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cannot, of course, take time to dwell on the particulars of it; to speak of the immense loss of life to the nobility of France; the consequence of their impetuous but illdirected valour. Nor can I more than mention Henry's stern order-let us hope it was unavoidable-for the slaughter of the French prisoners. One incident alone I must refer to as finely illustrative of that period of England's history; and it is described in one of the beautiful passages of poetic description with which the play abounds-the description of the deaths of York and Suffolk. After the battle, the king inquires whether his cousin, the Duke of York, survives :

"Lives he, good uncle? Thrice, within this hour,
I saw him down; thrice up again and fighting;
From helmet to the spur, all blood he was."

Exeter answers

"In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie,
Larding the plain; and by his bloody side
(Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds)
The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies.

Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,
Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteep'd,
And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
And cries aloud-'Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk !
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven :
Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast;
As, in this glorious and well-foughten field
We kept together in our chivalry!'
Upon these words, I came and cheer'd him up:
He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand,

And, with a feeble gripe, says 'Dear my lord,
Commend my service to my sovereign.'
So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck

He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips;
And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal'd

A testament of noble-ending love."

This description is an image of the English nobility; not discordant, but "keeping together in their chivalry" in the hour of battle and of death, and uttering with their last breath dutiful and affectionate loyalty to that sovereign, whose sway gave glory and harmony to the nation.

Intending this drama as a kind of triumphal song, Shakspeare has carried it, not as usual on to the monarch's death, but to the happy ending of the marriage of Henry the Fifth to Katharine of France, the daughter of King Charles. The great achievement of the war was the treaty stipulation for the permanent union of the crowns of England and France. The subjugation of the French was partial and of short duration; and the next page of history that we have to turn to, will show how the independence of France found its wondrous redemption by the splendid heroism of Joan of Arc.

LECTURE VIII.*

The Reign of Henry the Sixth.

The treaty of Troyes-Its details-The last hours of Henry the Fifth His intended crusade-Hume's comments-Henry the Sixth an infant-His reign and these "Chronicle-Plays" unpromising subjects--Genuineness of the plays-The Minority-The French warsState of France-The Regent Bedford-The Siege of Orleans-Joan of Arc-Various criticisms on her character-Her sincerityImputed witchcraft-Defective education-Her influence-Relief of Orleans-Coronation of the king at Rheims-Exemption of Domremy-Capture of the Maid-Her trial and examination-Her martyrdom-Cardinal Beaufort and the Bishop of Beauvais-The cardinal's death-Statue of the Maid at Versailles-Death of the Duke of Bedford-His monument-Magnanimity of Louis the Eleventh.

IN concluding the last lecture, I pointed your attention to the fact that Shakspeare, in order to preserve unbroken the triumphant tone of the drama of Henry the Fifth, did not bring it down to the monarch's death. The historical illustration which the play furnished us, ended with the close of Henry's campaign in France and his marriage with Katharine. The war waged by England against France extended over a period of about one hundred and twenty years, broken, indeed, by various truces and interruptions; and at length, some eighty years after its

*February 15th, 1847.

origin, it was settled, to all appearance permanently, by the treaty which the victory of Agincourt enabled the English monarch to exact. The treaty of Troyes, which was concluded in 1420, was such a treaty as a conqueror negotiates, or rather dictates, in the confident strength of recent victory. It did not absolutely depose the French king; but, transferring the royal power really into the hands of the conqueror, it provided that, on the death of Charles the Sixth, the crown should pass to Henry the Fifth and his heirs. The union of the crowns of the two great monarchies was a proud achievement; but it proved no more than a splendid dream of vain ambition. It seemed as if, by the subversion of its constitutional law of succession, the ancient dynasty of France had now reached the end of its thousand-year life, and that the sceptre of Clovis was to be forever broken, when it fell from the hands of the feeble Charles. It has been well said by Arnold in his Lectures on Modern History, that "When our object is to reproduce to ourselves, so far as is possible, the very life of the period we are studying, minute particulars help us to do this; nay, the very formal enunciation of titles, and the specification of towns and districts in their legal style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their very particularity. Every common historian records the substance of the treaty by which the succession to the crown of France was given to Henry the Fifth; but the treaty itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles the Sixth, in the ostentatious care taken to provide for the

recognition of his formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government."*

The English king was in the full vigour of his days, the prime of his manhood just past, and the splendour of his reign seemed to be shining forth upon some glorious future, with the united diadem of France and England glittering on his brow. But, in less than two years, he found himself to be a dying man. Having given his death-bed injunctions for the administration of the realm and for the guardianship of his infant child, he spent his last hours in devotional exercises; and, as the penitential psalms were read, when he heard the verse-"Build thou the walls of Jerusalem," he interrupted them to declare, as a dying man, that it had been his intention to visit Palestine and free the Holy City from the Saracens. It is at once very easy and very characteristic for an historian like Hume to add the comment "So ingenious are men in deceiving themselves, that Henry forgot in these moments all the blood spilt by his ambition, and received comfort from the late feeble resolve, which, as the mode of these enterprises was now past, he certainly would never have carried into execution." The mode of these enterprises was, indeed, past; but, at the time, it was not known to be, and the whole reflection seems to me a piece of most unreal moralizing. It is the malice of skepticism aping the modesty and the candour of piety; and it is well worth remarking that, while Mr. Hume is confident

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*Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, lect. i. p. 98, (Amer. ed.) † History of England, vol. iv. p. 73.

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