[Sidenote: Henry V. 1413-1422]
Such were some of the forces at work for fourteen brief years while
Henry IV. wore the coveted crown, and while his son, the roystering
"Prince Hal," in the new character of King (Henry V.) lived out his
brief nine years of glory and conquest.
[Sidenote: Agincourt, 1415]
France, with an insane King, vicious Queen Regent, and torn by the dissensions of ambitious Dukes, had reached her hour of greatest weakness, when Henry V. swept down upon her with his archers, and broke her spirit by his splendid victory at Agincourt; then married her Princess Katharine, and was proclaimed Regent of France. The rough wooing of his French bride, immortalized by Shakespeare, throws a glamour of romance over the time.
But an all-subduing King cut short Henry's triumphs. He was stricken and died (1422), leaving an infant son nine months old, who bore the weight of the new title, "King of England and France," while Henry's brother, the Duke of Bedford, reigned as Regent.
[Sidenote: Joan of Arc. Battle of Orleans 1429.]
Then it was, that by a mysterious inspiration, Joan of Arc, a child and a peasant, led the French army to the besieged City of Orleans, and the crucial battle was won.
Charles VII. was King. The English were driven out of France, and the Hundred Years' War ended in defeat (1453). England had lost Aquitaine, which for two hundred years (since Henry II.) had been hers, and had not a foot of ground on Norman soil.
The long shadow cast by Edward III upon England was deepening. A ruinous war had drained her resources and arrested her liberties; and now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by impeachments, murders, and impotent outbursts of fury.
[Sidenote: Jack Cade's Insurrection, 1450]