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Electoral Rhine, Burgundy, Westphalia, and Upper and Lower Saxony. Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Lusatia, and Prussia, were not included in this division.

Many years were employed in struggles between the French and Germans for the possession of Upper Italy. Venice surrendered to the emperor, but, having again revolted, was attacked by George of Frundsberg, with a chosen body of German soldiers (Landsknechten, Lansquenets, a sort of mercenaries, who served on foot and were at that time in much repute). The Venetian commander had invited a great number of ladies to witness what he supposed would be the certain defeat of the Germans; but to his unspeakable mortification, not only was his large army beaten by an insignificant force, but the fair Venetians themselves taken prisoners. In 1516, Maximilian endeavored to

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ENRY IV. ascended the throne on the deposition of Richard II., 1399, and had immediately to combat a rebellion, raised by the Earl of Northumberland, for placing Mortimer, earl of March, the heir of the house of York, on the throne. The Scotch and Welsh took part with the rebels. Hotspur (young Percy), marching at the head of twelve thousand men to effect a junction with Owen Glendower, had advanced as far as Shrewsbury, when he was encountered by the king, July 23, 1403. A most obstinate and bloody battle ensued, in which the Prince of Wales, afterward Henry V., proved himself the heir to the fame of Edward, the Black Prince. The fortune of the day was decided by the death of Hotspur. A second rebellion, headed by the archbishop of York, was quelled by the capital punishment of its author. Scotland might have played an important part in the troubles of Henry's reign; but the dissensions in her own royal family not only crippled her, but resulted in an accident which placed her in Henry's power. The Duke of Albany, not content with ruling his weak brother, Robert III., contrived the murder of his eldest son David, duke of Rothesay, as a step toward the throne. To save his younger son James, Robert caused him to sail for France; but the ship was taken by the English, 1405, and Henry detained the young prince long after his father's death had made him King James I. of Scotland. James beguiled his imprisonment at Windsor with some of those poems which have secured for him an honorable place in Anglo-Scottish literature. One great blot on Henry's .administration was his persecution of the Lollards The year 1401 was the first in

which the statute-book of England was sullied by an act for the burning of heretics.

Henry died at Westminster on March 20, 1413, in the forty-sixth year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign.

Henry V., 1413-1422, of Monmouth, was born on the 9th of August, 1388. His early exploits in the wars against the Percies and Glendower had been succeeded by an inactivity forced upon him by the jealous state of mind into which his father fell towards the end of his reign. How the prince's restless spirit is said to have found vent in disorders with debauched companions; how he atoned for these excesses by his graceful submission to the judge whom he had insulted on the bench; and how he was at last reconciled to his father; all these are traditions better known through the fancy of Shakespeare than in the actual facts of history. But these faults were all thrown aside when he mounted the throne, and he retained about him his father's wisest councillors.

The beginning of his reign was disgraced by a new persecution of the Lollards. The diffusion of doctrines such as Wickliffe's through Europe alarmed the church, and led to the assembling of the council of Constance, where John Huss was burnt, 1414.

But Henry's whole energies were soon thrown into a new effort to subdue France. During the last reign the war had languished, but the French had more than once attacked the southern coasts of England. Now, however, the internal state of France offered an opportunity which Henry was not the man to lose.

Charles VI., the grandson of John II., had lost his reason; and the regency was disputed between

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his brother the Duke of Orleans, and his cousin John (Jean sans Peur). the second duke of Burgundy, son of the younger son of John II. The dispute had broken out into open war, and Burgundy had secretly solicited aid from the king of England. Having strengthened himself by alliances with the Emperor Sigismund and with Ferdinand, king of Aragon, Henry openly laid claim to the crown of France, and assembled his forces at Portsmouth in the spring of 1415. He was detained a short time by a conspiracy formed in favor of the Earl of March by the Earl of Cambridge, younger son of Edmund, duke of York, Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas Grey, who were hastily tried and executed.

On the 11th of August, 1415, Henry sailed from Southampton, with 1,500 ships, conveying 6,000 men-at-arms and 24,000 infantry, chiefly archers. Landing on the 13th, he formed the siege of Harfleur, which capitulated on the 22d of September. But the delay and the heat of the season had been so fatal to Henry's little army that he could proceed no further. Resisting, however, all entreaties to return to England, he resolved to retreat to Calais. By slow stages he reached the Somme, on the banks of which the French army, four times as numerous as his own, were now assembled under the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon. Both armies crossed the river; Henry by an adroit surprise, and the French with a view of barring his progress. Their manœuvre succeeded, though to their ultimate ruin, and Henry found them posted in front of him on the plains of Azincour, or Agincourt, October 24, 1415. On the following day the scenes of Crécy and Poitiers were repeated, but with a result even more decisive. Standing on the defensive, with their front secured by palisades against the enemy's cavalry, the English archers poured their deadly volleys upon the dense masses of the French, and then charged their disordered ranks. Ten thousand of the French were slain, and 14,000 were made prisoners, amongst whom were the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, and many of the highest of the French nobility. The loss of the English was so small that it is stated at only forty!

The intimate relations long since established between France and Scotland had led a large body of the flower of the Scottish nation to enter the service of the French king. These Scots, to the number of 7,000, had adhered to the Dauphin, and had

defeated Henry's brother, the Duke of Clarence, at Baugé. Henry now obtained from the captive Scottish king, James I., his consent to the engagement of the Earl of Douglas and other Scottish nobles in the English army. James himself even served as a volunteer, and, under the color of his support, Henry treated the Scots whom he took prisoners as rebels and traitors. No wonder that the feud between Scotland and England grew bitterer in each age.

Returning to England to recruit his forces, Henry landed again with an army of 25,000, and fought his way to Paris. The insane monarch, with his court, fled to Troyes; and Henry pursuing, terminated the war by a treaty with the queen-motherwho had taken the part of the English monarch against her own son, and the Duke of Burgundy, by which it was agreed that he should marry Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI., and receive the kingdom of France as her dowry, which, till the death of her father, he should govern as regent.

Meantime the return of Henry to England gave the Dauphin hopes of the recovery of his kingdom. He was victorious in an engagement with the English under the Duke of Clarence; but his success was of no longer duration than the absence of the English sovereign, who was himself hastening to the period of his triumphs. Seized with a mortal distemper, Henry died in the thirty-fourth year of his age, 1422, one of the most heroic princes that ever swayed the sceptre of England. His brother, the Duke of Bedford, was declared Regent of France, and, on the death of Charles VI., who survived Henry V. but a few months, Henry VI., an infant nine months old, was proclaimed king at Paris and at London, 1422.

Henry left but the one infant son, with whose unhappy reign the dynasty of Lancaster ended. His widow, Catherine, by her second marriage with a Welsh gentleman, Sir Owen Tudor, became the ancestress of a new dynasty, in the person of her grandson, Henry VII.

Henry V. left his splendid and hard-won inheritance to his only son, Henry VI., of Windsor, 1422-1461. This reign of confusion and disaster divides itself into two parts, marked by the loss of the English dominions in France and by the terrible civil conflict known as the "Wars of the Roses."

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The king's infancy gave a new opportunity for the parliament to exercise the large powers which it had for some time been steadily acquiring. The administration was intrusted to the elder of the king's two uncles, John, duke of Bedford, with the title, not of regent, but Protector of the Realm and Church of England; the care of the king's person was committed to Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester. New life was infused into the French party by the death of the poor old imbecile king Charles VI., 1422, when the Dauphin was crowned as Charles VII. The year 1429 introduced a new scene, marked by one of the most romantic episodes in all history. Bedford had resolved to carry the war to the south of the Loire, and had laid siege to Orleans, the fall of which threatened to be fatal to Charles VII. Now there was a country girl, twenty-seven years old, at the village of Domremy, in Lorraine, named Joan of Arc. She had shown no marks of genius, nor eccentricities of character, but, as the sole servant at a small inn, she had been inured to masculine occupations, such as tending the horses of the guests; and she thus acquired great skill in horsemanship. At length the secret springs of enthusiasm, which so easily vibrate in a woman's heart, were touched by the news of the king's extremity, and Joan believed herself to be the heaven sent saviour of her country. Presenting herself to Baudricourt, the governor of Vaucouleurs, she related to him her visions, and persuaded him to send her to Charles VII. at Chinon. There, as the story goes, she at once recognized the king, though disguised among his courtiers; she mentioned a secret known only to himself; and she gave a minute description of a sword which was kept in the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois, and which she claimed as the sign and instrument of her mission. That mission she declared to be to raise the siege of Orleans and to crown the king at Rheims.

These and other miracles were eagerly spread abroad by the court and accepted by the people, before whom Joan was exhibited in full panoply on a splendid charger. In this array, unfurling a consecrated banner, she marched to the relief of Orleans. The besiegers, who shared in the first impression of superstitious awe, permitted her to enter the city with a convoy of provisions, April 20, 1429. She forth with assumed the offensive; attacked and carried the works of the enemy, and compelled the

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1154. Henry II. becomes King of England. Under him Thomas à Becket is made Archbishop of Canterbury: the first instance of any man of the Saxon race being raised to high office in Church or State since the Conquest.

1170. Strongbow, earl of Pembroke, lands with an English army in Ireland.

1189. Richard Coeur de Lion becomes King of England. He and King Philip Augustus of France join in the third Crusade.

1199-1204. On the death of King Richard, his brother John claims and makes himself master of England and Normandy and the other large continental possessions of the early Plantagenet princes. Philip Augustus asserts the cause of Prince Arthur, John's nephew, against him. Arthur is murdered, but the French king continues the war against John, and conquers from him Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitiers.

1215. The barons, the freeholders, the citizens, and the yeomen of England rise against the tyranny of John and his foreign favorites. They compel him to sign Magna Charta. This is the commencement of English nationality; for England's history from this time forth is the history of a national life, then complete, and still in being. All English history before this period is a mere history of elements, of their collisions, and of the processes of their fusion. For upwards of a century after the Conquest, Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon had kept aloof from each other: the one in haughty scorn, the other in sullen abhorrence. They were two peoples, though living in the same land. It is not until the thirteenth century, the period of the reigns of John and his son and grandson, that we can perceive the existence of any feeling of common patriotism among them. But in studying the history of these reigns, we read of the old dissensions no longer. The Saxon no more appears in civil war against the Norman; the Norman no longer scorns the language of the Saxon, or refuses to bear together with him the name of Englishman. No part of the community think themselves foreigners to another part. They feel that they are all one people, and they have learned to unite their efforts for the common purpose of protecting the rights and promoting the welfare of all. The fortunate loss of the Duchy of Normandy in John's reign greatly promoted these new feelings. Thenceforth the barons' only homes were in England. One language had, in the reign of Henry III., become the language of the land; and that, also, had

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1360. Treaty of Bretigny between England and France. By it Edward III. renounces his pretensions to the French crown. The treaty is ill kept, and indecisive hostilities continue between the forces of the two countries.

1414. Henry V. of England claims the crown of France, and resolves to invade and conquer that kingdom. At this time France was in the most deplorable state of weakness and suffering, from the factions that raged among her nobility, and from the cruel oppressions which the rival nobles practiced on the mass of the community. "The people were exhausted by taxes, civil wars, and military executions; and they had fallen into that worst of all states of mind, when the independence of one's country is thought no longer a paramount and sacred object. What can the English do to us worse than the things we suffer at the hands of our own princes?' was a common exclamation among the poor people of France." 1415. Henry invades France, takes Harfleur, and wins the great battle of Agincourt.

1417-1419. Henry conquers Normandy. The French Dauphin assassinates the Duke of Burgundy, the most powerful of the French nobles, at Montereau. The successor of the murdered duke becomes the active ally of the English.

1420. The Treaty of Troyes is concluded between Honry V. of England and Charles VI. of France, and Philip, duke of Burgundy. By this treaty it was stipulated that Henry should marry the Princess Catherine of France; that King Charles, during his lifetime, should keep the title and dignity of King of France, but that Henry should succeed him, and should at once be entrusted with the administration of the government, and that the French crown should descend to Henry's heirs; that France and England should for ever be united under one king, but should still retain their several usages, customs, and privileges; that all the princes, peers, vassals, and communities of France should swear allegiance to Henry as their future king, and should pay him present obedience as regent; that Henry should unite his arms to those of King Charles and the Duke of Burgundy, in order to subdue the adherents of Charles, the pretended dauphin; and that these three princes should make no truce or peace with the Dauphin, but by the common consent of all three.

1421. Henry V. gains several victories over the French, who refuse to acknowledge the treaty of Troyes. His son, afterwards Henry VI., is born.

1422. Henry V. and Charles VI. of France die. Henry VI. is proclaimed at Paris, King of England and France. The followers of the French Dauphin proclaim him Charles VII., King of France. The Duke of Bedford, the English Regent in France, defeats the army of the Dauphin at Crevant.

1424. The Duke of Bedford gains the great victory of Verneuil, over the French partisans of the Dauphin, and their Scotch auxiliaries.

1428. The English begin the siege of Orleans.

Joan of Arc's Victory over the English at Orleans, A.D. 1429.

Seldom has the extinction of a nation's independence appeared more inevitable than was the case in France, when the English invaders completed their lines round Orleans, over four hundred and forty years ago. A series of dreadful defeats had thinned the chivalry of France, and daunted the spirits of her soldiers. A foreign king had been proclaimed in her capital; and foreign armies of the bravest veterans, and led by the ablest captains then known in the world, occupied the fairest portions of her territory. Worse to her even than the fierceness and the strength of her foes were the factions, the vices, and the crimes of her own children. Her native prince was a dissolute trifler, stained with the assassination of the most powerful noble of the land, whose son, in revenge, had leagued himself with the enemy. Many more of her nobility, many of her prelates, her magistrates, and rulers, had sworn fealty to the English king. The condition of the peasantry amid the general prevalence of anarchy and brigandage, which were added to the customary devastations of contending armies, was wretched beyond the power of language to describe. The sense of terror and suffering seemed to have extended itself even to the brute creation.

In the autumn of 1428, the English, who were already masters of all France north of the Loire, prepared their forces for the conquest of the southern provinces, which yet adhered to the cause of the Dauphin. The city of Orleans, on the banks of that river, was looked upon as the last stronghold of the French national party. If the English could once obtain possession of it, their victorious progress through the residue of the kingdom seemed free from any serious obstacle. Accordingly, the Earl of Salisbury, one of the bravest and most experienced of the English generals, who had been trained under Henry V., marched to the attack of the all-important city; and, after reducing several places of inferior consequence in the neighborhood, appeared with his army before its walls on the 12th of October, 1428.

The city of Orleans itself was on the north side of the Loire, but its suburbs extended far on the southern side, and a strong bridge connected them with the town. A fortification which in modern military phrase would be termed a tête-du-pont, defended the bridge-head on the southern side, and two towers, called the Tourelles, were built on the bridge itself, where it rested on an island at a little distance from the têtedu-pont. Indeed, the solid masonry of the bridge terminated at the Tourelles; and the communication thence with the tète-du-pont on the southern shore was by means of a drawbridge.

The Tourelles and the tête-du-pont formed togther a strong fortified post, capable of containing a garrison of considerable strength; and so long as this was in possession of the Orleannais, they could communicate freely with the southern provinces, the inhabitants of which, like the Orleannais themselves, supported the cause of their Dauphin against the foreigners. Lord Salisbury rightly judged the capture of the Tourelles to be the most material step towards the reduction of the city itself. Accordingly, he directed his principal operations against this post, and after some severe repulses, he carried the Tourelles by storm, on the 23d of October. The French, however, broke down the part of the bridge which

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