, treated at once with Henry V. It was stipulated in the
preliminaries that Henry should aid them and be aided by them in war
upon the dauphin. The selfish mother who thus enlisted even foreigners
in her war against her son was capable of yet worse things. It was
agreed that Henry should marry Catherine de France, the youngest
daughter of Isabeau, and should at once receive control of the entire
kingdom, in consideration of the incapacity of Charles VI.

Isabeau de Baviere was merely a wanton, an idle, vain, shallow-hearted
seeker after pleasure, utterly incapable of taking seriously her role as
Queen of France. With such love as her heart was capable of feeling, she
loved Catherine, while her mean nature could never forgive the son who
was the heir of France. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find her
signing and causing the king to sign a treaty which violated every
principle of patriotism and honor. By the treaty signed at Troyes on May
21, 1420, Charles, Duke of Touraine, Dauphin of France, was
disinherited; the very principles of the Salic law were set at naught;
and the heritage of Charles was bestowed, not even upon one of his elder
sisters, but upon that Catherine of France, the youngest child, now
Queen of England, and, in failure of heirs of her body, upon her
husband, Henry V. of England. The two nations were to be merged, each
retaining its distinctive laws, but both were to be under the rule of
English sovereigns, and Henry was to aid in restoring peace and in
destroying "the rebels" under Charles, "called the Dauphin." One of the
bribes paid to Isabeau for selling the kingdom of her son was a pension;
for we find an ordinance of Henry, "heir and regent of France," granting
to the queen the sum of two thousand francs per month.

Isabeau's enjoyment of her pension was not destined to be of long
continuance. The brilliant Henry V. died on August 31, 1422; and less
than two months later died Charles VI., _le bien aime_. During thirty of
the forty-two years of his reign he had been incapacitated by madness or
by idiocy, and in the intervals France had been worse misgoverned than
ever before in her history; so that, with wars foreign and domestic and
with the shameless extravagance of the court, the kingdom had been
reduced to a deplorable state, scores dying in the streets of Paris of
sheer hunger while the English king was spending his first triumphant
winter in that city. For all these evils and miserie