In burning Joan the English had hoped to regain their former good fortune; but it was not so. Every day a fresh town opened its gates to the French. Indolent as Charles VII. still was, national instinct now fought for him. The Duke of Bedford wished to satisfy the taste of the Parisians for festivals while giving religious sanction to the rights of his nephew upon France; and on the 17th of December, 1431, the little King Henry VI., nine years of age, was solemnly crowned at Notre Dame. The ceremony was magnificent: wine and milk flowed in the streets; but the French noblemen were few, the Duke of Burgundy had not arrived, and Cardinal Beaufort himself placed the crown upon the head of Henry VI.: it was the English coronation of an English Prince. The sovereign started shortly afterwards for England, leaving with all those who had approached him a sad impression of languor and melancholy.
The war languished meanwhile: the English were in need of men and money, and the quarrels of the favourites with the great French noblemen continued around King Charles VII.; but the Duke of Burgundy detached himself more and more from England. The Duchess of Bedford died without children in the month of November, 1432, and six months after her death the Duke married Jacquette of Luxembourg, daughter of the Count of Saint Pol. The Duke of Burgundy considered himself offended by the shortness of the mourning, and by the union contracted without his authority with one of his vassals. He was seeking a pretext for a quarrel; his treaty with King Charles was almost concluded; the blood which had inundated France for fourteen years, sufficed, it was thought, to satisfy the shade of the Duke John. The counsellors of the king urged the duke towards peace; but he made much of his scruples anent the oaths which bound him to the English. Appeal was made to Pope Eugenius IV., and through his efforts a great congress assembled at Arras, in 1435. The Duke of Burgundy had summoned all his nobility; King Charles had sent twenty-nine noblemen, at the head of whom walked the Constable. Cardinal Beaufort, with twenty-six barons, half English and half French, represented the interests of England. The Duke Philip displayed, for receiving such great company, all his wonted magnificence; festivals succeeded festivals, and jousts followed tournaments; but matters were meanwhile being negotiated and so manifestly manœuvered to the advantage of the French, that Cardinal Beaufort shortly retired in disgust, denying the authority of the congress. Affairs proceeded more rapidly after his departure; the Duke Philip caused his forgiveness and his alliance to be dearly purchased; but at length the treaty was concluded, and on the 26th of September 1435, the Duke of Burgundy, relieved of his oaths to the English, promised to live in peace and friendship with the King of France. All the noblemen swore likewise; when it came to the turn of the Sire de Lannoy, he cried, "I have already five times sworn with this hand to keep the peace during the war which has just ended, and my five oaths have been violated. With the grace of God, I will keep this one."
The Duke of Bedford had not lived long enough to see the conclusion of a treaty which virtually took from England the conquests of King Henry V.; he had died at Rouen, on the 14th of September, exhausted by the struggle which he had sustained for thirteen years, with a courage, firmness and prudence worthy of the confidence which had been manifested towards him by his dying brother. Three days after the signing of the peace, an unnatural mother, abandoned by all her children—Queen Isabel of Bavaria, was dying alone in Paris, in solitude and misery, the just punishment of her crimes; the Duke of Burgundy had publicly declared war against the English, and in the month of April, 1436, at his instigation, the feeble English garrison which was stationed in Paris was overcome by the people, and found itself compelled to open the gates to the Marshal of Isle-Adam: the capital once more became French, the English were driven back into Normandy, where their authority remained complete. The Duke of York, for a moment regent of France, had been replaced by the Earl of Warwick, who established the seat of his government at Rouen where he died. Two towns yet remained to the English near Paris, Meaux and Pontoise; these were taken by the troops of King Charles VII. For a moment, in 1436, the Duke of Burgundy even threatened Calais with a considerable army; but before the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester, who had challenged him to combat, and claimed to take possession of the dominions of his wife, Jacqueline, who had recently died, the Duke Philip retreated precipitately into his dominions, impelled by his troops, who were disbanding. In 1444, through the efforts of Isabel of Portugal, wife of the Duke of Burgundy, added to the representations of the Duke of Orleans, recently snatched from the captivity which he had suffered since the battle of Agincourt, a truce of two years was concluded between the two nations; the horrors of the Hundred Years' War were at length reaching their end.
While the English were losing ground by degrees in France, England impoverished by the necessities of the war, underwent the commotion of a continual struggle between the two chiefs of the government, the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort. Queen Catherine, the mother of the king, had retained no influence, and three years after the death of Henry V. she had married a plain Welsh gentleman, Owen Tudor, by whom she had had three sons, whom she confided to the young King Henry VI. when she died in 1437, The Duchess of Bedford followed her example, by wedding Sir Richard Woodville of Wydeville; but these misalliances had proved grave dangers to the ambitious men, elevated to a rank for which they had not been born; Owen Tudor and Woodville were thrown into prison, and the wife of the Duke of Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham, accused of sorcery, was condemned to do public penance and to be imprisoned for the remainder of her days. The young King Henry had assumed no authority over his kingdom. He was twenty-two years of age; he was tall and handsome, but languid, apathetic, timid, solely occupied by his books and his devotions. He might have become a holy monk, but he was destitute of the qualities necessary to a king in difficult and hard times. A wife was sought for him who might supply the defects of his character, and the choice of his advisers fell upon Margaret of Anjou, cousin of the Queen of France, and daughter of René of Anjou, King of Sicily and Jerusalem, Duke of Maine, Anjou, and Bar; but a king without kingdom, a duke without duchy, a chevalier and a poet, without other fortune than his harp and his sword. His daughter was purchased of him by restoring to him his two provinces of Anjou and Maine, which the French arms had not yet been able to break through. The English now held but Normandy and a few towns in Guienne. The marriage of the king concluded by the Earl of Suffolk and Cardinal Beaufort, against the advice of the Duke of Gloucester, had not been successful in England. There, there were regrets for the loss of the two provinces which formerly formed part of the dominions of the Angevin kings, and over which England had always thought she had rights. Queen Margaret, besides, with her beauty, her wit, and her energy, brought into her new country ideas of government which were little favourable to English independence. She had confidence in the worthy Suffolk, who had become a Marquis and soon afterwards a Duke; she shared his power, and treated with haughtiness those who approached her. She manifested, in particular, little liking for the Duke of Gloucester, whom she considered as her enemy. In the month of February, 1447, the Parliament was convoked at Bury St. Edmund's; the partisans of Suffolk were assembled in the neighborhood, when the Duke of Gloucester arrived on the morrow of the opening of the session. Being immediately arrested and accused of the crime of high treason, he was found dead in his bed on the 28th of February, as had been formerly at Calais another Duke of Gloucester. A few of his servants were executed after his death, under pretext of a plot to release the Duchess Eleanor. Suffolk took possession of the property of the duke, whom the public voice accused him of having murdered. Cardinal Beaufort had recently died in his palace of Walvesey (on the 11th of April), leaving immense riches consecrated to the foundation of charitable institutions which still exist. Suffolk remained the sole master of the government. King Henry VI. was occupied in the creation of Eton College, and in the erection of King's College, at Cambridge, where the marvelous beauty of the chapel remains as a monument of the exquisite taste of the poor king, so little suited to the affairs of this world. Meanwhile the truce with France, several times renewed, had been violently broken by King Charles VII., under pretext of an infraction which well suited his wishes. France was rising again, and England was profoundly weakened by her internal dissensions. The troops assembled in Maine, then entered Normandy; the Duke of Somerset, who commanded there had few soldiers and no money. Dunois marched against Rouen, and notwithstanding the desperate resistance of Talbot, who was consigned as a hostage into the hands of the French, the citizens delivered up the city. Sir Thomas Kyriel, despatched with a reinforcement to the Duke of Somerset was defeated on the 13th of April, 1450, near Formigny, by the Constable and the Count of Clermont. Bajxux, Avranches, Caen succumbed in succession; Cherbourg was taken by storm, and by the 12th of August the English had lost the whole of Normandy. In the following year the towns which yet remained to them in Guienne surrendered without striking a blow. Calais alone was now all of the soil of France that remained to Henry VI. Charles VII., drawn from his elegant indolence, proposed negotiations. "My sword shall never return to its scabbard, until I have retaken all that I have lost!" cried poor king Henry VI., who had never drawn a sword in his life: but France no longer feared him.
Internal difficulties sufficed to absorb the efforts of the faithful servants of the King of England. The Parliament had at length risen against the Duke of Suffolk; he had been conducted to the tower, protesting his innocence. The accusations produced against him were confused, ill-founded, and frivolous; the graver subjects of distrust had scarcely been touched upon. The duke threw himself upon his knees before the king, refused to shield himself with his privilege by demanding the judgment of his peers, and consigned himself to the justice of his master, who wished to save him. He was simply banished from England for five years: the Parliament accepted this compromise, not without a protest on the part of the lords in favour of the rights of their order.
The anger of the population of London was not so easy to disarm as the vengeance of the Parliament. Suffolk had difficulty in retiring safe and sound to his estate; he had gathered around him friends and partisans, swearing before them that he was innocent, when he embarked for the Continent on the 1st of May, 1430. He was sailing about on the morrow between Dover and Calais, when a large war-ship, the Nicholas-de-la-Tour, hailed his little vessel. The duke was summoned on board the ship. "You are here, traitor," said the captain, as he placed his foot upon the deck, and Suffolk was immediately placed under arrest. Two days elapsed; the duke had asked for a confessor; a little bark came up with the Nicholas; she bore an executioner with an axe. Suffolk was led upon deck and beheaded. None inquired whence had come the warrant; but the importance of the ships entrusted to arrest the banished man at sea, caused a supposition that the greatest personages of the kingdom had not remained strangers to the execution. The people were satisfied, their vengeance was consummated. New events now absorbed all minds.
Numerous insurrections had during a short time past broken out in different parts of England. An adventurer, Jack Cade, an Irishman by origin, who had for a long while served in the English armies in France, placed himself at the head of the insurgents. He had assumed the name of Mortimer, and represented himself a relative of the Duke of York, who then commanded in Ireland. Thirty thousand men soon found themselves assembled around Cade, nearly all from the county of Kent. It was said that the queen wished to avenge herself for the death of her favourite, whose decapitated body had been brought by the waves to the coast of Dover. Cade brought his forces to Blackheath, as Wat Tyler had formerly done, and the "complaints of the commons of Kent," were dispatched to the king at London. Amongst the number of the demands of the insurgents, they begged Henry VI. to recall to his side his blood relatives, the Dukes of York, Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk, in order to punish the traitors who had caused the death of the Duke of Gloucester, the holy father in God, Cardinal Beaufort, and lost the dominions of Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. The reply of the court was the dispatch of an army against the rebels; but the first detachment was defeated: the soldiers murmured, saying that they did not like to fight against their countrymen, who claimed the liberties of the nation. Concessions were attempted: but the forces of Cade swelled every day, and on the 3rd of July he entered London. Lord Say, one of the most unpopular ministers, was dragged from the tower, where he had been sent by the court in the hope of satisfying the insurgents; and, notwithstanding his protestations, he was executed after a mock trial. Some houses were pillaged, and on the morrow, when the rebels wished to re-enter into London, after having been encamped at Blackheath, the citizens defended the bridge. Cade was compelled to retreat. He was amused by vain concessions and the promise of an amnesty but was soon afterwards pursued and killed; and his head was planted upon London Bridge. The insurrection was stifled; but the name of the Duke of York had been put forward; it circulated from mouth to mouth, and many people began to ask whether the rights to the throne which he held through Anne Mortimer, his mother, did not supersede those of King Henry VI. Prince Richard, son of the Earl of Cambridge, had succeeded to the title of Duke of York, at the death of his paternal uncle; the successes which he had obtained in his government of Ireland had increased his popularity.