30. Charles VII.
CHAPTER XXX. Charles VII. (1422-1461)
When Charles VI. died, he left a son named like himself Charles. Henry V., who died(, as I said,) at just the same time, had left a son called Henry. By the agreement which had been made a few years before by the English and French it had been settled that when Charles died the son of Henry of England should be king. But the dauphin, the son of Charles, had never agreed to this, and had always gone on making war upon the English. He now began to call himself Charles VII., and the people of the south part of France gathered round him and said they would have him for their king (sooner)<rather> than the son of an Englishman, though Henry V. 's little baby was half French, for his mother had been a French princess. The part of France that had been conquered by the English, in which Henry VI. was to be king was, governed for him by his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, a wise and brave soldier, who ruled well, and brought the country into better order than had been known there for many years.
But the state of France, on the whole, was miserable at this time. In some parts of the country, everything was destroyed, woods were growing where there had been villages, the roads had been all broken up, or become so rough from want of attention, that no one could travel on them; wolves came into the towns to try and find some child or weak person of whom to make a meal. Still the war went on, though the English would have done better at this time to make a peace with the French, taking some part of the country for their own, and then leaving the rest and going back to England; for now that Henry was dead they had very little chance of conquering the whole of France, and affairs in England were going very badly, so that the Duke of Bedford had to go backwards and forwards between England and France, and could not attend fully to the affairs of either.
The fighting went on for about five years; sometimes one side had the better, sometimes the other. The two chief battles fought were won by the English; but though many men were killed in them, they were not of great importance. At last the English resolved to besiege the most important town in France next to Paris — Orleans, on the river Loire, almost in a straight line to the south of Paris. The English had gathered together ten thousand men, and had begun by taking all the small places near Orleails, so that they might send no help to the town. Then the English army drew close round the town, built forts, and prevented any food from going in. The people of Orleans did all they could to defend themselves, and for some time they managed to prevent the English from doing their city much harm, but they soon began to feel the want of food, and they sent to ask for help from the chief men of France. But no help came to them either from the great lords, who were all busy about business of their own, or from the king, Charles VII., who was a weak, idle man, and did not seem to care, so long as he himself was safe and comfortable, whether or not the second city of his country fell into the hands of his enemy.
Help did come to Orleans at last, but in a way in which no one could have expected it. In a little village in Lorraine, on the east side of France, there lived a peasant girl named Jeanne D'Arc. She was brought up like other children by her parents, taking the cows out to the meadows when she was quite young, and when she grew older, sitting at home and sewing with her mother, while her brothers and sisters worked in the fields. She could neither read nor write, but her mother taught her all that she herself knew. Jeanne was fond of being alone, and used often to go to an old beech tree near the village, where it was supposed that fairies danced by night. Here Jeanne would sit by herself when she wanted to think quietly. As she grew older, she began to hear a great deal of the war between England and France, which brought so much distress and trouble to the people of France. She knew how many hundreds of Frenchmen had lost their houses, their lands, their friends, all that they cared about, already, and how the war was not yet nearly over, but seemed likely to go on, no one could tell how much longer. The king, Charles, had some good generals who would have fought bravely for him, but he would not listen to them, and spent all his time in amusing himself.
Jeanne thought of all this till she longed to do something to help her countrymen. She began to fancy that she saw visions, that is, that she thought she saw people and heard voices which no one else could see or hear. It seemed at times, always when she was alone, that three angels appeared to her in a bright right, saying, "Jeanne, go to the help of the King of France, and you will win back his kingdom for him." The voices also told her to go to the captain of the town near, and ask him to send her to the king.
We often read in history of people who have thought, as Jeanne did, that special messages are sent to them from God by signs or voices which no one else can hear or understand. Sometimes such people are out of their minds, sometimes they are ill, but sometimes, like Jeanne D'Arc, they are not only in their right senses, but are particularly wise and sensible people, whose advice is of great value to everybody. They seem to see strange unusual sights because their minds are full of strange unusual thoughts; they think only of the one thing that interests them till they become too much excited to see and hear the common things going on round them, and then imagine they see something which is not seen by any one else, and so cannot be said to be really there.
Jeanne talked about her visions to her relations, and told her parents that she wished to go to court to give the king a message from heaven and to help him fight his enemies. They refused for some time to let her go, but she at last found an uncle who took her to the captain of the town near at hand, and asked him to send her to the king. The captain would not hear of it for some time; but at last some of the chief people of the place saw her, and having talked with her, promised to go with her to the court.
Charles heard of her, and sent to say he would receive her; the people of the town bought her a horse; the captain gave her a sword; and so she set off with a few soldiers to guard her. When she was presented at the court, the king had hidden himself among his courtiers, and put one of them richly dressed on the throne, to see whether Jeanne would know which was the real king. She went straight up to Charles, and though at first he said, to try her, that he was not the king, she declared that he was, and went on to tell him that she was sent by God to save his country from the English. At last he was persuaded to listen to her, and even to believe what she said.
The first thing she wished to do was to go to the help of Orleans. The king put her at the head of a body of soldiers, and sent them on their way. They marched towards Orleans, all the people as they passed through the country coming out to look at Jeanne in her shining armour on her fine horse. From this time she always dressed herself like a man, which was more convenient for the soldier's life she had to lead. Jeanne at this time was only seventeen, but she had so much good sense and power of understanding, that the captains were glad to have her help and advice, and were all her friends by the time they came to Orleans, where they made their way into the town, and were welcomed with delight by the people. They all looked upon Jeanne as a saint; and the English, who had heard so much of her, were frightened, and thought she would be able to bewitch them, or do them harm in some strange way.
The first time that they met her in battle they did not dare to resist, but gave way before her. She was afraid of no one; her friends were always made braver themselves by seeing her courage in battle, for she went straight on as if nothing could hurt her; and both her friends and enemies believed more and more that she was a special messenger sent from God to the help of France.
Orleans was saved by her help. The siege had already lasted for some time, and the English were tired with the efforts they had made. They saw that the people of Orleans were less likely to yield now than before; the English general was killed one day by a shot from the walls of the town, and at last, a week after Jeanne had come into the city, the English army left all the forts and towers that they had built round Orleans, and marched away, leaving the town free.
Jeanne had one more great wish. The king had never yet been solemnly crowned. It was the custom for the kings of France to be crowned at a place called Rheims, and Jeanne wished to take Charles to Rheims and have him crowned king. Charles had been amusing himself while Jeanne was at Orleans, and made no objection to anything that was proposed. Most of his advisers thought that as the English were masters of the country all round Rheims, it would be too dangerous to try and make their way there; but the common people, who thought the crowning of the king, which was done with a sort of religious service and very solemnly, a matter of great importance, agreed with Jeanne, and the great lords were persuaded to yield. They all went together to Rheims; meeting the English on the way, and defeating them in a great battle. In Rheims itself there were no enemies; the French had only to march in, and they were masters. Charles was crowned king with Jeanne standing by his side, with the standard or flag (which she always carried in battle, instead of a sword,) in her hand. Many people, seeing that Charles had been crowned in this way, while Henry had not, went over from the side of Henry to that of Charles.
When this was over, Jeanne wished to go back to her old home, and live again with her parents. She had now been away for nearly three months, and she had done the two great things which she had wished to do for her country - saving Orleans, and having the king crowned. But the captains of Charles begged her to stay with the army. They found that the English feared her, and their own soldiers admired her so much that they thought while she was with them, they were certain to succeed. Jeanne agreed to stay, but from this time she was often sad and disturbed, and was sometimes heard to say, "I shall not live for more than a year." The English had begun to draw back from many of the parts of France which they had conquered, and the people whose country had not been conquered were encouraged to rise up against them. The English still held Paris, and Jeanne led an army to try and make its way into that city. Here she failed for the first time; and she and her men were driven back from the walls. The favourites of the king were growing jealous of Jeanne; they found that Charles listened more to her than he did to them. They began trying to prevent her from winning any more glory by her victories, and sometimes even refused to send soldiers out with her, or to listen to her advice on questions about the war. At last she one day went with a party of French soldiers outside a town in which many of the French soldiers were gathered together, and where she had been staying. The English, with some of the French who still took their part, were outside the walls, and Jeanne and her men were surrounded by the enemy. Most of them made their way back into the city, but no one stayed to help Jeanne, who had gone on farther than all the rest. She turned at last, but when she came to the town she could not get through the gates. Some writers say that they were shut; others, that the people pressing in filled them up, so that she could not make her way through; but whatever the reason, she was kept out, and after trying to escape without being noticed, was taken prisoner by her enemies.
It was not to an Englishman, but to a subject of the Duke of Burgundy, a friend of the English, that she gave herself up, and she was at first kept in a castle belonging to him, but she was afterwards sold to the English for a large sum of money.
It shows such ingratitude as one could hardly have thought possible in the King of France and his chief lords, that no one did anything to save Jeanne D'Arc. The English, as soon as she was in their power, brought her up for trial, as if she had been a criminal, that is, a person who has done some wrong action, instead of a brave (soldier)<woman> who had fought for her country. A French bishop was her chief judge, and all her judges were Frenchmen. She had no one to defend her; questions of every kind were asked her about herself, about her life, her religion, her visions. The English wished to make her confess that she was a witch; she was thrown into prison, and treated with great cruelty. It was thought very wicked of her to wear men's clothes instead of women's; and her having one day put some on, because the women's clothes had been taken out of her prison, was one of the excuses for the horrible sentence which her judges passed on her. She was sentenced to be burned alive, and the execution took place at Rouen. Crowds of people, both friends and enemies, came to see her die, but no one interfered to help her. She died before she was twenty-one, and is perhaps the most wonderful woman of whom we read in all history. It is hard to say how much she might not have done for France, if the king (would have)<had> made up his mind to trust her (sooner)<rather> than his vain and jealous courtiers. As it was, the English never settled themselves firmly in the country again, and were driven out of it altogether before the end of Charles VII. 's reign, as we shall hear. The English had hoped that when Jeanne was dead, they would no longer find the French able to resist them; but the French, soon after, made themselves stronger than they had ever been before, by making up the quarrels they had among themselves, and all joining together against the English. The people of France wished for peace, and messengers from France and England met several times to try and arrange it, but always in vain. As usual in time of war, the boldest and most lawless men formed themselves into bands, and went through the country, taking for themselves whatever they could find, and ruining all the poor people who were not already ruined by the war. It seemed as if every one had (left off caring)<ceased to care> not only for law, but for the common rules of right and wrong. Fathers and sons, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, quarrelled, and put one another to death by poison, or in more open ways, and this happened in most of the great families of that time in France.
There was one nobleman, living in Brittany, named Gilles de Retz, of whom a horrible story is told. It had been noticed for some time that a great number of children who lived in the neighbourhood had disappeared, no one knew where. They were usually poor children who had been sent out to keep cattle or to beg, and it was supposed that they were tempted away by an old woman to some place from which they never came back. After a time, the children in a town near at hand began to disappear in the same way. The people complained to the Duke of Brittany, and he gave orders that a castle, belonging to one of the great lords, into which the children were supposed to be taken, should be searched. This was done, and there was found in it a pile of bones so large, that it was supposed that forty children must have been put to death. The nobleman, to whom the castle belonged, had killed the children out of wickedness, and amused himself by watching their struggles as they died. This was too much to be borne, even in those days, and the nobleman was put to death. He was to have been burned, but because he was a noble, the king agreed that he should be strangled before the flames touched him.
At about this time there came a change in the character of the king. Till now he had been so weak that he had allowed himself to be ruled by the people about him, without taking any notice of what was going on. He had cared only for amusing himself, and not being troubled (to settle)<about> the affairs of the kingdom; but now at last he began to see the miserable state into which the country had fallen, and the importance of doing something to help his people. He called together the States-General, and made several wise laws. One of the first things to be done was to get rid of the disorderly soldiers who obeyed no one, but spent their time in robbing peaceful people, and to send them out of the country.
He first tried sending them to fight in wars that were going on in different countries of Europe. In these wars many of them were killed, and France was free from them for a time; but Charles wished to make some plan by which they should be prevented from coming back again to trouble the country each time that there was a fresh war. He (settled)<determined> to have (what we have now in England, and) what France and most other countries (also)<now> have, a standing army — that is, an army which should always be kept together and ready to fight — so that when a war began there should be no need to call out a number of men with no one (special)<particular> to command them, and no one to answer for their behaviour. All the soldiers in the country were to be always under fixed officers, who should lead them to battle when they were wanted, and should be punished if their men disturbed the people of the country, or did harm to any peaceable person.
The king chose from all his men fifteen of the best and bravest, and called them his captains. Each captain had a certain number of men under him, called a company, and was sent with them to a particular town or part of the country, which he was to defend and keep in order. All the men who were not chosen by the king or the captains to make part of the companies, were commanded to go back to their homes and live quietly, which they did, because they were afraid to refuse, and so at last the country was freed from them.
The war between England and France had gone on all this time without anything important being done on either side. Both parties had got tired of fighting at last, and there had been a truce for two years, but no peace. The French had, however, won back Paris, and suddenly they seemed to wake up as if out of a long sleep, and drove the English almost entirely out of the country. They took the whole province of Normandy in less than a year, and Guienne, which is all the southern part of France, in another year. The English had only about three towns in France still belonging to them; one was Calais, which was theirs for another hundred years; the others were small places of no importance. The English were now taken up with troubles in their own kingdom. The Wars of the Roses had begun, and from this time they had no thought or time to spare for what went on in France.
The war between England and France had lasted for nearly one hundred years, for which reason it is often called The Hundred Years' War. (*It had brought much trouble upon both nations, and though most Englishmen must be proud of the memory of the great battles, in which the French were defeated by the good conduct of the English, in spite of their small numbers and all the difficulties in their way; yet no one can help being sorry that this war should ever have been begun.
In the first place, the English king had no right in France, and therefore the war was an unjust one; and in the second place, it would have been a very bad thing for England if her kings had succeeded in doing what they wished, and made both countries one. England, the smaller country, would soon have been the subject of France. *) The French had suffered far more than the English, as all the fighting had been in their country; they had also had the misfortune of being badly governed all the time the war was going on. It is a gloomy part of history, and the part of it that is most pleasant to remember is the story of Jeanne D'Arc, which shows us what the courage and good sense and virtue of one brave, wise, good person may do, even when things seem at their very worst, and though the person may be, what we should think, one of the humblest and least important of (his or her countrymen)<people>. Charles VII. had some trouble with his eldest son, who joined the great lords in an attack they made against his father, and was only kept quiet by having a province of the kingdom given him to rule over. He left even that at last, being afraid that his father meant to do him some harm, and went to the court of the Duke of Burgundy, his father's cousin, who treated him very kindly, kept him there for some years, and tried to make peace between him and the king. But Louis, the young prince, would not trust his father, and Charles, though wishing Louis himself to come back, said he must not bring with him any of his friends, several of whom had followed him to the court of the Duke of Burgundy.
At last King Charles fell ill; he became very anxious to see his son again, but Louis still refused to trust himself at the French court. Then some of his enemies persuaded the king that the Dauphin's friends wished to poison him. Charles believed this, and refused to take any food, even though his younger son tasted it before him. (In this way he starved himself to death;) after a few days he became very ill, and at the end of a week he died, at the age of fifty-eight. He had been king for thirty-nine years. Charles VII. has been called the Well-served, and it is a good name, for very few of the good things that happened to France in his time were brought about by him; but he had had many good soldiers and advisers, of whom you will read in other histories when you are older, as I have not space here to mention any of them but Jeanne D'Arc.
