Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/562

548 when murder had wearied itself out, or ceased for want of fresh victims, pestilence took up the work, and the whole tale of the victims of this outbreak is said to have amounted to 14,000 persons, of whom 5,000 were women.

In the midst of those horrors, the queen and the Duke of Burgundy made their entry into Paris in triumph on the 14th of July. The streets, not yet dried from the blood of the massacred, were strewn with flowers; and these contemptible princes, themselves stained with more than one murder, or the reputation of it, rode on as if nothing had occurred. The butcheries had not ceased when they entered Paris, and they rather encouraged than put a stop to them, for they had spites of their own which they sought to gratify. They got the poor doting king into their possession, and, thus armed with the royal authority, they made use of the leaders of the mob to execute their own vengeance on those they hated, and then executed their tools to pacify the people. They made strenuous endeavours to secure the person of the dauphin; but Tannegui du Chastel and the Armagnacs had him at Bourges, and kept good watch over him. They then entered into negotiations with him, offering him terms of coalition, and doing all in their power to allure him to Paris; but such overtures were hopeless while the whole Armagnac party were burning for revenge of their late butchery. Though the old Count of Armagnac was dead, his son was alive, and vowing the most signal retribution. With the Count of Dreux, and other French barons, he had been harassing Henry's province of Guienne as a diversion in favour of Normandy; but he and his associates at once made peace with the King of England and joined the dauphin, demanding justice on his father's assassins. Tannegui du Chastel, equally eager for revenge, and more truculent, denounced extermination to the Burgundians. By their advice the dauphin assumed the title of regent, repudiating his mother's right to it, and opened a Parliament at Poictiers.

Thus France, after all the murders of the heads of its factions, had still two factions as decided and iniquitous as over. Each of these factions sought to make an alliance with Henry, the common enemy of their claims. Henry amused them as long as it suited his purpose. He sent commissioners to meet those of the dauphin at Alençon, and those of Burgundy at Pont de l'Arche; and having heard all they had to say, without at all communicating his own views, at length dismissed them with the insulting observations that the dauphin was a minor, the king not of sound mind, and Burgundy's authority doubtful, so that no safe treaty could be made with any of them.

During these attempts at negotiation Henry still pressed on the siege of Rouen. Winter was now setting in, and the famished citizens saw its approach with horror. They had long been reduced to the severest condition of starvation, and still the determined De Bouteillier held out. They had consumed every green and every living thing but themselves and their children. The inky Robec, flowing through and under Rouen, the Styx of the place, had long ceased to furnish one desperate rat to the hungry watchers. The time was come when a man looked at his neighbour's leathern girdle with fierce desire, and an old shoe was the only material for a stew. A lizard, a bat, or a snail were luxuries which only could be purchased by the rich. Gaunt Famine, the sternest of all conquerors, now subdued the iron hardihood of the governor, and he offered on the 3rd of January to capitulate; but Henry insisted on unconditional surrender. Bouteillier, indignant and in despair, assembled the garrison, and proposed to them to set fire to the city, to throw down a portion of the wall, which was already undermined by the English, and burst headlong into the camp of the enemy, where, if they could not cut their way through, they should at least perish as became soldiers.

This stoical design, as terribly sublime as any project of antiquity, reaching the ears of Henry, he lowered his demands. It was impossible not to be struck with such heroism in men wasted by months of utter want, and he had no wish to see Rouen a heap of smoking ruins. He offered the soldiers their lives and liberties on condition that they did not serve against him for twelve months; and he guaranteed to the citizens their property and their franchises on the payment of 300,000 crowns. On the 13th of January, 1419, the terms of surrender were signed, and on the 19th Henry entered the city in triumph. To his honour he strictly observed the treaty, suffering no infringement of the citizens' rights, nor displaying any signs of vengeance. The only person exempted from this clemency was a priest who had, during the siege, excommunicated him, and pronounced the direst curses upon him. Him he imprisoned for life; and a captain of the city militia was executed a few days after the entrance of the city, for treasonable designs.

The fall of Rouen was the fall of the whole province. The fortresses which had hitherto held out now speedily opened their gates, and the red cross of England waved on all the towers of Normandy, announcing it an appendage of England. 

CHAPTER LXXI.

surrender of Rouen was a shock to the whole kingdom of France, sufficient, one would have thought, to bring the contending factions to a pause, and unite them for the protection of their common country; but for a time it appeared to produce little effect on the rival parties themselves. The people at large were struck with consternation, and loudly complained that they were made the victims of the vices and jealousies of their rulers. The people of Paris saw with indignation the Duke of Burgundy and the queen flee out of the city, carrying the king with them, and establish their headquarters at Lagny. They looked upon themselves as basely betrayed, and that the capital was left exposed to the arms of the victor, who, it was well known, was preparing to march along the Seine and invest the city with all his forces. They represented that the people of the provincial towns had been left to fight their own battles, 