A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [379]
After two years’ pause, Henry V returned for the systematic conquest of territory. Improved technology in the use of gunpowder and artillery now made the difference, costing walled cities their immunity. As the era of the sword was ending, that of firearms began, in time to allow no lapse in man’s belligerent capacity. In three years, 1417–19, Henry took possession of all Normandy while the French twisted and grappled in internal feuds. Two successive Dauphins died within a year of each other, leaving Charles, a hapless fourteen-year-old whom his mother pronounced illegitimate, as heir to the throne. The Cabochiens rose again in a rampage of savagery and murder. John the Fearless took control of the King and capital, while the Dauphin escaped below the Loire. Through a France divided against itself, Henry V hammered his advance. In the course of the English siege of Rouen, the defenders, to save food, expelled 12,000 citizens whom the English refused to let through their lines and who remained between the two camps in winter, subsisting on grass and roots or dying of cold and starvation. When the fall of Rouen posed a direct threat to Paris, the French factions were frightened into an attempt to close ranks against the enemy.
In 1419, after much stalling by the Duke of Burgundy, a meeting was arranged between him and the Dauphin to take place on the bridge at Montereau, about 35 miles southeast of Paris. The parties advanced toward each other filled with suspicion, harsh words were spoken as if the gods of Troy were again whispering evil, hands flew to swords, and as the Dauphin backed away from the scene, his followers fell upon the Duke, plunged their weapons in his body, and “dashed him down stark dead to the ground.” Louis d’Orléans was avenged, but at bitter cost.
Reconciliation was broken off. Swearing revenge in his turn, Philip of Burgundy, the new Duke, entered into full alliance with Henry V, even recognizing his shopworn claim to the crown of Philip’s own ancestors. Together they drew up the Treaty of Troyes between the King of England and the still living wraith of the King of France. By its terms, signed in 1420, the witless King and his foreign-born Queen, who never felt French, disowned the “so-called Dauphin” and accepted Henry V as successor to the throne of France and husband of their daughter Catherine. During Charles VI’s lifetime Henry was confirmed in possession of Normandy and his other territorial conquests and was to share the government of France with the Duke of Burgundy.
The integrity of France had reached its lowest point. If a king had been captured at Poitiers, kingship itself was surrendered at Troyes. France the supreme was reduced to an Anglo-Burgundian condominium. Henry V’s quick five-year campaign alone had not accomplished this: it was the work of a hundred years of disintegrating forces combined with the rise of the Burgundian state and the accident of the King’s long-lived madness. But at this stage in the development of nationalism it was not a conquest that could succeed, no matter how careful the methods of Henry V. If a sense of Frenchness was already too strong to accept the transfers of sovereignty in 1360, it was that much stronger two generations later, as the parties to the Treaty of Troyes were clearly aware. They included a clause forbidding anyone to voice disapproval of the treaty and making such disapproval an act of treason.
There was, however, an occupied France and a free France below the Loire. The wretched Dauphin, with what stamina he possessed, refused to accept the treaty and retreated with his Council to Bourges in Berry, where he maintained a feeble heartbeat of the crown. After making a royal entry into Paris, Henry V returned home, leaving his brother, the Duke of Bedford, as his regent in France. History, or whatever