Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/523

A.D. 1411.] to the already crushing calamities of France. In this he at length appeared successful; but the success was only apparent, the result was really tragical. Burgundy returned to Paris, visited the Duke of Orleans, who was somewhat indisposed, and there appeared the most cordial reconciliation. The Duke of Berri, enchanted with the happy effect of his good offices, on the 30th of November, 1407, accompanied his two nephews to the Church of the Augustines to hear mass, and there these seemingly amicable relatives took the sacrament together in token of their perfectly reconciled minds. In three days after, Orleans was murdered in the Rue Barbette, by eighteen assassins in the pay of his dear friend the newly-reconciled and forgiving Burgundy. What was worse, it came out that both these thoroughly depraved princes had entertained the same design of dispatching his rival, and that Burgundy had only got the start with his assassins. Burgundy absented himself from Paris for a short time, when he returned again, and boldly justified his deed. The king, who was at the moment in one of his more lucid intervals, wept over the fate of his brother, and vowed to avenge if, but the power of Burgundy was beyond that of the feeble monarch.

The Orleans family was vehement for vengeance. Isabella, the former Queen of England, now joined her mother-in-law the duchess dowager in this demand of justice from her father. She came with the widowed duchess in a chariot covered with black cloth, and followed by a long train of mourning carnages filled with their domestics. The two ladies sat m front of their chariot weeping, and thus they arrived at the gates of Paris. There they wore met by most of the princes of the blood, and this mournful procession passed through the streets of the capital to the gates of the Hôtel de St. Pol, where Isabella threw herself at the feet of her wretched father Charles VI., crying for justice on the murder of her uncle. She cried in vain, the poor king was fast sinking again into his delirium, and twelve months afterwards Isabella again joined the Dowager Duchess of Orleans in a similar procession, to seek the same justice from her brother, the dauphin Louis, who was acting as regent, but with equal want of success; and the old duchess sank and died in despair of punishment on her enemy. The marriage of Isabella to Charles, now Duke of Orleans, took place soon after these events, and, as already related, the died in 1410, in giving birth to an infant daughter.

The Orleans family, finding that no justice was to be obtained from the feeble and corrupt government, but, on the contrary, that the people of Paris hailed John of Burgundy as a second Brutus, who had freed his country of a tyrant aiming at the crown, and that the very lawyers and clergy justified the murder on the same pleas, declaring that Orleans had produced the king's insanity through sorcery and drugs, determined to take arms and enforce it for themselves.

Burgundy, to strengthen himself with the Parisians, promised to reduce the monstrous weight of taxation under which they groaned, and they applauded him as their saviour. Revolt amongst Burgundy's subjects in Flanders withdrew him for a time from Paris, during which the queen, in the name of her son, the dauphin. declared Burgundy an enemy of the state, and threw all her energies into the interests of the Orleanists. But Burgundy returned victorious from his contest with his subjects, and in November entered Paris at the head of 6,000 men.

Once more, in the following March, the farce of a reconciliation took place between Burgundy and the young Duke of Orleans, at Chartres, where the children of Orleans embraced their father's murderer. But this base and unnatural union was as hollow as the former one; all the old animosity burst forth anew; and the young Duke of Orleans, who had lost the amiable Isabella, and married a daughter of the Count of Armagnac, was supported by that able and energetic nobleman in his opposition to Burgundy. From this day the whole of France was divided into the great hostile factions—the Orleanists and the Armagnacs—so called from the Count of Armagnac assuming the lead in his son-in-law's quarrel by his superior vigour and experience. The Dukes of Berri and Brittany, and the Count d'Alençon, embraced the cause of Orleans, and Burgundy was compelled to retire from Paris.

Henry IV., relieved from his own domestic foes, had watched this contest from the commencement with the deepest interest. His calculating soul saw that now the time was coming for him to take vengeance on Franco for its insults and injuries during the whole period of his struggles with his rebellious nobles. Into Henry's mind no feeling of commiseration for the sufferings of the French people was likely to enter; his very intellectual constitution was policy; his feelings led him only towards self-advancement. He foresaw that the first failing combatant would turn to him for aid, and he determined that it should be granted, because it would damage France. What he knew must come came now; and it was the more agreeable, because it enabled him to pay to the son of Orleans the debt of hate which he owed to the father for his haughty defiance and his taunts of murder.

Burgundy solicited his aid, and it was immediately granted in the shape of 1,000 archers and 800 men-at-arms. Perhaps there might be a secret fellow-feeling, which made Henry "thus wondrously kind;" for it was one murderer succouring another. Burgundy, with this force, formidable though small-for the fame of the English bowmen in France was not forgotten-drove the Orleanists from Paris, and took their place in October of 1411 amid the acclamations of the people. Burgundy had now secured the persons of the king and the dauphin, and with this semblance of being the royal party, he marched against the Orleanists, and besieged them in Bourges. In their retreat from Paris they had plundered the Abbey of St. Denis, and carried off a treasure of the queen deposited there, which naturally alienated the mind of that lady.

In their distress the Orleanists now in their turn sought aid from Henry of England, and it was granted with equal alacrity. Henry had satisfied his resentment against the Orleans family by punishing and humbling them; and he was rendered placable by still more powerful motives The Orleanists offered very tempting terms. They offered to acknowledge him as the rightful Duke of Aquitaine and to assist him to recover all the ancient rights and