The

with the fancy that his promise bore some personal relation to Henry and Bedford, both no more. terms which he had obtained were in all respects advantageous to him, and somewhat humiliating to France. Charles, beside pronouncing a solemn censure upon the murder of Jean-sans-Peur, offering an ample apology for himself as of tender years and under the control of others, binding himself to pursue with the utmost rigour those whom Philip might charge with the offence, and engaging to found convents and chapels, with daily mass and requiem for the deceased's soul, ceded in perpetuity the counties of Macon, Auxerre, Péronne, and other places, with all the towns of the Somme, Tournay excepted; and freed the Duke and his states from all feudal homage and services.

The peace of Arras diffused the greatest joy over the whole of France, and caused the utmost discontent in England. The price was heavy at which Charles had most wisely purchased the inestimable advantages of immediately confining the operations of the war to his English enemies, and ultimately driving them from the country. But all parties, Bourguignons as well as Armagnacs, and the people still under the nominal dominion of England, as well as those under his own, cheerfully agreed to the terms by which he had obtained a fair prospect of terminating miseries that equally affected all. The English, removed from the scenes of the war, and who had

'He immediately named Tanneguy, Louvet, and two others.-Ol. de la Marche, liv. i. ch. 3.

never suffered or even witnessed its calamities, regarded the loss of the Burgundian alliance, and that of their French conquests, certain in itself, and probable to all appearance, as prejudicial both to their interests and their honour. The envoy whom Philip sent to announce his signature of the treaty was slighted by the Council, refused an audience of the King, and only saved by the military from the vengeance of the multitude, who rose upon the Flemings and other foreigners in London, maltreating all they could find, and even putting some to death. It must be confessed that a more disreputable passage is not to be found in the history of any nation than the conduct alike selfish and foolish of our countrymen on this occasion. Alone of all mankind, they and the Robber-bands were indignant at the Burgundian for having given peace to his own subjects, placed the same blessing within the reach of England, and left France free to shake off a foreign yoke imposed by the accident which had converted a predatory incursion into a conquest. Surely, if any people are bound by every obligation of principle and of feeling to be the unflinching advocates of peace, it is they who, placed by happy accident at a safe distance from the scenes of war, can only know the worst of its countless horrors, its intolerable miseries, in the song of the poet whom they do not believe, or the page of the historian whom they do not heed.' But

The contemporary writer already referred to (Amelgard, lib. ii. cap. 1) affirms that the whole country, naturally of extreme fertility,

the short-sighted folly of the nation was as signal as their want of right feeling. The most advantageous offers had been rejected by their representatives at the Congress, because, though the head of the embassy was also the chief of the peace party, he manifestly did not venture to accept terms against which the clamour at home would have enabled his unreflecting and impetuous rival to work his immediate destruction. Thus the last chance of retaining any portion of the conquests so dearly bought and so fondly cherished was thrown away, and the multitude, utterly and necessarily ignorant of the whole subject, as well its details as its principles, upon which they undertook to pronounce a judgment, carried their own sentence into execution, as they fancied, against their ally-in reality, against themselves.'

On the restoration of peace the Burgundian was treated by Charles with the greatest cordiality, and he desired to remain on amicable terms with England also. But the party of Gloster had obtained the mastery; they rejected his friendly offer of mediation with Charles, and were resolved that the alliance, the dissolution of which had so enraged them, should be succeeded not by neutrality, but by war. The

from the Somme to the German frontier, a distance of 200 miles, was converted into a perfectly uncultivated desert, covered with thorns and brush-wood, and in some places thick forests, without a single inhabitant remaining in many districts. In other parts of France the natives had been driven into the woods for shelter from the armies and their overflowings, the Bands, when the fortified towns were so encumbered with refugees from the country that they could admit no more. Note LXIII.

Flemish vessels were stopped on the high seas, and rifled; the malcontents in Philip's towns were excited to sedition and revolt; the Emperor was urged to declare against him; and a plot to seize one of his principal fortresses by stratagem was accompanied with an open attack upon a small body of his forces near the Flemish frontier. These senseless proceedings, which only served to display ill humour, drove him to hostilities. He marched an army to besiege Calais, and though he was obliged to retire in consequence of a mutiny among his troops, his movement compelled Gloster to hasten with a June, 1436. large force to its relief. But he had also at the commencement of hostilities sent considerable reinforcements to Charles, who was thus enabled to carry on his operations more effectually in the Isle de France.

To succeed Bedford in the Regency, Gloster's party, which was then preponderant, had appointed Richard, Duke of York, son of the Earl of Cambridge, executed for the conspiracy against Henry V. at the beginning of his reign, and now representative of the elder branch of the royal family, whom the Lancastrian usurpation had set aside-a prince of no mean capacity, distinguished for his bravery, but of an irresolute and feeble character; indiscreet, fickle, and obstinate by turns, so that his errors were by the French ascribed to haughtiness and presumption, while in England they passed for the result of openness and good humour; wholly devoid of the pru

dence and wary circumspection which, joined to his singular firmness, had enabled his predecessor to maintain a hold over the conquered country when surrounded by such complicated difficulties. While the distracted councils of the English Regency, and the official forms in completing his appointment, detained him above half a year from his government, he committed the great indiscretion of removing the Chancellor Therouanne to make way for an English favourite, and thus alienated the House of Luxembourg at a time when the loss of all other support made its countenance of peculiar importance; but the popular party, which had clamoured for war with the Burgundian, in all probability regarded this breach with Luxembourg as equally politic.

Long before Richard arrived at Rouen, Paris had fallen. Though Willoughby, the Commandant in the Regent's absence, had carefully kept from the people all information of the proceedings at Arras, by degrees the defection of Philip became known; and there was at once an end of all hope that any part of the Parisians would longer endure the English authorities. Their troops were few, and recourse was had to the most violent measures in order to supply by means of terror their want of numbers. For a short time the discontent was thus prevented from breaking out in open revolt; but, as Willoughby's forces diminished, the exasperation of the people increased under the cruelties hourly exercised, and gave them courage to assemble, especially in those