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Updated: May 6, 2025
The barriers that separated the Guelphs from the Ghibelines, the Montagues from the Capulets, the Burgundians from the Armagnacs, and the House of York from that of Lancaster, could not have been more impenetrable than that which now existed between the Wolstons and Beckers.
Now this said period, when the women were not averse to the odour of the priesthood, is not so far distant as some may think, Monsieur D'Orgemont, son of the preceding bishop, still held the see of Paris, and the great quarrels of the Armagnacs had not finished.
Now, at the tidings that Brother Richard was on foray with the Armagnacs and winning over for them by his well-hung tongue good towns like Troyes in Champagne, they called down on him the curse of God and his Saints.
"It may be that he would have fought the Burgundians as stoutly as he fought the Armagnacs," the other said, "and that the duke does not care about having so strong a castle held by so stout a knight within a few miles of the English line." The other shrugged his shoulders. "The English are sleeping dogs," he said; "there is no Edward and no Black Prince to lead them now."
Charles VI.'s insanity seemed to be infectious; the English invasion was followed by the pillage of France, the frenzied contest of the Bourguignons and the Armagnacs, by plagues and famines, and the overthrow at Agincourt; then came Charles VII., Joan of Arc, the deliverance and the healing of the land by the energetic treatment of King Louis XI.
The great battle of Azincourt followed, with frightful ruin and carnage of the French. With a huge crowd of prisoners the young King passed on to Calais, and thence to England. The Armagnacs' party lay buried in the hasty graves of Azincourt; never had there been such slaughter of nobles.
But Frenchmen were not Frenchmen, they were Burgundians, Armagnacs, Bretons, Provencaux five hundred years ago. The interests of one part of the kingdom were not those of the other. Unity had no existence.
Of course, they must be taught reason. It was true that the men-at-arms, who were under the command of Sir Christopher Kitson and Sir William Trenton, were obliged to abide where they were, much as Kitson growled at being unable to procure a draught of wine for Trenton, whom he had been nursing for weeks under intermitting fever, caught at Meaux; but the young gentlemen were well pleased to show themselves under no Yorkshireman's orders, and galloped off en masse to procure refreshment for their horses and themselves, further stimulated by the report that the Armagnacs had left a sick man behind them there, who might be a valuable prisoner.
During the day he had admitted a number of refugees, whose courage or good luck had led them to his gate; and as night fell on such a carnage as the hapless city had not beheld since the great slaughter of the Armagnacs, one hundred and fifty-four years earlier the glow of his matches through the dusk, and the sullen tramp of his watchmen as they paced the walls, indicated that there was still one place in Paris where the King's will did not run.
We English are not loved in Paris, and the less you open your mouth here the better; for when Burgundians and Armagnacs are ready to cut each other's throats over a name, fellow-countrymen though they be, neither would feel any compunction about killing an Englishman."
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