Upon a throne, and dressed in cloth of gold, Henry V. received the keys of Rouen from Guy le Bouteiller, in the Chartreuse de la Rose. Then the Duke of Exeter, as captain of the town, set up the English standard over all her gates and above the donjon of the castle; and at daylight on the twentieth of January the French garrison filed out of Rouen across the Seine towards the Bridge of St. George on the left bank, and were stripped of everything, save one suit of clothes, by the English soldiers, as they went. Only two thousand men survived out of the six thousand who had so gallantly come into Rouen to help resist the enemy. While they escaped sadly into desolated Normandy, King Henry V. was advancing from the Chartreuse; he moved slowly round the city to the Porte Cauchoise, and behind him was borne a fox's brush swinging upon a lance.[44] The bells rang and the cannon roared salute as he entered Rouen, but of the inhabitants scarcely one had strength to stand upright, not one had voice to cheer, and all besought for bread. Alone of the nine prisoners, Alain Blanchart was beheaded. But thirty-three burgesses were picked out to pay a special tax in ready money and imprisoned till it was delivered.[45] The main sum of the ransom was disputed with the true Norman delight in legal quibbling, and not fully paid (or at least "arranged for") till 1430.
The imposition of this huge sum on a community already at the end of its resources had a lasting and terrible effect upon the town. The Chapterhouse were obliged to remit half their rents from the farmers ruined by the war. All debts had to receive special postponement, and commerce suffered almost as fatally as agriculture. All over Rouen houses were continually being put up to auction for public or private defalcations, to be bought by those Englishmen who had not been already given estates as a reward for their services. The buildings of the Abbey of St. Ouen were entirely occupied by the men of the Duke of Suffolk, so that the archbishop of 1423 was unable to pass the night before his entry in the abbey, as of immemorial custom, because the English filled up every inch of it. Of the exquisite east end we can see now, not much more than the beautiful little "Tour aux Clercs" of the older abbey was standing in 1419. But it may be put down as one of the few things creditable to the English occupation that part of the nave was certainly finished under their encouragement (see [Chap. X.]). Meanwhile the King took care to strengthen the castle at the Porte Bouvreuil, and the barbacan at the bridge; and his own palace began to rise near the Tour Malsifrotte and the Porte du Pré de la Bataille. Nothing now remains of it save the name of "Rue du Vieux Palais" in the Quartier St. Eloi (see [map D]). But it served in the first years as a residence for the Duke of Bedford, and for the young King Henry VI.
After the conquest of Rouen, one town after another fell into the English hands. On September 23 in 1419, the last resistance in Normandy was quelled at Château Gaillard. Mont St. Michael alone remained free until the English domination ceased and France joined her in her freedom. The King who took the city of Rouen was seen there twice again. In 1421, with Catherine of France, his wife, he opened the Estates of Normandy. In 1422 he was borne through Rouen on his funeral bier; two months before the crown of France would have been his.
The Rouen besieged by King Henry V. can be almost exactly traced along the lines of the modern boulevards shown in [map B]. The extension eastwards, which is given in [map E]. with this chapter, took place chiefly during the fourteenth century when Rouen was rapidly growing to be the second town in the kingdom. In making the circuit of the walls you will remember passing the Tour du Colombier between the Porte Martainville and the Porte St. Hilaire. It is represented now by a picturesque old house standing four-square upon a buttressed wall above the stream, at the extreme eastern verge of the great enclosure of the hospital. It is still called the Maison des Célestins, and aged men over sixty are preserved there to live out in peace the autumn of their days. Both the name and the present occupiers are an appropriate reminder of one who is connected with some of the better memories of the English occupation, the Duke of Bedford who founded the Couvent des Célestins, that was ruined by the Huguenots in 1562, upon the land formerly occupied by his Château de Chantereine, called "Joyeux Repos."
This convent, which was also known as the "Val Notre Dame," is not the only trace which the Duke of Bedford's benefactions left in Rouen. He also took the Carmelite brethren under his especial protection, being no doubt supported in this charitable action by the English Carmelite confessor of Henry V., Thomas de Valde, who died at Rouen in 1430. But his most intimate connection with ecclesiastical Rouen is recorded in the archives of the Cathedral, where we are told that he left the chapterhouse in his will a beautiful golden chalice garnished with gems, a pair of golden censers and a silver-gilt crucifix, in memory of his being made a canon at his own request. And there is some irony in the thought that at the moment he was giving these proofs of his affection for the town, his councillors were, with his consent, pursuing Jeanne d'Arc with every subtlest form of legal and religious torture.
Scarcely a year after Jeanne had been burnt in the Vieux Marché, the Duke's wife, Anne of Burgundy, died at the early age of 28, and in addition to this private loss he had to submit to the consequences of a grave error of judgment in his second marriage to Jacqueline, daughter of Pierre de Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol, an alliance which gravely offended the whole house of Burgundy. In 1435 he died himself on the 14th of September, "die exaltacionis Sancte Crucis" as the chapterhouse entries record, in the same Château of Rouen where Jeanne d'Arc had suffered her last imprisonment. His body was embalmed and buried in a leaden coffin in the choir of Rouen Cathedral by the side of the dukes of Normandy and the English kings his ancestors, beneath a magnificently sculptured tomb.
He left the Célestins of "Joyeux Repos," near the Tour du Colombier,[46] a small legacy, and benefactions to many other abbeys and churches in the town. Though the canons did not get their golden treasure by any means intact, or indeed get any part of it without protracted struggles, they always took good care of his tomb, which was certainly in excellent preservation before the Calvinists of 1562 began a destruction which was completed by the Revolution. An inscription, however, was left on an adjacent pillar, and this was copied by Dugdale. The ostrich feathers and the order of the garter were shown upon the brass besides the epitaph. In 1866 his coffin was found still in its original position on the right side of the altar, and nothing more is now left of him in Rouen.
