The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [93]
The English had to pay heavily for such support. Between 1429 and 1431 Philip obtained £150,000 from them for his services and was owed a further £100,000. After 1431 he was paid a monthly pension of 3,000 francs (about £330). In addition in March 1430 the English ceded Champagne to him—though this was already occupied by Dauphinists—together with 50,000 gold saluts (Anglo-French gold crowns minted at Rouen), in return for military assistance against the Dauphinists for two months.
Slowly the Regent restored the situation. Château Gaillard was recovered in June 1430, and the English continued to regain ground everywhere throughout 1431. In March Bedford himself retook Colummiers, Gourlay-sur-Marne and Montjoy ; at the same time the Earl of Warwick annihilated a raiding force which had tried to ambush the Regent, capturing its commander Poton de Xaintrailles, together with a shepherd boy who was supposed to be Joan’s successor (he deliberately bloodied his hands and feet in imitation of St Francis’s stigmata). In October Louviers fell to Bedford, after a siege of nine months. The Duke of Burgundy was not so successful, losing territory to the Dauphinists.
The impetus generated by Joan’s revivalism had ground to a halt. The apathy of the Dauphinists is understandable enough. It was not simply because of the supine nature of the man who was the leader and the symbol of Valois France, but because more fighting meant more devastation. Basin wrote how ‘from the Loire to the Seine the peasants had been slain or put to flight’. The bishop continued : ‘We ourselves have seen the vast plains of Champagne, of the Beauce, of the Brie, of the Gâtinais, Chartres, Dreux, Maine and Perche, of the Vexin (French as well as Norman), the Beauvaisis, the Pays de Caux, from the Seine as far as Amiens and Abbeville, the countryside round Senlis, Soissons and Valois right to Laon and beyond towards Hainault absolutely deserted, uncultivated, abandoned, empty of inhabitants, covered with scrub and brambles; indeed in most of the more thickly wooded districts dense forests were growing up.’
The capital itself was in a frightful state. As a result of interrupted communications and exposed supply routes, together with harassment by brigands and peasants, many Parisians were starving, while travellers were ambushed by raiding parties lurking outside the city. At night wolves continued to prowl the streets, looking for dead bodies or children. Thousands left in despair. Now that Burgundy had relinquished his governorship Bedford could act, and on the last day of January 1431 he returned to Paris ‘en très belle compagnie’, bringing up with him seventy barges laden with food. The Bourgeois records how Parisians said that ‘for 400 years people had never seen so much to eat’. But it was only a drop in an ocean, and the famine became even worse, the price of wheat doubling. The Parisians ‘often cursed the Duke, not only in private but in public as well, giving way to despair and ceasing to believe in his fine promises’.
Bedford decided to play his trump card. At the end of November the nine-year-old ‘Henri II’ arrived at Saint-Denis and on 2 December made his joyeuse entrée into the capital of his Kingdom of France. Yellow-haired and in cloth of gold, he rode on a white charger through the icy streets to be greeted by the Provost and the Councillors of the Parlement in their red satin. Although starving, the Parisians gave the King a tumultuous welcome, crying ‘Nowell’; obviously they hoped for a rich bounty from the royal largesse. On Sunday 16 December he went on foot to Notre-Dame, accompanied by citizens who sang melodiously.