BED 



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BED 



mons, in contravention of the late king's testament, passed 

 an act, declaring, under certain well-defined limitations, 

 the Duke of Bedford, ' or, in his absence beyond seas,' the 

 Duke of Gloucester, to be protector and defender of the 

 kingdom and the English church, and the king's chief 

 counsellor, during the minority of the young king. The 

 proceedings of the parliament on this occasion may be re- 

 ferred to as of great constitutional importance ; furnishing, 

 as they do, the first great constitutional precedent of the 

 right of parliament, in contradistinction to the king, and in 

 this instance, in contravention to the king's will, to name a 

 regent during the minority of his successor; and the equally 

 decisive constitutional precedent, of the right and power of 

 parliament to fix the limitations of that regent's exercise 

 of the prerogative. (See Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. iii. 

 p. 276, and P<irL Hist. vol. i.) 



By the treaty of Troyes, which was concluded between 

 the court of France and Henry V., on the 21st May, 1420, 

 the English king was declared tobe regent of France and next 

 heir to the French crown. On his death-bed, Henry, anxious 

 to secure this splendid inheritance for his infant son, earn- 

 estly impressed upon Bedford and his council the necessity 

 of cultivating diligently the friendship of the Duke of Bur- 

 gundy, and to offer to him in the first place the regency of 

 France. This injunction Bedford obeyed to the letter. 'On 

 the death of Henry, he immediately offered the regency to 

 the Duke of Burgundy ; and on his refusal, and at the ap- 

 parent solicitation of the French king, accepted the office 

 himself. He conferred with Burgundy as to the best mode 

 of observing the terms of the treaty of Troyes, and obtained 

 from him the warmest assurances of good faith as to its 

 observance. He also obtained the adhesion of the Duke 

 of Bretagne to that treaty, and at a meeting which he 

 brought about between that prince, the Duke of Bur- 

 gundy, and himself, at Amiens, in April, 1423, he pre- 

 vailed upon them to affirm their professions of friendship 

 with an oath, by which they swore to love each other as 

 brothers, and to afford mutual aid against the attack of ene- 

 mies. To make their union the more binding, Bedford 

 married a sister of the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke 

 of Bretagne married another. Bedford led his young bride 

 to Paris, which he had made the centre of his government, 

 and vigorously applied himself to the consolidation of his 

 infant nephew's inheritance. 



Had Henry lived a few months longer, he would have 

 been, in virtue of the treaty of Troyes, and the splendour 

 and extent of his conquests, declared king of France. 

 Charles VI., distinguished by the epithet of the ' Well Be- 

 loved,' with whom he had concluded that treaty, survived 

 ' his dear son and heir' but a few months ; and at his fu- 

 neral, Bedford had his infant nephew Henry VI. proclaimed 

 ' Our Sovereign Lord, King of France and England.' The 

 south of France, however, was still in possession of the Dau- 

 phin and his party, who summoned all the adherents of the 

 antient monarchy to the standard, which that prince, as 

 Charles VII., had raised at Chartres, the place of his coro- 

 nation. All the country to the north of the Loire may bo 

 said to have been in the hands of the English ; while every 

 province to the south of that river, with the exception of 

 Gascony, warmly espoused the cause of the heir of their 

 native king:). The history of France accordingly for many 

 years presents a series of battles and sieges, which ended in 

 the expulsion of the English from all their conquests in 

 the French territory. 



In the first year of the war, Charles VII. received a 

 great defeat at Crcvant. A still more signal disaster 

 befell him next year at the battle of Verneuil (16th August, 

 1424), at which Bedford commanded in person, and dis- 

 played all the qualities of a great general. The French 

 monarchy was only saved from ruin, after this decisive 

 battle, by the conduct of the Duke of Gloucester, Bedford's 

 brother, which deprived the latter of the aid of the forces of 

 the Duke of Burgundy, to which he was mainly indebted 

 for the victory at Verneuil. In his capacity of Regent of 

 France, Bedford was thwarted in every measure which 

 tended to effect the entire subjugation of that country, 

 either by the indiscreet ambition of nis brother, or the 

 jealous and parsimonious policy of the English parliament. 

 The administration of affairs in England turned altogether 

 upon the intrigues and contests of two opposite parties, one 

 headed by Cardinal Beaufort [see BBAUFORT, CARDINAL], 

 the other by the Duke of Gloucester ; and as the former 

 was the more powerful, and opposed to the war policy 



of the latter, the supplies of men and money for the prose- 

 cution of the war in France were doled out with so frugal 

 a hand, that the offensive operations of the Duke of Bed- 

 ford were confined to besieging some towns still held by the 

 French king in the northern provinces ; and it was only by 

 the fraudulent connivance of Beaufort, for which he re- 

 ceived a bribe of 1000 marks, that a force of 5500 soldiers, 

 which he had raised for a crusade against the Hussites in 

 Bohemia, and which were on their way through France 

 under the military command of the Cardinal, were sent as 

 a reinforcement to the English forces, so as to enable the 

 Regent to attempt to check the disasters that ensued from 

 raising the siege of Orleans. 



The circumstances which deprived the Duke of Bedford 

 of the aid of the Burgundian forces were these: Gloucester 

 had married Jacqueline, heiress of Hainault, Holland, 

 Zealand, and Friesiand. She had previously been married 

 to the Duke of Brabant, first cousin of the Duke of Bur- 

 gundy, but despising his tame spirit she eloped from him, 

 and sought an asylum in England. Brabant, however, kept 

 possession of her territorial dominions, which Gloucester 

 claimed and sought to recover by force. For this purpose he 

 entered Hainault with 5000 English men-at-arms, besides 

 other forces, shortly after the decisive defeat of the French 

 king at Verneuil. The Duke of Burgundy hastened with 

 his troops to the aid of his kinsman ; and Charles VII. was 

 saved from ruin. 



The siege of Orleans, memorable as one of the most ex- 

 traordinary incidents in history, was commenced on the 12th 

 of October, 1428. The fortunes of Charles hung upon the 

 issue, and he was in despair. He was saved by the assist- 

 ance of Joan of Arc, and the English raised the siege of 

 Orleans. [See ARC, JOAN OF.] This memorable effect of 

 superstition of supernatural confidence on the one side, 

 and supernatural awe on the other was followed by a suc- 

 cession of disasters to the English arms, which, while they 

 deeply afflicted, tasked all the energies of the Duke of Bedford. 

 With a force drawn from the garrison towns of Normandy, 

 and strengthened, as we have stated, by the troops which Car- 

 dinal Beaufort was leading to Bohemia, he marched against 

 Charles, who had just been crowned at Rheims, but failed 

 in provoking him to risk a battle. The Regent then chal- 

 lenged Charles to single combat denounced him as de- 

 luding the people with the impostures of ' a woman of a dis- 

 orderly and infamous life and dissolute manners, and dressed 

 in the clothes of a man ;' and offered to fight him hand 

 to hand, in order that the people might judge by the issue 

 whose claim was favoured by Heaven. Charles took no 

 notice of the letter, and moved steadily upon Paris. The 

 Regent hastened after him, and after breaking the spell of 

 the maid's charm, by repulsing her from the walls of Paris, 

 compelled the French army to fall back upon the Loire. 

 After various skirmishes, defeats, and successes, the maid 

 was captured, when attempting a desperate sally from Com- 

 pic'gne, on the 23rd May, 1430. 



With the subsequent fate of the Maid of Orleans, we have 

 here no further concern, than to state, that the Regent 

 joined eagerly in bringing her to the stake. 



In 1432 the Duchess of Bedford, sister to the Duke of 

 Burgundy, and the great cement of their friendship, died. 

 Within four months after the Regent married Jacquetta, 

 daughter of the Earl of St. Pol, a vassal of the Duke of 

 Burgundy. The precipitateness and secrecy, as well as 

 inferiority of the marriage, gave great offence to the Duke 

 of Burgundy. Cardinal Beaufort laboured to reconcile the 

 two princes ; but as both were haughty and unbending, the 

 attempt altogether failed. In this temper of mind, and the 

 war having languished for upwards of two years, overtures 

 were made on the part of Charles to Burgundy ; and the re- 

 sult was a treaty of peace between them. This treaty was 

 the death-blow to the English interest in France, and so 

 affected the Regent that he died of mortification and anxiety 

 while it was pending, at Rouen, on the 1 3th September, 1 435, 

 a fortnight before the treaty between Charles and the Duke 

 of Burgundy was formally signed. An anecdote is told 

 with respect to his tomb at Rouen, which is worth notice, 

 as illustrative of the esteem in which he was held by his 

 contemporaries. We shall quote it in the words of Rapin. 

 ' Louis XL, son of Charles VII., being one day in the 

 church at Rouen, and looking upon the Duke of Bedford's 

 tomb, a certain lord of his retinue advised him to demolish 

 that standing monument of the dishonour of the French. 

 " No," replied the king, " let the ashes of a prince rest in 



NO. 222. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPEDIA.] 



VOL. IV.-T 



