Young Folks' History of England eBook


The poor little baby, Henry VI., was but nine months old when—­over the grave of his father in England, and his grandfather in France—­he was proclaimed King of France and England.  The crown of England was held over his head, and his lords made their oaths to him:  and when he was nine years old he was sent to Paris, and there crowned King of France.  He was a very good, little, gentle boy, as meek and obedient as possible; but his friends, who knew that a king must be brave, strong, and firm for his people’s sake, began to be afraid that nothing would ever make him manly.  The war in France went on all the time:  the Duke of Bedford keeping the north and the old lands in the south-west for little Henry, and the French doing their best for their rightful king —­though he was so lazy and fond of pleasure that he let them do it all alone.

Yet a wonderful thing happened in his favor.  The English were besieging Orleans, when a young village girl, named Joan of Arc, came to King Charles and told him that she had had a commission from Heaven to save Orleans, and to lead him to Rheims, where French kings were always crowned.  And she did!  She always acted as one led by Heaven.  Many wonderful things are told of her, and one circumstance that produced a great impression on the public mind was that when brought into the presence of Charles, whom she had never before seen, she recognized him, although he was dressed plainly, and one of the courtiers had on the royal apparel.  She never let anything wrong be done in her sight—­no bad words spoken, no savage deeds done; and she never fought herself, only led the French soldiers.  The English thought her a witch, and fled like sheep whenever they saw her; and the French common men were always brave with her to lead them.  And so she really saved Orleans, and brought the king to be crowned at Rheims.  But neither Charles nor his selfish bad nobles liked her.  She was too good for them; so, though they would not let her go home to her village as she wished, they gave her no proper help; and once, when there was a fight going on outside the walls of a town, the French all ran away and left her outside, where she was taken by the English.  And then, I grieve to say, the court that sat to judge her—­ some English and some French of the English party—­sentenced her to be burnt to death in the market place at Rouen as a witch, and her own king never tried to save her.

But the spirit she had stirred up never died away.  The French went on winning back more and more; and there were so many quarrels among the English that they had little chance of keeping anything.  The king’s youngest uncle, Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester, was always disputing with the Beaufort family.  John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster—­father to Henry IV.—­had, late in life, married a person of low birth, and her children were called Beaufort, after the castle where they were born—­not Plantagenet—­and were hardly reckoned as

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