Fourteenth century France was the prey of Anarchy, of Civil
War, of Foreign Invasion. When one considers the unhappy reigns
of Philip of Valois and of John, the captivity of the king, the
occupation of France by the English, the insanity of Charles
VI, and the crimes of Isabella of Bavaria, one can explain why
two centuries separated the literary epoch of France from that
of Italy.--VILLEMAIN.[t]
[Sidenote: [1380-1422 A.D.]]
Charles V was but forty-three years of age when he died. His death was
a great misfortune for the country, for his eldest son was only twelve
years old, and intrusted to the care of his three uncles, the dukes of
Anjou, Burgundy, and Berri, grasping men, each solely preoccupied with
one subject--the first with the kingdom of Naples where Queen Joanna had
proclaimed him her successor, the second with the great fief of Flanders
which he would in time inherit, the third with his pleasures and his
wealth. The young king, who came to the throne as Charles VI, and who,
owing to his tender years, was quite at the mercy of his relatives, had,
on his mother’s side, a fourth uncle, the duke de Bourbon, an excellent
prince but wholly without influence; and a brother, the duke of Orleans.
During the late king’s last moments, his eldest brother, the duke of
Anjou, who by virtue of his title would assume the regency, kept himself
hidden in an adjacent chamber. Scarcely had Charles drawn his last breath
than the duke seized the crown jewels, and by threatening the treasurer,
Savoisy, with death, got hold of a number of gold and silver ingots
which had been sealed up in the walls of the castle of Melun by masons
who had immediately been got rid of. The year before, while governor
of Languedoc, he had caused an insurrection by his rapacious acts, and
in Montpellier alone condemned two hundred citizens to the stake, two
hundred to the gallows, two hundred to the block, eighteen hundred to the
loss of their property, and the rest of the town to a fine of 600,000
francs. The king modified these atrocious sentences and recalled the
duke. Unfortunately the power of regency belonged to this prince. His
brothers, like himself, filled their pockets; Burgundy allotted himself
the government of Normandy and Picardy; Berri, who had already had Berri,
Auvergne, and Poitou in appanage, took Languedoc and Aquitaine. Thus a
third of the realm became a field for his rapacity.
[Sidenote: [1380-1382 A.D.]]
A new reign always brings a moment of hope. The abolition of certain
taxes was demanded, and the duke promised to suppress all those which had
been instituted since Philip the Fair. He might as well have promised to
renounce the government of France; the regent did not know how to keep
his word. One day a mounted crier appeared in the public square, and
announced that the king’s silver plate had been stolen, promising a large
reward to whoever recovered it. When a crowd had gathered to discuss
the news, he cried that the next day a new tax would be levied on all
merchandise sold, and galloped away at full speed.
The next day, in truth, which was the first of March, 1382, tax-gatherers
appeared in the market-place and demanded a tax on a bit of cress which
had just been sold by an old woman. A furious riot at once broke out. The
rebels rushed to the Hôtel-de-Ville and the arsenal, and armed themselves
with new mallets that had been stored up there in view of an attack from
the English. These _maillotins_ were, for the moment, masters of the
situation; then, as in all popular riots of this time, fury gave way to
terror and discouragement. The princes, who took the matter in hand,
executed in secret the most seditious and imposed on others the most
ruinous fines, with the proceeds of which the duke of Anjou departed for
Italy. But the new tax was withdrawn and the leaders of the riot were
punished secretly. The Parisian rising had meantime spread to Rouen,
Rheims, Châlons, Troyes, and Orleans, where it formed the nucleus of two
other revolutionary movements--one in the north in Flanders, the other in
the south in Languedoc.
The duke of Berri had scarcely appeared in his province of Languedoc
when trouble broke out. The pope interfered and put an end to it, but
the pope could not stop the executions and cruelties of the governing
prince. The peasants despoiled of everything by the soldiers commenced a
sort of _jacquerie_ (peasant revolt). They took refuge in the mountains,
especially on the slopes of the Cévennes and thence, organised into armed
bands, rushed down upon the nobles and wealthy inhabitants, giving no
quarter to those whose hands were not callous with toil. They were called
the _tuchins_. Affairs in Flanders were still more serious.
WAR IN FLANDERS: BATTLE OF ROOSEBEKE (1382 A.D.)
The Flemings had rebelled, in the preceding reign, against their French
count who amused himself with violating the municipal franchises of
the country. Peter Dubois and Philip van Artevelde, son of the famous
brewer, had led with success the insurrection of the “chaperons
blancs” (white-caps), and at the battle of Bruges (May 3rd, 1382) had
overturned the last hopes of Count Louis. Philip van Artevelde pushed the
insurrection with the same boldness and in the same manner as his father.
Plenipotentiaries from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges were sent to Richard
II of England, offering to recognise him as king of France if he would
come to their aid. For a quarter of a century the breath of revolt had
been blowing over the middle classes throughout Europe--the enterprise
of Rienzi at Rome, Wat Tyler in England, then Étienne Marcel and now
the “Jacques,” the “maillotins,” the “tuchins,” and the “white-caps”!
Insurrection, smothered in one place, broke out afresh in another, and it
was to be feared, as Froissart[c] says, “that all nobility and refinement
would be dead and lost in France as well as in many other countries.”
[Sidenote: [1382-1383 A.D.]]
One day while the dukes of Burgundy and Berri were discussing together
the dangers of the situation and the necessity for intervention in
Flanders, and of striking at the roots of the spirit of revolt and
liberty, the young king entered, with a hawk on his fist. “Well, my
dear uncles,” said he, “and what are you talking about in such solemn
council?” “Ah, monseigneur,” replied Berri, “here is my brother of
Burgundy who complains of the people in Flanders where the wretches have
turned their lord and nobles out of their heritage. They have a leader
who calls himself Artevelde, a true Englishman for courage, who has
besieged a crowd of nobles in Oudenarde, and swears he will never leave
and will have his will with those in the town unless your power relieve
them.” “By my faith,” rejoined the king, “I have a great desire to help
them. For God’s sake, let us go there. I want nothing more than to arm
myself, for I have never yet been armed, and if I wish to reign with
power and honour, must I not learn the use of arms?” And he was anxious
to set out that day or the next.
A great army was soon ready. At its approach all the Flemish towns made
submission and the people of Ghent had now no resource but to win a
great battle by throwing themselves upon the enemy with the impetuosity
of the boar, as they had done at Bruges and as they now tried to do at
Roosebeke, November 27th, 1382. They were tied one to the other, so as to
make it impossible to retreat, and advanced in a single battalion. This
manœuvre had been successful at Bruges against a much smaller number.
But this time the wings of the great French army folded upon them, and,
assailed on its side, the battalion was helpless. The lances of the
cavalry carried much farther than the short Flemish spears, and the
latter could not reach the enemy which was attacking them. Disorder soon
reigned supreme in the little cohort surrounded on all sides.
“The men-at-arms,” says Froissart,[c] “knocked down the Flemings with all
their might. They had well-sharpened battle-axes, with which they cut
through helmets and disbrained heads; others gave such blows with leaden
maces that nothing could withstand them. Scarcely were the Flemings
overthrown when pillagers advanced, who, mixing with the men-at-arms,
made use of the large knives they carried, and finished slaying whoever
fell into their hands, without more mercy than if they had been so many
dogs. There was a large and high mound of the Flemings who were slain;
and never was there so little blood spilt at so great a battle where
such numbers were killed.” Twenty-six thousand dead remained upon the
field and among them the whole battalion of Ghent, including Artevelde.
Flanders was not laid low by this defeat, for Ghent held out for two
years more. But the nobles had avenged the shame of their defeat at
Courtrai; and to efface even the memory of it, on leaving the town which
had lodged them for a fortnight but where they had found, hanging in the
churches, the golden spurs of the knights killed in 1302, they gave it to
the flames after ransacking it. On his own account the duke of Burgundy
took down from the cathedral a magnificent clock with figures which he
removed to Dijon and set up in the south transept of the church of Notre
Dame. It is still there.
INSURRECTIONS IN PARIS AND ROUEN
The Paris riots, quite as much as the rising at Ghent, had been put down
at Roosebeke. The Parisians realised that nothing more would be tolerated
from them, but hoped nevertheless by showing their strength that nothing
would be attempted. So they set out to meet the king to the number of
twenty thousand armed men, who drew up in line of battle beneath the
heights of Montmartre. At this sight the nobles said to themselves: “Look
at the fine rabble and its insolence. Why didn’t they come with our army
to serve the king in Flanders? They kept well out of it, and instead
of ringing the bells to celebrate our victories, they dare to show
themselves in arms before their lord.”
Heralds came forward who asked the Parisians: “Where are your leaders?
Which of you are captains?” The Parisians replied, “We have none other
than the king and his nobles.” The heralds then demanded whether the
constable and four barons would be allowed to enter in safety. “Ah, you
laugh at us,” returned the Parisians; “go, tell them that we are ready
to receive their commands.” The constable then confronted them. “Well,
men of Paris,” he said, “who has made you come out thus from the city?
You look as though you would fight your lord the king.” “My lord,” they
replied, “we have no such wish and we never had; we only wish to show
the king the power of his fair city of Paris. He is very young and does
not know what we could do for him should he ever need us.” “Well said,”
retorted the constable, “but the king for this once does not wish to see
you thus. If you would that he enters your city, go back to your homes
and lay aside your arms.” They obeyed (1383).
[Illustration: CHARLES VI
(From an old French print)]
The next day the king arrived. The gates were all wide open; but he
wished to enter through a breach and had a section knocked out. Then he
made his way through the streets, helmeted, lance in hand, with the most
terrible air his young person could assume. Executions began at once;
first those of the city’s liberties. They took away its franchises, its
elective magistrates, provost, aldermen, clerk, syndic, centurions, and
tithing-men; they suppressed the people’s masterships, corporations,
and brotherhoods; they deprived them of their arms and of the chains
that made the streets safe. Then followed executions of persons; they
arrested, made summary investigation, and finished by killing. Three
hundred of the richest bourgeoisie were drowned, hanged, or decapitated
with scarcely a form of trial. Noteworthy were the deaths of Nicholas
le Flamand, one of those who followed Étienne Marcel the day of the
slaying of the two marshals, twenty-six years before, and of John
Desmarets, _avocat-général_ in the parliament, one of the negotiators
of the Peace of Bretigny, and who was worn out in vain efforts between
the two parties. His trial was iniquitous and his death touching. “When
Desmarets,” says the monk of St. Denis,[d] “arrived at the place of
execution, ‘Ask mercy of the king, Master John,’ the people cried, ‘that
he may forgive your crimes.’ The old man turned to them and replied,
‘Loyally and well did I serve King Philip his great-grandfather, King
John, and King Charles, his father; never had these kings anything to
reproach me with; and this one would reproach me neither, had he the age
and knowledge of a grown man. I do not believe him responsible in the
least for this judgment. I have done nothing to ask mercy of him. It is
God alone from whom I must ask it and I pray him to pardon my sins.’”
[Sidenote: [1383-1388 A.D.]]
The bourgeoisie were brought together and read a long list of their
misdeeds, with the punishments they deserved. At the moment when terror
was at its height the two uncles of the king threw themselves at his feet
and begged for pity. He let himself be influenced, and announced through
his chancellor that he would change the punishments into fines. “This
was,” says Mézeray,[e] “the true reason for this _coup de théâtre_!”
Paris did not get off on less than 400,000 francs, worth to-day about
20,000,000; at Rouen, Rheims, Troyes, Châlons, Orleans, Sens, in Auvergne
and Languedoc, the same proceedings took place, especially the enormous
fines. “And this all went,” says Froissart,[c] “to the profit of the
duke of Berri and the duke of Burgundy, for the young king was in their
power!” This blow fell upon the bourgeoisie more disastrously than that
of 1359, because the government was then in the hands of an intelligent
man who checked the feudal reaction; in 1383 the princes gave themselves
a free hand. The upper middle class was decimated and ruined; and when,
after thirty years, public grievances caused them to essay another
revolution, they were in no condition to assume its control and left it
to violent men, who drenched Paris with blood.
In 1384 the count of Flanders died and the duke of Burgundy, his
son-in-law, inherited his vast dominions. In 1369 Charles V, in order
to facilitate the marriage of his brother the duke of Burgundy with
the heiress of the county of Flanders, had abandoned French Flanders
to him. But at the same time the king exacted an agreement from his
brother, that the donation would be restored on the death of the latter’s
father-in-law, Louis de Mâle. But the count of Flanders survived the
king, and Philip the Bold easily obtained from Charles VI the remission
of his promise. Henceforth the house of Burgundy will turn all its
affection towards these rich provinces, and as it finds means for
aggrandisement in this direction at the expense of the petty German
princes, it will forget little by little both the stock from which it
came, and the France which began its greatness.
The following year was employed in immense preparations for an invasion
of England. They collected, says Froissart, enough ships to make a bridge
from Calais to Dover; there were fourteen hundred of them. They built a
whole town of wood, which could be taken apart, piece by piece, in order
to take an entrenched camp with them. But they let the proper moment for
crossing over pass, and the project had to be given up, but not until
enormous sums had been squandered. Another expedition against the duke
of Gelderland who, for the price of a pension of £400 from England, bade
defiance to the king of France, cost still more, and came to nothing
(1388).
THE KING ASSUMES THE RULE (1388 A.D.)
The voice of public opinion was still very feeble, but it could be
heard. On the return from the sad war in Germany, the king called a
general council in the hall of the palace of the archbishop of Rheims,
and demanded of those present, in virtue of the obedience they owed
him, their advice on the conduct of public affairs. Peter de Montaigu,
cardinal of Laon, took the floor, and praising the king’s good qualities,
exhorted him to begin the exercise of his absolute power by taking under
his own control and direction the ministry of war and his own household,
taking counsel from no one. Others supported the cardinal’s advice;
Charles declared himself determined to follow it and thanked his uncles
for the good offices they had rendered him. The king had scarcely left
Rheims when the cardinal of Laon died by poison.
[Sidenote: [1388-1389 A.D.]]
The former counsellors of Charles V, the “small fry,” the _marmousets_
as the great lords dubbed them in disdain, Olivier de Clisson, Bureau de
la Rivière, Le Bègue de Vilaines, John de Novian, and John de Montaigu,
reassumed, as ministers of state, the direction of affairs. The new
administration was wise and economical, and stood for internal order and
foreign peace, but through it the king only became the more prodigal;
having no longer the pleasures and distractions of war, those of the
fête and tourney became necessary to him, and these diversions now never
ceased.[b]
Prodigious sums were needed for the “incomparable” fêtes in which Charles
VI gloried, and which attracted to Paris the flower of the knights and
noble ladies of all Christendom. This vast concourse of strangers,
the stir, the joyful tumult, the dazzling shows intoxicated the young
nobility and even the people of Paris; the Parisians had their share of
the rain of gold and recovered in one way what was taken from them in
another. In the first days of May, 1389, the most magnificent tournament
which had ever been seen was held at St. Denis on the occasion of the
knighting of the two sons of the late duke Louis of Anjou, the eldest of
whom, Louis II, duke of Anjou and count of Provence, was preparing to
set out to assert his claims to the kingdom of Naples against the heir
of Charles of Durazzo. Charles VI had endeavoured to realise the most
brilliant descriptions of the romances and to present to the feudal world
a complete type of chivalric splendours. The ceremonial of initiation
to the “holy order of chivalry,” which had almost fallen into disuse
since the adoption of the custom of conferring the order on the field of
battle, was reproduced with scrupulous exactness.
In a neighbouring field the lists had been prepared, surrounded with
wooden galleries for the ladies; and in the great court of the abbey
a banquet hall had been constructed 192 feet long by 36 wide and hung
throughout with tapestries of silk and gold. The first day of the
tournament twenty-two knights in green and gold armour were conducted
into the lists to the sound of music, by twenty-two fair ladies similarly
attired and mounted on elegant palfreys; each gave her knight a ribbon of
her own colours. The contests lasted all day; then the company proceeded
from the enclosure to the festival hall and after the supper the ladies
awarded the prize to the two who had done the best. The rest of the
night was passed in dances and _caroles_[30] and in “pastimes” of a less
innocent kind. The fête lasted three days and three nights--nights of
orgy and delirium which rendered the venerable cloisters of St. Denis
the witnesses of many voluptuous mysteries and which must have strangely
scandalised the chaste shade of St. Louis in the depths of its tomb.
The jousts and balls were succeeded by a ceremony of a sterner character
but equally sumptuous: the young king loved to vary his emotions and his
shows. He had been seized with “a great love” for the memory of Bertrand
du Guesclin, a feeling which was shared by the whole nation: although
nine years had passed since the death of that great captain, and though
Charles V had honoured him with a splendid funeral, Charles VI insisted
on recelebrating the obsequies of Messire Bertrand in presence of all the
French and foreign nobility whom the tournament had brought together.
The fêtes of St. Denis had not satiated Charles VI; he remembered that
the queen his wife had not yet been crowned: this was a fine occasion to
indulge in fresh magnificences. He resolved to have Isabella anointed at
Paris, and to compensate himself for the paucity of ceremonial which had
been accorded to the queen’s first entry into the capital. He notified
his intention “to those of Paris,” in order that they might be prepared,
and charged the old queen, Blanche of Navarre, widow of Philip of Valois,
to arrange the ceremony. Accordingly Blanche ordered the _Chronicles of
St. Denis_ to be examined for everything which they reported concerning
the anointing of queens in olden times. Froissart[c] and the monk of
St. Denis[d] have vied with one another in describing the queen’s
procession which arrived before St. Denis the 22nd of August, 1389,
with all the princesses, some in painted and gilded litters, others on
palfreys marvellously caparisoned. The king’s uncles, who sought every
opportunity to approach the supreme power, had presented themselves at
court with their families; the dukes and all the great nobles escorted
the litters which entered Paris to the sound of a thousand instruments
and between two rows of horsemen clad, some in scarlet silk, others
in green silk: they were on the one side the members of the king’s
household, on the other twelve hundred citizens of Paris led by the
provost of the merchants. Across the whole of the rue St. Denis and the
Grand Font (the Pont au Change) were hung draperies of silk, camlet, and
cendal (taffetas), which “shut out the sky”; all the houses were hung
with silks and tapestries of a high warp and the windows were crowded
with women adorned with dresses of brilliant materials and with gold
necklaces. Fountains of milk and perfumed wine flowed at the street
corners, and beautiful young girls offered the passers-by to drink from
golden goblets. At the Porte St. Denis, at the _moûtier_ (monastery)
of the Trinity, at the second Porte St. Denis or Painters’ Gate (Porte
aux Peintres), at the church of St. Jacques de l’Hôpital, at the Grand
Châtelet, platforms, wooden castles, and richly ornamented theatres had
been erected; one represented God in his paradise and the starry heavens
filled with angels who sang “very melodiously” and congratulated in rhyme
“the lady enclosed amongst _fleurs-de-lis_”; another “showed” the king of
France and his twelve peers, King Richard Cœur de Lion, and King Saladin
with his Saracens. A rope had been stretched from one of the towers of
Notre Dame to the Pont au Change: as the queen passed the bridge a man
dressed as an angel, seated on this rope, descended from the towers of
Notre Dame, passed through an opening in the awning which covered the
bridge, placed “a beautiful wreath” on the queen’s head, and “was drawn
up again through the said opening as if he were returning to heaven.”
The procession presented itself before Notre Dame, whence it returned
to the Palais, and the next day the queen was anointed and crowned in
the Sainte-Chapelle, by the archbishop of Rouen. The descriptions of the
banquets which took place at the “marble table” in the great hall of
the Palais, and of the jousts at the Hôtel St. Pol are to be found in
Froissart.[c] The king had adopted a golden sun with rays as his device:
he was one of the victors in the jousts. The rich presents of the city of
Paris to the queen and the duchess of Touraine, the king’s sister-in-law,
contributed to pay for the gaiety of the court; the Parisians offered the
princesses gold and silver plate to the value of sixty thousand crowns:
they doubtless calculated on being repaid for this munificence by a large
diminution of the taxes; but their expectation was cruelly deceived. The
king left Paris a few days later, and as a farewell to his people left an
increase of the gabelle and an ordinance which prohibited, under pain of
death, the use of silver coins of twelve and four deniers which had been
in circulation since the reign of the late king.[f]
HATRED OF THE NOBLES FOR THE MINISTRY (1389-1392 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1389-1392 A.D.]]
The ministry attempted to combat this state of affairs or at least to
extenuate its disastrous effects. It economised in state expenditure to
make up for the king’s extravagance, and the state was the gainer by the
arrangement.
[Illustration: COSTUME IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES VI]
The ministers gave Paris back its provost and conferred upon the
bourgeoisie the right to acquire fiefs, as though they were nobles, and
deprived the duke of Berri of his government in Languedoc, where four
hundred thousand inhabitants had fled into Aragon. Not being able to
inflict further punishment on Berri, they caused his treasurer Bétisac
to be put to death. This Bétisac had merited the hate of all by his
exactions. But they did not dare condemn him as an embezzler, since the
duke of Berri had authorised all his acts and it was on the duke himself
that the complaints of the people should have fallen. So they laid a trap
for Bétisac, by advising him to declare heretical opinions, for which he
would be summoned to ecclesiastical jurisdiction which would exculpate
him. The accused man followed this advice and they burned him for a
heretic instead of hanging him for a thief.
The “small fry” ruled the kingdom for four years. Four years in which
the king’s uncles and the great nobles had to keep their hands off the
management of affairs, and longed for an opportunity to get back into
power. Finally an Angevin nobleman, Peter de Craon, mortal enemy of the
leader of the marmousets, the constable Olivier de Clisson, placed his
personal hatred at the service of the aristocracy’s political resentment.
On June 13th, 1392, at the close of a fête given at the Hôtel St. Pol,
the constable lingered a little to take leave of the king and the duke
of Orleans, and then with eight attendants, two carrying torches, made
his way towards the rue Ste. Catherine. Here Peter de Craon was waiting
for him, with forty mounted brigands, scarcely a half dozen of whom knew
what was expected of them. When Clisson appeared, Craon’s men threw
themselves on his attendants and extinguished their torches. Clisson
at first thought it a joke of the duke of Orleans, whom he supposed to
have followed him. “My lord,” he said, “you are young, we must pardon
you. These are the pranks of youth.” But Peter de Craon cried, “Die,
die, Clisson; here you shall die.” “Who art thou,” asked Clisson, “who
speakest such words?” “I am Peter de Craon, your enemy. You have many
times provoked me, and shall here pay for it. Forward,” he called to
his men, “I have him whom I wanted and will have.” The constable tried
to defend himself but was soon wounded and thrown from his horse. In
falling, his head came against the unlatched door of a bake-shop, which
gave way. This saved him. The assassins thought him dead; they had,
moreover, recognised the constable, and fearful of having attacked so
powerful a personage, they fled with Craon to his castle of Sablé in
Maine.
The news of the outrage was brought to the king as he was preparing for
bed. He called his guard, had torches lighted and went to the bake-shop
where Clisson was beginning to recover consciousness. “Constable,”
said the king, “how do you feel?” “Weak and poorly, sire.” “And who
brought you to this pass?” “Peter de Craon, sire, and his accomplices,
treacherously and with no warning.” “Constable, nothing will be paid more
dearly or amends made for than this thing.”
Peter de Craon, who no longer felt himself safe in the castle of Sablé,
sought refuge with the duke of Burgundy, who, called upon to deliver
up the rascal, caused him to be hid and replied that he knew nothing
whatever of him. Charles immediately collected an army, swearing to take
no rest until he had punished this rebellion. The dukes of Burgundy and
Berri endeavoured to block this enterprise. Their hatred towards Clisson
had grown since they learned he possessed great wealth. The constable,
believing himself about to die, had made his will, and besides his fiefs
and heritage he had disposed of 1,700,000 francs’ worth of personal
property. But the king paid no heed to the delays and bad will of his
uncles and to the fears which his physicians expressed for his health. He
led his army as far as Le Mans.
THE KING GOES MAD: THE PRINCES RETURN TO POWER (1392 A.D.)
It was the middle of summer, during the prolonged August heat. As the
king was crossing the forest, a man dressed all in white seized his
bridle and cried, “Stop, noble king, go no further, thou art betrayed.”
This sudden apparition startled the king greatly; a little farther on the
page who carried the royal lance nodded in the saddle. The lance fell
and struck a shield a resounding blow. At the sound of arms the king
trembled, drew his sword and cried, “Quick, quick, upon the traitors!”
He thrust his naked sword at his brother the duke of Orleans, who barely
avoided it. One of his knights finally had to seize him from behind. They
disarmed him. He no longer knew anyone.
The king was mad. Some said it was sorcery, but the king himself was to
blame. Possessor at twelve years of age of that unlimited power which is
often the undoing of the strongest characters, he was at twenty-four worn
out with every pleasure and emotion in the range of human experience from
debauch to battle-field. His constitution was ruined, his mind shaken; a
violent shock had deranged everything.
When it was hinted that the king was the victim of poison or sorcery,
“No,” exclaimed the duke of Berri, “he is neither poisoned nor bewitched,
except by bad advice.” These words sealed the fate of the marmousets. A
few days later Clisson demanded of the duke of Burgundy the pay of the
knights who had accompanied the king on his last expedition. The duke
looked him through and through, and said, “Clisson, you need not trouble
yourself about the affairs of the kingdom, for without your help it
will be well governed. It was an evil day for the realm when you first
meddled with it. How the devil have you got so much money, that you were
recently able to will away 1,700,000 francs? Neither his majesty, my
brother Berri, nor I with all our present power have been able to acquire
so much. Leave my presence and let me never see you again, for were it
not for my honour I would put your other eye out.” Clisson hastened to
the safety of his castle in Brittany, while parliament declared him
guilty of extortion, and banished him from the country, imposing a fine
of 100,000 silver marks. The sire de Montaigu, warned by this experience,
sought refuge at Avignon. Bureau de la Rivière, the sire de Novian, and
Le Bègue de Vilaines were arrested and imprisoned in the Château St.
Antoine (the Bastille).
[Sidenote: [1392-1396 A.D.]]
The king’s uncles came again into full possession of the government: what
would they do? They signed a twenty-eight years’ truce with England in
1395 and gave King Richard II the infant princess Isabella, Charles VI’s
daughter, in marriage. But four years later (1399) the English deposed
and afterwards, it is said, strangled their king, and this valuable
alliance was broken.[b]
The signing of the truce of 1395 was a real assurance of peace in France,
even in Brittany, where Clisson, banished to his fiefs, had armed his
vassals at once and attacked John de Montfort. But the duke of Burgundy
appeared in person at Ancenis, mediated between the two parties, and made
them in January, 1395, sign a reciprocal promise to lay down their arms.
Shortly after this John IV attended the meeting of Charles VI and Richard
II at Guines (where the truce was arranged) and obtained from the English
the restitution of Brest which had only been pledged to them.
With peace thus restored France was now able to occupy herself more
particularly with the great questions then agitating all Europe: that
of the papal schism of which all Christendom was longing for the end,
and that of the crusade--or rather the barrier which it was felt must
be raised against the conquests of the Ottoman Turks in the European
provinces of the Greek empire.[g]
Forty years before the Ottoman Turks had crossed the Bosporus, taken
Adrianople and a portion of the Danube valley. Now they were threatening
Hungary. A crusade was therefore resolved upon, and put under the
direction of a young man of twenty-four, John, count of Nevers, who
later became the famous duke of Burgundy (John the Fearless). Young and
old, equally short-sighted, gaily descended the Danube, taking the whole
matter as a pleasure excursion. When they arrived at Nicopolis, King
Sigismund of Hungary advised them to meet the advance troops of the enemy
with his Hungarian foot-soldiers and light cavalry, and to reserve the
knights for the real Ottoman army which would appear afterwards. But no
one was willing to forego the honour of striking the first blow. So all
opposed themselves to the advance-guard, threw themselves upon the first
enemy who appeared, and arrived exhausted and in disorder at the top of
a hill where they were received by the redoubtable janissaries which
Amura had just organised, and who made short work of the breathless,
disordered troops. It was said that Bajazet put ten thousand captives[31]
to death in his own presence, saving only from the massacre the count of
Nevers and twenty-four nobles whom he ransomed (1396).[b] Consternation
was universal throughout France, especially in Burgundy. Duke Philip
strangely abused the obligations of feudalism which compelled vassals
to ransom a captive lord or his son and raised as much from his vassals
as from the royal treasury, more than double the 200,000 ducats which
Bajazet demanded for the freedom of his captives.[f]
DOMESTIC TROUBLES AND SCANDALS
[Sidenote: [1396-1407 A.D.]]
The government of the aristocracy was not fortunate: its acts were
discrediting it abroad; its quarrels were weakening it at home.
Isabella of Bavaria was but fifteen years old when she came from Germany
to wed Charles VI. Without parents, without a guide in the midst of a
corrupted court, she learned its morals quicker than she learned its
tongue, and she lived solely for luxury and pleasure. Years did not
render her conduct more circumspect, or her thoughts more serious. From
pleasure she descended to debauchery. Charged after the king’s affliction
with the keeping of his person, she used the authority obtained through
the melancholy situation of her husband to satisfy her passions, her
vices, and her vengeances. It will soon be seen how fatal this foreign
queen was to France.
The duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, kept the sovereign authority until
his death in 1404. His son, John the Fearless, wished to receive, with
his heritage, his father’s influence in the government, but the duke of
Orleans, the king’s brother, all powerful with the queen--master, through
her, of the king and the dauphin; chief of the nobility, and brilliant
knight himself--had no intention of renouncing the power to anyone. So
there soon sprang up, between John the Fearless and Orleans, a rivalry
that threatened to become civil war right in the midst of Paris. Each
collected his arms and fortified his palace; they were about to fight
when the aged duke of Berri interposed. He brought Burgundy to the
bedside of Orleans who was lying ill and made the two men embrace and
talk and take food together. This reconciliation took place November the
20th, 1407; on the 23rd Louis of Orleans fell, assassinated by John the
Fearless.
For more than four months, the duke had been planning this murder. He had
bought, in the city, a house for the ostensible purpose of storing wine,
corn, and other provisions, but really concealed in it seventeen hired
assassins. This house, situated in the rue Vieille du Temple, near the
Porte Barbette, lay in the path of the duke of Orleans while returning
from the king’s residence to his own palace. Wednesday, the 23rd of
November, at eight in the evening, the duke of Orleans left the Hôtel
Montaigu on muleback. The night was very dark, and he was accompanied
only by two equerries mounted on one horse and four foot attendants
carrying torches. Although it was not late, all the shops were closed.
The duke, keeping a little behind his people, was singing softly to
himself and toying with his glove when suddenly the assassins, concealed
by the corner of a house, rushed upon him crying, “Die! Die!”
“I am the duke of Orleans,” the duke shouted. “Then we want you,” they
replied, striking him. A page tried to cover the prince with his body
and was killed. A woman who witnessed the affair from a window screamed
murder. One of the assassins called to her, “Shut up, wretch.” Then by
the light of the torches she saw come out of the duke of Burgundy’s
recently bought house, a large man with a red hat over his eyes, who,
with a lantern, looked to see that there had been no slip as in the case
of the constable De Clisson. But this time the murderers had well earned
their wage. The body was literally hacked to pieces; the right arm was
cut in two, the severed left wrist was thrown to one side, the skull
split from ear to ear, and the brains scattered on the pavement. At this
the man in the red hat said to the others, “Put out your lights and let
us go, he is dead.” They put their torches back into the house they had
occupied, strewed caltrops behind them to prevent pursuit, and retired to
the Hôtel d’Artois in the rue Mauconseil.
[Sidenote: [1407-1409 A.D.]]
The next day John the Fearless went, like all the princes, to see
the corpse, and sprinkled it with holy water, at the church of the
Blancs-Manteaux. “Never,” he said, at sight of the dead, “has so foul a
murder been committed in this realm.” He wept at the funeral and held a
corner of the pall. Some days later, however, when the provost of Paris
announced in the council that he would make every effort to find the
assassins if they would give him permission to search the palaces of the
princes, John the Fearless became confused and grew pale. Then it was
he drew aside the duke of Berri and the king of Sicily, “I did it,” he
whispered, “the devil tempted me.” This state of mind soon passed, and
the duke of Burgundy resolved to admit and justify his crime. In fact
the next day he boldly appeared at the council of the princes, but his
uncle Berri met him at the door and said, “My good nephew, don’t come in
this time. I don’t want you here.” The thought came to the guilty man
that perhaps they were going to arrest him, and he fled at once to his
possessions in Flanders. From there he proclaimed, preached, and wrote to
the world that he had but forestalled an ambush of the duke of Orleans. A
Franciscan monk, the learned John Petit, was the following year charged
with the proof in twelve arguments, in honour of the twelve Apostles,
that if the duke was killed it was for the glory of God, since he was a
heretic; for the good of the king, since he wished to usurp the throne,
and for the public welfare, since the state was rid of a tyrant.
To this strange apology for the murder, from the pen of a monk, Burgundy
added a bloody victory.[b] An insurrection of the people of Liège against
their bishop, a creature of the duke, called the latter from Paris. His
influence had caused John, a younger brother of the house of Bavaria, to
be elected bishop; John took deacon’s orders to entitle him to assume
the episcopal sovereignty, but he refused to be priested, preferring the
helmet to the mitre. The Liègeois were discontented at having a profane
knight in lieu of a bishop; they entreated and petitioned John to take
upon him the sacerdotal character. He laughed at them. They rebelled and
drove him out. Such was the crime of the Liègeois. The duke of Burgundy
marched against them; a battle was fought at Hasbain, in which the
burgesses of Liège were as unfortunate as those of Ghent had been at
Roosebeke. It is said that twenty-six thousand dead were counted on the
field of battle.[h]
This was the best argument in Burgundy’s defence; he returned to Paris
promising the people an immediate abolition of taxes, and extracted from
the king a letter of forgiveness, in which Charles VI declared that he
cherished no resentment towards the author of his brother’s death (Peace
of Chartres, March, 1409).
The duchess of Orleans, the beautiful and gentle Valentine Visconti, was
at least spared this last shame. The death of her husband killed her. She
had taken for her motto, “_Rien ne m’est plus; plus ne m’est rien_,” and
“died in 1408” [says Juvénal des Ursins[i]] “in anger and grief.”
The duke of Orleans was not worth much regret. His administration had
been as deplorable as his morals. He had declared war on England, and
had not carried it out, and had used this pretext for an increase of
taxes which he himself had appropriated. Burgundy had bitterly opposed
this new burden, and to appease the people, and especially to lay his
own hand on the rich spoil, he now sent the superintendent of finances
to the scaffold (1408). Then he restored the Parisians their ancient
free constitution, the rights to elect their provost and to organise a
citizen militia under elective leaders, and even to hold noble fiefs with
the privileges thereto attached. Besides this he was extremely popular,
which state of affairs he increased by showing citizens, even the least
important, such consideration as they had never before known. These were
the market people who formed, in Paris, the strength of the Burgundian
party. Feudalism never forgave John the Fearless for having sought
such support, no more than it did for having compromised seignorial
inviolability by slaying a prince of the blood, the king’s brother. A
considerable faction of the nobility turned against him. The avengers of
Orleans ranged themselves under the banner of the father-in-law of one
of his sons, the count d’Armagnac, who gave the party its name (1410).
Thus, with the king mad, the queen ignored and incapable, the dauphin
threatened by his excesses with his father’s end, the first prince of
the blood stained with an infamous murder, there was no government--only
armed factions, and war at home and abroad. Such was the state of France;
nothing but disaster could come of it.
CIVIL WAR
[Illustration: SHIELD USED IN THE FIRST PART OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
From 1410 to 1412 the two factions attacked each other twice, and twice
came to a settlement (Peace of Bicêtre, November, 1410; Peace of Bourges,
July, 1412). Both sides made advances to the English to win over the
country’s enemy.[b] The Gascon soldiers, preferring a plundering life in
the midst of France to their own rude and poor homes, were constant to
their banners. The duke of Burgundy, on the other hand, could not get
his Flemings to quit their families and crafts for more than forty days;
he was therefore obliged to call in the English. Henry IV sent a body of
archers to his aid, with whom he drove his enemies from the north of the
capital (February, 1410). In May we find Henry in league with the Orleans
party, who were to restore to the English, in recompense, all their
ancient possessions in France. The emissary who bore this treaty was
seized at Boulogne; its contents were made public, and great odium was in
consequence excited against the Armagnacs. The hapless monarch, Charles,
recovering for a moment from his frenzy, joined in this indignation; he
called an army, displayed the oriflamme, and marched with the Burgundians
to besiege Bourges. The campaign, as usual, ended without an action, in
a kind of treaty. Both parties felt the thirst of pillage and of blood;
both wanted the courage to decide their differences in a general combat.
No period of history manifests such an utter want of talent; no prowess
was shown except in tournaments; no statesmanship save in the planning
of a murder. Although the passions of men possessed of power and means
were excited to the utmost, yet not a decisive blow was struck in policy
or in arms. The fortune of the struggling parties was left to events--to
chance. Success and reverse, the former at least, if not both, unearned,
alternately ensued; conquerors and conquered pursued and fled, rolling
like destructive waves over the necks of a prostrate and ruined people.
Civil wars in general, destructive as they are of peace and prosperity,
beget at least the virtue of courage; yet it was not so in France. The
peasantry were crushed and trodden down; the nobles and knights feared
to trust them with arms. The Bretons and the Gascons, natives of distant
provinces, were the only foot-soldiers, the sole infantry of France at
this time; and a handful of English sufficed in these quarrels to give
the advantage to either party.[h]
[Sidenote: [1410-1413 A.D.]]
In this condition of affairs there was much to recall the worst days
of king John, and to better them the bourgeoisie took the initiative,
parliament, as in 1356, holding back. The University of Paris was very
proud of having recently accomplished the deposition of two anti-popes,
the election of Alexander V, a former doctor of the Sorbonne, and the
convocation of a general council for the consideration of reforms within
the church; and the bourgeoisie thought it could pacify the state as
it hoped to have pacified Christianity. It obtained from Charles VI,
in one of his lucid moments, a decree ordering all the princes back to
their provinces and forbidding them to leave. But in a few months the
war recommenced. The Armagnacs committed a thousand atrocities, telling
their victims to seek vengeance from the “poor mad king.” The body of
citizens asked, in the king’s council, that the defence of Paris might
be committed to a friend of Burgundy’s, the count of Saint-Pol, and the
latter, not very sure of the upper middle classes, wished to overcome
them by means of the populace. He took refuge in the great and rich
corporation of the butchers which he authorised to raise five hundred men
for the municipal defence. The butchers armed their servants and all the
men employed about the slaughter-houses. This violent mob, accustomed to
the sight of blood and killing, and who made a slaughterer named Caboche
their chief, let themselves be led for a time by their masters and the
learned men of the University of Paris. Then Paris presented the most
singular and terrible spectacle. One day the mob presented itself at the
dauphin’s palace, forced him to appear on a balcony and through their
spokesman, the old surgeon, John de Troyes, made him listen to their
demands. He must send away his evil companions; lead a more regular life
in every way; and take care of his health, and of his soul. The butchers
charged themselves with superintending this change of morals which would
bring with it, according to their ideas, the reformation of the kingdom.
They set a watch around the Hôtel St. Pol for the safety of the king
and monseigneur the duke of Guienne, and if they heard the sound of
instruments and dancing in the night they entered boldly to put a stop to
it, and preserve decency and order. But these rough and violent natures
were not always content with words. If they had compassion on “that good
fellow, the dauphin,” they broke out against those who were corrupting
him and removed them violently from the palace and dragged them before
the parliament for justice, even sometimes administering it on the way to
those who had displeased them the most.
However, the able members of the party drew up, for the repression of
abuses, the ordinance of 1413, known as the Cabochian ordinance, whose
application would have been successful, if in making elections universal
it had not made its administration impossible (May 25th). “But,” says
Augustin Thierry, “men were found to conceive that great reform charter,
joint work of the citizens and the university, while none could be found
to execute and maintain it. Wise men and those accustomed to affairs
had at this time neither will power nor political energy. They kept
themselves apart, and all action rested upon fanatics and the unruly
who precipitated, through their intolerable excesses, a reaction which
brought about their fall and put a stop to all reform.”
[Sidenote: [1413-1415 A.D.]]
What the bourgeoisie respected, the mob outraged. It proscribed not
only vice and immorality, but wealth, and mingled pillage and murder
with its reforms; it disgraced finally those who had employed it and
who, blushing at the association, now preferred the Armagnacs to the
Cabochians. Called upon by all men of moderation the Armagnacs put a stop
to the mob’s excesses, but at the same time overthrew the reform measures
of the bourgeoisie (September 5th, 1413). John the Fearless fled again
to his Flemish provinces.[b] Charles VI marched in person against him
at the head of the Armagnacs, besieged and took Soissons, of which the
inhabitants of every age and sex were inhumanly massacred. Arras was next
invested,[32] but the Armagnacs becoming disgusted at the tediousness
of the siege, as the Burgundians had been the previous year at that of
Bourges, an accommodation ensued, the duke of Burgundy making verbal
submissions, and promising never to show himself in Paris again. (Treaty
of Arras, September, 1414.)
HENRY V INVADES FRANCE--A FRENCH VIEW
[Sidenote: [1415 A.D.]]
Whilst France was thus occupied and torn by civil contests, Henry V had
succeeded, in 1413, to the throne of England.[h] He now judged the time
come to interfere in the French mêlée. He stood, moreover, in need of a
foreign war to settle himself on the throne his father had usurped. Since
the great campaigns of the preceding century, the idea of a war with
France had ever been popular in England. Therefore, when Henry proposed
a serious expedition, he obtained easily from parliament six thousand
men-at-arms and twenty-four thousand archers, with whom he debarked at
Harfleur on the 14th of August, 1415. After a heroic defence which lasted
a whole month, Harfleur, unsuccoured, was compelled to give up. But Henry
V had lost fifteen thousand men (two thousand men-at-arms, thirteen
thousand archers)--the half of his army. Too feeble now for any great
undertaking, he resolved to march across country to Calais, and to throw
the French knighthood a new and insolent defiance.
The English left Harfleur on the 8th of October, traversing the Pays de
Caux, not without some resistance, although they took nothing but food
and wine from the towns for fear of arousing the inhabitants. On the 13th
they arrived at Abbeville intending to cross the Somme there, but they
found the ford at Blanquetaque so well defended this time that they were
obliged to ascend the stream as far as Amiens.
Near Nesle a peasant pointed out a ford that could be reached across a
marsh. It was a difficult and dangerous passage; they would be lost if
attacked. But the French army was still far away. Besides, the nobles
would not have wished a combat in this swamp; they were seeking a fine
battle in open field and to this end asked king Henry for a day and place
for a fight. To which the Englishman replied that it was not necessary to
name either day or place, since every day would find him on the field.
In spite of this answer, they feared, in the French army, that the
enemy would escape; and to make sure they should not, the princes took
up a position between the villages of Tramecourt and Agincourt [French
Azincourt], where the English must necessarily pass, on a narrow plain,
newly ploughed and all sodden with rain.[b]
On Thursday, the 24th of October, the English having passed Blangy
learned that the French were close at hand, and thought they were about
to attack them. The men-at-arms dismounted from horseback, and all of
them kneeling down, and lifting up their hands to heaven, prayed to God
to take them into his keeping. Nothing, however, took place as yet, the
constable not having reached the French army. The English proceeded to
quarter themselves at Maisoncelle, still nearer to Agincourt. Henry V
disencumbered himself of his prisoners, saying to them, “If your masters
survive, you will present yourself again at Calais.”
At last, they discovered the huge French army, its fires and its banners.
There were, according to the estimate of the eye-witness, Lefebvre de St.
Rémy,[j] fourteen thousand men-at-arms, in all perhaps fifty thousand
men; thrice the number of the English. The latter had eleven or twelve
thousand men remaining of the fifteen thousand that had marched from
Harfleur, ten thousand of them at least being archers.
The Welshman, David Gam, the first who brought word to the king of the
enemy’s presence, being asked how many men the French might have, is said
to have replied, “Enough to be killed, enough to be taken prisoners,
enough to fly.” An Englishman, Sir Walter Hungerford, could not forbear
from observing that it would not have been amiss to have brought ten
thousand more stout archers; there were as many in England who would have
desired no better. But the king replied peremptorily, “Now in our Lord’s
name, I would not have one man more. The number we have is that which he
has willed; these folks place their confidence in their multitude, and I
in him who so often gave victory to Judas Maccabæus.”
The English having still a night at their disposal, employed it usefully
in making their preparations, and providing as well as possible for both
body and soul. First, they rolled up the banners for fear of the rain,
and took off and folded up the handsome coats of arms they had put on for
the fight. Then in order to pass the cold October night in comfort, they
opened their baggage and laid straw under them, which they procured from
the neighbouring villages. The men-at-arms fitted the rivets of their
armour, the archers applied fresh strings to their bows. They had for
several days employed themselves in cutting and sharpening the stakes
which they usually planted before them to stop the advance of cavalry.
Amidst all their preparations for victory, these brave men did not forget
their souls’ weal, but set their accounts in order with God and their
consciences. They confessed hastily, those at least whom the priests
could attend, and all this was done without noise, in whispers. The king
had commanded silence, under penalty of forfeiture of their horses for
the gentlemen, and of loss of the right ear for those of lower degree.
It was otherwise on the French side, where the time was spent in
making knights. In every direction there were great fires which showed
everything to the enemy; a confused din of people shouting and calling to
each other; a bustling mob of valets and pages. Many gentlemen passed the
night on horseback in their heavy armour, no doubt to avoid soiling it in
the deep mud, which with the cold rain chilled them to the bones.
MICHELET’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT (OCTOBER 25TH, 1415)
On the morning of St. Crispin and St. Crispinian’s day, October 25th,
1415, the king of England heard three masses, bareheaded, but otherwise
in full armour. “For it was his custom,” says John de Vaurin,[k] “to
hear three masses each day, one after the other.” He then put on a
magnificent helmet with an imperial gold crown. He rode without spurs
on a gray palfrey, and made his men advance over a field of green corn,
where the ground was less spoiled by the rain, the whole army forming
one body, with the few lances he had in the centre, flanked by bodies
of archers. He then rode slowly along the line, speaking a few brief
sentences: “You have a good cause; I am come but to demand my right.
Remember that you belong to old England; that your kindred, your wives
and children are awaiting you there; see that you return to them with
good cheer. The kings of England have always fared well in France. Look
to the honour of the crown; look to yourselves. The French say they will
cut off three fingers from each archer’s hand.”
[Illustration: MAP ILLUSTRATING THE MARCH OF HENRY V AND THE BATTLE OF
AGINCOURT
(The dotted line indicates a doubtful part of the route.)]
The ground was in so bad a condition that no one was disposed to attack.
The king of England parleyed with the French, offering to renounce the
title of king of France, and to surrender back Harfleur, provided he were
given Guienne, with some few convenient additions, Ponthieu, a daughter
of the king, and 800,000 crowns. While this parleying between the two
armies was going on the English archers were securing their stakes.
The two armies formed a strange mutual contrast. On the French side were
three enormous squadrons, like so many forests of lances, following
each other in lengthened file through the narrow plain; at their head
the constable, the princes, the dukes of Orleans, Bar, and Alençon, the
counts of Nevers, Eu, Richemont, and Vendôme, a multitude of lords, a
dazzling iris of enamelled armour, escutcheons, banners, the horses
fantastically disguised in steel and gold. The French, too, had archers,
men of the commonalty; but where were they to be placed? Every post was
numbered, and no one would give up his own; these men would have been
a blot upon so noble an assemblage. There were cannon, but it does not
appear that they were made use of; probably there was no place for them
either.
The English army did not look handsome. The archers had no armour, often
no shoes; for headpieces they had sorry caps of boiled leather, or even
of willow with a crosspiece of iron; the axes and hatchets stuck in their
belts gave them the appearance of carpenters. Many of these good workmen
had taken off their breeches, in order to be at their ease and to work
the better. It is a strange, incredible, and yet certain fact, that the
French army really could not stir either to fight or to fly. The rear
alone escaped.
At the decisive moment, when old Thomas of Erpingham, having drawn up the
English army, threw his truncheon into the air, crying out, “Now strike!”
and when the English had replied with a shout from ten thousand throats,
the French army, to their great astonishment, still remained motionless.
Horses and riders, all appeared enchanted, or dead in their steel cases.
The fact was that the big war horses, loaded with their heavy riders
and their steel caparisons, had sunk deep in the stiff soil, had become
firmly fixed there, and only struggled out to advance slowly a few
paces. Such is the acknowledgment of the English chroniclers; a modest
acknowledgment, which does honour to their probity.
Lefebvre,[j] John de Vaurin[k] and Walsingham[m] expressly say that the
field was nothing but viscid mud. “The place was soft and cut up by the
horses, so that it was with great difficulty they could drag their feet
out of the ground. The French were so loaded with harness that they
could not advance. They had long and very weighty coats of mail, hanging
below the knees; below these they had leg harness, and above them plate
harness, and, moreover, helmets of proof. They were so much crowded
together that they could not lift their arms to strike an enemy, except
some of them in the front.”
Another historian of the English side, Titus Livy,[l] informs us that
the French were drawn up thirty-two deep, whilst the English were ranged
in but four ranks. This enormous depth of the French served no purpose;
their thirty-two ranks consisted wholly, or almost so, of cavalry; the
majority of whom, far from being able to act, did not even see the
engagement; whereas every man of the English was efficient. Of the fifty
thousand French, two or three thousand only could fight against the
eleven thousand English, or at least might have done so if their horses
could have extricated themselves from the mud.
To rouse those inert masses, the English archers discharged volleys of
ten thousand arrows with extreme rapidity and pertinacity at their faces.
The iron-clad horsemen stooped their heads, otherwise the arrows would
have entered through their visors. Then, from the two wings of Tramecourt
and Agincourt, two French squadrons began with much spurring to execute
a clumsy charge, led by two excellent men-at-arms, Messire Clignet de
Brabant and Messire William de Saveuse. The first squadron, advancing
from Tramecourt, was unexpectedly taken in flank by a body of archers
concealed in the woods; neither squadron reached the enemy.
Of twelve hundred men who began this charge, there remained not more
than 120 when they came up with the English palisades. Most of them had
fallen in the mud by the way, men and horses. Would to God that all had
so fallen; but the others, whose horses were wounded, could no longer
control the frantic animals, which rushed desperately back on the French
ranks. The vanguard, far from being able to open and let them pass, was,
as we have seen, so closely packed together that not a man could move. We
may imagine the frightful accidents that took place in that dense mass,
the horses wild with terror, backing and smothering each other, flinging
off their riders, or crushing them under their armour as the iron masses
clashed together. Then came the English to complete the havoc. Coming
out from their line of stakes, and throwing down their bows and arrows,
they advanced quite at their ease with axes, hatchets, heavy swords, and
leaded clubs, to demolish that confused mountain of men and horses. In
process of time they succeeded in clearing away the vanguard, and made
their way, with the king at their head, to the second line of battle.
It was perhaps at this moment that eighteen French gentlemen made a dash
at the king of England. They had made a vow, it was said, to die or bring
down his crown; one of them struck off a point from it; all perished in
the attempt. This _on dit_ is not enough for the historians, who further
adorn the tale, and convert it into a Homeric scene, in which the king
fights over the body of his wounded brother, like Achilles over that
of Patroclus. Then it is the duke of Alençon, commander of the French
army, who kills the duke of York and cleaves the king’s crown. Being
speedily surrounded, he yields; Henry holds out his hand to him; but he
was already slain.[33] What is more certain is that the duke of Brabant
arrived in haste at the second stage of the engagement. He was the duke
of Burgundy’s own brother, and seems to have sought the field to clear
the honour of his family. He arrived very late, but time enough to die.
The brave prince had left all his men behind him, and had not even put
on his coat of arms: instead of which he took his banner, made a hole in
it, passed his head through it, and charged the English, who slew him
instantly.
There remained but the rearguard, which soon dispersed. A great number of
cavaliers, dismounted, but raised up again by their servants, had made
their way out of the throng of battle and surrendered to the English. At
this moment, word was brought the king that a French corps was pillaging
his baggage; and at the same time he saw some Bretons or Gascons in the
French rear, that seemed about to return to the charge against him. He
was alarmed for the moment, especially as he saw his men embarrassed
with so many prisoners, and instantly ordered every man to kill his
captive. Not one obeyed; those soldiers without shoes or breeches, who
held the greatest lords of France in their hands, and thought they had
made their fortunes, were now ordered to ruin themselves. As they refused
to comply, the king appointed two hundred men to act as executioners.
“It was a sad spectacle,” says Lefebvre,[j] “to see those poor disarmed
wretches, who had just received promise of quarter, slaughtered in cold
blood, cut and hewed, head and face!” The alarm was groundless. It was
only some pillagers of the neighbourhood, people of Agincourt, who, in
spite of their master, the duke of Burgundy, had taken advantage of the
opportunity. The battle being ended, the archers made haste to strip the
slain, whilst they were yet warm. Many were dragged forth alive from
beneath the corpses; among others, the duke of Orleans. Next day the
victor, on his departure, killed, or made prisoners, all that remained
alive.[34] “It was a piteous sight to see the great nobles who had there
been slain, and who were already stark naked, like those who were born
of men of no account.” An English priest was not less affected by the
spectacle. “If this sight,” he says, “excited pity and compunction in us,
who were strangers, and but passed through the country, how great was
the sorrow for the native inhabitants. Oh, may the French nation come to
peace and union with the English, and depart from its iniquities and its
evil ways!” Sternness then prevails over compassion, and he subjoins:
“Meanwhile, let his grief be turned upon his head.”
The English lost 1,600 men; the French 10,000, almost all gentlemen,
120 lords having banners. The list fills six large pages in Monstrelet,
beginning with seven princes (Brabant, Nevers, D’Albret, Alençon, the
three De Bar); then come lords without number, Dampierre, Vaudemont,
Marle, Roussy, Salm, Dammartin, etc., the bailiffs of Vermandois, Mâcon,
Sens, Senlis, Caen, and Meaux, and Montaigu, the brave archbishop of
Sens, who fought like a lion.[35]
The duke of Burgundy’s son bestowed the charity of a grave on all the
dead that lay naked on the field of battle. Twenty-five square rods of
ground were measured out, and in that huge pit were laid all the bodies
that had not been carried away, fifty-eight hundred men by the tale. The
ground was consecrated, and a thick thorn hedge was planted round it, for
fear of the wolves. There were but fifteen hundred prisoners, including
the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the counts d’Eu, de Vendôme, and de
Richelieu, the marshal de Boucicaut, Messire James d’Harcourt, Messire
John de Craon, etc.[p]
MASSACRE OF THE ARMAGNACS IN PARIS (1418 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1415-1418 A.D.]]
With this rich capture, Henry hastened to re-embark at Calais. His
army, reduced to ten thousand men, was unable to consider any further
enterprise. The duke of Burgundy had taken no part whatever in the battle
of Agincourt;[36] it was his enemies that brought about that shameful
defeat. If he had made haste, he might have entered Paris as its master.
D’Armagnac, the new constable and successor of D’Albret, showed more
promptitude; he took possession of the capital, of the king and the
dauphin his son, who was still a minor; that is to say, of the entire
government. To recall a little popularity to the side of the party he
showed a praiseworthy activity, borrowing ships from the Genoese, raising
troops in France, and besieging Harfleur (1416). But funds were lacking
and he fell back on the great resource of the times, debasement of money
and false loans.
John the Fearless was always the patron of the poor. Paris murmured, and
John the Fearless, to increase the fermentation, prevented the arrival of
provisions in the city. He succeeded in carrying off Queen Isabella from
Tours and having her declared regent. He forbade the cities, in his name,
to pay the taxes imposed by D’Armagnac, and he entered into negotiations
with the English (1417).
The latter had now returned. Henry V had taken Caen (1417), and like
a conqueror who is sure of himself had divided his army into four
divisions, the more quickly to accomplish his purpose. What, in fact, did
he have to fear? The dukes of Brittany, Anjou, and Burgundy had signed
treaties of neutrality with him. D’Armagnac could do nothing, for he was
reduced to “borrowing from the saints,” in melting their shrines, with
the people of his party fast abandoning him because they were not paid
enough; it was necessary to protect Paris with the Parisians who hated
and betrayed him.
[Illustration: A FRENCH CROSSBOW-MAN, BEGINNING OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
One Perrinet Leclerc, iron merchant on the Petit Pont, had charge of the
small gate at St. Germain. “His son,” says Monstrelet, “and some reckless
young companions, who formerly had been punished for their escapades,”
plotted to deliver the city over to the Burgundians. On the night of
May 29th, 1418, Perrinet entered his father’s chamber while the old man
slept and stole the keys from under the pillow. The sire de l’Isle-Adam
informed in advance, was on the other side of the moat. He entered with
eight hundred men, and the former partisans of the faction, the butchers,
the slaughterers--all the people of the market flocked around him. Some
Armagnacs tried to escape, taking the dauphin with them; but the greater
part including the constable were thrown into prison, where their lives
were soon in peril. The mob, which in 1413 had made its first appearance,
reappeared on the scene in 1418 exasperated and furious with misery and
uneasiness. Provisions failed and Paris was threatened with famine at
the same time that ugly rumours circulated in the crowd; the Armagnacs
were coming to assail such a gate, such a faubourg; the English, another.
The cause of these misfortunes, they cried on every side, were those
Armagnacs they had in their keeping. Vengeance must be had upon them and
an end put to their schemes.
Sunday the 12th of June, 1418, the mob got under way and rushed to the
prisons, Hôtel-de-Ville, Temple, St. Éloi, St. Magloire, St. Martin, and
the Grand and Petit Châtelet, to murder indiscriminately everyone they
found there. Armagnacs or not, by Monday morning sixteen hundred people
had perished, killed in the prisons and streets. Their bodies were left
there and “bad children played with them and dragged them about.” With
that of the constable they amused themselves by raising a large strip of
skin “to represent the white scarf of Armagnac.”
THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY MASTER OF PARIS (1418 A.D.)
These dreadful occurrences had just taken place when John the Fearless
returned with the queen to Paris, amidst the enthusiastic acclaims of the
crowd, who believed he brought peace and abundance with him. Vain hope!
Neither one nor the other was to come from the duke of Burgundy, but on
the contrary to all preceding misfortunes there was added an epidemic
which carried off in Paris and its environs fifty thousand persons. Again
the fury of the mob became uncontrollable and wrought its vengeance on
the wretched beings that had been overlooked in the prisons or sent there
since June. The 31st of August an immense assemblage formed itself under
the orders of the hangman Capeluche, and set out for the prisons. The
duke of Burgundy hastened after them imploringly, and even went so far as
to press the hand of Capeluche, but in vain. A new massacre took place.
Some days after the duke sent the bloodthirsty mob after some Armagnacs,
shut up, as he said, in Montlhéry, and as soon as they were gone he shut
the gates of Paris behind them and had Capeluche beheaded.[b]
In becoming master of Paris, the duke of Burgundy had succeeded to all
the embarrassments of the constable D’Armagnac. He had now in his turn to
rule the great city, victual and maintain it, which could only be done by
keeping the Armagnacs and the English at a distance--that is to say, by
making war, re-establishing the taxes he had suppressed, and losing his
popularity.
The equivocal part he had so long played, accusing others of treachery,
while he himself was betraying his country, was now to come to a close.
As the English were ascending the Seine and menacing Paris, he had no
alternative but to forego his hold on the capital, or to give them
battle. But by his eternal tergiversation and duplicity, he had enervated
his own party, and was now powerless alike for peace or war.
The people of Rouen and Paris, who had chosen him for their leader, were
Burgundians, indeed, and foes to the Armagnacs, but still more foes to
the English. They were astonished, in their simplicity, to see that their
good duke did nothing against the enemy of the kingdom. His warmest
partisans began to say, as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] relates, that “he
was, in all his proceedings, the slowest man that could be found.” The
Armagnacs possessed the whole centre, Sens, Moret, Crécy, Compiègne,
Montlhéry, a girdle of towns round Paris, Meaux, and Melun; that is to
say, Marne and Haute Seine. The duke sent to Rouen all the forces he
could spare without leaving Paris unprotected, namely, four thousand
horse.
It had long been foreseen that Rouen would be invested. Henry V had
approached it with extreme slowness. Not content with having two great
English colonies in his rear, Harfleur and Caen, he had completed the
conquest of lower Normandy by the capture of Falaise, Vire, St. Lô,
Constance, and Évreux. He kept possession of the Seine, not only by
Harfleur, but also by Pont de l’Arche. He had already re-established
some degree of order, reassured the clergy, and invited the absentees to
return, promising them support in case of their compliance, and declaring
that otherwise he would dispose of their lands or their benefices. He
reopened the exchequer and the other tribunals, and appointed his grand
treasurer of Normandy supreme president over them. He reduced the tax on
salt to almost nothing, “in honour,” says Rymer,[r] “of the Holy Virgin.”
SIEGE OF ROUEN (1418-1419 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1418-1419 A.D.]]
There were in Rouen fifteen thousand foot-soldiers and four thousand
horse, in all, perhaps, sixty thousand souls--a whole people to feed.
Henry, knowing he had nothing to fear, either from the dispersed
Armagnacs, or from the duke of Burgundy, who had just besought of him
another truce for Flanders, did not hesitate to divide his army into
eight or nine bodies, so as to embrace the vast compass of Rouen. These
bodies communicated with each other by means of trenches, which protected
them from shot; whilst in the direction of the open country they were
defended from a surprise by deep ditches set with thorns. He was prepared
for an obstinate resistance, but his anticipation was surpassed. There
was a strong Cabochian leaven in Rouen. Alain Blanchard, the chief of the
arblast men, and the other Rouennese leaders, seem to have been connected
with the Carmelite Pavilly, the Parisian orator of 1413. The Pavilly of
Rouen was the canon Delivet. These men defended Rouen for seven months.
The king of England, thinking to terrify the inhabitants, had gibbets
erected all round the town, and hanged the prisoners on them. He barred
the Seine, too, with a wooden bridge, chains, and barges, so that nothing
could pass. The Rouennese seemed reduced to extremities at an early
period of the siege, and yet they held out six months longer; it was a
miracle. They ate up the horses, dogs, and cats. When these were gone,
those who could anywhere find a morsel of food, however filthy, took good
care not to let it be seen; a thousand greedy wretches would otherwise
have seized upon it. The most horrible necessity that befell the town
was that of expelling all who could not fight, twelve thousand old men,
women, and children. The piteous crowd presented themselves before the
English intrenchments, and were received at the sword’s point. Repulsed
alike by their friends and their enemies, they remained between the camp
and the town, in the ditch, without any other food than the weeds they
plucked. There they passed the whole winter, with nothing between them
and the sky.
Meanwhile, the duke of Burgundy was beginning to put himself in motion.
First, he went to Paris from St. Denis, where he made the king go through
the solemn mockery of displaying the oriflamme, to remain a long while at
Pontoise, and again a long while at Beauvais. There he received another
message from Rouen by a man who had risked his life to convey it. It was
the voice of an expiring town, and said merely that fifty thousand men
had died of famine in Rouen and its environs. The duke of Burgundy was
touched by this sad tale, and promised succour; then having got rid of
the messenger, and feeling assured that he should hear no more of Rouen,
he turned his back on Normandy, and took the king to Provins.
A surrender was then inevitable; but the king of England, desirous of
making an example on account of so long a resistance, wished to have
the inhabitants at his mercy. The Rouennese, who well knew what was the
mercy of Henry V, resolved to undermine a wall, and to pass out that way
by night with arms in their hands, trusting in God’s grace. The king and
the bishops reconsidered the matter, and the archbishop of Canterbury
personally offered the besieged the following terms of capitulation:
(1) their lives to be spared, five men excepted (those of the five who
were rich, or churchmen, got themselves out of the difficulty, and Alain
Blanchard paid for all; the English were bent on an execution, in order
to ratify the principle that the resistance had been rebellion against
the lawful king); (2) for the same reason, Henry insured to the town all
the privileges which the kings of France, his ancestors, had granted to
it, “before the usurpation of Philip of Valois”; (3) it had to pay a
tremendous fine--300,000 gold crowns--one-half before the end of January
(it was already the 19th of that month), the other half in February,
1419. To squeeze all that from a depopulated, ruined town was no easy
matter.
HENRY AND JOHN THE FEARLESS (1419 A.D.)
The king of England being occupied with the task of organising the
country he had conquered, granted a truce to the two French parties, the
Burgundians and the Armagnacs. He felt it necessary to refit his army;
and, above all, to collect money and discharge his debts to the bishops,
who had lent him funds for his long expedition.
Henry was so far from apprehending danger from the dauphin, that he
was not afraid to displease the duke of Burgundy. The latter sought an
interview with him, and proposed to him a marriage with a daughter of
Charles VI, with Guienne and Normandy for a dower; but Henry required
also Brittany as a dependence of Normandy, besides Maine, Anjou, and
Touraine.
But the duke of Burgundy had about him persons who besought him to treat
with them. They were followers of the dauphin, Barbazan, and Tannegui
Duchâtel, the commanders of his troops. It was full time France should
become self-reconciled, when her ruin was so imminent. The parliament of
Paris, and that of Poitiers, laboured equally to that end; so, too, did
the queen, who talked, wept, and found means to move his hardened soul.
On the 11th of July was beheld, at the bridge of Pouilly, this singular
spectacle: the duke of Burgundy surrounded by the old servants of the
duke of Orleans, and by the brothers and kinsmen of the Agincourt
prisoners, and of the victims butchered in Paris. Of his own accord he
knelt before the dauphin. A treaty of amity and mutual aid was signed
and submitted to by both parties. But on the 29th of July, less than
three weeks after the signing of the treaty, the Burgundian garrison of
Pontoise, near Paris, suffered themselves to be surprised by the English;
the inhabitants fled to Paris, which they filled with consternation, and
this augmented when, on the 30th, the duke of Burgundy, carrying away
the king from Paris to Troyes, passed beneath the walls of the capital,
without making any other provision for the defence of the distracted
Parisians than naming his nephew, a boy of fifteen, captain of the town.
[Sidenote: [1419-1420 A.D.]]
Seeing all this, the dauphin’s followers believed, rightly or wrongly,
that the duke had a secret understanding with the English, and his
servants told him, it is alleged, that he would perish in an interview
which the dauphin sought with him. The dauphin’s people had set about
erecting on the bridge of Montereau the gallery in which it was to take
place; a long, tortuous wooden gallery, without any barrier in the
middle, contrary to the custom always observed in that suspicious age.
In spite of all this he persisted in his resolution to meet the dauphin;
such was the wish of Dame de Giac, who never quitted him.
As the duke did not come in time, Tannegui Duchâtel went to fetch him.
The duke hesitated no longer, but slapped him on the shoulder, saying:
“Here is the man I trust in.” Duchâtel made him hasten his pace, for the
dauphin, he said, was waiting. In this way he separated him from his
suite, so that he entered the gallery along with none but the sire de
Noailles, brother of the captal de Buch, who was in the service of the
English, and had just taken Pontoise. Neither of them came out alive
(September 10th, 1419).
The altercation which took place is variously related. Tannegui Duchâtel,
however, averred that he had not struck the duke. Others boasted that
they had done so. One of them, Le Bouteiller, said: “I said to the duke
of Burgundy: ‘Thou didst cut off the hand of the duke of Orleans, my
master; I am going to cut off thine.’” However little worthy of regret
was the duke of Burgundy, his death did the dauphin immense mischief.
John the Fearless and his party had both fallen very low, and in a little
time there would have been no more avowed Burgundians. Everyone was
beginning to despise and hate him; but from the moment he was killed all
were again Burgundians.
THE TREATY OF TROYES (1420 A.D.)
We must not suppose that Paris easily admitted the foreigner, but extreme
lassitude and inexpressible suffering made everyone only too happy to
find a pretext for a settlement with Henry. Each man exaggerated to
himself his feelings of pity and indignation. The shame of calling in
the stranger was veiled by a fair show of just vengeance; but the real
fact was that Paris yielded, because it was perishing of hunger. The
queen yielded, because, after all, if her son was not to be king, her
daughter, at least, would be queen. The duke of Burgundy’s son, Philip
the Good, was the only person who acted sincerely; he had his father’s
death to avenge. But he, too, doubtless, thought to find his advantage in
the new order of things; the Burgundy branch would thrive by the ruin of
the elder branch, by placing on the throne a stranger, who would never
have more than one foot on the continent, and who, if he were wise, would
govern France through the duke of Burgundy.
[Illustration: FRENCH MAN-AT-ARMS, BEGINNING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]
Paris then left the Burgundians, who again possessed full authority in
the town, to do as they thought fit. Young Saint-Pol, nephew to the duke
of Burgundy, and captain of Paris, was sent, in November, to the king of
England, with Maître Eustace Aloy, “in the name of the city, the clergy,
and the commune.” He received them extremely well, declaring that he
desired nothing but the independent possession of what he had conquered,
and the hand of the princess Catherine; and he said graciously: “Am I not
myself of the blood royal of France? If I become the king’s son-in-law,
I will defend him against all men living.” He obtained more than he
demanded. His ambassadors, encouraged by the inclinations of the new duke
of Burgundy, asserted their master’s right to the crown of France, and
that right the duke acknowledged. The king of England had spent three
years in conquering Normandy; the death of John the Fearless seemed to
give him France in one day.
The treaty concluded at Troyes, May 20th, 1420, in the name of Charles
VI, secured to the king of England the hand of the daughter of the
king of France, and the reversion of the kingdom: “It is agreed that
immediately after our decease the crown and realm of France shall remain
and be perpetually to our said son King Henry and his heirs. The faculty
and exercise of governing and ordering the public affairs of the said
realm shall be and remain, during our life, to our said son King Henry,
with the counsel of the nobles and sages of the said realm. During our
life the letters pertaining to matters of justice shall be written
and shall proceed under our name and seal; nevertheless, for as much
as extraordinary cases may occur, it shall be competent to our son to
write his letters to our subjects, wherein he shall order, prohibit, and
command, on our behalf, and on his own, as regent.” After this, was not
the subsequent article a mockery? “All conquests which shall be made by
our said son king, over the disobedient, shall be and shall be made to
our profit.”
This monstrous treaty concluded worthily with these lines, in which the
king proclaimed the dishonour of his family, the father proscribed his
son: “Considering the enormous crimes and misdemeanours perpetrated upon
the said realm of France by Charles, styling himself (_soi-disant_)
dauphin of Viennois, it is agreed that we, our said son the king, and
also our very dear son Philip, duke of Burgundy, will in no wise treat
concerning peace or concord with the said Charles, nor will we treat by
ourselves or others, except with the consent and counsel of all and each
of us three, and of the three estates of the two realms aforesaid.”
The mother received prompt payment for the shameful phrase, _soi-disant
dauphin_. Isabella immediately had 2,000 francs a month assigned to her,
payable out of the mint at Troyes. For this price she denied her son, and
gave up her daughter. The English took from the king of France, at one
stroke, both his kingdom and his child. The poor girl was forced to wed a
master, and brought him for dower her brother’s ruin.[p]
HENRY’S STRUGGLE WITH THE DAUPHIN (1420-1422 A.D.)
Such was the tenor of the Treaty of Troyes, so glorious to Henry, yet
so impracticable of accomplishment, that it must be doubted whether
there was any sincerity in the French signers of it. To be avenged
of the dauphin, and to crush him by the assistance of England, was
evidently the foremost thought, the first desire. But it is scarcely
credible that the duke of Burgundy looked forward to continuing, after
the accomplishment of his vengeance, the faithful vassal of the house of
Lancaster. The arrangement of one king governing the two countries was
plainly impracticable. And that Henry himself could have entertained it
only shows how the most vigorous intellects may allow their perspicacity
and sense to be clouded by success and superstition. He was well aware
that his new position could only be preserved by force of arms. On the
occasion of his marriage with the princess Catherine, which took place
on June 2nd, the knights of both countries were for celebrating the
event by a tournament. But he forbade the rival combat, and told those
who proposed it to join him in the siege of Sens, where they might
exercise their prowess against the Armagnacs. Sens made but a trifling
resistance.[h] Next, this implacable hunter of men hurried to Montereau,
and not being able to reduce the castle, he had his prisoners hanged by
the ditch sides.
With all his impetuosity he was forced to have patience before Melun,
where the brave Barbazan detained him many months. The king of England,
employing all the means of which he could avail himself, took Charles VI
and the two queens to the siege, presenting himself as the son-in-law of
the king of France, speaking in his father-in-law’s name, and using his
wife as a bait and a snare. All these clever devices were ineffectual.
The besieged resisted valiantly; obstinate conflicts took place round the
walls, and beneath them, in the mines and countermines, and Henry did
not spare his own person. At last, however, provisions failed, and the
garrison were constrained to surrender. Henry, according to his custom,
accepted the capitulation, and put to death several citizens, all the
Scotchmen who were in the place, and even two monks.
During the siege he had got the Burgundians to deliver up to him Paris
and the four fortresses, Vincennes, the Bastille, the Louvre, and the
Tour de Nesle. He made his entry in December, riding between the king
of France and the duke of Burgundy. The latter was dressed in mourning,
in token of grief and vengeance, perhaps also from a feeling of shame
for the unworthy part he played in thus introducing the foreigner. The
king of England was accompanied by his brothers, the dukes of Clarence
and Bedford, the duke of Exeter, the earl of Warwick, and all his lords.
The king of England was well received in Paris. He entered into formal
possession as regent of France, by assembling the estates on the 6th of
December, 1420, and making them sanction the Treaty of Troyes.
[Sidenote: [1420-1421 A.D.]]
That the son-in-law might be sure of inheriting, it was necessary that
the son should be proscribed. The duke of Burgundy and his mother
presented themselves before the king of France, sitting as judge in the
Hôtel St. Pol, to make “great plaint and clamour of the piteous death of
the late duke John of Burgundy.” The king of England was seated on the
same bench as the king of France. Messire Nicholas Raulin demanded in
the name of the duke of Burgundy and his mother that Charles, styling
himself dauphin, Tannegui Duchâtel, and all the murderers of the duke of
Burgundy, should be carted through the streets, with torches in their
hands, to make _amende honorable_. The king’s advocate spoke to the same
effect, and the university supported the demand. The king authorised
the prosecution, and Charles was cried and cited at the Marble Table,
to appear within three days before the parliament. He did not put in an
appearance and was condemned by default, sentenced to banishment, and
stripped of all right to the crown of France (January 3rd, 1421).
The cumbrous and devouring army which Henry brought with him was but too
necessary to him. His brother Clarence was defeated and killed, with
two or three thousand English, in Anjou (battle of Baugé, March 23rd,
1421). In the north even the count d’Harcourt had taken up arms against
the English, and was overrunning Picardy. Saintrailles and La Hire were
advancing by forced marches to combine with him. All the men of family
were gradually going over to the side of Charles VII, to the party that
made bold expeditions and adventurous forays. The peasants, it is true,
who were the sufferers by these pillaging exploits, would in the long run
declare for a master who could and would protect them.
The ferocity of the old Armagnac marauders was of service to Henry’s
cause. He did a popular thing in besieging Meaux, the captain of which
town, the bastard De Vaurus, a sort of ogre, had filled the country
round with indescribable terror. But as the bastard and his men expected
no mercy, they defended themselves with desperate determination. They
detained the English the whole winter, eight long months, before Meaux,
till cold, want, and pestilence consumed that fine army. The siege began
on the 6th of October, and on the 18th of December, Henry, who already
saw his forces diminishing, wrote urgently for fresh soldiers to Germany
and Portugal. Englishmen were probably more costly to him than those
foreigners. To induce the German mercenaries to take service with him
rather than with the dauphin, he caused them to be told, among other
things, that he would pay them in better coin.
He could not reckon on the duke of Burgundy. That prince appeared for a
short while at the siege of Meaux, but soon withdrew, under pretence of
going into Burgundy, and obliging the towns in his duchy to accept the
Treaty of Troyes. Henry had good reason to believe that the duke himself
had secretly instigated their resistance to a treaty which annulled the
contingent rights of the house of Burgundy to the crown, as well as those
of the dauphin, the duke of Orleans, and all the French princes. And why
had young Philip made such a sacrifice to the friendship of the English?
Because he thought he needed their aid to avenge his father and beat
his enemy. But it was much rather they who had need of him. Fortune had
forsaken them. Whilst the duke of Clarence was getting himself beaten in
Anjou, the duke of Burgundy had been brilliantly successful in Picardy,
where he had come up with the dauphin’s partisans, Saintrailles and
Gamaches, before they could form a junction with d’Harcourt, and had
defeated and made them prisoners.
[Sidenote: [1421-1422 A.D.]]
During that interminable siege of Meaux, whilst Henry was seeing his fine
army dissolving away around him, word was brought him that the queen
had been delivered of a boy at Windsor Castle. He evinced no joy, and
comparing his own destiny with that of the child, he said, with prophetic
sadness: “Henry of Monmouth will have had a short reign and will have
conquered much; Henry of Windsor will reign long and will lose all. God’s
will be done!”
Henry was still young, but he had toiled much in this world, his time for
rest was come; he had never had any since his birth. He was attacked,
after his winter campaign, with an acute irritation of the bowels, a
malady very common in those days. Being warned by the physicians that his
end was at hand, he commended his son to his brothers, and gave them two
wise counsels; first, to conciliate the duke of Burgundy, and secondly,
in any treaty that might be made, to manage always so as to keep Normandy.
He died at Vincennes on the 31st of August, 1422; Charles VI followed him
on the 21st of October. The people of Paris shed tears for their poor mad
king as freely as the English for their victorious Henry V. “The whole
people,” says the Bourgeois de Paris,[q] “were in the streets weeping
and crying, as if each had lost the friend he most loved. Truly, their
lamentations were like those of the prophet, ‘_Quomodô sedet sola civitas
plena populo!_’ The petty folk of Paris cried, ‘Oh, most dear prince,
never shall we have one so good! Never shall we see thee more! Cursed be
death! We shall never have aught but war since thou hast left us. Thou
art gone to rest; we remain in tribulation and sorrow.’”
Charles VI was carried to St. Denis, “poorly accompanied for a king of
France. There were only his chamberlain, his chancellor, his confessor,
and some subordinate officers.” One prince only attended the funeral, and
that was the duke of Bedford. When the corpse was lowered into the grave,
the ushers-at-arms broke their wands and threw them into the grave, and
reversed their maces. Then Berri, king-at-arms of France, cried out,
over the grave, “May it please God to have mercy on the soul of the very
high and very excellent prince Charles, king of France, sixth of the
name, our natural and sovereign lord.”[p] And then he added, “God grant
long life to Henry, by the grace of God, king of France and of England,
our sovereign lord.” About the same time at Mehun-sur-Yèvre, in Berri,
some French knights unfurled the royal banner, crying, “Long live King
Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God, king of France.”[b]
WOES OF THE PEOPLE--THE _DANSE MACABRE_
[Sidenote: [1418-1424 A.D.]]
After having spoken of the death of the king, we must mention that of the
people. From 1418 to 1422, the depopulation was frightful. The history
of those dismal years runs in a murderous circle; war leads to famine,
famine to pestilence, and pestilence again brings round famine. It is
like that night of the Exodus, in which the angel passes and repasses,
touching each house with the sword.
When men have come to that pass they weep no more; there is an end to
tears, or there mingle even with tears gleams of hellish joy and savage
laughter. It was the most tragical characteristic of the times that
in the gloomiest moments there were alternations of frantic gaiety.
The beginning of that long series of evils, “of that woeful dance,”
as the Bourgeois de Paris[q] says, was the madness of Charles VI, and
contemporaneously therewith the too famous masquerade of the satyrs, the
piously burlesque mysteries, and the _basoche_ farces.[37]
The year in which the duke of Orleans was murdered was distinguished
by the organisation of the corporation of minstrels. That corporation,
quite indispensable of course in so joyous a period, became important and
respected. Treaties of peace were cried through the streets with a mighty
strumming of violins; hardly any six months passed in which a peace was
not cried and sung. The eldest son of Charles VI, the first dauphin, was
an indefatigable player on the harp and the spinet. He had a great staff
of musicians; and in addition to these, he used to call in the aid of
the choir-boys of Notre Dame. He sang, danced, and “balled” (_balait_),
night and day, and that even in the year of the Cabochians, whilst they
were killing his friends. He killed himself, too, by dint of singing and
dancing.
It seems an ascertained fact that in the fourteenth century dancing
became involuntary and maniacal in many countries. The violent
processions of the Flagellants set the first example. The great
epidemics, and the terrible and lasting shock they gave to the nerves of
the survivors, easily gave occasion to St. Vitus’ dance. These phenomena
are, as we know, contagious. The spectacle of the convulsions acted
with so much the more force, as there was nothing in men’s souls but
convulsion and vertigo; and then the sick and the hale danced together
promiscuously. They would catch each other violently by the hand, in
the streets and the churches, and foot it round in a ring. Many a one
who at first laughed at this sight, or looked on coldly, became at last
bewildered, his head reeled, and he, too, reeled and danced with the
rest. The rings went on multiplying, interlacing; they became bigger and
bigger, more and more heady, fast, and furious, as though they were huge
coiling reptiles, that momently swelled to view. There was no stopping
the monster, but its joints might be lopped; the electric chain was
broken by one falling with feet and fists on some one of the dancers. The
rude dissonance interrupting the harmony, they found themselves free,
otherwise they would have gone on reeling until utterly exhausted, and
have danced themselves to death.
This phenomenon of the fourteenth century does not occur again in the
fifteenth; but in the latter we find, in England, France, and Germany, a
strange amusement, which reminds us of those great popular dances of the
sick and dying. It was called the dance of the dead, or _danse macabre_.
It was a great favourite with the English, who introduced it into France.
The spectacle of the dance of the dead was enacted in Paris in 1424, in
the cemetery of the Innocents. That narrow space in which the enormous
city for so many ages accumulated the remains of almost all its
inhabitants had been at first both a cemetery and a laystall, haunted at
night by robbers, and in the evening by wantons, who plied their trade
among the tombs. Philip Augustus enclosed it with walls, and to purify
it dedicated it to St. Innocent, a child crucified by the Jews. In the
fourteenth century the churches were already very full, and it became
the fashion among the good citizens to bury their dead in the cemetery.
Such was the suitable theatre of the _danse macabre_. It was begun in
September, 1424, when the heat had diminished, and the first rain had
rendered the smell of the place less offensive. The performances lasted
many months.
Whatever disgust both the place and the spectacle might inspire, it was
matter suggestive of much thought to see in that fatal period, in a town
so frequently and so cruelly visited by death, the hungry, sickly, scarce
living multitude, merrily making death itself a matter of spectacle,
attending with insatiable avidity to its moralising buffooneries, and
enjoying them so heartily as to tread heedlessly upon the bones of their
fathers, and on the gaping graves they were themselves about to fill.[p]
THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE
[Sidenote: [1414-1424 A.D.]]
A very different phase of life which demands at least a passing notice
is that which clustered about the wonderful University of Paris.[a] As
early as the thirteenth century, the university shone in all its glory.
Born in the shadow of the cloister of the bishopric, and primarily
confounded with the ancient cathedral college of the town, it had
obtained, little by little, immunities and privileges by favour of
which it had grown and had reached a point where it was dependent upon
no one but the court of Rome. Among the popes who conferred the most
important privileges may be cited Alexander III, Innocent III, and his
successor Honorius III, all promoters of the progress of knowledge, all
jealously seeking to retain for the church that superiority of studies
and learning to which its power was bound. The University of Paris rose
rapidly above the universities of Italy, the only ones with which it was
then in serious rivalry. It became the most important ecclesiastical
and scientific college of Europe, the school whence the high clergy of
France was recruited, as well as that of a large part of Christianity.
It belonged to the church by its creation, by its studies in which
theology predominated, and by its object, which was to prepare the
learned candidates for the obtention of livings. For all its rights it
depended on the holy see, which subjected it to visits and regulations.
Meanwhile it formed in the bosom of the church itself a vast corporation
(_universitas_), governing itself by its own laws with an extended
liberty.
It was divided into four faculties: arts or philosophy which comprised
nearly all the known sciences; theology; decree or canonical law; and
medicine. The faculty of arts had a particular celebrity; it is to it
that the capital of France owes its appellation of the Modern Athens.
The faculty of theology was not less celebrated after the lectures
of Roscellinus and Abelard. That of law was incomplete, since civil
law, which restored to honour the work of the great Italian jurists,
was taught in Paris only subsidiarily. It even ceased to exist at the
beginning of the year 1220, although the laws of Justinian had found
able interpreters in France as well as in Italy. The decree of the
pope, Honorius III, to suppress its instruction in Paris, had probably
its entire concentration in the college of Boulogne for an object. In
any case, that suppression was only for a time, and a little later
at Orleans a special university was founded, called the University of
Law. As to the study and profession of medicine, it is well known that
in the Middle Ages it was a prerogative of the religious orders almost
exclusively.
Each faculty held special assemblies, in which the masters and graduates
had deliberative voice. The four faculties met once a year to elect their
rector, the formulæ of which elections, determined with infinite care,
in order to guarantee liberty of vote and prevent intrigue, presented a
great analogy to the election of a pope. Thus the University of Paris
possessed a liberal government, with a regular hierarchy, where degrees
conferred powers, and where superior intelligence ruled.
The pope gave it its highest protection. He made the rules of study,
intervened in disputes with the civil authorities. The principal
ecclesiastical privilege of the University of Paris was that of being
dependent on no bishop, and having its own jurisdiction. Its members
could not be excommunicated except by the court of Rome.[g]
It is one of the strangest contrasts of history that while France was
at the lowest ebb of its national history, the University of Paris was
attempting to carry out one of the greatest revolutions in the history of
Europe. The conciliar movement in the church, which produced such great
international gatherings as the councils of Constance and of Bâle, and
which aimed to limit papal absolutism by something like a parliamentary
system, was due to the work of men like Jean Gerson, chancellor of the
University of Paris, and Pierre D’Ailly, scholar and prelate. It was
universally admitted that abuses had crept into the administration of the
church. There was evidently something wrong when, while Frenchmen were
perishing from famine, and France was on the verge of ruin, the papal
court at Avignon luxuriated on a revenue that was more than royal, and a
pope (John XXII) could accumulate a treasure of eighteen millions of gold
florins, and jewels and vestments estimated at seven millions more.
But the evils which date from the residence at Avignon were increased
twofold during the schism. All Christendom was in doubt how this would
end. For the civil war in the church had divided the countries under
rival obediences. France, Scotland, and Spain adhered to the pope at
Avignon; and England, Germany, and Italy obeyed the Italian pope.
At first they tried to induce the rivals to resign; and Pedro de Luna,
who was elected pope at Avignon as Benedict XIII, won the high office
by declaring that he would resign as easily as take off his hat. But
the wily prelate, after his election, declared that no earthly power
could dethrone him, and for more than a decade defied the attempts of
reformers to achieve union. It was then that in the University of Paris
the theologians began agitation for a universal council, as supreme over
the pope. It is said that a German doctor began the movement, but the
credit has gone to France. First at Pisa and then at Constance, the great
parliaments of the church took in hand the reformation.
In the later council (1414-1418) union was achieved by the deposition of
opposing popes and the election of Martin V (see volume on The Papacy),
but the decree _Frequens_ which demanded regular meeting of councils in
the future, was gradually lost sight of in the following pontificates,
and the great experiment of a constitutional church was a failure. That
such an attempt should be made while France was in the throes of this
great Hundred Years’ War, and that mostly by Frenchmen, shows that
alongside of the story of carnage, crime, and superstition, there were
signs of intellectual life and earnest effort of reformers, which are
suggestive in the age of Wycliffe and Huss.
A strange page of history is opened here. Sigismund, emperor of Germany,
who presided at the council of Constance, was anxious to play a great
part in the world’s affairs. He took advantage of the great international
assemblage in his dominions to attempt to put himself at the head of a
European confederacy to fight the Turks, who were advancing along the
Danube.
To accomplish this he made a journey into France and England to try to
prevent the war. His visit took place just before the fatal invasion of
Henry V which brought the victory of Agincourt.[38] To raise the money
for that journey Sigismund made over the mark of Brandenburg to Frederick
of Hohenzollern, burggraf of Nuremberg, and thus founded the power of the
Hohenzollern.
Henry V, was willing to accede to Sigismund’s plans, but although he even
offered the succession of Hungary as a bribe, the court of France refused
to make the peace he desired, and Sigismund’s great effort at European
concord resulted in only one thing--the foundation of the great dynasty
which rules in Germany to-day. France and England went their own way,
bringing mutual disaster for another generation.[a]
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[30] [This old French word denoted either a song or a particular kind of
dance.]
[31] Doubtless a monkish exaggeration.
[32] [At the siege of Arras the harquebus was used for the first time.]
[33] This embellishment is of Monstrelet’s[n] contrivance. He places it
apart from the account of the battle after the long list of the killed.
Lefebvre, an eye-witness, could not make up his mind to copy Monstrelet
in this place.
[34] Lefebvre[j] and Monstrelet[n] are the authorities for this
statement. De Barante[o] says without naming his source, “Henry V
put a stop to the carnage and caused the wounded to receive relief.”
[Tyler,[s] after reviewing the evidence, declares that “Henry did not
stain his victory by any act of cruelty. His character comes out of the
investigation untarnished by a suspicion of his having wantonly shed the
blood of a single fellow-creature.”]
[35] [For other views of the battle of Agincourt see our history of
England.]
[36] [But neither for that matter had, in person, the count d’Armagnac.
The princes had refused the aid of any civic corps, and as Burgundy
could command but the town folk of Flanders and Picardy, his offers
of help were rejected. The responsibility of the battle lay therefore
entirely with the Armagnacs; but, as Crowe[h] says, “to the honour of the
Burgundian party, more of its princes, than of the Armagnacs, fell on the
field of Agincourt.”]
[37] [In 1402 letters-patent were issued by the king permitting the
bourgeois of Paris to constitute themselves into a religious fraternity
for the representation of the “Mystery of the Passion.” This is the
origin of the modern tragic theatre. The “morality plays,” or comedies,
were created by the clerks of the _basoche_--the corporation formed by
the clerks of the _procureurs_ of the parliament of Paris. This body
exercised extensive jurisdiction over its members--its head bore the
title of “king.” In the reign of Charles VI playing-cards were perfected,
and about 1420 Jan van Eyck, called Jean of Bruges, discovered a drying
oil, which has caused him to be regarded as the inventor of oil painting.
Hitherto men had used distemper, fresco, gum, paste, or white of egg.[b]]
[38] [It was Sigismund’s grandfather, the blind King John of Bohemia,
whose death at Crécy gave the famous motto, _Ich dien_, to the prince of
Wales.]
[Illustration]