There are stories[17] that the bit of history most enjoyed by the pupil was the narrative of Alexander.  Books about that hero were easy to come by long before the invention of printing, though Alexander would have had difficulty in recognising his identity under the strange mediaeval motley in which his namesake wandered over the land.  No single man, with the possible exception of Charlemagne, was so much written about or played so brilliantly the part of a hero to the Middle Ages and after.[18] The simplicity and universality of his success were of a type to appeal to the boy Charles, himself built on simple lines.  The fact, too, that Alexander was the son of a Philip stimulated his imagination and instilled in his breast hopes of conquering, not the whole world perhaps, but a good slice of territory which should enable him to hold his own between the emperor and the French king.  Tales of definite schemes of early ambition are often fabricated in the later life of a conqueror, but in this case they may be believed, as all threads of testimony lead to the same conclusion.

The air breathed by the boy when he first became conscious of his own individuality was certainly heavy with the aroma of satisfied ambition.  The period of his childhood was a time when his father stood at the very zenith of his power.  In 1435, was signed the Treaty of Arras, the death-blow to the long coalition existing between Burgundy and England to the continual detriment of France.  Philip was reconciled with great solemnity to the king, responsible in his dauphin days for the murder of the late Duke of Burgundy.  After ostentatiously parading his filial resentment sixteen long years, Philip forgave Charles VII. his share in the death of John the Fearless, on the bridge at Montereau, and swore to lend his support to keep the French monarch on the throne whither the efforts of Joan of Arc had carried him from Bourges, the forlorn court of his exile.

England’s pretensions were repudiated.  To be sure, the recent coronation of Henry VI. at Paris was not immediately forgotten, but while the Duke of Bedford had actually administered the government as regent, in behalf of his infant nephew, it was a mere shadow of his office that passed to his successor.  Bedford’s death, in 1435, was almost coincident with the compact at Arras when the English Henry’s realms across the Channel shrank to Normandy and the outlying fortresses of Picardy and Maine.  Later events on English soil were to prove how little fitted was the son of Henry V. for sovereignty of any kind.

Out of the negotiations at Arras, Philip of Burgundy rose triumphant with a seal set upon his personal importance.[19] His recognition of Charles VII. as lawful sovereign of France, and his reconciliation did not pass without signal gain to himself.