The offensive was soon after taken by the Burgundians, and the Duke of Berri was besieged in Bourges; but Frenchmen were disinclined to fight against Frenchmen, and a treaty as hollow as any of the rest was concluded under the walls of that place. Even while the negotiations went on, means were taken to open the eyes of the dauphin to the ambition of the Burgundian prince; and John, sans peur, saw himself opposed in the council by one who had long been subservient to his will.
But the duke found easy means to crush this resistance. The people of Paris were roused, at his beck, into tumult; the Bastile was besieged by the armed bands of Caboche and his companions, the palace of the dauphin invaded, and he himself reduced to the state of a mere prisoner. More bloodshed followed; and Burgundy at length found that an enraged multitude is not so easily calmed as excited. His situation became somewhat difficult. Although the dauphin was shut up in the Hôtel St. Pol, he found means of communicating with the princes of the blood royal without; and nothing seemed left for the Duke it Burgundy but an extension of the convention of Bourges to a general peace with all his opponents. This was concluded at Pontoise, much against the will of the Parisians; the dauphin was set at liberty; and the leaders of the Armagnac party were permitted to enter Paris. Burgundy soon found that he had made a mistake; that his popularity with the people was shaken, and his power over them gone. He was even fearful for his person; and well might he be so. But his course was speedily determined; and, after having failed in an attempt to carry off the dauphin while on a party of pleasure at Vincennes, he retired in haste to Flanders.
A complete change of scene took place; the creatures of the Duke of Burgundy were driven from power, and sanguinary retribution marked the ascendency of the Armagnac party.
The easiest labor of Hercules, probably, was the destruction of the hydra; for creatures with many heads are always weaker than those with one. Dissensions spread among the Armagnac faction. The queen and the dauphin disagreed; and the prince, finding the tyranny of the Armagnacs as hard to bear as that of the Burgundians, instigated the duke to return to Paris. John without fear, however, had not force sufficient to effect any great purpose; and, after an ineffectual attempt to besiege the capital, he retired before a large army, gathered from all parts of France, with the king and all the princes of the blood at its head. Compiegne capitulated to the Armagnacs; Soissons was taken by assault; but Arras held out, and once more negotiations for peace commenced under its walls. A treaty was concluded by the influence of the dauphin, who was weary of being the shuttle-cock between two factions, and resolved to make himself master of the capital. His first effort, however, was frustrated, and he was compelled to fly to Bourges. With great adroitness, he then took advantage of a proposed conference at Corbeil between himself and the allied princes. He agreed to the meeting; but while they waited for him at Corbeil, he passed quietly on to Paris, made himself master of the capital, and seized the treasures which his mother had accumulated in that city. Three parties now appeared in France: that of the Duke of Burgundy; that of the allied princes; and that of the dauphin; and in the mean while, an acute enemy, with some just pretensions to certain portions of France, and unfounded claims to the crown itself, was watching from the shores of England for a favorable moment to seize upon the long-coveted possession. From the time of the treaty of Bretigny, wars and truces had succeeded each other between the two countries--hostilities and negotiations; and during the late dissensions, English alliance had been sought and found by both parties; but, at the same time, long discussions had taken place between the courts of France and England with the pretended object of concluding a general and definitive treaty of peace. Henry demanded much, however; France would grant little; offensive words were added to the rejection of captious proposals and suddenly the news spread over the country like lightning, that Henry the Fifth of England had landed in arms upon the coast of France.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A few miles from the strong town of Bourges, on the summit of a considerable elevation, was a château or castle, even then showing some signs of antiquity. It was not a very large and magnificent dwelling, consisting merely of the outer walls with their flanking towers, one tall, square tower, and one great mass stretching out into the court, and rising to the height of two stories. In a small, plain chamber, containing every thing useful and convenient, but nothing very ornamental, sat a young gentleman of three or four-and-twenty years of age, covered with corselet and back piece, but with his head and limbs bare of armor. Two men, however, were busily engaged fitting upon him the iron panoply of war. One was kneeling at his feet, fastening the greaves upon his legs; the other stood behind, attaching the pauldrons and pallets. On a table hard by stood a casque and plume, beside which lay the gauntlets, the shield, and the sword; and near the table stood a lady, somewhat past the middle age, gazing gravely and anxiously at the young man's countenance.
But there was still another person in the room. A young girl of some six or seven years of age had climbed up upon the gentleman's knee, and, was making a necklace for him of her arms, while ever and anon she kissed him tenderly.
"You must come back, Jean--you must come back," she said; "though dear mother says perhaps you may never come back--you must not leave your own little Agnes. What would she do without you?"
Jean Charost embraced her warmly, but he did not speak; for there were many emotions in his heart which he feared might make his voice tremble. Few who had seen him six or seven years before would have recognized in that tall, powerful young man, the slim, graceful lad who was secretary to the unfortunate Duke of Orleans; nor was the change, perhaps, less in his mind than in his person, for although he was of that character which changes slowly, yet all characters change. The oak requires a hundred years; the willow hardly twenty; and as one layer or circle grows upon another in the heart of the tree, so do new feelings come over man's spirit as he advances from youth to age. Each epoch in human life has the things pertaining to itself. The boy can never divine what the man will feel; the man too little recollects what were the feelings of the boy.
However, the change in Jean Charost, in consequence of the circumstances in which he had been placed, was somewhat different from that which might have been expected. He had become tenderer rather than harder in the last seven years, more flexible rather than more rigid. Till between seventeen and eighteen years of age, hard necessities, constant application, the everlasting dealing with material things, the guard which he had been continually forced to put upon himself--knowing that not only his own future fate might be darkened, but the happiness and deliverance of a parent might be lost by one false step--had all tended to give him an unyouthful sternness of principle and of demeanor, which had perhaps saved him from many evils, but had deprived him of much innocent enjoyment.