A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 494 pages of information about A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3.

A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 494 pages of information about A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3.
VII., in maintaining the war which, after the treaty of Troyes, was, in his father’s and his mother’s name, made upon him by the King of England and the Duke of Burgundy.  This war lasted more than three years.  Several towns, amongst others, Melun, Crotoy, Meaux, and St. Riquier, offered an obstinate resistance to the attacks of the English and Burgundians.  On the 23d of March, 1421, the dauphin’s troops, commanded by Sire de la Fayette, gained a signal victory over those of Henry V., whose brother, the Duke of Clarence, was killed in action.  It was in Perche, Anjou, Maine, on the banks of the Loire, and in Southern France, that the dauphin found most of his enterprising and devoted partisans.  The sojourn made by Henry V. at Paris, in December, 1420, with his wife, Queen Catherine, King Charles VI., Queen Isabel, and the Duke of Burgundy, was not, in spite of galas and acclamations, a substantial and durable success for him.  His dignified but haughty manners did not please the French; and he either could not or would not render them more easy and amiable, even with men of note who were necessary to him.  Marshal Isle-Adam one day went to see him in camp on war-business.  The king considered that he did not present himself with sufficient ceremony.  “Isle-Adam,” said he, “is that the robe of a marshal of France?” “Sir, I had this whity-gray robe made to come hither by water aboard of Seine-boats.”  “Ha!” said the king, “look you a prince in the face when you speak to him?” “Sir, it is the custom in France, that when one man speaks to another, of whatever rank and puissance that other may be, he passes for a sorry fellow, and but little honorable, if he dares not look him in the face.”  “It is not our fashion,” said the king; and the subject dropped there.  A popular poet of the time, Alan Chattier, constituted himself censor of the moral corruption and interpreter of the patriotic paroxysms caused by the cold and harsh supremacy of this unbending foreigner, who set himself up for king of France, and had not one feeling in sympathy with the French.  Alan Chartier’s Quadriloge invectif is a lively and sometimes eloquent allegory, in which France personified implores her three children, the clergy, the chivalry, and the people, to forget their own quarrels and unite to save their mother whilst saving themselves; and this political pamphlet getting spread about amongst the provinces did good service to the national cause against the foreign conqueror.  An event more powerful than any human eloquence occurred to give the dauphin and his partisans earlier hopes.  Towards the end of August, 1422, Henry V. fell ill; and, too stout-hearted to delude himself as to his condition, he thought no longer of anything but preparing himself for death.  He had himself removed to Vincennes, called his councillors about him, and gave them his last royal instructions.  “I leave you the government of France,” said he to his brother, the Duke of Bedford, “unless
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A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.