In 1417 the English returned under Henry V. The Burgundians had promised neutrality, and the defeated Armagnacs were forced in their need to “borrow[88] of the saints.” But hateful memories clung to them in Paris and they were betrayed. On the night of 29th May 1418, the son of an ironmonger on the Petit Pont, who had charge of the wicket of the Porte St. Germain, crept into his father’s room and stole the keys while he slept. The gate was then opened to the Burgundians, who seized the person of the helpless and imbecile king. Some Armagnacs escaped, bearing the dauphin with them, and the remainder were flung into prison. The Burgundian partisans in the city, among whom was the powerful corporation of the butchers and fleshers, now rose, and on Sunday, 14th June, ran to the prisons.
Before dawn fifteen hundred Armagnacs were indiscriminately butchered under the most revolting circumstances. The count himself perished, and a strip of his skin was carried about Paris in mockery of the white scarf of the Armagnacs. Jean sans Peur and Queen Isabella[89] entered the city, amid the acclamation of the people, and soon after a second massacre followed, in spite of Jean’s efforts to prevent it. He was now master of Paris, but the Armagnacs were swarming in the country around and the English marching without let on the city. In these straits he sought a reconciliation with the dauphin and his Armagnac counsellors at Melun, on 11th July 1419. On 10th September a second conference was arranged, and duke and dauphin, each with ten attendants, met in a wicker enclosure on the bridge at Montereau. Jean doffed his cap and knelt to the dauphin, but before he could rise was felled by a blow from an axe and stabbed to death.[90] In 1521 a monk at Dijon showed the skull of Jean sans Peur to Francis I., and pointing to a hole made by the assassin’s axe, said: “Sire, it was through this hole that the English entered France.”
On receipt of the news of his father’s murder, the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip le Bon, thirsting for vengeance, flung himself into the arms of the English, and by the treaty of Troyes on May 20, 1420, Henry V. was given a French princess to wife and the reversion of the crown of France, which, after Charles’ death, was to be united ever more to that of England. But the French crown never circled Henry’s brow: on August 31, 1422, he lay dead at Vincennes. He was buried with great pomp in the royal abbey of St. Denis, leaving an infant son of nine months to inherit the dual monarchy. Within a few weeks of Henry’s death the hapless king of France was entombed under the same roof; a royal herald cried “for God’s pity on the soul of the most high and most excellent Charles, king of France, our natural sovereign lord,” and in the next breath hailed “Henry of Lancaster, by the grace of God, king of France and of England, our sovereign lord.” All the royal officers reversed their maces, wands and swords as a token that their functions were at an end. At the next festival the Duke of Bedford was seen in the Sainte Chapelle of the palace of St. Louis, exhibiting the crown of thorns to the people as Regent of France, and a statue of Henry V. of England was raised in the great hall, following on the line of the kings of France from Pharamond to Charles.
CHAPTER IX
JEANNE D’ARC—PARIS UNDER THE ENGLISH—END OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION
THE occupation of Paris by the English was the darkest hour in French history, yet amid the universal misery and dejection the treaty of Troyes was hailed with joy. When the two kings entered Paris after its signature, the whole way from the Porte St. Denis to Notre Dame was filled with people crying, “Noël, noël!”
The university, the parlement, the queen-mother, the whole of North France, from Brittany and Normandy to Flanders, from the Channel to the line of the Loire, accepted the situation, and the Duke of Burgundy, most powerful of the royal princes, was a friend of the English. Yet a few French hearts beat true. While the regent Duke of Bedford was entering Paris, a handful of knights unfurled the royal banner at Melun, crying—“Long live King Charles, seventh of the name, by the grace of God king of France!” And what a pitiful incarnation of national independence was this to whom the devoted sons of France were now called to rally!—a feeble youth of nineteen, indolent, licentious, mocked at by the triumphant English as the “little king of Bourges.”
The story of the resurrection of France at the call of an untutored village girl is one of the most enthralling dramas of history. When all men had despaired; when the cruelty, ambition and greed of the princes of France had wrought her destruction; when the miserable dauphin at Chinon was prepared to seek safety by an ignominious flight to Spain or Scotland; when Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, was about to fall into English hands—the means of salvation were revealed in the ecstatic visions of a simple peasant maid. With that divine inspiration vouchsafed alone to faith and fervent love, she saw with piercing insight the essential things to be done. The siege of Orleans must be raised and the dauphin anointed king at Rheims. “The originality of the Maid,” says Michelet, “and the cause of her success was her good sense amid all her enthusiasm and exaltation.” We may not here narrate the story of those miraculous three months of the year 1429 (27th April-16th July), which saw the relief of Orleans, the victories of Jargeau, of Patay (where invincible Talbot was made prisoner), of the surrender of ill-omened Troyes and of the solemn coronation at Rheims. Jeanne deemed her mission over after Rheims, but to her ill-hap was persuaded to follow the royal army after the retreat of the English from Senlis, and on 23rd August she occupied St. Denis. She declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was foiled by the king’s apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[91] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, when she was carried away to St. Denis, at whose shrine she hung up her arms—her mysterious sword from St. Catherine de Fierbois and her banner of pure white, emblazoned with the fleur-de-lys and the figure of the Saviour, with the device “Jesu Maria.”
