A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

The party of the Constable, which had once been that of most of the princes of the royal blood, consisted now of adventurers, pledged to continue a civil war, to which they owed their importance. The real governors of France and Paris were the Gascon noble D’Armagnac and the Breton Tannegui Duchâtel. Their tyranny was of the bitterest description; their hired men-at-arms did all the harm an undisciplined soldiery can do; the people were taxed, in the midst of bitter famine, to the last farthing; their bloody tyranny induced them to forbid bathing in the Seine, lest the bathers should find there the corpses of their victims. The sole virtue of the party was that they continued the war with England, while Burgundy renewed his treaty with that nation. The Constable’s efforts were not successful. An attempt to regain Harfleur was defeated by the Duke of Bedford. But Henry for the present was content to stand on the defensive. The Parliament, in its enthusiasm at his great success, had granted him large subsidies, and the tax on wool for life; and he was spending his time in recruiting the strength of his army, and in giving a magnificent reception to Sigismund, King of the Romans.

Visit of Sigismund. His position in Europe. 1416.

His close union with Henry.

That Prince had succeeded in re-establishing the obsolete supremacy of the head of the Roman Empire. This he had done by the activity and success with which he collected a general council of the Church at Constance. His object at the council was to heal the great schism, which since 1378 had divided the Church. On the death of Gregory XI., who had brought back the Papacy to Rome, after its seventy years’ servitude to the French at Avignon, a double election took place, and the world was divided between Urbanists, who owned Urban VI., the Roman Pontiff, and the Clementines, who acknowledged Clement VII. of Avignon. Each Pope had his successors, and an attempted compromise at Pisa in 1409 had produced a third Pope. The three claimants to the honour were now Gregory XII. at Rome, Benedict XIII. at Avignon, John XXIII. at Pisa. The new council declared itself superior to all Popes, and proceeded to secure the dismissal or resignation of these three prelates. It also undertook to suppress the Wicliffite heresy, which had spread to Bohemia. Its efforts in this direction led to the condemnation and burning of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. The negotiations with Pope Benedict, who was acknowledged in Spain, were intrusted to Sigismund, who thus not unreasonably thought himself the arbiter of Europe, and determined to add to his ecclesiastical successes the healing of the war between France and England. For this purpose he passed through Paris, but met with indifferent success, and then betook himself to England. With Henry, as suppresser of heresy and champion of the Church, he had much in common, and he soon laid aside his position of arbiter to become an English partisan.[89] One incident of his visit is interesting, as marking both his position and the determined independence of the English. While in Paris he was present at a trial, and one party to the dispute seemed on the point of losing his case because he was not of knightly rank. Sigismund immediately knighted him. This interference was not pleasant to the French, and gave rise to the idea that the Emperor was claiming universal supremacy. On his approach to England, therefore, one of the King’s brothers and some other lords rode out into the water by the side of the ship, and there made him solemnly assert that he came as a friend, and claimed no jurisdiction in England.

Failure of Sigismund’s mediation.

Armagnac attacks Queen Isabella. 1417.

She allies herself with Burgundy.

Henry’s second invasion.

Sigismund’s efforts at procuring peace had been thwarted in Paris by the determination of D’Armagnac, whose position had become apparently more assured than ever. One after the other, Charles VI.’s two elder sons died, and his third son, Charles, who had been brought up by the Armagnac party, was now Dauphin. Besides the Constable, there was no one but his mother who had influence over him. That influence Bernard was determined to destroy. The avaricious character and licentiousness of the Queen afforded easy opportunity. He drove her into privacy at Tours, and seized her money. Henceforward she hated the Dauphin heartily, and was ready to do anything to injure him. Thus, when Burgundy approached Paris with an army, he was suddenly summoned to rescue the Queen from her captivity, and France became still more distinctly divided into the party of the Dauphin and the party of the Queen. Still further to complete the separation, and to give a shadow of legitimacy to their action, the Queen and Burgundy established a counter-Parliament at Amiens, and a rival Great Council of France. The civil war went on increasing in atrocity, and D’Armagnac was too hard pressed to interfere with Henry, who, on August 14th, landed at Honfleur for his second invasion, and proceeded to master Normandy. With Flanders, Artois and Picardy on the one hand rendered neutral by the friendship of Burgundy, and Brittany on the other under a truce with him, he could act at his ease. Caen, Bayeux, L’Aigle, were captured one after the other, and the next year, with four divisions spreading from Artois to Brittany, he pushed southward, conquering all the strong towns as he went. He was not a merciful conqueror. He exacted to the full the rights of war. Most of the towns were treated as Harfleur had been, but in nearly every case a certain number of the citizens were beheaded under the title of rebels.

The Parisians, anxious for peace, admit the Burgundians.