No sooner was the truce concluded between the two king. doms, than Charles employed himself, with great industry and judgment, in repairing those numberless ills to which France from the continuance of wars both foreign and domestic, had so long been exposed. He restored the course of public justice; he introduced order into the finances; he established discipline in his troops; he repressed faction in his court; he revived the languid state of agriculture and the arts; and, in the course of a few years, he rendered his kingdom flourish. ing within itself, and formidable to its neighbors. Meanwhile, affairs in England had taken a very different turn. The court was divided into parties, which were enraged against each other: the people were discontented with the government: conquests in France, which were an object more of glory than of interest, were overlooked amidst domestic incidents, which engrossed the attention of all men: the governor of Normandy, ill supplied with money, was obliged to dismiss the greater part of his troops, and to allow the fortifications of the towns and castles to become ruinous; and the nobility and people of that province had, during the late open communication with France, enjoyed frequent opportunities of renewing connections with their ancient master, and of concerting the means for expelling the English. The occasion, therefore, seemed favorable to Charles for breaking the truce. [1449.] Normandy was at once invaded by four powerful armies: one commanded by the king himself; a second by the duke of Brittany; a third by the duke of Alençon; and a fourth by the count of Dunois. The places opened their gates almost as soon as the French appeared before them; Verneuil, Nogent, Chateau Gaillard, Ponteau de Mer, Gisors, Mante, Vernon, Argentan, Lisieux, Fecamp, Coutances, Belesme, Pont de l'Arche, fell in an instant into the hands of the enemy. The duke of Somerset, so far from having an army which could take the field and relieve these places, was not able to supply them with the necessary garrisons and provisions. He retired, with the few troops of which he was master, into Rouen; and thought it sufficient, if, till the arrival of succors from England, he could save that capital from the general fate of the province. The king of France, at the head of a formidable army, fifty thousand strong, presented himself before the gates the dangerous example of revolt had infected the inhabitants; and they called aloud for a capitulation. Somer set, unable to resist at once both the enemies within and from without, retired with his garrison into the palace and castle; which, being places not tenable, he was obliged to surrender he purchased a retreat to Harfleur by the payment of fifty-six thousand crowns, by engaging to surrender Arques, Tancarville, Caudebec, Honfleur, and other places in the higher Normandy, and by delivering hostages for the performance of articles. [1450.] The governor of Honfleur refused to obey his orders; upon which the earl of Shrewsbury, who was one of the hostages, was detained prisoner; and the English were thus deprived of the only general capable of recovering them from their present distressed situation. Harfleur made a better defence under Sir Thomas Curson, the governor; but was finally obliged to open its gates to Dunois. Succors at last appeared from England, under Sir Thomas Kyriel, and landed at Cherbourg: but these came very late, amounted only to four thousand men, and were soon after put to rout at Fourmigni by the count of Clermont. This battle, or rather skirmish, was the only action fought by the English for the defence of their dominions in France, which they had purchased at such an expense of blood and treasure. Somerset, shut up in Caen, without any prospect of relief, found it necessary to capitulate : Falaise opened its gates, on condition that the earl of Shrewsbury should be restored to liberty: and Cherbourg, the last place of Normandy which remained in the hands of the English, being delivered up, the conquest of that important province was finished in a twelvemonth by Charles, to the great joy of the inhabitants, and of his whole kingdom.‡ A like rapid success attended the French arms in Guienne; though the inhabitants of that province were, from long custom, better inclined to the English government. Dunois was despatched thither, and met with no resistance in the field, and very little from the towns. Great improvements had been made during this age in the structure and management of artillery, and none in fortification; and the art of defence was by that means more unequal, than either before or since, to the art of attack. After all the small places about Bordeaux were reduced, that city agreed to submit, if not relieved by a certain time; and as no one in England * Monstrelet, vol. iii. p. 21. Grafton, p. 643. Grafton, p. 646. hought seriously of these distant concerns, no relief appeared, the place surrendered; and Bayonne being taken soon after, this whole province, which had remained united to England since the accession of Henry II., was, after a period of three centuries, finally swallowed up in the French monarchy. Though no peace or truce was concluded between France and England, the war was in a manner at an end. The English, torn in pieces by the civil dissensions which ensued, made but one feeble effort more for the recovery of Guienne : and Charles, occupied at home in regulating the government, and fencing against the intrigues of his factious son, Lewis the dauphin, scarcely ever attempted to invade them in their island, or to retaliate upon them, by availing himself of their intestine confusions. CHAPTER XXI. HENRY VI. [1450.] A WEAK prince, seated on the throne of England, had never failed, how gentle soever and innocent, to be infested with faction, discontent, rebellion, and civil commotions; and as the incapacity of Henry appeared every day in a fuller light, these dangerous consequences began, from past experience, to be universally and justly apprehended. Men also of unquiet spirits, no longer employed in foreign wars, whence they were now excluded by the situation of the neighboring states, were the more likely to excite intestine disorders, and by their emulation, rivalship, and animosities, to tear the bowels of their native country. But though these causes alone were sufficient to breed confusion, there concurred another circumstance of the most dangerous nature: a pretender to the crown appeared: the title itself of the weak prince who enjoyed the name of sovereignty, was disputed; and the English were now to pay the severe though late penalty of their turbulence under Richard II., and of their levity in violating, without any necessity or just reason, the lineal succession of their monarchs. All the males of the house of Mortimer were extinct; but Anne, the sister of the last earl of Marche, having espoused the earl of Cambridge, beheaded in the reign of Henry V., had transmitted her latent, but not yet forgotten claim to her son Richard, duke of York. This prince, thus descended by his mother from Philippa, only daughter of the duke of Clar ence, second son of Edward III., stood plainly in the order of succession before the king, who derived his descent from the duke of Lancaster, third son of that monarch; and that claim could not, in many respects, have fallen into more dangerous hands than those of the duke of York. Richard was a man of valor and abilities, of a prudent conduct and mild disposition: he had enjoyed an opportunity of display. ing these virtues in his government of France; and though recalled from that command by the intrigues and superior interest of the duke of Somerset, he had been sent to sup press a rebellion in Ireland; had succeeded much better in that enterprise than his rival in the defence of Normandy, and had even been able to attach to his person and family the whole Irisn nation, whom he was sent to subdue.* In the right of his father, he bore the rank of first prince of the blood; and by this station he gave a lustre to his title derived from the family of Mortimer, which, though of great nobility, was equalled by other families in the kingdom, and had been eclipsed by the royal descent of the house of Lancaster. He possessed an immense fortune from the union of so many successions, those of Cambridge and York on the one hand, with those of Mortimer on the other; which last inheritance had before been augmented by a union of the estates of Clarence and Ulster with the patrimonial possessions of the family of Marche. The alliances too of Richard, by his marrying the daughter of Ralph Nevil, earl of Westmoreland, had widely extended his interest among the nobility, and had procured him many connections in that formidable order. The family of Nevil was perhaps at this time the most potent, both from their opulent possessions and from the characters of the men, that has ever appeared in England. For, besides the earl of Westmoreland, and the lords Latimer, Fauconberg, and Abergavenny, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick were of that family, and were of themselves, on many accounts, the greatest noblemen in the kingdom. The earl of Salisbury, brother-in-law to the duke of York, was the eldest son by a second marriage of the earl of Westmoreland; and inherited by his wife, daughter and heir of Montacute, earl of Salisbury, killed before Orleans, the possessions and title of that great family. His eldest son, Richard, had married Anne, the daughter and heir of Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who died governor of France; and by this alliance he enjoyed the possessions, and had acquired the title, of that other family, one of the most opulent, most ancient, and most illustrious in England. The personal qualities also of these two earls, especially of Warwick, enhanced the splendor of their nobility, and increased their influence over the people. This latter nobleman, commonly known, from the subsequent events, by the appellation of the * Stowe, p. 387. |