Joan of Arc 1

Joan of Arc by casor Helen part one before one this war a cursed of God God had spoken that at least was what the English said in the circumstances it was hard for the French to argue or rather it would have been had they not been too busy arguing among themselves for the English it was temp Le their kings claim to the throne of France and for that matter his Dynasty's contested right to wear the crown of England had been utterly gloriously Vindicated by his astonishing victory at the Battle they called aen Court only Gods will could explain how so few Englishmen had vanquished so many great Knights of France and how it was that so little English blood had been spilled when so Much Death had been visited on their adversaries this was Heaven's mandate in action the Triumph of another David over the might of an arrogant Goliath as one of the royal chaplain who had formed the spiritual core of the English army now solemnly noted in his account of the campaign these clerical conscripts had sat behind the English lines as the fighting raged praying furiously for divine intervention and its undeniable manifestation in that mount of pity and blood in which the French had fallen could lead to only one conclusion far be it from our people to ascribe the Triumph to their own Glory or strength wrote the anous priest with palpable fervor rather let it be ascribed to God Alone from whom is every Victory lest the Lord be wrathful at our in gratitude and at another time turn from us which heaven forbid his Victorious hand clearly the English king was waging a just War he had given his French subjects every chance to acknowledge his rightful claim to be their ruler by descent from the French mother of his Royal ancestor Edward III outside the walls of harfler following the prescription for the conduct of righteous War laid down in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy he had patiently explained that he came in peace If Only They would open the gates and submit to his authority as their Duty demanded their obstinate refusal meant that he had no choice but to take up the Sword of Justice to punish their rebellion in doing so was explained his chaplain the true elect of God our gracious King his own soldier at the head of an army that thanks to the king's Stern instructions conducted itself soberly and iously without resorting to pillage or indulging in vengeful or wanting violence the exposition of this analysis by the anonymous Royal chaplain in his guesta Henry chinti the Deeds of Henry V was intended in part to persuade an international audience of the merits of the king's cause specifically the great Council of the church then meeting in the German city of constant there was also a domestic constituency that needed reminding of the imperative to lend practical support to Henry's divinely sanctioned project project the representatives of English buroughs and shers in Parliament and the representatives of the English church in convocation whose responsibility it was to Ascent to the taxes that would pay for the king's future campaigns in France but Heaven's judgment had been made so plain that it seemed a source of irritation in some Quarters at least that such campaigns would have to be fought at all the bishop of Winchester England's Chancellor in his opening address to the Parliament that gathered in March 1416 noted testy that God had in fact already spoken three times over once in England's Great Naval victory over the French Fleet at s in 1340 then in 1356 when Francis King had been captured at pias and now on the killing field of aen cour oh God remarked the Royal chaplain as he recounted the tenor of the chancellor speech why does this wretched and stiff necked Nation not obey these Divine sentences so many and so terrible to which by avengeance most clearly made manifest obedience is demanded of them The Wretched and stiff necked Nation itself however while accepting that God had indeed spoken was much less certain of what he had actually said clearly the English cause was not just after all the English king had no lawful right to the throne of France since claims through the female line had no validity in the most Christian kingdom and the French had no wish to be his subjects which made his attempt at conquest and Act of unwarranted aggression and his proposed rule of tyranny the conflict between the two kingdoms would hardly have lasted so long nor would it have encompassed French successes as well as English ones had God's judgment been quite so overwhelmingly obvious as the English king was pleased to suggest the inference of the accursed day of a Zen Court therefore was not that God supported England's unjust claims instead he had chosen to use England's unjust claims as an instrument with which to punish France for its sins sin was the heart of the matter that much was clear but exactly what sin and committed by whom were questions in which it was more difficult to agree perhaps suggested the chronicler Thomas bason half a century later the Blessed Saints Crispen and Crispian had abandoned the French to the Carnage Unleashed on their feast day at a zinc cour because their town of swasan had been sacked and their shrines plundered only a year before in the course of the civil war between burgundians and armagnacs everyone he said with sorrowful resignation can think what they will for himself bason preferred to stick to the facts leaving the discussion of the Arcane workings of the Divine will to those who presume to do so there were plenty of them the monk who chronicled the events of 1415 from The Abbey of St an outside the walls of Paris attempted a pass at the same kind of historical humility I leave it to those who have given the matter careful consideration he said to decide if we should attribute the ruin of the Kingdom to the French nobility but he could restrain himself only momentarily from a thunderous verdict of his own it could hardly be denied that the great were no longer good the Lords of France had fallen into subartic luxury into vanity and into Vice and their impious abuse of holy mother church was matched only by their mortal hatred of each other all these crimes the chronicler of St Den declared and others worse still to put it briefly have justly stirred up the wrath of God against the great man of the Kingdom so that he has taken from them the power to defeat their enemies or even to resist their attack but even if it could be agreed that divine retribution was patently at work question still remained were all of Francis sinful nobl men equally guilty in the eyes of God or were some among them more reprehensible and therefore more responsible for the desperate Straits in which the kingdom now found itself than others supporters of the armeniac cause knew that one crime above all had cast a shadow dark enough to blot out the light of Heaven's Grace the bloody murder of Lewis of oron by his cousin the Duke of burgundy that unnatural act had precipitated a Civil War which not only turned the realm upon itself but opened the door to English aggression John of burgundy the armagnacs were well aware had had dealings with the King of England both before and after Henry had inherited his father's Throne now the fact that the Duke had not taken the field that a incc court provided proof positive that burgundy had entered into secret negotiations with the English and with horrifying treachery had agreed not to resist their Invasion about the Dreadful outcome of the battle and the slaughter of the Duke's countrymen the armeniac chronicle Jee juvenal de 's reported it was commonly said that he did not seem angered in the slightest Pierre def fenon on the other hand a writer whose Noble family came from The Burgundian dominated region of Aris was no less confident that Duke JN had been much enraged by the French loss when he was told of it those who supported the Duke in his efforts to secure the stake that was rightfully his in the government of the Kingdom knew that he had wanted nothing more than to fight at a zinc Court until he had been refused permission in the Name of the King himself the deaths of the Duke's two brothers Anthony of Brent and Philip of never had been a shattering blow which s truck at the heart of his family and his dynasty and to Burgundian eyes it was remark able how many of those who had escaped with their lives if not their honor from that field of blood were members of the armanac Confederacy Chief among the English prisoners after all was young Charles Duke of Orlon what then should John of burgundy do as he surveyed the devastation that the crimes of his armanac enemies had wrought on the Kingdom from the safety of his duy of burgundy he contemplated his options and calculated his odds to his French followers the Duke was a distinctively imposing figure his shrewd brain working behind lously hooded eyes the long nose sketching an inimitable profile beneath the rich black folds piled forward and pinned with a ruby of extraordinary price of his trademark chaperon hat all in all as unlike their beloved but pitiful King as it was possible to imagine but the frontiers of France as the armagnacs well knew and accusing him of treachery were not the limits of the Arena across which Duke JN now aimed to maneuver great Prince of France though he was the territories of burgundy itself extended his political reach beyond the bounds of the Kingdom as the Duke of burgundy he was a vassel of the French King sworn to serve and Obey but as the count of burgundy holding the lands immediately to the east of his duy a thief which lay outside the French King's dominions he owed Allegiance and homage to the Holy Roman Emperor nor were the two burgundies as they were known his only stake in the complex shifting geography of Western European power from his mother the AIS Margaret of ma he had also inherited the rich counties of Flanders and ARA territories which made him a force to be reckoned within the low countries the Colossal figure of The Burgundian Duke towering over the French political landscape therefore had one foot planted within the kingdom and the other without a separation of powers which at times required him to perform spine twisting acts of political contortionism back in 1406 for example he had been appointed as the French King's Captain General to command an assault on the English held Port of Cal he mustered his forces ready to begin the campaign and at the same moment even as he buckled on his armor and rode out to review his troops his ambassadors were busily negotiating a treaty with the English in which their Master guaranteed that his Flemish fortresses would offer no Military Support of any kind to the French attack that he himself was about to lead but despite the dark suspicions of the armagnacs this was not treachery or even duplicity in any unequivocal sense as count of Flanders the Duke had a duty and a political imperative to support the economic interests of the wealthy Flemish towns of gent bruan ipra and that required him to maintain a relationship with England close enough to safeguard the supply of English wool to those who produced fine Flemish cloth and to protect commercial shipping in the waters between England and Flanders it did not mean that as duke of burgundy he was anyth less a prince of France in 1406 his outrage had been unmistakable when the order to attack the English at Cal was countermanded from Paris at the 11th hour for lack of funds my Lord has been in is as saddened and angered by this as it is possible to be in all the world and no one can plate him the Duke's Treasurer told his colleagues in burgundy and in 1415 whatever the insinuations made in the aftermath of the slaughter at a zinc Court he had come to no accommodation with the English Invaders instead in the weeks and months after the battle Duke John's sites were fixed as firmly as they had ever been on the prize that still eluded him control of the government of France during November 145 he Advanced on Paris very distressed by the deaths of his brothers and his men explained the anonymous and by now Pro Burgundian parisan who kept a journal throughout these years but prevented from reaching the helpless King by the armanac betrayers of of France for the armagnacs who controlled the capital meanwhile the Duke's distress was less immediately striking than the heavily armed troops at his back the gates of the city were closed against him and his hopes were dashed in December by the death of the dolin Lewis a young man with a reputation for indolence and self-indulgence who had nevertheless exerted himself in the search for a lasting settlement with the Duke to whose daughter he was married a year earlier Lewis had attempted to forbid the US on either side of injurious or slanderous terms such as Burgundian or armanac but now that the dolphin was dead the count of armanac himself was appointed Constable of France a man of wisdom and foresight said the monk of St an as cruel as Nero exclaimed the Parisian Journal writer and by February 1416 the latter reported in horror he was in Soul charge of the whole Kingdom of France in spite of all objections for the King was still not well as the armanac grip on government tightened the Duke of burgundy had little choice but to withdraw his forces northward to his strongholds in Flanders and artoa his castle at hden 30 Mi west of Aris lay only 7even miles from the field at a zort where the English had killed his brothers and where the armagnacs he believed had failed to defend France hon was not only a fortress and a ducal residence but a curiosity housing a suite of rooms filled with ingenious Contraptions finally automa and gumping practical jokes visitors to the Castle's Gallery might be distracted by a misshapen reflection in a distorting mirror only to find themselves drenched in Jets of water triggered by a footfall or squirted from an innocently impassive statue those who avoided the buffets of a mechanical contrivance that dealt unexpected blows To The Head and Shoulders at the gallery's exit found a room filled with rain and snow thunder and lightning as if from the sky itself and beyond that a wooden figure of a hermit an uncanny presence that became truly unnerving when it began to speak this cabinet of Wonders had been part of the fabric of the castle at hden for more than a hundred years by the spring of 1416 however John of burgundy could have been forgiven for thinking that life was beginning to imitate artifice the Gathering of international opinion at the Council of the church in constant was fast becoming a Hall of Mirrors every theological and political dispute in Europe was reflected there often in ludicrous disproportion at least in relation to the council's ostensible task of seeking an end to the long running Schism in the papacy the delegates sent by the armeniac government in Paris expended a great deal of energy in the attempt to deny any kind of hearing to their English adversaries but their assault on their French enemy the Duke of burgundy was equally vitriolic the formidable Chancellor of the University of Paris an eminent Theologian named Jee jerson railed against the justification of the murder of the Duke of oron proposed in 1407 by Jean petite demanding that it now be formally condemned with the full weight of the church's Authority but the Duke of burgundy had sent a delegation of his own to the council and his men led by the bishop of arys with the support of Pierre kosan another Paris trained Theologian and as passionate a Burgundian as jerson was an armanac railed back meeting every attack with a blistering compound of argument bribery and barely disguised threats while the ecclesiastics wrangled Duke JN tested his footing on uncertain ground by entering into a diplomatic dance with the elect of God himself Henry of England in July 1416 Duke and King agreed a treaty by which they promised not to make war against one another in the Duke's Northern Territories of piery Flanders and ARA and a face-to-face meeting in English held Cal was planned for the Autumn the situation was so delicate and the lack of trust so grave that elaborate Arrangements were put in place to guarantee the Duke's safety on the 5th of October he left his town of St om to arrive at gravelines near Cala at low tide Where the River off flowed into the sea as a shallow stream with his household men and an armed escort he took up position on One Bank of the River on the other similarly attended was the Duke of Gloucester the English King's youngest brother after a moment both men Advanced until their horses stood s side by side in the middle of the water the two Dukes shook hands and exchanged the kiss of Peace before Humphrey of Gloucester rode on a lavishly entertained Hostage to St Omar while John of burgundy made his way to cala to meet the King by the 13th of October when the exchange was effected in Reverse The Duke had successfully negotiated both this ad hoc water feature and a week of English Hospitality without obvious mishap but if King Henry had hoped that their private discussions would persuade The Burgundian Duke to support his divinely sanctioned claim to the throne of France he was to be sadly disappointed what kind of conclusion these enigmatic talks and exchanges had produced went no further than the king's breast or the reticence with which he kept his counsel reported Henry's chaplain in some frustration the general view was that burgundy had all this time detained our King with ambiguities and prevarications and had so left him and that in the end like all Frenchmen he would be found a double dealer one person in public and another in private the difficulty was indeed the Duke's French identity albeit not quite in the way the Royal chaplain suggested tempting though the acquisition of such a powerful Ally against his French enemies might be and necessary though it always was to protect angl Flemish trade a military pact with England would vindicate the armagnacs allegations of Burgundian treachery and spell the end once and for all of the Duke's claim to be the rightful defender of his King and Country he turned instead to a French who would serve to bolster that claim the new doin 18-year-old Jee of terrain who as it happened was married to his niece Jacqueline Aris to the rich and strategically vital counties of hanout Holland and Zealand in the low countries where the young couple lived at her father's Court in November 1416 the Duke followed his inconclusive English conference at Cala with another at valencian in hanout and this time a definitive agreement was the result burgundy and hanout would work together to established doin Jean naturally with his wife's uncle of burgundy at his side at the head of government in Paris it was a good plan but it could not survive the sudden deaths in April and May 1417 of the young dolin and his father-in-law the count of hanout again there was a new heir to the throne this time the king's youngest son 14-year-old Charles but he was already in Paris with his father at the heart of the armeniac regime and unlike his dead Brothers he had no no links by marriage to The Burgundian Dynasty quite the reverse he was betrothed to the daughter of Lewis Duke of andw and titular king of Sicily who until his death in April 1417 was one of the closest Confederates of the count of armanac and a personal enemy of the Duke of burgundy and Charles who had spent much of the last four years at the Anan Court under the wing of Duke Lewis and his formidable Duchess Yolanda of Aragon was hardly likely now to reject the political Embrace of his surrogate family still John of burgundy had regrouped before and he could do so again from his castle at hden he issued an open letter to the people of France each of the many copies signed with his own hand the armagnacs he said were traitors destroyers pillagers and poisoners they had murdered the king's Sons Lewis and Jean and their treacherous plans lay behind the English Triumph at a zenc court put simply they were dedicated to the destruction of the kdom of France he on the other hand was determined to protect and preserve the French King and his people a holy loyal and necessary task in which he would persevere until death and in case the appeal of his Manifesto were not yet sufficiently apparent he would abolish all taxes to boot this was no search for a settlement this it was clear was War as spring turned into summer and summer into Autumn Burgundian forces moved into towns and cities around Paris Troy to the southeast Ron to the east Amen to the north chartre to the Southwest some towns people opened their Gates others tried and failed to hold out by October the Noose was drawing tighter the Duke and his army were just 10 miles from the capital and as food ran short and Prices rose Paris was now suffering extremely noted the despairing Journal writer within the city's walls to strengthen his white knuckled grip on government the count of army AK sought to Rally his supporters behind a royal figurehead by appointing the young doin Charles as Lieutenant General of his father's Kingdom but who could play at that game Charles's mother Queen isabo had once been so closely associated with the dead Duke of oron in the attempt to rule on behalf of her distracted and unstable husband that as so often happened when female hands touched the reins of power breathless Whispers of inuendo had begun to curl around her reputation since then how ever her attempts to preserve some neutral ground on which her husband and Sons might stand had provoked growing hostility within the embattled armanac regime and in April 1417 the count of armanac had sent her into Political Exile at tours more than 100 miles from the capital that it turned out was a mistake when John of burgundy arrived at her gates in the first week of November she had no option left but to welcome him murderer of the Duke of oron though he was as a liberator and a prot protector now the Duke of burgundy could draw on the authority of the queen to speak for her husband the king while the count of armanac could draw on the authority of the dolphin as the heir to his father's Throne France in effect had two governments each committed to the obliteration of the other and while they fought Henry of England slipped through the open door behind them by January 148 as Burgundian troops pushed Westward into Ruan the capital of Normandy the rest of the Dutch was being quietly dismembered by The Return of the English Invaders Henry had moved Inland from the coast with characteristically inexorable purpose taking the great castle and town of Khan and with it Bou then alen con argenton and Fila and almost the greatest shock of this violent assault was that little more than two years after The Wretched day of a zenc court it no longer seemed the worst of the horrors France had to face some people who had come to Paris from Normandy having escaped from the English by paying Ransom or some other way reported the Parisian in his journal had then been captured by the burgundians and then a mile or so further on had been captured yet again by the French that is the armagnacs and had been as brutally and as cruy treated by them as if by sarens these men all honest Merchants reputable men who had been in the hands of all three and had bought their freedom solemnly affirmed on oath that the English had been kinder to them than the burgundians had and the burgundians 100 times kind than the troops from Paris as regards food Ransom physical suffering and imprisonment which had astonished them as it must all good Christians the greatest of all good Christians Pope Martin I newly installed by the Council of constant sent special envoys in May to treat for peace but John of burgundy was not interested in peace when victory was within his grasp he paid lip service to the Cardinals Mission but his attention was elsewhere his Siege of Paris was about to bear fruit in the rain swept darkness of the early hours of the 29th of May Burgundian sympathizers within the blockaded capital opened the Gate of St gerand de pre to a Detachment of Burgundian men at Arms they had surprise as well as deadly intent on their side and they were brutally effective some seized control of the hotel St Paul the Royal residents in the east of the city and with it the bewildered person of the king others hunted down the count of armanac and his captains to put them in chains by the early afternoon there could be no doubt that Paris was theirs for years it had been politic to wear a white sash the symbol of the armeniac Confederacy in the city's streets now thousands of parisians dobbed or chocked their clothes with The Burgundian saltire the diagonal Cross of St Andrew one of the Duke's badges to demonstrate their support for their new ruler or to ward off dangerous accusations of armc collaboration God Sav the king the doin and peace The Burgundian troops had cried God had given them the king but peace was not it seemed part of his plan Paris was in an uproar reported the journal writer the people took up their arms much faster than the soldiers did this was the chance at last for those who hated the armagnacs those who supported the Duke of burgundy or resented the oppressions of armanac rule or loathe the count and his captains as foreigners from the south to take their Revenge the city turned on itself and in the streets bludgeon corpses lay heaped stripped almost naked like sides of bacon a Dreadful thing their clotting blood washed into the gutters by the pouring rain worse was to come two weeks later false alarms at the city Gates roused the mob to new fear and a new Fury they broke into the prisons mutilating and killing all those they found inside were lighting up the Night by torching any building from which they found their entry barred among those who died his body later identified not by his disfigured face but by the cell in which he had slept was the captive count of aranc a band of Flesh had been hacked from his torso from shoulder to hip in Savage mockery of the sash his partisans had worn so proudly it was another month before the city was quiet enough for the Duke of burgundy to Stage his own triumphant arrival with Queen isabo at his side their cavalcade was greeted by crowds who wept cheered and called Noel the traditional Cry of Celebration and welcome at Last King and capital were in Duke John's hands along with the power they represented but the brightness of this new Burgundian Dawn glittering with the sharpened steel of the plain engraved lances carried by the Duke's soldiers was shadowed by two menacing clouds the English were on the march by the end of July their ominous Advance had brought them to the walls of burgundy and held Ruan France's Second City and the key to Upper Normandy the presence of England's Army on French soil had once exerted useful diversionary pressure on France's armeniac government but now that the Duke himself ruled in the Name of the King he could not afford to be complacent in the face of this growing threat and the uncomfortable truth was that one vital component of the royal Authority he claimed to represent still eluded his grasp as Burgundian troops had stormed into the sleeping City on the 29th of May armeniac loyalists led by the Provost of Paris a former servant of Lewis of oron named Tangi duel had spirited 15-year-old dolin Charles away in his nightclothes Duke JN could reassure himself of course that Charles was young and inexperienced and with only the stricken rump of the armanac regime left at his disposal he could not match the Grandeur of burgundy's resources the dolphin was surrounded still by a Cy of loyal supporters not only Tangi duel but men such as Robert Lin his Chancellor and Jean louit one of the worst Christians in the world said the Parisian Journal writer former servants respectively of his prospective mother-in-law Yolanda of Aragon and his mother Queen isabo these counselors were shrewd ambitious and driven but among their number were no princes of the blood ready to Rally their pays to his cause with the count of armanac so violently dispatched to join the dead of a Zen court and the Dukes of bourbon and oron still prisoners in England Charles could look further among the front ranks of the nobility than to the latter's younger brother the count of Veris and his illegitimate half-brother Jean known with respectful acknowledgement of his lineage as the bastard of Orlon and limited in leadership as the Dolphins cause undoubtedly was it was limited too in Cold Hard Cash thanks to John of burgundy's show stealing promise to abolish taxation the dolin could hardly attempt to Levy the sums required to raise a great Army without hemorrhaging support he could not afford to lose but his cause was not lost he could turn always to the Deep Pockets in the formidable political brain of the woman who had become a mentor as well as a second mother to him Yolanda of Aragon The Dowager Duchess of Anu whose daughter Marie was to be his wife and whose young Sons the new Duke Lewis and 9-year-old Renee were his companions and friends with her backing the doin established himself a little more than 100 miles south of Paris in the city of Bor es the capital of the duy of Barry that he had inherited after the death in 1416 of his aged great uncle and now of necessity rather than Choice the new capital of armanac France it was a modly approximation of a Royal Court with a hurriedly organized Parliament at Pier's and ex- cheer at Borges to mirror those in burgundy and Paris and at its head a 15-year-old boy calling himself the Regent of France but there could be no doubt how much it mattered however loudly the Duke of burgundy claimed to be the loyal counselor of the king and however firmly the queen supported The Burgundian regime the doin refused to accept that a government led by Duke JN was anything other than a treasonable usurpation the unhappy fact was that while the daily reality of conflict between armagnacs and burgundians simmered in towns and cities across the country the indelible sovereignty of France's most Christian King had been raggedly torn into three the Duke of burgundy dominated the North and the East the often controlled the center in the South and all the while Henry of England who like his Royal predecessors already held gascony in the southwest continued his Relentless Advance across Normandy Into the Heart of the Kingdom in January 1419 after a 5mon Siege the English finally starved Ruan into submission and two weeks later Henry's forces were at mans only 30 mil from Paris no one did anything about it noted the journal writer matter of fact in his misery because all the French Lords were angry with each other because the dolin was at odds with his father on account of the Duke of burgundy who was with the King and all the other princes of the blood Royal had been taken prisoner by the English king at the Battle of a zort this Parisian remained stalwartly hostile to the armagnacs but his faith in the Duke of burgundy had not survived his recent experience of Burgundian rule so the kingdom of France went from bad to worse and this was entirely or almost entirely the fault of the Duke of burgundy who was the slowest man in the world in everything that he did in fact by the time news arrived of the fall of Ruan Duke JN had already left his troops to hold the beleaguered Capital while he removed the king and queen to the greater safety of the town of provin 50 mi from Paris in the opposite direction from the English Army's approach it seemed possible now that France was not just broken but lost the kingdom was ancient but perhaps not Eternal and certainly not immutable it had after all changed shape before its Frontiers ebing and flowing with the crosscurrents of international diplomacy in the rip tides of War Kings of England had been instrumental in that process already and might be again and now a Duke of burgundy whose Powers were not confined by France's borders exerted a new and unpredictable gravitational pull by the summer of 1419 the Rival forces wrenching and tearing at the body politic had reached a the jittery precarious impass like wrestlers grappling in search of a winning hold envoys embraced at Summits convened in all possible combinations the king of England and the Duke of burgundy the Duke of burgundy and the dolin the doin and the King of England Henry hoped that he had won Jon as an ally to his cause only to find that Charles had agreed a temporary truce with the man armanac propaganda had previously dubbed the dearest and well-loved Lieutenant of Lucifer king of hell the 48-year-old Duke and the 16-year-old dolin came face to face three times in the first half of July but they publicly declared promises that they would join hands to resist the English and henceforth govern France together as friends proved as insubstantial as their smiles meanwhile the crashing thunderstorms that lashed the country with rain and great hailstones were seen by many said the monk of St an as a sign that these ill-starred negotiations would come to nothing it was not until the the end of the month when King Henry's troops stormed pontoise less than 20 mil from Paris and much too close for comfort that mines were concentrated in another personal conference arranged this time for September at mono fault Yan southeast of the capital the pressing concern for security amid the heightened threat of the English Advance meant that the Duke of burgundy now faced another diplomatic meeting in the middle of a river at mono a many arched Bridge Spann the waters where the river Yan gave into the San on One Bank stood the town held by the dolphin on the other the castle which Charles now made over to the Duke of burgundy is a gesture of Goodwill to facilitate an encounter on which the future of France might stand or fall by swearing an oath to do one another no harm and then advancing from opposite sides onto the bridge with only 10 men each for company both the Duke and the dolphin could be reassured that their councils would not be overheard nor ambushed by some hidden Army the dolin and his advisor cautious and painstaking hosts who had had to work hard to persuade Duke Jon to accept their invitation to monoe gave meticulous thought to the practicalities of the meeting a stone tower already stood halfway along the bridge between castle and town but now a new wooden enclosure was constructed on the town side of the tower within which the two deputations could safely speak without fear of attack from outside by the afternoon of Sunday the 10th of September preparations were complete under the crisp autumn Sky the Duke of burgundy Sleek in his magnificence hooded eyes unreadable took the winding path from the castle onto the bridge past the tower and into the newly built Palisade the gate clicking shut as the last of his men was ushered inside a key turning in the lock behind them ahead stood the short scrawny figure of the dolin an ungainly adolescent who had not inherited the good looks of either of his Royal parents and with him 10 of his most senior attendants including Jean louit and and Tangi duchatel the latter a familiar face from the frequent embassies of recent weeks as the Duke knelt doing his black velvet hat in obes to his Prince he could hear the water moving softly all around but he could see only the craftsmanship of the Carpe enters who had enclosed the bridge with wooden walls did he think of his Cabinet of Curiosities at hon the moment was fleeting then the buffet struck the steel blade of a war axe driven deep into his skull there was blood pooling around the falling body of John of burgundy dripping in great gouts from the axe in the hands of Tangi duel in blind shock in churning Panic the Duke's counselors started forward only to find themselves caught by soldiers pouring through the open door at the far end of the Palisade in their ears voices shrill with hate shouted kill kill and as they were bundled away they saw in an uncomprehending blur a man kneeling over the prone figure of their lord and the bright blade of a sword plunging down then suddenly came a roar of explosions as armeniac troops concealed within the stone tower on the bridge turned their guns on the bewildered burgundians in montero's Castle Waiting in Vain for the Duke's return it was an assassination more precisely planned and more ruthlessly executed than the murder of the Duke of oron in the streets of Paris 12 years earlier and as the mutilated corpse was carried away from the bridge stripped of its finery and blood smeared with one hand dangled Ling almost severed in a mess of mangled tendons it was clear that the consequences of this Duke's death would be still more terrible for the veteran Tangi duel it was an eye for an eye a reckoning at last for the loss of his former Master for the teenage doin who had been just four years old when Lewis of oron died it was the Striking down of the devil's Lieutenant the man who had raised war in the Kingdom for as long as the Young Prince could remember but this killing in one bloody moment had retria altered the essence of the conflict now however subtle the diplomacy between the Lords of France and however implacable the onslaught of the English there could be no hope of reconciliation between armanac and Burgundian in public the doin acknowledged no conspiracy against the Duke instead he explained the first sword drawn on the bridge had been that of John of burgundy himself or perhaps he later remembered the Duke's attendant Arch ow defa Lord of navales the princely finger was pointed at defa only after he had died of head wounds sustained during the melee and was therefore conveniently unable to contest the accusation it was this unprovoked Burgundian aggression that had caused the sudden Outburst of violence to the dolins utter consternation and it was only thanks to the quick thinking of his loyal servants that God be praised he had not been taken hostage but no amount of wide-eyed protestation nor the suggestion to his dear and wellbeloved brother the Duke's son and air Phillip that he should remain calm in the face of these Unfortunate Events could disguise the fact that John of burgundy had died under the dolins safe conduct at the hands of the Dolphins men and that for the burgundians changed everything 20000 miles away in the Flemish town of gent 23-year-old Philip the new Duke was overwhelmed with extreme grief and distress at his father's death his counselors reported for Duke John's Widow Margaret of Bavaria her husband was a Christlike figure entering the Palisade on the bridge to be betrayed by Tangi du chatles Judas not everyone would be prepared to endorse that particular image perhaps but in Burgundian eyes there could be no doubt that the dolin the heir to the throne of the most Christian King was guilty of perjury and murder as a result Philip of burgundy was confronted with a decision more fateful more extreme than any his father had faced the hapless King with Queen isabo at his side remained under Burgundian protection at Troy's 90 Mi southeast of Paris where they are with their poor retinue like fugitives said the journal writer bleakly but Charles the mad and well-beloved was already passed his 50th birthday and after him what then there were two claimants to his crown an armeniac doin or an English king and for Philip of burgundy after mono that was no choice at all still it took time to accept that the next mon monarch of France might be an English Invader as Autumn faded into the beginnings of a bitter winter Duke Philip remained in the North in Flanders and Artois deliberating with his counselors and arranging a magnificent service for his father's soul in the abbey church of St Boston arys from dejon his indefatigable mother marshaled the resources of the two burgundies to gather all possible evidence of the crime perpetrated against her husband and to Lobby the great powers of Europe to support her quest for justice meanwhile as the marauding English devastated the countryside to the north of Paris the dolin did what he could to exert pressure of his own on The Burgundian held Capital declaring his commitment to peace even while his troops plundered and burned the lands to the South it was not enough by the spring of 1420 both the Parisian Journal writer and the monk of the Abbey of St Ane four miles north of the city walls were convinced that the English were the lesser of the two evils that menaced the kingdom Duke Philip of burgundy agreed negotiations conducted in a series of taught delicate exchanges between the Duke at arys the queen at Troys the parliament of Paris and the English in Ruan had taken months but finally on the 21st of May the sovereign powers of England and France came together in the incense clouded Cathedral of Troy for the cealing of a treaty that Sacred Space bore witness to the terrible force of the Divine will half a century earlier the Spire that reached towards heaven from the crossing of the Nave had been smashed into Rubble by a tornado and two decades after that a bolt of lightning had made an inferno of the wooden roof but still the cathedral endured an architectural Testament to the possibility that with the blessing of the almighty restoration might follow destruction not perhaps for King Charles of France himself whose unsound mind had evaded all attempts to make it whole but it seemed at last that his warart torn Kingdom might find a new future at the high altar amid the Press of Lords and prelates retainers and servants stood France's enemy turned savior Henry of England scarred and self-possessed with his eldest brother Thomas Duke of Clarence by his side before him was the Majesty of the French Crown as embodied by the queen isabo and the young Duke of burgundy a loyal counselor ready to speak for his faltering King both sides knew the terms of the peace which had brought them together but this was the solemn moment at which those Provisions became inescapable binding Charles by the grace of God King of France recognized Henry of England as the rightful heir to his throne because of his own unfortunate indisposition gracefully acknowledged in the ventriloquized text of the treaty Henry would take control of the Kingdom's government with immediate effect he was now France's Regent as well as its Heir he would marry the kingk daughter Catherine their Union of physical incarnation of this Perpetual peace and their descendants would wear a double crown as monarchs of the twin Realms of England and France which would thus be joined forever in Concord and tranquility and so not quite 5 years after the horror of a zort the English king was clasped in the political Embrace of The Sovereign lord of the French is notra Trace Sher Phils our dearest son the Adolescent who until this moment would have claimed that title went almost unmentioned the horrible and enormous Crimes of the so-called doin were such the treaty declared that King Charles and his dear Sons Henry of England and Philip of burgundy the latter being already the husband of another of the royal Daughters of France now swore to have no more dealings with him instead Henry acting in the name of the most Christian King as air and Regent of France would do everything in his power to restore to their rightful Allegiance those rebellious parts of the Kingdom that still held for the party commonly called that of the doin or armanac Royal seals were pressed into soft wax and as preparations began for the wedding to come Harold set out to inform the French people of the identity of their next Monarch and to demand Oaths of their loyalty truly it seemed God had spoken