An obscure strife went on until 1404, when Duke Philip of Burgundy died, leaving his vast inheritance to John the Fearless, the deadly foe of Louis d’Orleans.  Paris was with him, as with his father before him; the Duke entered the capital in 1405, and issued a popular proclamation against the ill-government of the Queen-regent and Orleans.  Much profession of a desire for better things was made, with small results.  So things went on until 1407, when, after the Duc de Berri, who tried to play the part of a mediator, had brought the two Princes together, the Duc d’Orleans was foully assassinated by a Burgundian partisan.  The Duke of Burgundy, though he at first withdrew from Paris, speedily returned, avowed the act, and was received with plaudits by the mob.  For a few years the strife continued, obscure and bad; a great league of French princes and nobles was made to stem the success of the Burgundians; and it was about this time that the Armagnac name became common.  Paris, however, dominated by the “Cabochians,” the butchers’ party, the party of the “marrowbones and cleavers,” and entirely devoted to the Burgundians, enabled John the Fearless to hold his own in France; the King himself seemed favourable to the same party.  In 1412 the princes were obliged to come to terms, and the Burgundian triumph seemed complete.  In 1413 the wheel went round, and we find the Armagnacs in Paris, rudely sweeping away all the Cabochians with their professions of good civic rule.  The Duc de Berri was made captain of Paris, and for a while all went against the Burgundians, until, in 1414, Duke John was fain to make the first Peace of Arras, and to confess himself worsted in the strife.  The young Dauphin Louis took the nominal lead of the national party, and ruled supreme in Paris in great ease and self-indulgence.

The year before, Henry V. had succeeded to the throne of England,—­a bright and vigorous young man, eager to be stirring in the world, brave and fearless, with a stern grasp of things beneath all,—­a very sheet-anchor of firmness and determined character.  Almost at the very opening of his reign, the moment he had secured his throne, he began a negotiation with France which boded no good.  He offered to marry Catharine, the King’s third daughter, and therewith to renew the old Treaty of Bretigny, if her dower were Normandy, Maine, Anjou, not without a good sum of money.  The French Court, on the other hand, offered him her hand with Aquitaine and the money, an offer rejected instantly; and Henry made ready for a rough wooing in arms.  In 1415 he crossed to Harfleur, and while parties still fought in France, after a long and exhausting siege, took the place; thence he rode northward for Calais, feeling his army too much reduced to attempt more.  The Armagnacs, who had gathered at Rouen, also pushed fast to the north, and having choice of passage over the Somme, Amiens being in their hands, got before King Henry, while he had to make a long round before