A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  killed, two more were taken prisoners, seven Counts were killed,

  three more were taken prisoners, and ten thousand knights and

  gentlemen were slain upon the field. The English loss amounted to

  sixteen hundred men, among whom were the Duke of York and the Earl

  of Suffolk.

  War is a dreadful thing; and it is appalling to know how the

  English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners

  mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how the

  dead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen and

  countrywomen, and afterwards buried in great pits; how the dead

  upon the English side were piled up in a great barn, and how their

  bodies and the barn were all burned together. It is in such

  things, and in many more much too horrible to relate, that the real

  desolation and wickedness of war consist. Nothing can make war

  otherwise than horrible. But the dark side of it was little

  thought of and soon forgotten; and it cast no shade of trouble on

  the English people, except on those who had lost friends or

  relations in the fight. They welcomed their King home with shouts

  of rejoicing, and plunged into the water to bear him ashore on

  their shoulders, and flocked out in crowds to welcome him in every

  town through which he passed, and hung rich carpets and tapestries

  out of the windows, and strewed the streets with flowers, and made

  the fountains run with wine, as the great field of Agincourt had

  run with blood.

  SECOND PART

  THAT proud and wicked French nobility who dragged their country to

  destruction, and who were every day and every year regarded with

  deeper hatred and detestation in the hearts of the French people,

  learnt nothing, even from the defeat of Agincourt. So far from

  uniting against the common enemy, they became, among themselves,

  more violent, more bloody, and more false - if that were possible -

  than they had been before. The Count of Armagnac persuaded the

  French king to plunder of her treasures Queen Isabella of Bavaria,

  and to make her a prisoner. She, who had hitherto been the bitter

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  enemy of the Duke of Burgundy, proposed to join him, in revenge.

  He carried her off to Troyes, where she proclaimed herself Regent

  of France, and made him her lieutenant. The Armagnac party were at

  that time possessed of Paris; but, one of the gates of the city

  being secretly opened on a certain night to a party of the duke's

  men, they got into Paris, threw into the prisons all the Armagnacs

  upon whom they could lay their hands, and, a few nights afterwards,

  with the aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people, broke the

  prisons open, and killed them all. The former Dauphin was now

  dead, and the King's third son bore the title. Him, in the height

  of this murderous scene, a French knight hurried out of bed,

  wrapped in a sheet, and bore away to Poitiers. So, when the

  revengeful Isabella and the Duke of Burgundy entered Paris in

  triumph after the slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was

  proclaimed at Poitiers as the real Regent.

  King Henry had not been idle since his victory of Agincourt, but

  had repulsed a brave attempt of the French to recover Harfleur; had

  gradually conquered a great part of Normandy; and, at this crisis

  of affairs, took the important town of Rouen, after a siege of half

  a year. This great loss so alarmed the French, that the Duke of

  Burgundy proposed that a meeting to treat of peace should be held

  between the French and the English kings in a plain by the river

  Seine. On the appointed day, King Henry appeared there, with his

  two brothers, Clarence and Gloucester, and a thousand men. The

  unfortunate French King, being more mad than usual that day, could

  not come; but the Queen came, and with her the Princess Catherine:

  who was a very lovely creature, and who made a real impression on

  King Henry, now that he saw her for the first time. This was the

  most important circumstance that arose out of the meeting.

  As if it were impossible for a French nobleman of that time to be

  true to his word of honour in anything, Henry discovered that the

  Duke of Burgundy was, at that very moment, in secret treaty with

  the Dauphin; and he therefore abandoned the negotiation.

  The Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin, each of whom with the best

  reason distrusted the other as a noble ruffian surrounded by a

  party of noble ruffians, were rather at a loss how to proceed after

  this; but, at length they agreed to meet, on a bridge over the

  river Yonne, where it was arranged that there should be two strong

  gates put up, with an empty space between them; and that the Duke

  of Burgundy should come into that space by one gate, with ten men

  only; and that the Dauphin should come into that space by the other

  gate, also with ten men, and no more.

  So far the Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When the Duke of

  Burgundy was on his knee before him in the act of speaking, one of

  the Dauphin's noble ruffians cut the said duke down with a small

  axe, and others speedily finished him.

  It was in vain for the Dauphin to pretend that this base murder was

  not done with his consent; it was too bad, even for France, and

  caused a general horror. The duke's heir hastened to make a treaty

  with King Henry, and the French Queen engaged that her husband

  should consent to it, whatever it was. Henry made peace, on

  condition of receiving the Princess Catherine in marriage, and

  being made Regent of France during the rest of the King's lifetime,

  and succeeding to the French crown at his death. He was soon

  married to the beautiful Princess, and took her proudly home to

  England, where she was crowned with great honour and glory.

  This peace was called the Perpetual Peace; we shall soon see how

  long it lasted. It gave great satisfaction to the French people,

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  although they were so poor and miserable, that, at the time of the

  celebration of the Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying with

  starvation, on the dunghills in the streets of Paris. There was

  some resistance on the part of the Dauphin in some few parts of

  France, but King Henry beat it all down.

  And now, with his great possessions in France secured, and his

  beautiful wife to cheer him, and a son born to give him greater

  happiness, all appeared bright before him. But, in the fulness of

  his triumph and the height of his power, Death came upon him, and

  his day was done. When he fell ill at Vincennes, and found that he

  could not recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke serenely

  to those who wept around his bed. His wife and child, he said, he

  left to the loving care of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and his

  other faithful nobles. He gave them his advice that England should

  establish a friendship with the new Duke of Burgundy, and offer him

  the regency of France; that it should not set free the royal


  princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel

  might arise with France, England should never make peace without

  holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the

  attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which

  solemn sounds, on the thirty-first of August, one thousand four

  hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age

  and the tenth of his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.

  Slowly and mournfully they carried his embalmed body in a

  procession of great state to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his

  Queen was: from whom the sad intelligence of his death was

  concealed until he had been dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed

  of crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a

  golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried

  it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road

  black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal

  Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes

  of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light

  as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais

  there was a fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to Dover. And

  so, by way of London Bridge, where the service for the dead was

  chanted as it passed along, they brought the body to Westminster

  Abbey, and there buried it with great respect.

  CHAPTER XXII - ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE SIXTH

  PART THE FIRST

  IT had been the wish of the late King, that while his infant son

  KING HENRY THE SIXTH, at this time only nine months old, was under

  age, the Duke of Gloucester should be appointed Regent. The

  English Parliament, however, preferred to appoint a Council of

  Regency, with the Duke of Bedford at its head: to be represented,

  in his absence only, by the Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament

  would seem to have been wise in this, for Gloucester soon showed

  himself to be ambitious and troublesome, and, in the gratification

  of his own personal schemes, gave dangerous offence to the Duke of

  Burgundy, which was with difficulty adjusted.

  As that duke declined the Regency of France, it was bestowed by the

  poor French King upon the Duke of Bedford. But, the French King

  dying within two months, the Dauphin instantly asserted his claim

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  to the French throne, and was actually crowned under the title of

  CHARLES THE SEVENTH. The Duke of Bedford, to be a match for him,

  entered into a friendly league with the Dukes of Burgundy and

  Brittany, and gave them his two sisters in marriage. War with

  France was immediately renewed, and the Perpetual Peace came to an

  untimely end.

  In the first campaign, the English, aided by this alliance, were

  speedily successful. As Scotland, however, had sent the French

  five thousand men, and might send more, or attack the North of

  England while England was busy with France, it was considered that

  it would be a good thing to offer the Scottish King, James, who had

  been so long imprisoned, his liberty, on his paying forty thousand

  pounds for his board and lodging during nineteen years, and

  engaging to forbid his subjects from serving under the flag of

  France. It is pleasant to know, not only that the amiable captive

  at last regained his freedom upon these terms, but, that he married

  a noble English lady, with whom he had been long in love, and

  became an excellent King. I am afraid we have met with some Kings

  in this history, and shall meet with some more, who would have been

  very much the better, and would have left the world much happier,

  if they had been imprisoned nineteen years too.

  In the second campaign, the English gained a considerable victory

  at Verneuil, in a battle which was chiefly remarkable, otherwise,

  for their resorting to the odd expedient of tying their baggagehorses

  together by the heads and tails, and jumbling them up with

  the baggage, so as to convert them into a sort of live

  fortification - which was found useful to the troops, but which I

  should think was not agreeable to the horses. For three years

  afterwards very little was done, owing to both sides being too poor

  for war, which is a very expensive entertainment; but, a council

  was then held in Paris, in which it was decided to lay siege to the

  town of Orleans, which was a place of great importance to the

  Dauphin's cause. An English army of ten thousand men was

  despatched on this service, under the command of the Earl of

  Salisbury, a general of fame. He being unfortunately killed early

  in the siege, the Earl of Suffolk took his place; under whom

  (reinforced by SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, who brought up four hundred

  waggons laden with salt herrings and other provisions for the

  troops, and, beating off the French who tried to intercept him,

  came victorious out of a hot skirmish, which was afterwards called

  in jest the Battle of the Herrings) the town of Orleans was so

  completely hemmed in, that the besieged proposed to yield it up to

  their countryman the Duke of Burgundy. The English general,

  however, replied that his English men had won it, so far, by their

  blood and valour, and that his English men must have it. There

  seemed to be no hope for the town, or for the Dauphin, who was so

  dismayed that he even thought of flying to Scotland or to Spain -

  when a peasant girl rose up and changed the whole state of affairs.

  The story of this peasant girl I have now to tell.

  PART THE SECOND: THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC

  IN a remote village among some wild hills in the province of

  Lorraine, there lived a countryman whose name was JACQUES D'ARC.

  He had a daughter, JOAN OF ARC, who was at this time in her

  twentieth year. She had been a solitary girl from her childhood;

  she had often tended sheep and cattle for whole days where no human

  figure was seen or human voice heard; and she had often knelt, for

  hours together, in the gloomy, empty, little village chapel,

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  looking up at the altar and at the dim lamp burning before it,

  until she fancied that she saw shadowy figures standing there, and

  even that she heard them speak to her. The people in that part of

  France were very ignorant and superstitious, and they had many

  ghostly tales to tell about what they had dreamed, and what they

  saw among the lonely hills when the clouds and the mists were

  resting on them. So, they easily believed that Joan saw strange

  sights, and they whispered among themselves that angels and spirits

  talked to her.

  At last, Joan told her father that she had one day been surprised

  by a great unearthly light, and had afterwards heard a solemn

  voice, which said it was Saint Michael's voice, telling her that

  she was to go and help the Dauphin. Soon after this (she said),

  Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret had appeared to her with

  sparkling crowns upon their heads, an
d had encouraged her to be

  virtuous and resolute. These visions had returned sometimes; but

  the Voices very often; and the voices always said, 'Joan, thou art

  appointed by Heaven to go and help the Dauphin!' She almost always

  heard them while the chapel bells were ringing.

  There is no doubt, now, that Joan believed she saw and heard these

  things. It is very well known that such delusions are a disease

  which is not by any means uncommon. It is probable enough that

  there were figures of Saint Michael, and Saint Catherine, and Saint

  Margaret, in the little chapel (where they would be very likely to

  have shining crowns upon their heads), and that they first gave

  Joan the idea of those three personages. She had long been a

  moping, fanciful girl, and, though she was a very good girl, I dare

  say she was a little vain, and wishful for notoriety.

  Her father, something wiser than his neighbours, said, 'I tell

  thee, Joan, it is thy fancy. Thou hadst better have a kind husband

  to take care of thee, girl, and work to employ thy mind!' But Joan

  told him in reply, that she had taken a vow never to have a

  husband, and that she must go as Heaven directed her, to help the

  Dauphin.

  It happened, unfortunately for her father's persuasions, and most

  unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin's

  enemies found their way into the village while Joan's disorder was

  at this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants.

  The cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan's heart and made her

  worse. She said that the voices and the figures were now

  continually with her; that they told her she was the girl who,

  according to an old prophecy, was to deliver France; and she must

  go and help the Dauphin, and must remain with him until he should

  be crowned at Rheims: and that she must travel a long way to a

  certain lord named BAUDRICOURT, who could and would, bring her into

  the Dauphin's presence.

  As her father still said, 'I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,' she

  set off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor

  village wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality of

  her visions. They travelled a long way and went on and on, over a

  rough country, full of the Duke of Burgundy's men, and of all kinds

  of robbers and marauders, until they came to where this lord was.