Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/552

538 dismembered France of its most valuable provinces; and, though Charles is stated to have given a full assent to the proposal, there were others who were more averse to any such terms with England.

In the very midst of this apparently amicable negotiation, amid the frightful anarchy of France, the Count of Armagnac had now succeeded to the authority of the Dauphin John, recently dead, and being also constable in the place of D'Albret, slain at Azincourt, he determined, if possible, to win popularity by wresting from England its recent conquest of Harfleur. He marched there with a large army, drew lines around the town, while a fleet of French ships, aided by a number of Genoese caracks, which he had hired, blockaded the harbour. It was in vain he was reminded of the negotiations pending at London; he determinedly rejected all proposals of truce or peace, and pressed on with all his characteristic ardour the siege of the place.

Henry, alarmed and indignant at the news of this investment at this moment, proposed, in his impetuous promptness, to rush across the Channel and fall on Armagnac in person; but Sigismund, his royal guest, suggested to him that it was not a cause of sufficient importance to demand his own presence. He sent the Duke of Bedford, his brother, with a fleet to the relief of Harfleur. The duke mustered at Eye such ships as he could procure in haste, and on the 14th of August, 1416, reached the mouth of the Seine. He found the blockade of a formidable character. The galleys of the Genoese were so tall that the loftiest of the duke's ships could not reach to their upper decks by more than a spear's length. Besides these, there were also Spanish ships of great size, and all were posted with great judgment. Nothing daunted, the duke resolved on attacking them in the morning. At sunset he summoned on board of his ship all the captains of his fleet to concert the plan of the battle, and during the night he kept his squadron together by displaying a light at his masthead.

The next morning, the 15th of August, 1416, Bedford was agreeably surprised to see the French quit their secure moorings, and, in their rash confidence, leave behind their powerful allies of Genoa and Spain, and come out into the open sea to attack him. He very soon captured two of their ships, and, after a long and desperate conflict, most of the rest were taken or destroyed; a few escaping up the river. Bedford lost no time in bearing down on the Genoese galleys, which, notwithstanding their height, his sailors clambered up like squirrels, and boarded in gallant style. The garrison within the town now joined their countrymen in an attack on the land forces, which speedily raised the siege and fled. The duke remained to see the town put into a complete state of defence; and during this time, which was three weeks, the vast number of bodies which had been plunged into the Seine during the fight, rose and covered the whole of the waters all round the ships, much to the horror of the sailors. The duke led them away as soon as possible, and returned to England, having most successfully completed his mission.

In the following month of September, Henry proceeded to Calais, accompanied by his imperial guest Sigismund, who had concluded an alliance with him, and been enrolled a Knight of the Garter, and by the Duke of Bavaria, to meet John Sanspeur, Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy, during the late campaign, had professed to remain neuter. Though summoned by Charles to assist in expelling the English, he neither went himself nor permitted his vassals to do so. His county of Flanders not only maintained an avowed neutrality with England, but carried on their usual lucrative trade with it without any regard to French interests. Yet Burgundy had been cautious not to enter into direct engagements with Henry, or to lend any assistance to his invading army. Nay, after the battle of Azincourt, where his brothers the Duke of Brabant and the Count of Nevers fell, he had expressed great resentment, and even defied Henry to mortal combat. But now circumstances had occurred in France which stung him to the quick, and made him ready to forget even the destruction of his brothers; but to understand the motives for this congress with the King of England and his allies at Calais, we must once more glance at the unhappy condition of France.

Blind to all dangers without, that wretched country was still torn by its mad factions. Not even the thunderbolt which had fallen in their midst in the terrible defeat of Azincourt could long arouse them to a sense of their peril. There was scarcely a family in the kingdom but had to mourn the loss of one or more of its members in that enormous carnage. But these feelings rapidly died out before the demon spirit of party hatred. The Burgundians, who had kept in a great measure out of the campaign, soon began to express their joy that the Armagnacs had been so sanguinarily chastised and humbled by the English. The common people held much the same language as the King of England, and denounced the crimes and imbecility of their rulers as the cause of their calamities and their national disgrace. When the Count of Armagnac was placed at the head of affairs, the Duke of Burgundy was forbidden to approach Paris, and even insulted by Armagnac with the offer of a pension and the government of Picardy for his son Philip. Burgundy set out on his march to Paris to expel the Armagnacs, but at Troyes was met by a proclamation in the king's name ordering him to disband his troops. He continued his march in defiance of it, pretending that he was in arms only against the English invaders. By the end of November he had reached Lagny, only six leagues from the capital. Here he waited to try the effect of the butcher-faction in the city. He had with him the ferocious Caboche, and other leaders of that terrible clan, and trusted through their means to raise all their savage tribes again in his favour. But the constable, Armagnac, kept them down with a strong hand; and, instead of the long hoped-for success, came the news of the sudden death of the Dauphin Louis, his son-in-law. The rumour was that he had been dispatched by poison, lest he should join his father-in-law, Burgundy, and admit him to the city. The duke demanded that his daughter, the dauphin's widow, should be given up to him, which was done, but without either her jewels or her dowry; and, disappointed in his attempt on the capital. Burgundy returned homo to Flanders.

The condition of that unfortunate city was now as frightful as in some periods of the tremendous revolutions of late years. The Armagnacs raged in their triumph over Burgundy as furiously as Jacobins of our time