FOOTNOTES.
[Footnote 1]: Jacques Cœur, it would seem, alluded to a fact not generally stated by English historians, which I may as well mention here as a curious illustration of the habits of those times. After the death of the unhappy Richard the Second, when it was currently reported throughout Europe that the successful usurper had put him to death in prison, the Duke of Orleans sent a cartel to Henry of Lancaster, by the hands of Champagne, king-at-arms, and Orleans his herald, demanding a combat of one hundred noblemen of France against one hundred of the Lancastrian party of England, the one party to be headed by the duke, the other by the new King of England. He gave the choice of any place between Angoulême and Bordeaux, and endeavored earnestly to bring about the meeting. Henry, in his reply, evading the demand, takes exception to the titles which the Duke had given him, stands upon his dignity as a king, and expresses great surprise that the duke should call him to the field without having previously solemnly abjured an alliance contracted between them in the year 1396. To this the Duke of Orleans tartly replied, in a letter full of pungent and bitter satire. Among other galling passages is the following: "And as to what you say, that no lord or knight, let his condition be what it will, ought to demand a combat without renouncing his alliance (with his adversary), I am not aware that you renounced to your lord the King Richard your oath of fealty to him before you proceeded against his person in the manner which you have done." And again: "As to what you write, that whatever a prince and king does ought to be done for the honor of God, and for the common benefit of all Christendom and his own kingdom, and not for vain-glory, nor for any temporal cupidity, I reply that you say well; but if you had so acted in your own country in times past, many things which you have done would not have been perpetrated in the land in which you live." By such expressions he galled Henry the Fourth into an indefinite sort of acceptance of his challenge, though the English king would not condescend to name time or place. The letters are still extant, and are very curious.
[Footnote 2]: His exact words.
[Footnote 3]: He afterward nobly proved his devotion to Charles the Seventh, by an act which distinguished him more than all the military services he rendered to that prince. His dismissal from the court was demanded, as the price of even a partial reconciliation between the king and the young Duke of Burgundy. Charles resisted firmly; but Du Châtel voluntarily resigned all his prospects and retired, to free his master from embarrassment.
[Footnote 4]: A large piece of artillery, which threw immense balls of stone, evidently by the force of gunpowder. It was by the discharge of one of these that the famous Earl of Salisbury was killed under the walls of Orleans the following year.