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

by François Guizot

The Duke of Burgundy, as a matter of course, let his quarrel with the King of England drop, and occupied himself for the future only in recovering his power in France. He set out on the march for Paris, proclaiming everywhere that he was assembling his army solely for the purpose of avenging the kingdom, chastising the English, and aiding the king with his counsels and his forces. The sentiment of nationality was so strongly aroused that politicians most anxious about their own personal interests, and about them alone, found themselves obliged to pay homage to it.

Unfortunately, it was, so far as Duke John was concerned, only a superficial and transitory homage. There is no repentance so rarely seen as that of selfishness in pride and power. The four years which elapsed between the battle of Agincourt and the death of John the Fearless were filled with nothing but fresh and still more tragic explosions of hatred and strife between the two factions of the Burgundians and Armagnacs, taking and losing, re-taking and re-losing, alternately, their ascendency with the king and in the government of France. When, after the battle of Agincourt, the Duke of Burgundy marched towards Paris, he heard almost simultaneously that the king was issuing a prohibition against the entry of his troops, and that his rival, the Count of Armagnac, had just arrived and been put in possession of the military power, as constable, and of the civil power, as superintendent-general of finance. The duke then returned to Burgundy, and lost no time in recommencing hostilities against the king’s government. At one time he let his troops make war on the king’s and pillage the domains of the crown; at another he entered into negotiations with the King of England, and showed a disposition to admit his claims to such and such a province, and even perhaps to the throne of France. He did not accede to the positive alliance offered him by Henry; but he employed the fear entertained of it by the king’s government as a weapon against his enemies. The Count of Armagnac, on his side, made the most relentless use of power against the Duke of Burgundy and his partisans; he pursued them everywhere, especially in Paris, with dexterous and pitiless hatred. He abolished the whole organization and the privileges of the Parisian butcherdom which had shown so favorable a leaning towards Duke John; and the system he established as a substitute was founded on excellent grounds appertaining to the interests of the people and of good order in the heart of Paris; but the violence of absolute power and of hatred robs the best measures of the credit they would deserve if they were more disinterested and dispassionate. A lively reaction set in at Paris in favor of the persecuted Burgundians; even outside of Paris several towns of importance, Rheims, Chalons, Troyes, Auxerre, Amiens, and Rouen itself, showed a favorable disposition towards the Duke of Burgundy, and made a sort of alliance with him, promising to aid him “in reinstating the king in his freedom and lordship, and the realm in its freedom and just rights.” The Count of Armagnac was no more tender with the court than with the populace of Paris. He suspected, not without reason, that the queen, Isabel of Bavaria, was in secret communication with and gave information to Duke John. Moreover, she was leading a scandalously licentious life at Vincennes; and one of her favorites, Louis de Bosredon, a nobleman of Auvergne and her steward, meeting the king one day on the road, greeted the king cavalierly and hastily went his way. Charles VI. was plainly offended. The Count of Armagnac seized the opportunity; and not only did he foment the king’s ill-humor, but talked to him of all the irregularities of which the queen was the centre, and in which Louis de Bosredon was, he said, at that time her principal accomplice. Charles, in spite of the cloud upon his mind, could hardly have been completely ignorant cf such facts; but it is not necessary to be a king to experience extreme displeasure on learning that offensive scandals are almost public, and on hearing the whole tale of them. The king, carried away by his anger, went straight to Vincennes, had a violent scene with his wife, and caused Bosredon to be arrested, imprisoned, and put to the question; and he, on his own confession it is said, was thrown into the Seine, sewn up in a leathern sack, on which were inscribed the words, “Let the king’s justice run its course!” Charles VI. and Armagnac did not stop there. Queen Isabel was first of all removed from the council and stripped of all authority, and then banished to Tours, where commissioners were appointed to watch over her conduct, and not to let her even write a letter without their seeing it. But royal personages can easily elude such strictness. A few months after her banishment, whilst the despotism of Armagnac and the war between the king and the Duke of Burgundy were still going on, Queen Isabel managed to send to the duke, through one of her servants, her golden seal, which John the Fearless well knew, with a message to the effect that she would go with him if he would come to fetch her. On the night of November 1, 1417, the Duke of Burgundy hurriedly raised the siege of Corbeil, advanced with a body of troops to a position within two leagues from Tours, and sent the queen notice that he was awaiting her. Isabel ordered her three custodians to go with her to mass at the Convent of Marmoutier, outside the city. Scarcely was she within the church when a Burgundian captain, Hector de Saveuse, presented himself with sixty men at the door. “Look to your safety, madame,” said her custodians to Isabel; “here is a large company of Burgundians or English.” “Keep close to me,” replied the queen. Hector de Saveuse at that moment entered and saluted the queen on behalf of the Duke of Burgundy. “Where is he?” asked the queen. “He will not be long coming.” Isabel ordered the captain to arrest her three custodians; and two hours afterwards Duke John arrived with his men-at-arms. “My dearest cousin,” said the queen to him, “I ought to love you above every man in the realm; you have left all at my bidding, and are come to deliver me from prison. Be assured that I will never fail you. I quite see that you have always been devoted to my lord, his family, the realm, and the common-weal.” The duke carried the queen off to Chartres; and as soon as she was settled there, on the 12th of November, 1417, she wrote to the good towns of the kingdom,

“We, Isabel, by the grace of God Queen of France, having, by reason of my lord the king’s seclusion, the government and administration of this realm, by irrevocable grant made to us by the said my lord the king and his council, are come to Chartres in company with our cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, in order to advise and ordain whatsoever is necessary to preserve and recover the supremacy of my lord the king, on advice taken of the prud’hommes, vassals, and subjects.”

She at the same time ordered that Master Philip de Morvilliers, heretofore councillor of the Duke of Burgundy, should go to Amiens, accompanied by several clerics of note and by a registrar, and that there should be held there, by the queen’s authority, for the bailiwicks of Amiens, Vermandois, Tournai, and the countship of Ponthieu, a sovereign court of justice, in the place of that which there was at Paris. Thus, and by such a series of acts of violence and of falsehoods, the Duke of Burgundy, all the while making war on the king, surrounded himself with hollow forms of royal and legal government.

Whilst civil war was thus penetrating to the very core of the kingship, foreign war was making its way again into the kingdom. Henry V., after the battle of Agincourt, had returned to London, and had left his army to repose and reorganize after its sufferings and its losses. It was not until eighteen months afterwards, on the 1st of August, 1417, that he landed at Touques, not far from Honfleur, with fresh troops, and resumed his campaign in France. Between 1417 and 1419 he successively laid siege to nearly all the towns of importance in Normandy, to Caen, Bayeux, Falaise, Evreux, Coutances, Laigle, St. Lo, Cherbourg, &c., &c. Some he occupied after a short resistance, others were sold to him by their governors; but when, in the month of July, 1418, he undertook the siege of Rouen, he encountered there a long and serious struggle. Rouen had at that time, it is said, a population of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, which was animated by ardent patriotism. The Rouennese, on the approach of the English, had repaired their gates, their ramparts, and their moats; had demanded re-enforcements from the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy; and had ordered every person incapable of bearing arms or procuring provisions for ten months, to leave the city. Twelve thousand old men, women, and children were thus expelled, and died either round the place or whilst roving in misery over the neighboring country; “poor women gave birth unassisted beneath the walls, and good compassionate people in the town drew up the new-born in baskets to have them baptized, and afterwards lowered them down to their mothers to die together.” Fifteen thousand men of city-militia, four thousand regular soldiers, three hundred spearmen and as many archers from Paris, and it is not quite known how many men-at-arms sent by the Duke of Burgundy, defended Rouen for more than five months amidst all the usual sufferings of strictly-besieged cities. “As early as the beginning of October,” says Monstrelet, “they were forced to eat horses, dogs, cats, and other things not fit for human beings;” but they nevertheless made frequent sorties, “rushing furiously upon the enemy, to whom they caused many a heavy loss.” Four gentlemen and four burgesses succeeded in escaping and going to Beauvais, to tell the king and his council about the deplorable condition of their city. The council replied that the king was not in a condition to raise the siege, but that Rouen would be relieved “within” on the fourth day after Christmas. It was now the middle of December. The Rouennese resigned themselves to waiting a fortnight longer; but, when that period was over, they found nothing arrive but a message from the Duke of Burgundy recommending them “to treat for their preservation with the King of England as best they could.” They asked to capitulate. Henry V. demanded that “all the men of the town should place themselves at his disposal.” “When the commonalty of Rouen heard this answer, they all cried out that it were better to die all together sword in hand against their enemies than place themselves at the disposal of yonder king, and they were for shoring up with planks a loosened layer of the wall inside the city, and, having armed themselves and joined all of them together, men, women, and children, for setting fire to the city, throwing down the said layer of wall into the moats, and getting them gone by night whither it might please God to direct them.” Henry V. was unwilling to confront such heroic despair; and on the 13th of January, 1419, he granted the Rouennese a capitulation, from which seven persons only were excepted, Robert Delivet, the archbishop’s vicar-general, who from the top of the ramparts had excommunicated the foreign conqueror; D’Houdetot, baillie of the city; John Segneult, the mayor; Alan Blanchard, the captain of the militia-crossbowmen, and three other burgesses. The last-named, the hero of the siege, was the only one who paid for his heroism with his life; the baillie, the mayor, and the vicar bought themselves off. On the 19th of January, at midday, the English, king and army, made their solemn entry into the city. It was two hundred and fifteen years since Philip Augustus had won Rouen by conquest from John Lackland, King of England; and happily his successors were not to be condemned to deplore the loss of it very long.

These successes of the King of England were so many reverses and perils for the Count of Armagnac. He had in his hands Paris, the king, and the dauphin; in the people’s eyes the responsibility of government and of events rested on his shoulders; and at one time he was doing nothing, at another he was unsuccessful in what he did. Whilst Henry V. was becoming master of nearly all the towns of Normandy, the constable, with the king in his army, was besieging Senlis; and he was obliged to raise the siege. The legates of Pope Martin V. had set about establishing peace between the Burgundians and Armagnacs, as well as between France and England; they had prepared, on the basis of the treaty of Arras, a new treaty, with which a great part of the country, and even of the burgesses of Paris, showed themselves well pleased; but the constable had it rejected on the ground of its being adverse to the interests of the king and of France; and his friend, the chancellor, Henry de Marle, declared that, if the king were disposed to sign it, he would have to seal it himself, for that, as for him, the chancellor, he certainly would not seal it. Bernard of Armagnac and his confidential friend, Tanneguy Duchatel, a Breton nobleman, provost of Paris, were hard and haughty. When a complaint was made to them of any violent procedure, they would answer, “What business had you there? If it were the Burgundians, you would make no complaint.” The Parisian population was becoming every day more Burgundian. In the latter days of May. 1418, a plot was contrived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in the quarter of St. Germain des Pros, stole the keys from under the bolster of his father’s bed; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians. They spread over the city, shouting, “Our Lady of peace! Hurrah for the king! Hurrah for Burgundy! Let all who wish for peace take arms and follow us!” The people swarmed from the houses and followed them accordingly. The Armagnacs were surprised and seized with alarm. Tanneguy Duchatel, a man of prompt and resolute spirit, ran to the dauphin's, wrapped him in his bed-clothes, and carried him off to the Bastille, where he shut him up with several of his partisans. The Count of Armagnac, towards whose house the multitude thronged, left by a back-door, and took refuge at a mason’s, where he believed himself secure. In a few hours the Burgundians were masters of Paris. Their chief, the lord of Isle-Adam, had the doors of the hostel of St. Paul broken in, and presented himself before the king. “How fares my cousin of Burgundy?” said Charles VI.; “I have not seen him for some time.” That was all he said. He was set on horseback and marched through the streets. He showed no astonishment at anything; he had all but lost memory as well as reason, and no longer knew the difference between Armagnac and Burgundian. A devoted Burgundian, Sire Guy de Bar, was named provost of Paris in the place of Tanneguy Duchatel. The mason with whom Bernard of Armagnac had taken refuge went and told the new provost that the constable was concealed at his house. Thither the provost hurried, made the constable mount behind him, and carried him off to prison at the Chatelet, at the same time making honorable exertions to prevent massacre and plunder.

But factions do not so soon give up either their vengeance or their hopes. On the 11th of June, 1418, hardly twelve days after Paris had fallen into the hands of the Burgundians, a body of sixteen hundred men issued from the Bastille, and rushed into the street St. Antoine, shouting, “Hurrah for the king, the dauphin, and the Count of Armagnac!” They were Tanneguy Duchatel and some of the chiefs of the Armagnacs who were attempting to regain Paris, where they had observed that the Burgundians were not numerous. Their attempt had no success, and merely gave the Burgundians the opportunity and the signal for a massacre of their enemies. The little band of Tanneguy Duchatel was instantly repulsed, hemmed in, and forced to re-enter the Bastille with a loss of four hundred men. Tanneguy saw that he could make no defence there; so he hastily made his way out, taking the dauphin with him to Melun. The massacre of the Armagnacs had already commenced on the previous evening: they were harried in the hostelries and houses; they were cut down with axes in the streets. On the night between the 12th and 13th of June a rumor spread about that there were bands of Armagnacs coming to deliver their friends in prison. “They are at the St. Germain gate,” said some. No, it is the St. Marceau gate,” said others. The mob assembled and made a furious rush upon the prison-gates. “The city and burgesses will have no peace,” was the general saying, “so long as there is one Armagnac left! Hurrah for peace! Hurrah for the Duke of Burgundy!” The provost of Paris, the lord of Isle-Adam, and the principal Burgundian chieftains, galloped up with a thousand horse, and strove to pacify these madmen, numbering, it is said, some forty thousand. They were received with a stout of, “A plague of your justice and pity! Accursed be he whosoever shall have pity on these traitors of Armagnacs. They are English; they are hounds. They had already made banners for the King of England, and would fain have planted them upon the gates of the city. They made us work for nothing, and when we asked for our due they said, ‘You rascals, haven’t ye a sou to buy a cord and go hang yourselves? In the devil’s name speak no more of it; it will be no use, whatever you say.’” The provost of Paris durst not oppose such fury as this. “Do what you please,” said he. The mob ran to look for the constable Armagnac and the chancellor de Marle in the Palace-tower, in which they had been shut up, and they were at once torn to pieces amidst ferocious rejoicings. All the prisons were ransacked and emptied; the prisoners who attempted resistance were smoked out; they were hurled down from the windows upon pikes held up to catch them. The massacre lasted from four o’clock in the morning to eleven. The common report was, that fifteen hundred persons had perished in it; the account rendered to parliament made the number eight hundred. The servants of the Duke of Burgundy mentioned to him no more than four hundred.

It was not before the 14th of July that he, with Queen Isabel, came back to the city; and he came with a sincere design, if not of punishing the cut-throats, at least of putting a stop to all massacre and pillage; but there is nothing more difficult than to suppress the consequences of a mischief of which you dare not attack the cause. One Bertrand, head of one of the companies of butchers, had been elected captain of St. Denis because he had saved the abbey from the rapacity of a noble Burgundian chieftain, Hector de Saveuse. The lord, to avenge himself, had the butcher assassinated. The burgesses went to the duke to demand that the assassin should be punished; and the duke, who durst neither assent nor refuse, could only partially cloak his weakness by imputing the crime to some disorderly youngsters whom he enabled to get away. On the 20th of August an angry mob collected in front of the Chatelet, shouting out that nobody would bring the Armagnacs to justice, and that they were every day being set at liberty on payment of money. The great and little Chatelet were stormed, and the prisoners massacred. The mob would have liked to serve the Bastille the same; but the duke told the rioters that he would give the prisoners up to them if they would engage to conduct them to the Chatelet without doing them any harm, and, to win them over, he grasped the hand of their head man, who was no other than Capeluche, the city executioner. Scarcely had they arrived at the court-yard of the little Chatelet when the prisoners were massacred there without any regard for the promise made to the duke. He sent for the most distinguished burgesses, and consulted them as to what could be done to check such excesses; but they confined themselves to joining him in deploring them. He sent for the savages once more, and said to them, “You would do far better to go and lay siege to Montlhery, to drive off the king’s enemies, who have come ravaging everything up to the St. Jacques gate, and preventing the harvest from being got in.” “Readily,” they answered, “only give us leaders.” He gave them leaders, who led six thousand of them to Montlhery. As soon as they were gone Duke John had Capeluche and two of his chief accomplices brought to trial, and Capeluche was beheaded in the market-place by his own apprentice. But the gentry sent to the siege of Montlhery did not take the place; they accused their leaders of having betrayed them, and returned to be a scourge to the neighborhood of Paris, everywhere saying that the Duke of Burgundy was the most irresolute man in the kingdom, and that if there were no nobles the war would be ended in a couple of months. Duke John set about negotiating with the dauphin and getting him back to Paris. The dauphin replied that he was quite ready to obey and serve his mother as a good son should, but that it would be more than he could stomach to go back to a city where so many crimes and so much tyranny had but lately been practised. Terms of reconciliation were drawn up and signed on the 16th of September, 1418, at St. Maur, by the queen, the Duke of Burgundy, and the pope’s legates; but the dauphin refused to ratify them. The unpunished and long-continued massacres in Paris had redoubled his distrust towards the Duke of Burgundy; he had, moreover, just assumed the title of regent of the kingdom; and he had established at Poitiers a parliament, of which Juvenal des Ursins was a member. He had promised the young Count of Armagnac to exact justice for his father’s cruel death; and the old friends of the house of Orleans remained faithful to their enmities. The Duke of Burgundy had at one time to fight, and at another to negotiate with the dauphin and the King of England, both at once, and always without success. The dauphin and his council, though showing a little more discretion, were going on in the same alternative and unsatisfactory condition. Clearly neither France and England nor the factions in France had yet exhausted their passions or their powers; and the day of summary vengeance was nearer than that of real reconciliation.

Nevertheless, complicated, disturbed and persistently resultless situations always end by becoming irksome to those who are entangled in them, and by inspiring a desire for extrication. The King of England, in spite of his successes and his pride, determined upon sending the Earl of Warwick to Provins, where the king and the Duke of Burgundy still were: a truce was concluded between the English and the Burgundians, and it was arranged that on the 30th of May, 1419, the two kings should meet between Mantes and Melun, and hold a conference for the purpose of trying to arrive at a peace. A few days before the time, Duke John set out from Provins with the king, Queen Isabel, and Princess Catherine, and repaired first of all to Pontoise, and then to the place fixed for the interview, on the borders of the Seine, near Meulan, where two pavilions had been prepared, one for the King of France and the other for the King of England. Charles VI., being ill, remained at Pontoise. Queen Isabel, Princess Catherine, and the Duke of Burgundy arrived at the appointed spot. Henry V. was already there; he went to meet the queen, saluted her, took her hand, and embraced her and Madame Catherine as well; Duke John slightly bent his knee to the king, who raised him up and embraced him likewise. This solemn interview was succeeded by several others to which Princess Catherine did not come. The queen requested the King of England to state exactly what he proposed; and he demanded the execution of the treaty of Bretigny, the cession of Normandy, and the absolute sovereignty, without any bond of vassalage, of whatever should be ceded by the treaty. A short discussion ensued upon some secondary questions. There appeared to be no distant probability of an understanding. The English believed that they saw an inclination on the Duke of Burgundy’s part not to hasten to a conclusion, and to obtain better conditions from King Henry by making him apprehensive of a reconciliation with the dauphin. Henry proposed to him, for the purpose of ending everything, a conference between themselves alone; and it took place on the 3d of June. “Cousin,” said the king to the duke, “we wish you to know that we will have your king’s daughter, and all that we have demanded with her; else we will thrust him out of his kingdom, and you too.” “Sir,” answered the duke, “you speak according to your pleasure; but before thrusting my lord and myself from the kingdom you will have what will tire you, we make no doubt, and you will have enough to do to keep yourself in your own island.” Between two princes so proud there was little probability of an understanding; and they parted with no other result than mutual displeasure.

Some days before, on the 14th of May, 1419, a truce of three months had been concluded between the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy, and was to lead to a conference also between these two princes. It did not commence before the 8th of July. During this interval, Duke John had submitted for the mature deliberation of his council the question whether it were better to grant the English demands, or become reconciled to the dauphin. Amongst his official councillors opinions were divided; but, in his privacy, the lady of Giac, “whom he loved and trusted mightily,” and Philip Jossequin, who had at first been his chamber attendant, and afterwards custodian of his jewels and of his privy seal, strongly urged him to make peace with the dauphin; and the pope’s fresh legate, the Bishop of Laon, added his exhortations to these home influences. There had been fitted up at a league’s distance from Melun, on the embankment of the ponds of Vert, a summer-house of branches and leaves, hung with drapery and silken stuffs; and there the first interview between the two princes took place. The dauphin left in displeasure; he had found the Duke of Burgundy haughty and headstrong. Already the old servants of the late Duke of Orleans, impelled by their thirst for vengeance, were saying out loud that the matter should be decided by arms, when the lady of Giac went after the dauphin, who from infancy had also been very much attached to her, and she, going backwards and forwards between the two princes, was so affectionate and persuasive with both that she prevailed upon them to meet again, and to sincerely wish for an understanding. The next day but one they returned to the place of meeting, attended, each of them, by a large body of men-at-arms. They advanced towards one another with ten men only, and dismounted. The Duke of Burgundy went on bended knee. The dauphin took him by the hand, embraced him, and would have raised him up. “No, my lord,” said the duke; “I know how I ought to address you.” The dauphin assured him that he forgave every offence, if indeed he had received any, and added, “Cousin, if in the proposed treaty between us there be aught which is not to your liking, we desire that you amend it, and henceforth we will desire all you shall desire; make no doubt of it.” They conversed for some time with every appearance of cordiality; and then the treaty was signed. It was really a treaty of reconciliation, in which, without dwelling upon “the suspicions and imaginings which have been engendered in the hearts of ourselves and many of our officers, and have hindered us from acting with concord in the great matters of my lord the king and his kingdom, and resisting the damnable attempts of his and our old enemies,” the two princes made mutual promises, each in language suitable to their rank and connection, “to love one another, support one another, and serve one another mutually, as good and loyal relatives, and bade all their servants, if they saw any hinderance thereto, to give them notice thereof, according to their bounden duty.” The treaty was signed by all the men of note belonging to the houses of both princes; and the crowd which surrounded them shouted “Noel!” and invoked curses on whosoever should be minded henceforth to take up arms again in this damnable quarrel. When the dauphin went away, the duke insisted upon holding his stirrup, and they parted with every demonstration of amity. The dauphin returned to Touraine, and the duke to Pontoise, to be near the king, who, by letters of July 19, confirmed the treaty, enjoined general forgetfulness of the past, and ordained that “all war should cease, save against the English.”