certain night to a party of the duke's men,
they got into Paris, threw into the prisons all
the Armagnacs upon whom they could lay their
hands, and, a few nights afterwards, with the
aid of a furious mob of sixty thousand people,
broke the prisons open, and killed them all.
The former Dauphin was now dead, and the
king's third son bore the title. Him, in the
height of this murderous scene, a French
knight hurried out of bed, wrapt in a sheet,
and bore away to Poitiers. So, when the
revengeful Isabella and the Duke of
Burgundy entered Paris in triumph after the
slaughter of their enemies, the Dauphin was
proclaimed at Poitiers as the real Regent.

King Henry had not been idle since his
victory of Agincourt, but had repulsed a brave
attempt of the French to recover Harfleur;
had gradually conquered a great part of
Normandy; and, at this crisis of affairs, took
the important town of Rouen, after a siege of
half a year. This great loss so alarmed the
French, that the Duke of Burgundy proposed
that a meeting to treat of peace should be
held between the French and the English
kings in a plain by the river Seine. On the
appointed day, King Henry appeared there,
with his two brothers, Clarence and
Gloucester, and a thousand men. The unfortunate
French King, being more mad than usual that
day, could not come; but, the Queen came,
and with her the Princess Catherine: who
was a very lovely creature, and who made a
real impression on King Henry, now that he
saw her for the first time. This was the most
important circumstance that arose out of the
meeting. As if it were impossible for a
French nobleman of that time to be true to
his word of honor in anything, Henry
discovered that the Duke of Burgundy was, at
that very moment, in secret treaty with the
Dauphin; and he therefore abandoned the
negociation. The Duke of Burgundy and the
Dauphin, each of whom with the best reason
distrusted the other as a noble ruffian
surrounded by a party of noble ruffians, were
rather at a loss how to proceed after this;
but, at length they agreed to meet, on a
bridge over the river Yonne, where it was
arranged that there should be two strong
gates put up, with an empty space between
them; and that the Duke of Burgundy should
come into that space by one gate, with
ten men only; and that the Dauphin should
come into that space by the other gate, also
with ten men, and no more. So far the
Dauphin kept his word, but no farther. When
the Duke of Burgundy was on his knee before
him in the act of speaking, one of the
Dauphin's noble ruffians cut the said duke down
with a small axe, and others speedily finished
him. It was in vain for the Dauphin to
pretend that this base murder was not done
with his consent; it was too bad, even for
France, and caused a general horror. The
duke's heir hastened to make a treaty with
King Henry, and the French Queen engaged
that her husband should consent to it, whatever
it was. Henry made peace, on condition
of receiving the Princess Catherine in
marriage, and being made Regent of France
during the rest of the King's life-time, and
succeeding to the French crown at his death.
He was soon married to the beautiful Princess,
and took her proudly home to England,
where she was crowned with great honor and
glory.

This peace was called the Perpetual Peace;
we shall soon see how long it lasted. It
gave great satisfaction to the French people,
although they were so poor and miserable,
that, at the time of the celebration of the
Royal marriage, numbers of them were dying
with starvation, on the dunghills in the
streets of Paris. There was some resistance,
on the part of the Dauphin in some
few parts of France, but King Henry beat
it all down.

And now, with his great possessions in
France secured, and his beautiful wife to
cheer him, and a son born to give him greater
happiness, all appeared bright before him.
But, in the fulness of his triumph and the
height of his power, Death came upon him,
and his day was done. When he fell ill at
Vincennes, and found that he could not
recover, he was very calm and quiet, and spoke
serenely to those who wept around his bed.
His wife and child, he said, he left to the loving
care of his brother the Duke of Bedford, and
his other faithful nobles. He gave them his
advice that England should establish a friendship
with the new Duke of Burgundy, and
offer him the regency of France; that it should
not set free the royal princes who had been
taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever
quarrel might arise with France, England
should never make peace without holding
Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and
asked the attendant priests to chant the
penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds,
on the thirty-first of August, one thousand
four hundred and twenty-two, in only the
thirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of
his reign, King Henry the Fifth passed away.

Slowly and mournfully they carried his
embalmed body in a procession of great state
to Paris, and thence to Rouen where his
Queen was: from whom the sad intelligence of
his death was concealed until he had been
dead some days. Thence, lying on a bed of
crimson and gold, with a golden crown upon
the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying
in the nerveless hands, they carried it to
Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to
dye the roads black for miles. The King of
Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal
Household followed, the knights wore black
armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds
of men bore torches, making the night as
light as day; and the widowed Princess
followed last of all. At Calais there was a
fleet of ships to bring the funeral host to
Dover, and so, by way of London Bridge,