At this period France was afflicted with that cruel war which had at intervals been carried on for nearly a century between the English and French kings, and which had arisen from the claims of Edward I to the throne of France.  The whole country was distracted, forlorn, and miserable; it was impoverished, overrun, and drained of fighting men.  The war had exhausted the resources of England as well as those of France.  The population of England at the close of this long series of wars was less than it was under Henry II.  Those wars were more disastrous to the interests of both the rival kingdoms than even those of the Crusades, and they were marked by great changes and great calamities.  The victories of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt—­which shed such lustre on the English nation—­were followed by reverses, miseries, and defeats, which more than balanced the glories of Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. Provinces were gained and lost, yet no decisive results followed either victory or defeat.  The French kings, driven hither and thither, with a decimated people, and with the loss of some of their finest provinces, still retained their sovereignty.

At one time, about the year 1347, Edward III. had seemed to have attained the supreme object of his ambition.  France lay bleeding at his feet; he had won the greatest victory of his age; Normandy already belonged to him, Guienne was recovered, Aquitaine was ceded to him, Flanders was on his side, and the possession of Brittany seemed to open his way to Paris.  But in fourteen years these conquests were lost; the plague scourged England, and popular discontents added to the perplexities of the once fortunate monarch.  Moreover, the House of Commons had come to be a power and a check on royal ambition.  The death of the Black Prince consummated his grief and distraction, and the heroic king gave himself up in his old age to a disgraceful profligacy, and died in the arms of Alice Pierce, in the year 1377.

Fifty years pass by, and Henry V. is king of England, and renews his claim to the French throne.  The battle of Agincourt (1415) gives to Henry V. the same eclat that the victory of Crecy had bestowed on Edward III.  Again the French realm is devastated by triumphant Englishmen.  The King of France is a captive; his Queen is devoted to the cause of Henry, the Duke of Burgundy is his ally, and he only needs the formal recognition of the Estates to take possession of the French throne.  But in the year 1422, in the midst of his successes, he died of a disease which baffled the skill of all his physicians, leaving his kingdom to a child only nine years old, and the prosecution of the French war to his brother the Duke of Bedford, who was scarcely inferior to himself in military genius.