Execution of the king's friends.
King Richard meanwhile had grown to man's estate, and had resolved to
take the reins of power into his own hands. He was wayward,
high-spirited and self-confident. He wished to restore the royal powers
which had slipped into the hands of the council and parliament during
his minority, and had small doubts of his capacity to restore it. His
chosen instruments were two men whom his enemies called his
"favourites," though it was absurd to apply the name either to an
elderly statesman like Michael de la Pole, who was made chancellor in
1384, or to Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, a young noble of the oldest
lineage, who was the king's other confidant. Neither of them was an
upstart, and both, the one from his experience and the other from his
high station, were persons who might legitimately aspire to a place
among the advisers of the king. But Richard was tactless; he openly
flouted his two uncles, John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock, and took
no pains to conciliate either the baronage or the commons. His
autocratic airs and his ostentatious preference for his confidants--of
whom he made the one earl of Suffolk and the other marquess of
Dublin--provoked both lords and commons. Pole was impeached on a
groundless charge of corruption and condemned, but Richard at once
pardoned him and restored him to favour. De Vere was banished to
Ireland, but at his master's desire omitted to leave the realm. The
contemptuous disregard for the will of parliament which the king
displayed brought on him a worse fate than he deserved. His youngest
uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was a designing and
ambitious prince who saw his own advantage in embittering the strife
between Richard and his parliament. John of Gaunt having departed to
Spain, where he was stirring up civil strife in the name of his wife,
the heiress of Peter the Cruel, Gloucester put himself at the head of
the opposition. Playing the part of the demagogue, and exaggerating all
his nephew's petulant acts and sayings, he declared the constitution in
danger, and took arms at the head of a party of peers, the earls of
Warwick, Arundel and Nottingham, and Henry, earl of Derby, the son of
John of Gaunt, who called themselves the lords appellant, because they
were ready to "appeal" Richard's councillors of treason. Public opinion
was against the king, and the small army which his confidant De Vere
raised under the royal banner was easily scattered by Gloucester's
forces at the rout of Radcot Bridge (Dec. 20, 1387). Oxford and Suffolk
succeeded in escaping to France, but the king and the rest of his
adherents fell into the hands of the lords appellant. They threatened
for a moment to depose him, but finally placed him under the control of
a council and ministers chosen by themselves, and to put him in a proper
state of terror, executed Lord Beauchamp, the judge, Sir Robert
Tressilian, and six or seven more of his chief friends. This was a piece
of gratuitous cruelty, for the king, though wayward and unwise, had done
nothing to justify such treatment.
Richard rules constitutionally.
Peace with France.
To the surprise of the nation Richard took his humiliation quietly. But
he was merely biding his time; he had sworn revenge in his heart, but he
was ready to wait long for it. For the next nine years he appeared an
unexceptionable sovereign, anxious only to conciliate the nation and
parliament. He got rid of the ministers imposed upon him by the lords
appellant, but replaced them by Bishop Wykeham and other old statesmen
against whom no objection could be raised. He disarmed Gloucester by
making a close alliance with his elder uncle John of Gaunt, who had been
absent in Spain during the troubles of 1387-1388, and was displeased at
the violent doings of his brother. His rule was mild and moderate, and
he succeeded at last in freeing himself from the incubus of the French
war--the source of most of the evils of the time, for it was the heavy
taxation required to feed this struggle which embittered all the
domestic politics of the realm. After two long truces, which filled the
years 1390-1395, a definitive peace was at last concluded, by which the
English king kept Calais and the coast-strip of Guienne, from Bordeaux
to Bayonne, which had never been lost to the enemy. To confirm the
peace, he married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI. (Nov.
1396); he had lost his first wife, the excellent Anne of Bohemia, two
years before.
Richard reduces Ireland to obedience.
His revenge on Gloucester and the lords appellant.
Banishment of Bolingbroke and Norfolk.
The king seemed firmly seated on his throne--so much so that in 1395 he
had found leisure for a long expedition to Ireland, which none of his
ancestors had visited since King John. He compelled all the native
princes to do him homage, and exercised the royal authority in such a
firm manner as had never before been known in the island. But those who
looked forward to quiet and prosperous times both for Ireland and for
England were destined to be undeceived. In 1397 Richard carried out an
extraordinary and unexpected _coup d'etat_, which he had evidently
premeditated for many years. Having lived down his unpopularity, and
made himself many powerful friends, he resolved to take his
long-deferred revenge on Gloucester and the other lords appellant. He
trumped up a vain story that his uncle was once more conspiring against
him, arrested him, and sent him over to Calais, where he was secretly
murdered in prison. At the same time Gloucester's two chief confederates
of 1387, the earls of Arundel and Warwick, were tried and sentenced to
death: the former was actually executed, the latter imprisoned for life.
The other two lords appellant, Mowbray, duke of Norfolk,[2] and Henry of
Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, were dealt with a year later.
Richard pretended to hold them among his best friends, but in 1398
induced Bolingbroke to accuse Norfolk of treasonable language. Mowbray
denied it, and challenged his accuser to a judicial duel. When they were
actually facing each other in the lists at Coventry, the king forbade
them to fight, and announced that he banished them both--Henry for six
years, Norfolk for life.
Arbitrary rule of Richard.
Having thus completed his vengeance on those who had slain his friends
ten years before--their respective punishments were judiciously adapted
to their several responsibilities in that matter--Richard began to
behave in an arbitrary and unconstitutional fashion. He evidently
thought that no one would dare to lift a hand against him after the
examples that he had just made. This might have been so, if he had
continued to rule as cautiously as during the time when he was nursing
his scheme of revenge. But now his brain seemed to be turned by
success--indeed his wild language at times seemed to argue that he was
not wholly sane. He declared that all pardons issued since 1387 were
invalid, and imposed heavy fines on persons, and even on whole shires,
that had given the lords appellant aid. He made huge forced loans, and
employed recklessly the abuse of purveyance. He browbeat the judges on
the bench, and kept many persons under arrest for indefinite periods
without a trial. But the act which provoked the nation most was that he
terrified the parliament which met at Shrewsbury in 1398 into voting
away its powers to a small committee of ten persons, all creatures of
his own. This body he used as his instrument of government, treating its
assent as equivalent to that of a whole parliament in session. There
seemed to be an end to the constitutional liberties of England.
Second expedition to Ireland.
Henry of Bolingbroke lands in England_.
Flight of Richard.
Surrender and abdication of Richard.
Such violence, however, speedily brought its own punishment. In 1399
Richard sailed over to Ireland to put down a revolt of the native
princes, who had defeated and slain the earl of March, his cousin and
their lord-lieutenant. While he was absent Henry of Bolingbroke landed
at Ravenspur with a small body of exiles and mercenaries. He pretended
that he had merely come to claim the estates and title of his father
John of Gaunt, who had died a few months before. The adventurer was at
once joined by the earl of Northumberland and all the lords of the
north; the army which was called out against him refused to fight, and
joined his banner, and in a few days he was master of all England (July
1399). King Richard, hurrying back from Ireland, landed at Milford Haven
just in time to learn that the levies raised in his name had dispersed
or joined the enemy. He still had with him a considerable force, and
might have tried the fortune of war with some prospect of success. But
his conduct seemed dictated by absolute infatuation; he might have
fought, or he might have fled to his father-in-law in France, if he
judged his troops untrustworthy. Instead of taking either course, he
deserted his army by night, and fled into the Welsh mountains,
apparently with the intention of collecting fresh adherents from North
Wales and Cheshire, the only regions where he was popular. But
Bolingbroke had already seized Chester, and was marching against him at
the head of such a large army that the countryside refused to stir.
After skulking for three weeks in the hills, Richard surrendered to his
cousin at Flint, on the 19th of August 1399, having previously
stipulated that if he consented to abdicate his life should be spared,
his adherents pardoned, and an honourable livelihood assured to him.
This surrender put the crown to his career of folly. He should have
known that Henry would never feel safe while he survived, and that no
oaths could be trusted in such circumstances. At all costs he should
have endeavoured to escape abroad, a course that was still in his power.
Accession of Henry IV.
Richard carried out his part of the bargain; he executed a deed of
abdication in which he owned himself "insufficient and useless." It was
read to a parliament summoned in his name on the 30th of September, and
the throne was declared vacant. There was small doubt as to the
personality of his successor; possession is nine points of the law, and
Henry of Bolingbroke for the moment had the whole nation at his back.
His hereditary title indeed was imperfect; though he was the eldest
descendant of Edward III. in the male line after Richard, yet there was
a whole family which stood between him and the crown. From Lionel of
Clarence, the second son of Edward III. (John of Gaunt was only the
third) descended the house of March, and the late king had proclaimed
that Edmund of March would be his heir if he should die childless.
Fortunately for Bolingbroke the young earl was only six years of age;
not a voice was raised in his favour in parliament. When Henry stood
forward and claimed the vacant throne by right of conquest and also by
right of descent, no one gainsaid him. Lords and commons voted that they
would have him for their king, and he was duly crowned on the 13th of
October 1399. No faith was kept with the unhappy Richard; he was placed
in close and secret confinement, and denied the ordinary comforts of
life. Moreover the adherents for whose safety he had stipulated were at
once impeached of treason.
Position of the new king.
Henry of Lancaster came to the throne, for all intents and purposes as
an elective king; he had to depend for the future on his ability to
conciliate and satisfy the baronage and the commons by his governance.
For by his usurpation he had sanctioned the theory that kings can be
deposed for incapacity and maladministration. If he himself should
become unpopular, all the arguments that he had employed against Richard
might be turned against himself. The prospect was not reassuring; his
revenue was small, and parliament would certainly murmur if he tried to
increase it. The late king was not without partisans and admirers. There
was a considerable chance that the French king might declare
war--nominally to avenge his son-in-law, really to win Calais and
Bordeaux. Of the partisans who had placed Henry on the throne many were
greedy, and some were wholly unreasonable. But he trusted to his tact
and his energy, and cheerfully undertook the task of ruling as a
constitutional king--the friend of the parliament that had placed him on
the throne.
Rebellion of the earls.
Murder of Richard.
The problem proved more weary and exhausting than he had suspected. From
the very first his reign was a time of war, foreign and domestic, of
murmuring, and of humiliating shifts and devices. Henry commenced his
career by granting the adherents of Richard II. their lives, after they
had been first declared guilty of treason and had been deprived of the
titles, lands and endowments given them by the late king. Their reply to
this very modified show of mercy was to engage in a desperate conspiracy
against him. If they had waited till his popularity had waned, they
might have had some chance of success, but in anger and resentment they
struck too soon. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, close kinsmen of
Richard on his mother's side, the earl of Salisbury--a noted
Lollard--and the lords Despenser and Lumley took arms at midwinter (Jan.
4, 1400) and attempted to seize the king at Windsor. They captured the
castle, but Henry escaped, raised the levies of London against them, and
beat them into the west. Kent and Salisbury were slain at Cirencester,
the others captured and executed with many of their followers. Their
rebellion sealed the fate of the master in whose cause they had risen.
Henry and his counsellors were determined that there should be no
further use made of the name of the "lawful king," and Richard was
deliberately murdered by privation--insufficient clothing, food and
warmth--in his dungeon at Pontefract Castle (Feb. 17, 1400). It is
impossible not to pity his fate. He had been wayward, unwise and
occasionally revengeful; but his provocation had been great, and if few
tyrants have used more violent and offensive language, few have
committed such a small list of actual crimes. It was a curious
commentary on Henry's policy, that Richard, even when dead, did not
cease to give him trouble. Rumour got abroad, owing to the secrecy of
his end, that he was not really dead, and an impostor long lived at the
Scottish court who claimed to be the missing king, and was recognized as
Richard by many malcontents who wished to be deceived.
Welsh rising under Owen Glendower.
The rising of the earls was only the first and the least dangerous of
the trials of Henry IV. Only a few months after their death a rebellion
of a far more formidable sort broke out in Wales--where Richard II. had
been popular, and the house of March, his natural heirs, held large
estates. The leader was a gentleman named Owen Glendower, who had the
blood of the ancient kings of Gwynedd in his veins. Originally he had
taken to the hills as a mere outlaw, in consequence of a quarrel with
one of the marcher barons; but after many small successes he began to be
recognized as a national leader by his countrymen, and proclaimed
himself prince of Wales. The king marched against him in person in 1400
and 1401, but Glendower showed himself a master of guerrilla warfare; he
refused battle, and defied pursuit in his mountains, till the stores of
the English army were exhausted and Henry was forced to retire. His
prestige as a general was shaken, and his treasury exhausted by these
fruitless irregular campaigns.
Discontent of the commons.
Statute De heretico comburendo.
Meanwhile worse troubles were to come. The commons were beginning to
murmur at the king's administration; they had obtained neither the peace
nor the diminished taxation which they had been promised. Moreover,
among some classes at least, he had won desperate hatred by his policy
in matters of religion. One of his chief supporters in 1399 had been
Archbishop Arundel, an old enemy of Richard II. and brother to the earl
who had been beheaded in 1397. Arundel was determined to extirpate the
Lollards, and used his influence on the king to induce him to frame and
pass through parliament the detestable statute _De heretico comburendo_,
which recognized death by burning at the stake as the penalty of heresy,
and bound the civil authorities to arrest, hand over to the church
courts, and receive back for execution, all contumacious Lollards. Henry
himself does not seem to have been particularly enthusiastic for
persecution, but in order to keep the church party on his side he was
forced to sanction it. The burnings began with that of William Sawtre, a
London vicar, on the 2nd of March 1401; they continued intermittently
throughout the reign. The victims were nearly all clergy or citizens;
the king shrank from touching the Lollards of higher rank, and even
employed in his service some who were notoriously tainted with heresy.
War with Scotland.
Battle of Homildon Hill.
Conspiracy of Northumberland with Glendower.
External troubles continued to multiply during Henry's earlier years.
The Scots had declared war, and there was every sign that the French
would soon follow suit, for the king's failure to crush Glendower had
destroyed his reputation for capacity. The rebel achieved his greatest
success in June 1402, when he surprised and routed the whole levy of the
marcher lords at Bryn G'las, between Pilleth and Knighton, capturing
(among many other prisoners) Sir Edmund Mortimer, the uncle and guardian
of the young earl of March, whom all malcontents regarded as the
rightful monarch of England. A few months after the king's fortune
seemed to take a turn for the better, when the Scots were defeated at
Homildon Hill by the earl of Northumberland and his son Henry Percy, the
celebrated "Hotspur." But this victory was to be the prelude to new
dangers: half the nobility of Scotland had been captured in the battle,
and Northumberland intended to fill his coffers with their ransoms; but
the king looked upon them as state prisoners and announced his intention
of taking them out of the earl's hands. Northumberland was a greedy and
unscrupulous Border chief, who regarded himself as entitled to exact
whatever he chose from his master, because he had been the first to join
him at his landing in 1399, and had lent him a consistent support ever
since. He had been amply rewarded by grants of land and money, but was
not yet satisfied. In indignation at the first refusal that he had met,
the earl conspired with Glendower to raise rebellion in the name of the
rightful heirs of King Richard, the house of March. The third party in
the plot was Sir Edmund Mortimer, Glendower's captive, who was easily
persuaded to join a movement for the aggrandizement of his own family.
He married Owen's daughter, and became his trusted lieutenant.
Northumberland also enlisted the services of his chief Scottish
prisoner, the earl of Douglas, who promised him aid from beyond Tweed.
Insurrection in the north and west.
Defeat of the rebels at Shrewsbury.
In July 1403 came the crisis of King Henry's reign; while Glendower
burst into South Wales, and overran the whole countryside as far as
Cardiff and Carmarthen, the Percies raised their banner in the North.
The old earl set himself to subdue Yorkshire; his son Hotspur and the
earl of Douglas marched south and opened communication with the Welsh.
All Cheshire, a district always faithful to the name of Richard II.,
rose in their favour, and they were joined by Hotspur's uncle, the earl
of Worcester. They then advanced towards Shrewsbury, where they hoped
that Glendower might meet them. But long ere the Welsh could appear,
King Henry was on the spot; he brought the rebels to action at Hately
Field, just outside the gates of Shrewsbury, and inflicted on them a
complete defeat, in which his young son Henry of Monmouth first won his
reputation as a fighting man. Hotspur was slain, Worcester taken and
beheaded, Douglas desperately wounded (July 23, 1403). On receiving this
disastrous news the earl of Northumberland sued for pardon; the king was
unwise enough to grant it, merely punishing him by fining him and taking
all his castles out of his hands.
War with France renewed.
Parliament assumes control of the finances.
By winning the battle of Shrewsbury Henry IV. had saved his crown, but
his troubles were yet far from an end. The long-expected breach with
France had at last come to pass; the duke of Orleans, without any
declaration of war, had entered Guienne, while a French fleet attacked
the south-west of England, and burnt Plymouth. Even more menacing to the
king's prosperity was the news that another squadron had appeared off
the coast of Wales, and landed stores and succours for Glendower, who
had now conquered the whole principality save a few isolated fortresses.
The drain of money to meet this combination of foreign war and domestic
rebellion was more than the king's exchequer could meet. He was driven
into unconstitutional ways of raising money, which recalled all the
misdoings of his predecessor. Hence came a series of rancorous quarrels
with his parliaments, which grew more disloyal and clamorous at every
new session. The cry was raised that the taxes were heavy not because of
the French or Welsh wars, but because Henry lavished his money on
favourites and unworthy dependents. He was forced to bow before the
storm, though the charge had small foundation: the greater part of his
household was dismissed, and the war-taxes were paid not to his
treasurer but to a financial committee appointed by parliament.
Rising of 1405 in the North.
It was not till 1405 that the worst of Henry's troubles came to an end.
This year saw the last of the convulsions that threatened to overturn
him,--a rising in the North headed by the old earl of Northumberland, by
Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, and by Thomas Mowbray the earl
marshal. It might have proved even more dangerous than the rebellion of
1403, if Henry's unscrupulous general Ralph, earl of Westmorland, had
not lured Scrope and Mowbray to a conference, and then arrested them
under circumstances of the vilest treachery. He handed them over to the
king, who beheaded them both outside the gate of York, without any
proper trial before their peers. Northumberland thereupon fled to
Scotland without further fighting. He remained in exile till January
1408, when he made a final attempt to raise rebellion in the North, and
was defeated and slain at the battle of Bramham Moor.
Suppression of the Welsh rising.
Long before this last-named fight Henry's fortunes had begun to mend.
Glendower was at last checked by the untiring energy of the king's
eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who had been given charge of the Welsh
war. Even when French aid was sent him, the rebel chief proved unable to
maintain his grip on South Wales. He was beaten out of it in 1406, and
Aberystwyth Castle, where his garrison made a desperate defence for two
years, became the southern limit of his dominions. In the end of 1408
Prince Henry captured this place, and six weeks later Harlech, the
greatest stronghold of the rebels, where Sir Edmund Mortimer, Owen's
son-in-law and most trusted captain, held out till he died of
starvation. From this time onwards the Welsh rebellion gradually died
down, till Owen relapsed into the position from which he had started,
that of a guerrilla chief maintaining a predatory warfare in the
mountains. From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public danger to the
realm, yet so great was his cunning and activity that he was never
caught, and died still maintaining a hopeless rebellion so late as 1416.
End of the French and Scottish wars.
The French war died down about the same time that the Welsh rebellion
became insignificant. Louis of Orleans, the head of the French war
party, was murdered by his cousin John, duke of Burgundy, in November
1407, and after his death the French turned from the struggle with
England to indulge in furious civil wars. Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne
still remained safe under the English banner. The Scottish war had ended
even earlier. Prince James, the heir of Robert III., had been captured
at sea in 1406. The duke of Albany, who became regent when Robert died,
had no wish to see his nephew return, and concluded a corrupt agreement
with the king of England, by which he undertook to keep Scotland out of
the strife, if Henry would prevent the rightful heir from returning to
claim his own.[3] Hence Albany and his son ruled at Edinburgh for
seventeen years, while James was detained in an honourable captivity at
Windsor.
Illness of the king. Faction in the court.
From 1408 till his death in 1413 Henry was freed from all the dangers
which had beset his earlier years. But he got small enjoyment from the
crown which no longer tottered on his brow. Soon after his execution of
Archbishop Scrope he had been smitten with a painful disorder, which his
enemies declared to be the punishment inflicted on him by heaven for
the prelate's death. It grew gradually worse, and developed into what
his contemporaries called leprosy--a loathsome skin disease accompanied
by bouts of fever, which sometimes kept him bedridden for months at a
time. From 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able to assert
himself in rare intervals of convalescence. The domestic politics of the
realm during his last five years were nothing more than a struggle
between two court factions who desired to use his name. The one was
headed by his son Henry, prince of Wales, and his half-brothers John,
Henry and Thomas Beaufort, the base-born but legitimized children of
John of Gaunt. The other was under the direction of Archbishop Arundel,
the king's earliest ally, who had already twice served him as
chancellor, and had the whole church party at his back. Arundel was
backed by Thomas duke of Clarence, the king's second son, who was an
enemy of the Beauforts, and not on the best terms with his own elder
brother, the prince of Wales. The fluctuating influence of each party
with the king was marked by the passing of the chancellorship from
Arundel to Henry Beaufort and back again during the five years of
Henry's illness. The rivalry between them was purely personal; both were
prepared to go on with the "Lancastrian experiment," the attempt to
govern the realm in a constitutional fashion by an alliance between the
king and the parliament; both were eager persecutors of the Lollards;
both were eager to make profit for England by interfering in the civil
wars of the Orleanists and Burgundians which were now devastating
France.
Prince Hal.
The prince of Wales, it is clear, gave much umbrage to his father by his
eagerness to direct the policy of the crown ere yet it had fallen to him
by inheritance. The king suspected, and with good reason, that his son
wished him to abdicate, and resented the idea. It seems that a plot with
such an object was actually on foot, and that the younger Henry gave it
up in a moment of better feeling, when he realized the evil impression
that the unfilial act would make upon the nation. At this time the
prince gave small promise of developing into the model monarch that he
afterwards became. There was no doubt of his military ability, which had
been fully demonstrated in the long Welsh wars, but he is reputed to
have shown himself arrogant, contentious and over-given to loose-living.
There were many, Archbishop Arundel among them, who looked forward with
apprehension to his accession to the throne.
English expedition to France.
The two parties in the council of Henry IV. were agreed that it would be
profitable to intervene in the wars of France, but they differed as to
the side which offered the most advantages. Hence came action which
seemed inconsistent, if not immoral; in 1411, under the prince's
influence, an English contingent joined the Burgundians and helped them
to raise the siege of Paris. In 1412, by Arundel's advice, a second army
under the duke of Clarence crossed the Channel to co-operate with the
Orleanists. But the French factions, wise for once, made peace at the
time of Clarence's expedition, and paid him 210,000 gold crowns to leave
the country! The only result of the two expeditions was to give the
English soldiery a poor opinion of French military capacity, and a
notion that money was easily to be got from the distracted realm beyond
the narrow seas.
Accession of Henry V.
His character.
On the 20th of March 1413, King Henry's long illness at last reached a
fatal issue, and his eldest son ascended the throne. The new king had
everything in his favour; his father had borne the odium of usurpation
and fought down the forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II. had
been forgotten; the young earl of March had grown up into the most
harmless and unenterprising of men, and the nation seemed satisfied with
the new dynasty, whose first sovereign had shown himself, under much
provocation, the most moderate and accommodating of constitutional
monarchs.
Henry V. on his accession bade farewell to the faults of his youth. He
seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial conduct which had
vexed his father's last years, and showed a careful determination to
turn over a new leaf and give his enemies no scope for criticism. From
the first he showed a sober and grave bearing; he reconciled himself to
all his enemies, gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king
according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt that he had a
strong sense of moral responsibility, and that he was sincerely pious.
But his piety inspired him to redouble the persecution of the
unfortunate Lollards, whom his father had harried only in an
intermittent fashion; and his sense of moral responsibility did not
prevent him from taking the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his
unhappy neighbours of France.
Persecution of the Lollards.
Rising under Oldcastle.
The first notable event of Henry's reign was his assault upon the
Lollards. His father had spared their lay chiefs, and contented himself
with burning preachers or tradesmen. Henry arrested John Oldcastle, Lord
Cobham, their leading politician, and had him tried and condemned to the
stake. But Oldcastle escaped from the Tower before the day fixed for his
execution, and framed a wild plot for slaying or deposing his
persecutor. He planned to gather the Lollards of London and the Home
Counties under arms, and to seize the person of the king--a scheme as
wild as the design of Guy Fawkes or the Fifth Monarchy Men in later
generations, for the sectaries were not strong enough to coerce the
whole nation. Henry received early notice of the plot, and nipped it in
the bud, scattering Oldcastle's levies in St Giles' Fields (Jan. 10,
1414) and hanging most of his lieutenants. But their reckless leader
escaped, and for three years led the life of an outlaw, till in 1417 he
was finally captured, still in arms, and sent to the stake.
Henry V. and France.
This danger having passed, Henry set himself to take advantage of the
troubles of France. He threatened to invade that realm unless the
Orleans faction, who had for the moment possession of the person of the
mad king Charles VI., should restore to him all that Edward III. had
owned in 1360, with Anjou and Normandy in addition. The demand was
absurd and exorbitant and was refused, though the French government
offered him the hand of their king's daughter Catherine with a dowry of
800,000 crowns and the districts of Quercy and Perigord--sufficiently
handsome terms. When he began to collect a fleet and an army, they added
to the offer the Limousin and other regions; but Henry was determined to
pick his quarrel, and declared war in an impudent and hypocritical
manifesto, in which he declared that he was driven into strife against
his will. The fact was that he had secured the promise of the neutrality
or the co-operation of the Burgundian faction, and thought that he could
crush the Orleanists with ease.
Henry invades France.
Battle of Agincourt.
Effect of the battle.
He sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact and
well-equipped, but not very numerous. On the eve of his departure he
detected and quelled a plot as wild and futile as that of Oldcastle. The
conspirators were his cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope,
and Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They had planned to raise
a rebellion in the name of the earl of March, in whose cause Wales and
the North were to have been called to arms. But March himself refused to
stir, and betrayed them to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set
sail five days later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and
commenced his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the
Orleanists made no attempt to succour. But such a large number of his
troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential disorder, that he
found himself too weak to march on Paris, and took his way to Calais
across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure the French to battle by
exposing his small army to attack. The plan was hazardous, for the
Orleanists turned out in great numbers and almost cut him off in the
marshes of the Somme. When he had struggled across them, and was
half-way to Calais, the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct.
25, 1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation by winning a
victory even more surprising than those of Crecy, and Poitiers, for he
was outnumbered in an even greater proportion than the two Edwards had
been in 1346 and 1356, and had to take the offensive instead of being
attacked in a strong position. The heavily armoured French noblesse,
embogged in miry meadows, proved helpless before the lightly equipped
English archery. The slaughter in their ranks was terrible, and the
young duke of Orleans, the head of the predominant faction of the
moment, was taken prisoner with many great nobles. However, so exhausted
was the victorious army that Henry merely led it back to Calais, without
attempting anything more in this year. The sole tangible asset of the
campaign was the possession of Harfleur, the gate of Normandy, a second
Calais in its advantages when future invasions were taken in hand. The
moral effects were more important. The Orleanist party was shaken in its
power; the rival Burgundian faction became more inclined to commit
itself to the English cause, and the terror of the English arms weighed
heavily upon both.
England and the council of Constance.
It was not till the next year but one that Henry renewed his invasion of
France--the intervening space was spent in negotiations with Burgundy,
and with the emperor Sigismund, whose aid the king secured in return for
help in putting an end to the scandalous "great schism" which had been
rending the Western Church for so many years. The English deputation
lent their aid to Sigismund at the council of Constance, when
Christendom was at last reunited under a single head, though all the
reforms which were to have accompanied the reunion were postponed, and
ultimately avoided altogether, by the restored papacy.
Henry's second invasion of France.
Conquest of Normandy.
Triumph of the Burgundians.
Henry takes Rouen.
Murder of John of Burgundy.
In July 1417 Henry began his second invasion of France, and landed at
the mouth of the Seine with a powerful army of 17,000 men. He had
resolved to adopt a plan of campaign very different from those which
Edward III. or the Black Prince had been wont to pursue, having in view
nothing more than the steady and gradual conquest of the province of
Normandy. This he was able to accomplish without any interference from
the government at Paris, for the constable Armagnac, who had succeeded
the captive Orleans at the head of the anti-Burgundian party, had no
troops to spare. He was engaged in a separate campaign with Henry's ally
John the Fearless, and left Normandy to shift for itself. One after
another all the towns of the duchy were reduced, save Rouen, the siege
of which, as the hardest task, King Henry postponed till the rest of the
countryside was in his hands. He sat down to besiege it in 1418, and was
detained before its walls for many months, for the citizens made an
admirable defence. Meanwhile a change had taken place in the domestic
politics of France; the Burgundians seized Paris in May 1418; the
constable Armagnac and many of his partisans were massacred, and John
the Fearless got possession of the person of the mad Charles VI., and
became the responsible ruler of France. He had then to choose between
buying off his English allies by great concessions, or taking up the
position of champion of French interests. He selected the latter role,
broke with Henry, and tried to relieve Rouen. But all his efforts were
foiled, and the Norman capital surrendered, completely starved out, on
the 19th of January 1419. On this Burgundy resolved to open negotiations
with Henry; he wished to free his hands for an attack on his domestic
enemies, who had rallied beyond the Loire under the leadership of the
dauphin Charles--from whom the party, previously known first as
Orleanists and then as Armagnacs, gets for the future the name of the
"Dauphinois." The English king, however, seeing the manifest advantage
of his position, tried to drive too hard a bargain; he demanded the old
boundaries of 1360, with his new conquest of Normandy, the hand of the
princess Catherine, and a great sum of ready money. Burgundy dared not
concede so much, under pain of alienating all his more patriotic
supporters. He broke off the conference of Meulan, and tried to patch up
a peace with the dauphin, in order to unite all Frenchmen against the
foreign invader. This laudable intention was wrecked by the treachery of
the young heir to the French throne; on the bridge of Montereau Charles
deliberately murdered the suppliant duke, as he knelt to do homage,
thinking thereby that he would make an end of the Burgundian party
(Sept. 9, 1419).
The Burgundians acknowledge Henry as heir of France.
Treaty of Troyes.
This abominable deed gave northern France for twenty years to an English
master. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and his supporters
in Paris and the north, were so incensed with the dauphin's cruel
treachery that they resolved that he should never inherit his father's
crown. They proffered peace to King Henry, and offered to recognize his
preposterous[4] claim to the French throne, on condition that he should
marry the princess Catherine and guarantee the constitutional liberties
of the realm. The insane Charles VI. should keep nominal possession of
the royal title till his death, but meanwhile the Burgundians would do
homage to Henry as "heir of France." These terms were welcomed by the
English king, and ratified at the treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420). Henry
married the princess Catherine, received the oaths of Duke Philip and
his partisans, and started forth to conquer the Dauphinois at the head
of an army of which half was composed of Burgundian levies. Paris,
Picardy, Champagne, and indeed the greater part of France north of the
Loire, acknowledged him as their sovereign.
Death of Henry V.
Henry had only two years longer to live; they were spent in incessant
and successful campaigning against the partisans of his brother-in-law,
the dauphin Charles; by a long series of sieges the partisans of that
worthless prince were evicted from all their northern strongholds. They
fought long and bitterly, nor was this to be marvelled at, for Henry had
a custom of executing as traitors all who withstood him, and those who
had once defied him did well to fight to the last gasp, in order to
avoid the block or the halter. In the longest and most desperate of
these sieges, that of Meaux (Oct. 1421-March 1422), the king contracted
a dysenteric ailment which he could never shake off. He survived for a
few months, but died, worn out by his incessant campaigning, on the 31st
of August 1422, leaving the crown of England and the heirship of France
to his only child Henry of Windsor, an infant less than two years old.
Effects of his conquests.
Few sovereigns in history have accomplished such a disastrous life's
work as this much-admired prince. If he had not been a soldier of the
first ability and a diplomatist of the most unscrupulous sort, he could
never have advanced so far towards his ill-chosen goal, the conquest of
France. His genius and the dauphin's murderous act of folly at Montereau
conspired to make the incredible almost possible. Indeed, if Henry had
lived five years longer, he would probably have carried his arms to the
Mediterranean, and have united France and England in uneasy union for
some short space of time. It is clear that they could not have been held
together after his death, for none but a king of exceptional powers
could have resisted their natural impulse to break apart. As it was,
Henry had accomplished just enough to tempt his countrymen to persevere
for nearly thirty years in the endeavour to complete the task he had
begun. France was ruined for a generation, England was exhausted by her
effort, and (what was worse) her governing classes learnt in the long
and pitiless war lessons of demoralization which were to bear fruit in
the ensuing struggle of the two Roses. It is a strange fact that Henry,
though he was in many respects a conscientious man, with a strong sense
of responsibility, and a sincere piety, was so blind to the
unrighteousness of his own actions that he died asserting that "neither
ambition nor vainglory had led him into France, but a genuine desire to
assert a righteous claim, which he desired his heirs to prosecute to the
bitter end."
Henry VI.
The guardianship of the infant Henry VI. fell to his two uncles, John of
Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester, the two surviving brothers of the
late king. Bedford became regent in France, and took over the heritage
of the war, in which he was vigorously aided by the young Philip of
Burgundy, whose sister he soon after married. Almost his first duty was
to bury the insane Charles VI., who only survived his son-in-law for a
few months, and to proclaim his little nephew king of France under the
name of Henry II. Gloucester, however, had personal charge of the child,
who was to be reared in England; he had also hoped to become protector
of the realm, and to use the position for his own private interests, for
he was a selfish and ambitious prince. But the council refused to let
him assume the full powers of a regent, and bound him with many checks
and restrictions, because they were well aware of his character. The
tiresome and monotonous domestic history of England during the next
twenty years consisted of little else than quarrels between Gloucester
and the lords of the council, of whom the chief was the duke's
half-uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, the last to survive of
all the sons of John of Gaunt. The duke and the bishop were both
unscrupulous; but the churchman, with all his faults, was a patriotic
statesman, while Gloucester cared far more for his own private ends than
for the welfare of the realm.
Bedford's rule in France.
Humphrey of Gloucester.
While these two well-matched antagonists were wrangling in England,
Bedford, a capable general and a wise administrator, was doing his best
to carry out the task which the dying Henry V. had laid upon him, by
crushing the dauphin, or Charles VII. as he now called himself since his
father's death. As long as the Burgundian party lent the regent their
aid, the limits of the land still unsubdued continued to shrink, though
the process was slow. Two considerable victories, Cravant (1423) and
Verneuil (1424), marked the early years of Bedford's campaigning; at
each, it may be noted, a very large proportion of his army was composed
of Burgundian auxiliaries. But after a time their assistance began to be
given less freely; this was due to the selfish intrigues of Humphrey of
Gloucester, who, regardless of the general policy of England, had
quarrelled with Philip the Good. He had married Jacoba (Jacquelaine),
countess of Hainaut and Holland, a cousin of the Burgundian duke, who
coveted and hoped to secure her lands. Pressing her claims, Gloucester
came to open blows with Philip in Flanders and Hainaut (1424). In his
anger the Burgundian ceased to support Bedford, and would have joined
Charles VII. if revenge on the murderers of his father had not still
remained his dominant passion. But Gloucester's attempt to seize Hainaut
failed, and Philip, when he had got possession of his cousin's person
and estates, allowed himself to be pacified by Bedford, who could prove
that he had no part in his brother's late intrigues.
Siege of Orleans.
This quarrel having been appeased, the advance against the territories
of Charles VII. was resumed. It went slowly on, till in 1428 the tide of
war reached the walls of Orleans, how the only place north of the Loire
which remained unsubdued. The siege was long; but after the last army
which the Dauphinois could raise had been beaten at the battle of
Rouvray (Feb. 1429) it seemed that the end was near. Charles VII. was in
such a state of despair after this last check, that he was actually
taking into consideration a flight to Italy or Spain, and the
abandonment of the struggle. He had shown himself so incapable and
apathetic that his followers were sick of fighting for such a despicable
master.
Joan of Arc.
From this depth of despair the party which, with all its faults,
represented the national sentiment of France was rescued by the
astonishing exploits of Joan of Arc. Charles and his counsellors had no
great confidence in the mission of this prophetess and champion, when
she presented herself to them, promising to relieve Orleans and turn
back the English. But all expedients are worth trying in the hour of
ruin, and seeing that Joan was disinterested and sincere, and that her
preaching exercised a marked influence over the people and the soldiery,
Charles allowed her to march with the last levies that he put into the
field for the relief of Orleans. From that moment the fortune of war
turned; the presence of the prophetess with the French troops had an
immediate and incalculable effect. Under the belief that they were now
led by a messenger from heaven, the Dauphinois fought with a fiery
courage that they had never before displayed. Their movements were
skilfully directed--whether by Joan's generalship or that of her
captains it boots not to inquire--and after the first successes which
she achieved, in entering Orleans and capturing some of the besiegers'
forts around it, the English became panic-stricken. They were cowed, as
they said, "by that disciple and limb of the fiend called La Pucelle,
that used false enchantments and sorcery." Suffolk, their commander,
raised the siege, and sent to Bedford for reinforcements; but as he
retreated he was set upon by the victorious army, and captured with most
of his men at Jargeau and Beaugency (June 1429). The succours which were
coming to his aid from Paris were defeated by the Maid at Patay a few
days later, and for the most part destroyed.
Coronation of Charles VII. at Reims.
The regent Bedford was now in a desperate position. His field army had
been destroyed, and on all sides the provinces which had long lain inert
beneath the English yoke were beginning to stir. When Joan led forth the
French king to crown him at Reims, all the towns of Champagne opened
their gates to her one after another. A large reinforcement received
from England only just enabled Bedford to save Paris and some of the
fortresses of the Ile de France. The rest revolted at the sight of the
Maid's white banner. If Joan had been well supported by her master and
his counsellors, it is probable that she might have completed her
mission by expelling the English from France. But, despite all that she
had done, Charles VII. and his favourites had a profound disbelief in
her inspiration, and generally thwarted her plans. After an
ill-concerted attack on Paris, in which Joan was wounded, the French
army broke up for the winter. They had shaken the grip of the English on
the north, and reconquered a vast stretch of territory, but they had
failed by their own fault to achieve complete success. Nevertheless the
crucial point of the war had passed; after 1429 the Burgundian party
began to slacken in its support of the English cause, and to pass over
piecemeal to the national side. This was but natural: the partisans who
could remember nothing but the foul deed of Montereau were yearly
growing fewer, and it was clear that Charles VII., personally despicable
though he might be, represented the cause of French nationality.
Capture and execution of Joan.
The natural drift of circumstances was not stayed even by the disastrous
end of the career of Joan of Arc in 1430. The king's ministers had
refused to take her counsels or to entrust her with another army, but
she went forth with a small force of volunteers to relieve the important
fortress of Compiegne. The place was saved, but in a sortie she was
captured by the Burgundians, who sold her for 10,000 francs to Bedford.
The regent handed her over for punishment as a sorceress to the French
clergy of his own party. After a long trial, carried out with elaborate
formality and great unfairness, the unhappy Joan was found guilty of
proclaiming as divine visions what were delusions of the evil one, or of
her own vain imagination, and when she persisted in maintaining their
reality she was declared a relapsed heretic, and burnt at Rouen on the
30th of May 1431. Charles VII. took little interest in her fate, which
he might easily have prevented by threatening to retaliate on the
numerous English prisoners who were in his power. Seldom had a good
cause such an unworthy figurehead as that callous and apathetic prince.
Philip of Burgundy joins Charles. Treaty of Arras.
The movement which Joan had set on foot was in no way crushed by her
execution. For the next four years the limits of the English occupation
continued to recede. It was to no profit that Bedford brought over the
young Henry VI. and had him crowned at Paris, in order to appeal to the
loyalty of his French partisans by means of the king's forlorn youth and
simplicity. Yet by endless feats of skilful generalship the regent
continued to maintain a hold on Paris and on Normandy. The fatal blow
was administered by Philip of Burgundy, who, tired of maintaining a
failing cause, consented at last to forget his father's murder, and to
be reconciled to Charles VII. Their alliance was celebrated by the
treaty of Arras (Sept. 6, 1435), at which the English were offered peace
and the retention of Normandy and Guienne if they would evacuate Paris
and the rest of France. They would have been wise to accept the
agreement; but with obstinate and misplaced courage they refused to
acknowledge Charles as king of France, or to give up to him the capital.
Death of Bedford. English defeats.
Bedford, worn out by long campaigning, died at Rouen on the 14th of
September 1435, just before the results of the treaty of Arras began to
make themselves felt. With him died the best hope of the English party
in France, for he had been well loved by the Burgundians, and many had
adhered to the cause of Henry VI. solely because of their personal
attachment to him. No worthy successor could be found--England had many
hard-handed soldiers but no more statesmen of Bedford's calibre. It was
no wonder that Paris was lost within six months of the regent's death,
Normandy invaded, and Calais beleaguered by an army headed by England's
new enemy, Philip of Burgundy. But the council, still backed by the
nation, refused to give up the game; Burgundy was beaten off from
Calais, and the young duke of York, the heir of the Mortimers, took the
command at Rouen, and recovered much of what had been lost on the Norman
side.
Truce with France.
The next eight years of the war were in some respects the most
astonishing period of its interminable length. The English fought out
the losing game with a wonderful obstinacy. Though every town that they
held was eager to revolt, and though they were hopelessly outnumbered in
every quarter, they kept a tight grip on the greater part of Normandy,
and on their old domain in the Bordelais and about Bayonne. They lost
nearly all their outlying possessions, but still made head against the
generals of Charles VII. in these two regions. The leaders of this
period of the war were the duke of York, and the aged Lord Talbot,
afterwards earl of Shrewsbury. The struggle only ceased in 1444, when
the English council, in which a peace party had at last been formed,
concluded a two-year truce with King Charles, which they hoped to turn
into a permanent treaty, on the condition that their king should retain
what he held in Normandy and Guienne, but sign away his claim to the
French crown, and relinquish the few places outside the two duchies
which were still in his power--terms very similar to those rejected at
Arras nine years before--but there was now much less to give up. To mark
the reconciliation of the two powers Henry VI. was betrothed to the
French king's niece, Margaret of Anjou. The two years' truce was
repeatedly prorogued, and lasted till 1449, but no definitive treaty was
ever concluded, owing to the bad faith with which both parties kept
their promises.
Supremacy of the Beauforts in England.
Character of Henry VI.
The government in England was now in the hands of the faction which
Bishop Beaufort had originally led, for after long struggles the
churchman had at last crushed his nephew Humphrey. In 1441 the duchess
of Gloucester had been arrested and charged with practising sorcery
against the health of the young king--apparently not without
justification. She was tried and condemned to imprisonment for life; her
guilt was visited on her husband, on whose behalf she was acting, for if
Henry had died his uncle would have come to the throne. For some years
he was constrained to take a minor part in politics, only emerging
occasionally to make violent and unwise protests against peace with
France. The bishop now ruled, with his nephew Edmund Beaufort, duke of
Somerset, and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, as his chief
instruments. As he grew older he let the power slip into their hands, as
it was they who were mainly responsible for the truce of 1444. King
Henry, though he had reached the age of 23 at the time of his marriage,
counted for nothing. He was a pious young man, simple to the verge of
imbecility; a little later he developed actual insanity, the heritage of
his grandfather Charles VI. He showed a blind confidence in Suffolk and
Somerset, who were wholly unworthy of it, for both were tricky and
unscrupulous politicians. His wife Margaret of Anjou, though she
possessed all the fire and energy which her husband lacked, was equally
devoted to these two ministers, and soon came to share their
unpopularity.
Death of Humphrey of Gloucester and Henry Beaufort.
The truce with France had offended the natural pride of the nation,
which still refused to own itself beaten. The evacuation of the French
fortresses in Maine and elsewhere, which was the price paid for the
suspension of arms, was bitterly resented. Indeed the garrisons had to
be threatened with the use of force before they would quit their
strongholds. A violent clamour was raised against Suffolk and Somerset,
and Humphrey of Gloucester emerged from his retirement to head the
agitation. This led to his death; he was arrested by the order of the
queen and the ministers at the parliament of Bury. Five days later he
died suddenly in prison, probably by foul play, though it was given out
that he had been carried off by a paralytic stroke. His estates were
confiscated, and distributed among the friends of Suffolk and the queen.
Six weeks later the aged Bishop Beaufort followed him to the grave--he
had no share in Gloucester's fate, having long before made over his
power and the leadership of his party to his nephew Edmund of Somerset
(1447).
Renewal of the war with France.
Loss of Normandy.
The truce with France lasted for two years after the death of Duke
Humphrey, and came to an end partly owing to the eagerness of the French
to push their advantages, but much more from the treachery and bad faith
of Suffolk and Somerset, who gave the enemy an admirable _casus belli_.
By their weakness, or perhaps with their secret connivance, the English
garrisons of Normandy carried out plundering raids of the most impudent
sort on French territory. When summoned to punish the offenders, and to
make monetary compensation, Suffolk and Somerset shuffled and
prevaricated, but gave no satisfaction. Thereupon the French king once
more declared war (July 1449) and invaded Normandy. Somerset was in
command; he showed hopeless incapacity and timidity, and in a few months
the duchy which had been so long held by the swords of Bedford, York and
Shrewsbury was hopelessly lost. The final blow came when a small army of
relief sent over from England was absolutely exterminated by the French
at the battle of Formigny (April 15, 1450). Somerset, who had retired
into Caen, surrendered two months later after a feeble defence, and the
English power in northern France came to an end.
Jack Cade's Rebellion.
Even before this final disaster the indignation felt against Suffolk and
Somerset had raised violent disturbances at home. Suffolk was impeached
on many charges, true and false; it was unfair to accuse him of treason,
but quite just to lay double-dealing and bad faith to his charge. The
king tried to save him from the block by banishing him before he could
be tried. But while he was sailing to Flanders his ship was intercepted
by some London vessels, which were on the look-out for him, and he was
deliberately murdered. The instigators of the act were never discovered.
But, though Suffolk was gone, Somerset yet survived, and their partisans
still engrossed the confidence of the king. To clear out the government,
and punish those responsible for the late disasters, the commons of Kent
rose in insurrection under a captain who called himself John Mortimer,
though his real name seems to have been John Cade. He was a soldier of
fortune who had served in the French wars, and claimed to be in the
confidence of the duke of York, the person to whom the eyes of all who
hated Somerset and the present regime were now directed.
Cade was not a social reformer, like his predecessor Wat Tyler, with
whom he has often been compared, but a politician. Though he called
himself "John Amend-all," and promised to put down abuses of every kind,
the main part of the programme which he issued was intended to appeal to
national sentiment, not to class feeling. Whether he was the tool of
other and more highly placed malcontents, or whether he was simply a
ready-witted adventurer playing his own game, it is hard to determine.
His first success was marvellous; he defeated the king's troops, made a
triumphant entry into London and held the city for two days. He seized
and beheaded Lord Saye, the treasurer, and several other unpopular
persons, and might have continued his dictatorship for some time if the
Kentish mob that followed him had not fallen to general pillage and
arson. This led to the same results that had been seen in Tyler's day.
The propertied classes in London took arms to suppress anarchy, and beat
the insurgents out of the city. Cade, striving to keep up the rising
outside the walls, was killed in a skirmish a month later, and his bands
dispersed.
Richard, duke of York, heads the opposition.
But the troubles of England were only just beginning; the protest
against the misgovernment of Somerset and the rest of the confidants of
the king and queen was now taken up by a more important personage than
the adventurer Cade. Richard, duke of York, the heir to the claims of
the house of Mortimer--his mother was the sister of the last earl of
March--now placed himself at the head of the opposition. He had
plausible grounds for doing so; though he had distinguished himself in
the French wars, and was, since the death of Humphrey of Gloucester, the
first prince of the blood royal, he had been ignored and flouted by the
king's ministers, who had sent him into a kind of honourable banishment
as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and had forbidden him to re-enter the
realm. When, in defiance of this mandate, he came home and announced his
intention of impeaching Somerset, he took the first step which was to
lead to the Wars of the Roses.
Battle of Castillon. Loss of Guienne.
Yet he was a cautious and in the main a well-intentioned prince, and the
extreme moderation of his original demands seems to prove that he did not
at first aim at the crown. He merely required that Somerset and his
friends should be dismissed from office and made to answer for their
misgovernment. Though he backed his demands by armed demonstration--twice
calling out his friends and retainers to support his policy--he carefully
refrained for five long years from actual violence. Indeed in 1452 he
consented to abandon his protests, and to lend his aid to the other party
for a great national object, the recovery of Guienne. For in the previous
year Charles VII. had dealt with Bordeaux and Bayonne as he had already
dealt with Normandy, and had met with no better resistance while
completing the conquest. Six months' experience of French rule, however,
had revealed to the Bordelais how much they had lost when they
surrendered. Their old loyalty to the house of Plantagenet burst once
more into flame; they rose in arms and called for aid to England. For a
moment the quarrel of York and Somerset was suspended, and the last
English army that crossed the seas during the Hundred Years' War landed
in Guienne, joined the insurgents, and for a time swept all before it.
But there seemed to be a curse on whatever Henry VI. and Somerset took in
hand. On the 17th of July 1453 the veteran earl of Shrewsbury and the
greater part of his Anglo-Gascon host were cut to pieces at the
hard-fought battle of Castillon. Bordeaux, though left to defend itself,
held out for eighty days after Talbot's defeat and death, and then made
its final submission to the French. The long struggle was over, and
England now retained nothing of her old transmarine possessions save
Calais and the Channel Islands. The ambition of Henry V. had finally cost
her the long-loyal Guienne, as well as all the ephemeral conquests of his
own sword.
The last crowning disaster of the administration of the favourites of
Henry VI. put an end to the chance that a way out of domestic strife
might be found in the vigorous prosecution of the French war. For the
next twenty years the battles of England were to be fought on her own
soil, and between her own sons. It was a righteous punishment for her
interference in the unnatural strife of Orleanists and Burgundians that
the struggle between York and Lancaster was to be as bitter and as
bloody as that between the two French factions.