The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [42]
Henry V ignored this, for the greatest prize of all was almost within his grasp. On 21 May 1420 a peace treaty was ratified at Troyes by the kings of England and France, by the terms of which Henry V and his heirs were designated the lawful successors to Charles VI. Normandy was formally ceded to Henry and he was appointed Regent of France until such time as he should succeed to his new inheritance. The Treaty of Troyes effectively disinherited the House of Valois and the Dauphin Charles, and marked the pinnacle of Henry V’s achievement in France. However, it made little difference to the war, and hostilities continued as before, while the Dauphin, a penniless exile, set up a rival court at Bourges.
The Treaty of Troyes was sealed by the marriage of Henry V to Katherine of Valois, youngest daughter of Charles VI; their ‘magnificent espousals’ took place on 2 June at Troyes Cathedral. The marriage was supposed to lend dynastic credence to Henry’s new status as heir to the French throne, and as he made his vows he appeared, according to one chronicler, ‘as if he were at that moment king of all the world’.
The marriage had been under discussion since 1414, and according to Martin’s Chronicle Katherine had ‘passionately longed’ for it; from the moment she set eyes on Henry, she ‘constantly solicited her mother till the marriage took place’. She was undoubtedly handsome, if not beautiful, but Henry would probably not have cared if she were otherwise; to him, she represented France. He was never a doting husband, and Katherine seems to have been somewhat in awe of him. Theirs was essentially a dynastic match, and it is unlikely that love played much part in it.
Katherine had been born in 1401 in Paris of a demented father and a nymphomaniac mother, Isabeau of Bavaria. She had had a terrible childhood: she and her sister Michelle were neglected by their parents and nobody cared much about their welfare. They were filthy, often starving, and frequently abandoned by their unpaid attendants. The two princesses scavenged around for food or had to rely on the charity of their remaining servants.
Their father, a terrifying and sometimes violent figure, rarely saw them, but once, when he had one of his periods of lucidity, he demanded to know why his daughters were so unkempt and dirty. Their governess told him the truth, and he gave her a gold cup to sell so that necessities could be provided for the girls. Occasionally Queen Isabeau visited them, but she was too preoccupied with her many lovers and her political intrigues to spare much time for her vast brood of children, not all of whom were the King’s. Eventually Katherine was packed off to be educated at the convent at Poissy, where she learned at least one language if little else. She seems not to have been a particularly bright girl, nor was she gifted with a vivacious personality, but she emerged from the convent with looks, her rank and her precocious sensuality to commend her, as well as the most engaging manners. The Burgundian chronicler, Jean de Waurin, called her ‘a very handsome lady, of graceful figure and pleasing countenance’, and her funeral effigy at Westminster Abbey shows her to have had a long neck, good bone structure, and the long Valois nose.
Henry and Katherine returned to England in December 1420, being carried ashore in triumph on the shoulders of the barons of the Cinque Ports. Katherine was crowned with due magnificence in February 1421, and in the summer of that year, the King left her pregnant when he returned to France for what was to be his last campaign. Before he went he is said to have forbidden her to go to Windsor for her confinement because of an old prophecy which foretold that ‘Henry of Windsor shall long reign and lose all’.
Katherine disobeyed him. She went to Windsor in the autumn and there, at four o’clock in the afternoon of St Nicholas’s Day, 6 December, after a painful labour, she bore a son, who was styled Duke of Cornwall from his birth. Henry V was besieging Meaux when