God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour, Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars: Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he'll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day: Then shall our names And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here; SCENE III.-The Field of Battle. Enter King Henry and Forces; Exeter, and others, with prisonerɛ. K. Hen. Well have we done, thrice valiant countrymen : But all's not done, yet keep the French the field. Exe. The duke of York commends him to your majesty. I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting; From helmet to the spur, all blood he was. Exe. In which array (brave soldier !) doth he lie, Suffolk first died and York, all haggled over, And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes And cries aloud,-" Tarry, my cousin Suffolk ! Upon these words I came, and cheer'd him up: So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips; A testament of noble-ending love. The pretty and sweet manner of it forc'd Those waters from me, which I would have stopp'd; And all my mother came into mine eyes, And gave me up to tears. K. Hen. [Alarum. [Exeunt. 130.-THE DECAY AND SUBVERSION OF THE ENGLISH FRANCE. 6 DOMINION IN From the Penny Cyclopædia.' Although no nation ever received so great a blow in a single field as France did on the fatal day of Agincourt, it was not till after some years that, torn as she was by the most lamentable civil dissensions, and left nearly without a government, that unfortunate country at last consented to receive the yoke of her invader. Harfleur was attacked by the French the following August; but the attempt was put an end to by a great naval victory gained by the duke of Bedford. In September Henry passed over to Calais, and there had a secret conference with the head of one of the great French factions, John, surnamed Sans-peur, duke of Burgundy, with whom there is no doubt that he came to some understanding about the employment of their united efforts for the destruction of the Orleanists, who now had the government in their hands. It was by thus politically taking advantage of the dissensions of his enemies, rather than by any further very brilliant military operations, that Henry at last achieved the conquest of France. He returned to that country in August, 1417, having under his command a magnificent army of about 35,000 men. With this force he soon reduced the whole of Lower Normandy. He then laid siege to Rouen, 30th July, 1418, and was detained before this town till, after a brave resistance, it capitulated on the 16th of January in the following year. By this time the duke of Burgundy had obtained the ascendancy in Paris, and at the court of the incapable Charles and his profligate queen; and he was not now so much disposed as he had probably been two years before to aid the ambitious project of the English king. From Rouen Henry advanced upon Paris, on which Burgundy and the queen, taking the king with them, left that city, and went, first to Lagny, and afterwards to Provins. It was at last agreed, however, that a truce should be concluded between the English and the Bourguignons, and that Henry should meet the duke, and the king and queen of France, on the 30th of May. On that day the conference took place on the right bank of the Seine, near the town of Meulan. But after being protracted for above a month, the negociation was suddenly broken off by the French party; and then it was discovered that the duke had concluded a treaty with the Dauphin and the faction of the Armagnacs. On this Henry immediately resumed his advance upon Paris. Meanwhile the hollowness of the apparent reconciliation that had been hastily patched up between the two rival factions became abundantly manifest; the formal alliance of the chiefs had no effect in uniting their followers. At length, on the 10th of September, Burgundy having been induced to meet the Dauphin on the bridge of Montereau, was there foully fallen upon and murdered by the attendants, and in the presence, of the treacherous prince. From this time the Bourguignons, and even the people of Paris, who were attached to that party, looked upon the English as their natural allies against the Dauphin and his faction. Philip, the young duke of Burgundy, and the queen in the name of her husband, immediately assented to all Henry's demands, which were the hand of Charles's eldest daughter, the Princess Catherine, the present regency of the kingdom, and the succession to the throne of France on the death of Charles. It was also arranged that one of Henry's brothers should marry a sister of duke Philip. Several months were spent in the settlement of certain minor points; but at last the treaty of 'Perpetual Peace,' as it was styled, was completed and signed at Troyes by Queen Isabella and Duke Philip, as the commissioners of King Charles, on the 20th of May, 1420; and on the following day the oath to observe it was taken without murmur or hesitation by the parliament, the nobility, and deputies from such of the commonalties as acknowledged the royal authority. Henry's marriage with Catherine was solemnized on the 2nd June. On the second day after he resumed his military occupations, and some months were spent in reducing successively the towns of Sens, Montereau, Villeneuve-le-Roi, and Melun. On the 18th November Henry and Charles entered Paris together in triumph, and here the treaty of Troyes was unanimously confirmed (10th December) in an assembly of the three estates of the kingdom. Henry soon after set out with his queen for England, and on the 2nd February, 1421, entered London amidst such pageants and popular rejoicings as that capital had never before witnessed. He did not, however, remain long at home. On the 22nd March his brother, the duke of Clarence, whom he had left governor of Normandy, was defeated in a battle fought at Baugé, in Anjou, by a force chiefly composed of a body of Scottish auxiliaries under the earl of Buchan, who slew Clarence with his own hand, an exploit for which the Dauphin conferred upon the Scottish earl the office of constable of France. This victory appears to have produced a wonderful effect in reanimating the almost broken spirits and extinguished hopes of the Dauphin's party. Feeling that his presence was wanted in France, Henry again set sail for Calais in the beginning of June, taking with him a Scottish force commanded by Archibald, earl of Douglas, and also his prisoner, the Scottish king, to whom he promised his liberty as soon as they should have returned to England. His wonted success attended him in this new expedition; and he drove the Dauphin before him, from one place after another, till he forced him to retire to Bourges, in Berry. He then, after taking the strong town of Meaux, which cost him a siege of seven months, proceeded to Paris, which he entered with great pomp, 30th May, 1422, accompanied by his queen, who had come over to join him, after having given birth to a son at Windsor Castle on the 6th of the preceding December. But the end of Henry's triumphant career was now at hand. The Dauphin and the constable Buchan having again advanced from the south, and laid siege to the town of Cosne, Henry, though ill at the time, set out to relieve that place, but was unable to proceed farther than Corbeil, about twenty miles from Paris, when, resigning the command to his brother, the duke of Bedford, he was carried back in a litter to the Bois de Vincennes, in the vicinity of the capital, and there, after an illness of about a month, he breathed his last, on the 31st of August, in the 34th year of his age, and the 10th of his reign. It is unnecessary in the present day to waste a word on either the injustice or the folly of the enterprise on which Henry thus threw away the whole of his reign. In estimating his character it is of more importance to remember that the folly and injustice, which are now so evident, were as little perceived at that day by his subjects in general as by himself, and that there can be no doubt whatever that both he and they thought he was, in the assertion of his fancied rights to the crown of France, pursuing both a most important and a most legitimate object. That motives of personal ambition mingled their influence in his views and proceedings must no doubt be admitted; but that is perfectly consistent with honesty of purpose, and a thorough belief in the rightness both of the object sought, and the means employed to secure it. In following the bright though misleading idea that had captivated him, he certainly displayed many endowments of the loftiest and most admirable kind-energy, both of body and mind, which no fatigue could quell; the most heroic gallantry; patience and endurance, watchfulness and activity, steadiness, determination, policy, and other moral constituents, as they may be called, of genius, as well as mere military skill and resources. Nor does any weighty imputation dim the lustre of these virtues. His slaughter of his prisoners at the battle of Azincourt, almost the only stigma that rests upon his memory, was an act of self-preservation, justified by what appeared to be the circumstances in which he was placed. No monarch ever occupied a throne who was more the idol of his subjects than Henry V.; nor is any trace to be found of popular dissatisfaction with any part of his government, from the beginning to the end of his reign. Henry VI. was not quite nine months old when the death of his father left him king of England. In the settlement of the government which took place upon the accession of the infant king, the actual administration of affairs in England was entrusted to the younger of his two uncles, Humphrey, popularly called 'The Good,' duke of Gloucester, as substitute for the elder, John, duke of Bedford, who was appointed president of the council, but who remained in France, taking his late brother's place as regent of that kingdom. Gloucester's title was 'Protector of the Realm and Church of England.' The care of the person and education of the king was some time after committed to Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and to the king's great uncle, bishop (afterwards cardinal) Henry Beaufort. The history of the earlier and longer portion of this reign is the history of the gradual decay and final subversion of the English dominion in France. The death of Henry V. was followed in a few weeks (22nd October) by that of his father-inlaw, the imbecile Charles VI. Immediately on this event the Dauphin was acknowledged by his adherents as Charles VII.; and Henry VI. was also proclaimed in Paris, and wherever the English power prevailed, as king of France. The next events of importance that occurred were the two great victories of Crevant and Verneuil obtained by the English over the French and their Scottish allies, the former on the 31st of July, 1423, the latter on the 17th of August, 1424. In the interim king James of Scotland, after his detention of nearly twenty years, had been released by the English council, and had returned to his native country after marrying a near connexion of the royal family, the Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the duke of Somerset. One of the engagements made by James on his liberation was that he should not permit any more of his subjects to enter into the service of France: the Scots who were already there were for the most part destroyed a few months afterwards in the slaughter of Verneuil. This however was the last great success obtained by the English in France. From this time their dominion began to loosen and shake, and then to crumble faster and faster away, until it fell wholly to ruin. The first thing which materially contributed to unsettle it was the disgust given to the duke of Burgundy by the marriage of the duke of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Hainault, and their subsequent invasion and seizure of her hereditary states, then held by her former husband John, duke of Brabant, who was the cousin of the duke of Burgundy. Although Burgundy, on being left to pursue his quarrel with Jacqueline, whom he soon succeeded in crushing, after she had been abandoned by Gloucester, did not go the length of openly breaking with the English on acocunt of this matter, his attachment was never afterwards to be much relied upon, and he merely waited for a favourable occasion to change sides. Meanwhile another of the most powerful of the English allies, the duke of Brittany, openly declared for Charles VII. Other embarrassments also arose about the same time out of the mutual jealousies and opposition of Gloucester and Bishop Beaufort, which at last blazed up into open and violent hostility. It required all the moderating prudence and steadiness of the duke of Bedford to break as much as possible the shock of these various adverse For some years accordingly he had enough to do in merely maintaining his actual position. It was not till the close of 1428 that he proceeded to attempt the extension of the English authority beyond the Loire. With this view the siege of Orleans was commenced on the 12th of October in that year by the earl of Salisbury, and, on his death from a wound received a few weeks after, carried on by the earl of Suffolk. The extraordinary succession of events that followed -the appearance of Joan of Arc on the scene; her arrival in the besieged city (29th April, 1429); the raising of the siege (8th May); the defeat of the English at the battle of Patay (18th June); the coronation of king Charles at Rheims (15th July); the attack on Paris (12th September); the capture of Joan at Compiegne (25th May, 1430); her trial and execution at Rouen (30th May, 1431)—all belong to the singular story of the heroic maid. occurrences. The young King of England, now in his ninth year, had in the meantime been brought to Rouen (May, 1430), and was about a year and a half afterwards solemnly crowned at Paris (17th December, 1431). The death of the duchess of Bedford, the sister of the Duke of Burgundy, in November, 1432, and the marriage of Bedford in May of the following year with Jacquetta of Luxembourg, aided materially in still further detaching Burgundy from the English connection, till, his remaining scruples gradually giving way under his resentment, in September, 1435, he concluded a peace with king Charles. This important transaction was managed at a great congress of representatives from all the sovereign powers of Europe assembled at Arras, with the view of effecting a general peace under the mediation of the pope. On the 14th of September, a few days after the treaty between Charles and Burgundy had been signed, but before it was proclaimed, died the great duke of Bedford. This event gave the finishing blow to the dominion of the English in France. In April, 1436, the English garrison in Paris was compelled to capitulate. The struggle lingered on for about fifteen years more; but although some partial successes, and especially the brilliant exertions of the famous Talbot (afterwards earl |