CHAPTER VII.

"Thus far into the bowels of the land

Have we marched on without impediment."

THE STATE OF FRANCE-PLANS OF INVASION-NEGOTIATIONS-SCROOPS PLOT-THE INVASION OF FRANCE-THE SIEGE OF HARFLEUR-RETREAT OF THE ENGLISH ARMY.

In his coronation speech, Henry the Fifth declared it to be an ambition worthy of a great prince, to de rive glory from the achievements of war. The love of the suspense, the excitement, and the triumphs of the battle-field, was the predominant passion of his soul. He had already evinced the qualities of a great commander. He had won an enviable renown in the presence of hostile armies. He had attracted to himself both the affection and the confidence of his people. They were proud of him, and they looked for ward to seeing him glorious and powerful. His confidence in himself, although not arrogant, was great. He could count upon a united people, a well-filled exchequer, a military ardor which longed for action; and there was bright promise that in whatever he under took, he would be successful. He looked about, there fore, with zest for an opportunity. He would seek that glory which had been his earliest dream, and which would stamp his name upon the age. Scotland was not the proper field; there warfare would be des

ultory, the gain little, and the fame but feeble recompense. The Welsh had ceased to resist the royal authority, and were to all intents submissive to the officers of the Crown. But in another quarter of the horizon a bright prospect opened before the ambitious Prince.

France was still the unhappy theatre of civil strife, and the prey of rival princes who cared little for the nation, so that they were triumphant. The peace which, we have seen, was made between King Charles the Sixth and John of Burgundy on the one side, and Armagnac, Orleans, Bourbon, and Berri on the other, gave the regal authority to the King, which was tantamount to placing it in the hands of Burgundy. Prince Charles, the Dauphin, was but sixteen years old, and had married a daughter of Burgundy. To him the Armagnacs, in their despair, resorted. The Dauphin, young as he was, had seen enough of John the Fearless to dread and detest him. Probably a more heartless and perfidious wretch never lived than this man; he inspired those who were his interested friends, the very instruments of his barbarity, with horror and disgust. The Armagnacs easily persuaded young Charles that the insanity of his father made it proper that he should assume regal power. One night he seized the Bastile, and summoned the people to the support of the House of Valois, of which he was the only representative. Many, who were displeased with Burgundy, hastened to the Dauphin's standard; but Paris seems to have pertinaciously adhered to the bloody Duke. John of Troyes, a surgeon, at the head of the Parisians, made short work of the Prince. They besieged his palace, took him and many of his followers, and regained possession of the Bastile. The

excesses and ignominies which always succeeded Burgundy's triumphs, now took place in the metropolis. No mercy was shown to the rival faction. Both King Charles and the Dauphin were forced to wear the white сар which was the Burgundian symbol. John the Fearless flattered the people, and tyrannized over them at will. This was the state of things when Henry came to the throne of England. Soon afterward the Dauphin succeeded in getting loose from the hateful bondage of his infant wife's father. With the utmost despatch and secresy he began to organize the Armagnacs who remained in Paris. Burgundy be came at last aware, that no less than thirty thousand men, within the limits of the metropolis, were prepared to oppose him. His efforts were but feeble to resist the advancing tide, and he made all haste to Flanders, that, amid his own domains, he might gather up his energies for another trial. The King was now in the hands of the young Duke of Orleans and of the Dauphin, who persuaded the poor monarch, in a lucid interval, to denounce Burgundy, and to put to death a number of that prince's friends.

Here was an admirable chance for the interference of a foreign army, and Henry, as well as his principal advisers, were not slow to see it. It was not forgotten that Edward the Third had taken the ground that he was the heir to the French crown by the Queen Isabella, and that he had well nigh confirmed his claim at Crecy and Poictiers. The treaty of Bretigni had, indeed, done away with that claim; but the treaty had been broken, and by France. England was therefore clearly not bound by it.

The claim of Edward, and therefore of Henry, to the French throne, was absurd. Nay, that of

Henry was even less plausible than that of Edward. Edward claimed that his mother, as the eldest daughter of the King, was the heir to the throne; but the Salic law forbade females, and if it had not, the daugh ter of her older brother, Louis the Tenth, was first entitled to the succession. But had it been admitted that Edward's title was clear, there was an irremediable flaw in that of Henry. If Edward had a good title, Richard the Second had a good title. If Richard the Second had abdicated the French when he abdicated the English throne, the young Earl of March, yet liv. ing, was clearly as much entitled to Edward's claim on France, as to his crown in England. The only ground which Henry could with the least reason take, was that his father was the heir of an older brother of Edward the Second; by which claim, as we have seen, Bolingbroke sought to justify his usurpation.

The English Church had reasons for urging Henry to engage in a foreign war. They desired to turn him from those projects in which the Commons sought to interest him. It had been recommended that all the lands and tithes belonging to the prelates, should be seized for the replenishment of the royal exchequer. Henry, although an earnest Churchman, and ever ready to suppress Lollardism, was not so clear in regard to the temporal wealth of the ecclesiastics, as to make the priests sure that he would preserve them from the attacks of the Commons. Archbishop Chicheley, who in 1414 succeeded Arundel in the primacy, earnestly advocated a war with France, and was sustained in his importunities by the whole body of the prelates. Henry listened with no unwilling ear to projects so consonant with his taste and his ambition. Although he proposed to renew the claim of Edward, he looked

to other means for reclaiming the crown of France. He determined to occupy that throne by right of conquest. A parliament was held at Leicester, from which the Church feared serious annoyance. But the legislators were just now not inclined to attack the Establishment, although they refused to pass some stringent acts against Wickliffism which were urged by the Church party. About the same time, the King, to show his unaltered attachment toward Catholicism, founded two monasteries; one on the site of that palace which Richard refused to visit after the death of his Queen, Anne, at Shene,* in Surrey, and another at Sion, in Isleworth, afterward suppressed by Henry VIII.

The first movement of Henry against France was to despatch Lord Grey, the Bishop of Durham, and several other noblemen to Charles, with a demand for the hand of the Princess Katharine, and for a res titution of English rights in the French domain. The first proposition of these ambassadors, however, on arriving at the Louvre, was to demand the crown of France for Henry! Of course they did not expect it to be granted; the probability is that they wished to lay a ground for the future assertion of the claim by force of arms. The next demand was for the cession of Normandy, Touraine, Brittany, the lands between the Somme and Graveline, Flanders, Anjou, and Aquitaine; to be held by Henry without fealty. Then they asked that the ransom of King John (who had been captured by the Black Prince at Poictiers), which had never been satisfied, should be paid from the French treasury; and added a claim to the county of Provence. They intimated that the Princess Kath

*Now Richmond.