was a frail support at such a
time. Only a fragment of the country was held by his followers, the
Orleanists; Scotland had come to his aid with a few thousand men, but
what did this avail with the greater part of the kingdom held by the
Burgundians, while town after town was declaring its allegiance to the
English Duke of Bedford, whom his dying brother, Henry V., had named as
regent for his infant son.
The city of Orleans, held by the dauphin's adherents, was besieged. It
was the key to the situation. Its fall meant the fall of the kingdom,
the conquest of France. When this happened, that infant at the Louvre
would really be the wearer of the crown. So hopeless was the situation
that the spiritless Charles was only in doubt whether to take refuge in
Scotland or in Spain.
But although towns and cities had deserted him, the heart of the people
had not. Patriotism, dead everywhere else, still lived in the heart of
that forgotten multitude lying silent and humble under the feet of its
masters. The monarchy had been their friend, their only friend. The
Church had deserted them, and joined their enemies the nobles. But to
the people, the name King expressed gratitude and hope; and they loved
it.
If a great spreading tree full of verdure had arisen in a day out of
the barren breast of Mother Earth, it would scarcely have been a
greater miracle that what really happened when a child of the soil, a
girl, rising triumphant over the disabilities of age, sex, birth, and
condition, saved France from destruction. Summoned by celestial
voices, by angels whom she not only heard but saw, Joan of Arc started
upon her mission of rescue for France!
When this daughter of the people, this peasant from Domremy, was
admitted to the presence of the dauphin, it is said that in amusement
and in order to test the reality of her mission, Charles exchanged
dress with one of his courtiers. But the maid going straight to him,
said: "Gentle dauphin, I come to restore to you the crown of France.
Orleans shall be saved by me. And you, by the help of God and my Lady
St. Catharine, shall be crowned at Rheims."
On the 29th of April the maid did enter the fainting city. And she did
lead the dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. And then, kneeling at
his feet, asked the "Gentle King" to let her go back to her sheep at
Domremy. "For," she said, "they love me more than these thousands of
people I have seen."
Unhappily, she did not return to her sheep, but remained among those
wolves, and was captured and a prisoner of the English.
What should they do with this strange being, claiming supernatural
powers? The Regent Duke of Bedford denounced her as a rebel against
the infant king; and the Bishop of Beauvais as a blasphemer and child
of the devil. Nothing could be clearer than her guilt upon both of
these charges! And on the 13th of May, 1431, this mysteriously
inspired child was burnt by a slow fire in the market-place of Rouen.
And the "Gentle King," where was he while this was happening?
It must ever remain a mystery that a peasant girl, a child in years and
in experience, should have believed herself called to such a mission;
that conferring only with her heavenly guides, or "voices," she should
have sought the king, inspired him with faith in her, and in himself
and his cause, reanimated the courage of the army, and led it herself
to victory absolute and complete; and then, have compelled the
half-reluctant, half-doubting Charles to go with her to Rheims, there
to be anointed and consecrated; this simple child in that day bestowing
upon him a kingdom, and upon France a king!
Was there ever a stranger chapter in history! Alas, if it could have
ended here, and she could have gone back to her mother and her spinning
and her simple pleasures, as she was always longing to do when her work
should be done. But no! we see her falling into the hands of the
defeated and revengeful English--this child, who had wrested from them
a kingdom already in their grasp. She was turned over to the French
ecclesiastical court to be tried. A sorceress and a blasphemer they
pronounce her, and pass her on to the secular authorities, and her
sentence is--death.
We see the poor defenceless girl, bewildered, terrified, wringing her
hands and declaring her innocence as she rides to execution. God and
man had abandoned her. No heavenly voice spoke, no miracle intervened
as her young limbs were tied to the stake and the fagots and straw
piled up about her. The torch was applied, and her pure soul mounted
heavenward in a column of flames.
Rugged men wept. A Burgundian general said, as he turned gloomily
away, "We have murdered a saint."
[Illustration: Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431. From the
painting by Lenepveu.]
And Charles, sitting upon the throne she had rescued for him, what was
he doing to save her? Nothing--to his everlasting shame be it said,
nothing. He might not have succeeded; the effort at rescue, or to stay
the event, might have been unavailing. But where was his knighthood,
where his manhood, that he did not try, or utter passionate protest
against her fate?
Twenty-five years later we see him erecting statues to her memory, and
"rehabilitating" her desecrated name. And to-day, the Church which
condemned her for blasphemy is placing her upon the calendar of saints.