Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/607

A.D. 1453.] dispatched a deputation to London, entreating that an army might he sent to their relief, and offering to renew their allegiance. The brave Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who had so long fought in France, was sent over with 4,000 men, and his son, Lord Lisle, followed with as many more. Talbot was now eighty years of age, but full of a spirit and activity which seemed to know no decay. He very soon recovered Bordelais and Châtillon. In the spring of 1153 ho opened the campaign by the capture of Fronsac, where the French army, under Loheac and Jalenges, advanced against him, and Count Penthièvre invested Châtillon. Hastening to relieve that town, Talbot fell upon the French lines very early in the morning, and created such confusion that he ordered a general assault on the camp, the entrenchments of which were lined with 300 pieces of cannon. While dashing forward on this formidable battery, his troops were attacked in the rear by another body of French which came up. Talbot had his horse killed under him. His leg was broken in the fall, and he was dispatched with a spear as he lay on the ground. His son fell in the vain endeavour to rescue his father; and the army, on learning the death of its commander, dispersed in every direction. A thousand men, who had already penetrated into the camp, were made prisoners.

Charles, who now arrived, took the command of his victorious army, and led it to the gates of Bordeaux. That city, with Fronsac and Bayonne, still held out; but famine at length compelled them to surrender. Bayonne was the last to yield, but the Count Gaston de Fois besieging it with a large army of Basques and Bearnese, it was compelled to open its gates. And thus, in the autumn of 1453, closed all the English dreams of empire in France, and the possession of the last fragments of the territories which came to us with the Norman conquest, except Calais, and a strip of marshy land around it. In that dream of a century what oceans of blood have been spilled, what crimes and horrors perpetrated! And that was the finale? The predictions of Joan of Arc and of Henry V. had received their full and distinct accomplishment, that in a very few years the English would be driven out of France, and that Henry of Windsor should lose all that his father had acquired. This loss, however, great as it was, was only the beginning of losses to Henry; he had yet to lose everything.

It is not to be supposed that this disgraceful termination of our French dominion, this melancholy antithesis to the glories of Creçy and Azincourt, were borne with indifference by the people of England. With Bedford and Talbot the military genius of the nation seemed to have disappeared. Somerset, who was ambitious of ruling at home, had shown in his character of Regent of France only a faculty for sitting still in fortified towns, so long as the enemy was not very urgent to drive him out. At the head of the Government now stood Suffolk and the queen; and, while their administration afforded no support to our commanders abroad, their folly and despotism at home incensed the whole nation. As loss after loss was proclaimed, the public exasperation had increased. The cession of Maine and Anjou had excited the deepest indignation; but when month after month had brought only news of the invasion of Normandy and the loss of town after town, the whole population appeared stung to madness. Every one was indignantly deploring the fallen glory of England, and demanding vengeance on the minister who had so traitorously relinquished the first firm hold on our French possessions. Suffolk was denounced as the queen's minion, as a man who was so besotted by the charms of a foreign woman as to sacrifice for his pleasure, and to her relations, our fairest inheritance. On his head they plied, not only his fair share of those transactions, but the full odium of the release of the Duke of Orleans, contrary to the solemn injunction of the sagacious Henry V.; the murder of the popular Duke of Gloucester; the deplorable emptiness of the state coffers, and all the consequent defeats and disasters.

To calm the public mind and to take measures for the defence of Normandy, a Parliament was summoned, but scarcely did it meet when the news of the fall of Rouen arrived, adding fresh fury to the popular wrath, and confusion to the counsels of the Government. Stormy debates and altercations continued in Parliament for six weeks, whilst succour should have been dispatched to our army in Normandy. When at length Sir Thomas Kyriel was sent with a small force to relieve Somerset, it was, as we have seen, only to be defeated and dispersed on its very first landing. In the midst of the ever-growing irritation of the people, and the bitterness of the opposition from these causes, the Duke of Suffolk was accused of an attempt to cut off his most formidable enemies by actual assassination. A notorious outlaw, William Tailbois, was discovered lurking near the door of the council chamber, accompanied by several armed ruffians. Lord Cromwell, the leader of the opposition in Parliament and in the council, accused Tailbois of an intention to murder him, and the man was committed to the Tower, and condemned to pay a fine of £3,000 to Lord Cromwell. Suffolk most unwisely defended Tailbois to the utmost of his power, and thus, in public opinion, identified himself with him in the attempt.

Soon after, the Bishop of Chichester, keeper of the privy seal, who had been employed to complete the surrender of Maine to the French, was sent to Portsmouth to pay the soldiers and sailors about to embark for Guienne their then stipulated amount. No sooner did the people hear his name than, crying, "That is the traitor who delivered Maine to the French!" they rose en masse, and seized him. In appealing to them to spare his life, he was reported to have bade the populace reflect that it was not he, but Suffolk, who had sold that province to France; that he himself was but the humble instrument employed to personally deliver what ho had no power to keep; that it was Suffolk who was the traitor, and that he had boasted that he was as powerful in the French as in the English Government.

This explanation did not save the prelate's life, but it raised the fury of the people to the culminating point against Suffolk. They now, in their undiscriminating resentment, not only accused him of what was justly attributable to him, but of all sorts of impossible crimes. He was not only represented as insolent and rapacious, being the open paramour of the queen, and thus keeping the king as a mere puppet in his hands; as having not only murdered Gloucester and seized his possessions; but as having obtained exorbitant grants from the crown, embezzled the public money, perverted justice, screened