Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/553

A.D. 1416.] against the Girondists. They thrust into prison or drove out of the city all who opposed their arbitrary conduct, not merely of the butcher-faction, but the professors of the university who denounced their unpatriotic proceedings, expelling no loss than forty of them. But now the Count of Armagnac was seized with the ambition of recovering Harfleur from the English, and thus winning popularity and no sooner had he set out with his army than the partisans of Burgundy produced a new plot in favour of Burgundy. This was to seize on the government in the name of the new dauphin. Prince John, and by uniting with him for Burgundy to exercise the administration. But the vigilance of the Armagnac party again defeated this scheme. The chiefs of the agitators were seized. Belloy, a wealthy cloth merchant, and Regnaud, a clergyman highly esteemed for his learning and piety, were seized and beheaded. Orgemont, a canon of Paris, was brought to execution, but was there claimed by the chapter of the cathedral, and sent back to prison, where he died miserably.

Armagnac, at once defeated by the English, and thus endangered by revolt in his absence, returned to Paris in the worst of tempers. He abolished the chief privileges of the city, annihilated the fraternity of butchers, and placed the public under the most stringent despotism. No meetings or assemblings of the citizens, even for the most innocent domestic purposes, were permitted. Not a marriage or a christening could be celebrated without licence from the Government, and it must be attended by soldiery. Everything which could be possibly used as a missile by the populace was removed. Bottles, heavy pots, iron utensils, were taken away and secured, and not a flower-pot was allowed to stand in the windows, lest it should be thrown down on the heads of the troops. All arms were ordered to be delivered up on pain of death, and were deposited in that since so celebrated fortress, the Bastile. The city was in a state of siege, and the infuriated Armagnacs having disarmed their enemies, began to put the most dreaded of them to death.

This had the effect of causing all who could to escape from the city, who, adding to the already vast numbers of the expelled Burgundians and butchers, formed themselves into bands, and laid waste the country round Paris. They were soon joined by other predatory forces from Artois, and disorder once let loose grew with terrible rapidity. The whole of France was very soon desolated by wild troops of various descriptions, who preyed on the inhabitants at pleasure. It was one universal anarchy. The numerous mercenary forces of Germans, Lombards, and Savoyards, who had been brought into the country by one or other of the factions which had so long torn the very vitals of France, helped themselves now without control, and ravaged the miserable country at will. The troops which were actually in the pay of the Government perpetrated the same outrages on the helpless people, and numerous swarms of the very scum of all these, brigands of the vilest and most lawless character, ranged through the land, committing every species of villany and horror under the name of "Begeaux." They were still more demoralised than the bands of Free Companions in the time of the Black Prince.

The condition of France was such as defied description. No country ever presented such a spectacle of ruin, misery, crime, and desolation. According to their own writers of the time, whole districts were deserted by their inhabitants, who had many of them been destroyed in the most shocking manner. Many of the most fertile farms had not been cultivated for twenty years. But in the country all round Paris the horrors of this period raged in tenfold degree. Within the city sate the brooding and leaden despotism, of the Armagnacs, crushing every motion in the cruel terror of reaction; without raged fire and the most devilish passions of defeated faction. You might have ridden a whole day (say the chroniclers) without seeing a house or farm which was not burnt or plundered. Ono of the leaders, John de Potx, entered St. Germain-in-Laye, where the king was residing, and, followed by 400 of his partisans in disguise, attempted to carry him off. De Solré, another, burned the châteaux in the very environs of the city, and, seizing one of the gates, was near entering the city with his brutal hordes.

The Count of Armagnac struggled desperately with these legions of savage enemies; and the war of the factions went on, ever more desperate, deadly, and exterminating. He procured a papal ban against those various marauders, and issued a proclamation authorising any one to pursue and destroy them as wild beasts. He sent out troops in different directions to quell them where they could, and, under the pretence of executing their orders, the most sanguinary vengeance was inflicted on the Burgundian partisans. In the neighbourhood of Noyon one of his captains, Raymoud de la Guerre, is said to have laden all the trees in the neighbourhood with noblemen and gentlemen of that faction, whom he hanged without ceremony or mercy.

Such was the condition of France when the Duke of Burgundy consented to meet Henry, Sigismund, and the Duke of Bavaria at Calais. The spirit of enmity betwixt him and the Armagnacs had reached its height. It was between them war to the death; neither party was any longer capable of a thought besides that of the extermination of the other. Burgundy was expelled and worsted by Armagnac, and he sought the aid of England.

There had been through the year continual correspondence between the courts of Burgundy and England, which purported to concern treaties of trade; and now the congress opened on the 3rd of October, 1416, for the ostensible purpose of healing the schism in the Church. The Armagnacs were struck with direst consternation at this ominous conference. They neither gave credit to the object being trade nor the peace of the Church; but they believed, and assorted, that Burgundy had sold himself to Henry, had formally acknowledged his title to the throne of France, and done homage to him for his provinces of Burgundy and Alost, in order to avenge himself of his Armagnac opponents. That such a treaty was agitated at the congress is certain, for the protocol is preserved in Rymer, and by it Burgundy was not only to acknowledge Henry's claim, but to assist him in establishing it. There is, however, no proof that he actually signed it.

Whatever was determined upon remains unknown, any farther than it can be surmised from what followed. Henry returned to England to make immediate and extensive preparations for the invasion of France, on the