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 Battle of Agincourt, 1415. Treaty of Troyes, 1420 Death of Henry V, 1422. Henry VI, 1422–61. The Duke of Bedford continues the French War.

on a large scale, both on his ships and with his land army. Guns and gunpowder had been known before the middle of the fourteenth century, but so far had been little used. Their use explains Henry's success in his sieges in France, for with big guns you can batter down stone walls pretty quickly, whereas Edward III had spent eight months over the taking of Calais, which he only won by starving it out.

The French towns defended themselves gallantly, but, before his death, Henry had managed to conquer all Normandy, and had even reached the River Loire. But his great feat was the glorious battle of Agincourt, won against enormous odds in 1415. Finally in 1420 he got hold of the poor mad Charles VI, entered Paris with him and compelled him to conclude the Treaty of Troyes, by which he, Henry, should succeed to the French crown and marry the French princess Katharine. Then, in the flower of his age, and leaving to an infant of nine months old the succession to both crowns, he died in 1422.

There was one good ‘king's uncle’, John, Duke of Bedford, who did his best to keep these two crowns on his nephew's head; but there were other uncles and cousins who were not so good. Little Henry VI grew up into a gentle, pious, tender-hearted man, who hated war, hated wicked courtiers, loved only learning and learned men, founded the greatest school in the world (Eton), and shut his eyes to the fact that England was getting utterly out of hand. Bedford just managed to hold down Northern France (which had always hated the Treaty of 1420) until his own death in 1435; after that all Frenchmen rallied to their natural King, Charles VII. The noble French ‘Maid of God’, Joan