the Dauphin. He took with him to France James the First, the poet-king of Scotland, who no doubt gladly exchanged the lonely tower of Windsor for active service in the basin of the Seine. And then the world beheld a strange sight-a Scottish king fighting in France against Scotsmen. For the Earl of Buchan, second son of the Scottish regent, had led five thou sand of his countrymen to the aid of the Dauphin, and had received from that unfortunate prince a baton as Constable of France. Dreux* and Meaux† yielded to the valour and skill of the English; and the advance of Henry to relieve Cosne,‡ hardly pressed by Buchan, obliged the Dauphin to take refuge for the second time in the fortress of Bourges.§

But Henry was dying. His military glory, his regal splendour, his fatherly joy over the son lately born at Windsor, shrank into vapours of the earth before the icy touch of a conqueror greater than himself. At Vincennes, on the last day of August 1422, he died, worn out by some illness without name. Knights in black armour, with lances reversed, followed the coffin on its solemn journey to Calais. It rested for a night by the field of Agincourt, then thick with fallen leaves, and passed by the same route as the living victor of seven years ago had taken, to its place of rest in Westminster Abbey, close to the shrine of Edward the Confessor. He was only thirtyfour.

Dreux stands on the Blaise, a tributary of the Eure, forty-one miles west of Paris. Meaux is in the department of Seine-et-Marne, on the Marne, twenty-five miles from Paris. Cosne (the old Condate), in Nièvre, on the right bank of the Loire.

§ Bourges, lying where three tributaries of the Cher mingle their streams, is in the department of Cher, seventy miles south by east from Orleans.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FRENCH BUBBLE BURST.

The Duke of Bedford-Crevant and Verneuil-Jacqueline of HollandGloucester versus Beaufort-Gloucester's literary tastes-Siege of Orleans- Battle of Herrings-La Pucelle-The siege raised-Charles crowned-The cell and the stake-Congress of Arras-Magic-Margaret of Anjou-The last sword-Two rivals die-A headsman at sea--Loss of Normandy-Loss of Guienne-Death of John Talbot-Consolation.

A

N infant not a twelvemonth old now represented the But the destinies of majesty of English kingship. England lay chiefly in the hands of three men, all princes of the blood-John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brothers of the late king, and their uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester.

Bedford, a valorous and skilful soldier, dazzled by the false lights which played over France, flung his whole soul into the extension of the English empire there, leaving to Gloucester as protector and to the Privy Council the management of home affairs. There was, indeed, much to dazzle and allure in this French mirage. On the death of Charles the Sixth, not two months after Henry had died at Vincennes, the infant son of the victor at Agincourt was proclaimed King of France and England. Nor was the title an empty boast, for "the Isle of France with Paris, a part of Maine and Anjou, nearly all Champagne, the whole of Picardy and Normandy with few exceptions, and Guienne in the south, including Gascony, owned the English

sway. Their alliance with Philip, the Duke of Burgundy, gave them the feudal honours and military use of Upper and Lower Burgundy, Flanders and Artois; and the temporary attachment of the Duke of Bretagne added the forces of that province to the English power." The kingdom of Charles the Seventh had shrunk into a few central provinces between the Loire and the Garonne.

Salisbury and Bedford maintained the glory of the English arms the former in the battle of Crevant,* fought in July 1423; the latter in the greater fight of Verneuil, † which took place on the 16th of August 1424. The strength of Charles lay chiefly in his Scottish allies; but so terrible were the English archers, who shot from behind their bristling rows of wooden stakes, that neither French nor Scots could make head against the fatal shafts. Shut up in Bourges by this great defeat, the would-be king amused himself with his flower-beds and his garden tools.

Then occurred the first in a long series of disasters which dissolved the phantom empire of the English France within the short period of thirty years. Humphrey of Gloucester claimed the wide inheritance of Jacqueline, sovereign of Holland, Zealand, Friesland, and Hainault, because he had married this lady during a visit she had paid to England. Now her real husband, the Duke of Brabant, from whom she had eloped, was still living, and he did not like to see so many coronets and broad acres slip between his fingers. So Brabant sought aid from his powerful cousin of Burgundy, who took up arms on his side against the English invaders of Hainault. This quarrel complicated French affairs, and ultimately weakened the English cause, for Burgundy's help was the strongest backing the English regent had in France. A papal Bull afterwards

* Crevant is on the Yonne, not far from Auxerre.

+ Verneuil, in the department of Eure, near the left bank of the Avre; now noted for woollen, hardware, and pottery manufactures.

dissolved the English marriage; but the mischief between Burgundy and Bedford had been already done.

The struggles of Gloucester and his uncle Beaufort at home also hampered the regent very much. He was called to England to decide between the rivals, when he ought to have been hunting Charles from fort to fort in France. Henry Beaufort was the son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford, his second wife. The mitre of Winchester descended on his head in 1404, on the death of William of Wykeham. This see, one of the richest in England, afforded the prudent bishop splendid opportunities of accumulating such riches as no Englishman of his day possessed. His money added greatly to his influence. Henry the Fifth petted this wealthy uncle, and borrowed largely from him. Four times he held the dignified office of chancellor. In the struggle between his nephew and himself, he enlisted on his side the sympathies of the English nobility, leaving Gloucester to cajole the citizens of London and the populace of the land by his frank and pleasant manner.

In contrasting these two men, we find a certain phase in the character of Gloucester which touches his memory with a tenderer light than that which surrounds the name of Beaufort. He entertained in his princely mansion of Baynard's Castle,* on the Thames, the few literary and scientific men of whom England could then boast. Nor was Gloucester merely a vain, ignorant patron of learning. He was himself a keen student of those classical treasures whose value the European world was then only beginning to discover; and he collected books with great earnestness, displaying, however, a generous desire that others should taste the sweets that cost him time and gold. In 1443 he presented the University of Oxford with more than one hundred valuable manuscripts.

* Baynard's Castle, which perished in the Great Fire, after having been the residence of kings and nobles, had its north front in Thames Street, its south upon the river. It was built by Bainiardus, a follower of the Conqueror. Shakespeare, in Richard III., has laid two scenes of act iii. in the court-yard of this fortress. See Timbs's Curiosities of London.

1428

In the autumn of 1428, nothing would satisfy the rash and eager spirits in the English army but a move on the Loire, preparatory to the seizure of the French dominions south of that great physical boundary. Bedford, whose clear eye saw danger in the attempt, uplifted a warning voice, but in vain. On the 12th of October the Earl of Salisbury, the bravest leader on the English side, appeared under the walls of Orleans* with a small force of eight or nine thousand men. Having occupied the southern suburb, he directed all his energies against a couple of towers, called the Tournelles, which rose from the bridge across the Loire. He took this important position in eleven days; but the French, by breaking the arches which joined the Tournelles to the northern bank, neutralized the advantage thus gained. It must not be forgotten that the principal part of the city lay on the northern bank of the river. Through gaps left by the insufficient English lines some of the first officers in France (La Hire, Saintrailles, and Dunois) led fresh forces into the beleaguered town. Salisbury having been killed, the Duke of Suffolk took his place as commander of the attacking force. Brave John Talbot, too (afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury), lent to the struggle the weight and sharpness of a sword which had been used vigorously against the princes of Ireland. The cannon roared by night and by day; the great bell roused the weary citizens from rest every night to guard some fresh breach in the walls. Yet through all the winter the English seemed to gain nothing. The besiegers assaulted; the besieged sallied with varying and indecisive fortune. At last a decided success gilded the English arms. An English knight, Sir John Fastolfe, was approaching Orleans from Paris, escorting a string of provision-carts with a small body of sixteen hundred men, when he was suddenly attacked at the village of Rouvrai, near his

*Orleans, the capital city of Loiret, on the right bank of the Loire, seventy-six miles from Paris. It stands on the site of the ancient Aurelianis.