rise to their alliance with the clergy and
the Parliament: a fact which determined the character and manner of
their government. The most manifold results might be expected, even
beyond the borders of England, from their having by this very alliance
won for themselves a great European position.

Nowhere was greater interest taken in Richard's fate than at the
French court. Louis Duke of Orleans, whose voice was generally
decisive there, once challenged the first Lancaster to a duel, and
when he refused it pressed him hard with war. That Owen Glendower
could once more maintain himself as Prince in Wales was entirely due
to his French auxiliaries. That we find Henry IV more secure of his
throne in his later years than in his earlier is a phenomenon the
explanation of which we seek in vain in English affairs alone: it
results from the fact that his powerful foe, Louis of Orleans, was
murdered in the year 1407 at the instigation of John Duke of Burgundy,
and that then the quarrel of the two parties, which divided France,
burst out with increased violence, and remained long undecided. From
the French there was no longer anything to fear: they emulously sought
the alliance of the highest power in England; there even arose
circumstances under which the Lancasters could think of renewing the
claims of Edward III, from whom they too were descended.

At the time that Henry V ascended the English throne, the Orleanists
had again gained the preponderance in France: they unfurled the
Oriflamme against the Duke of Burgundy, who was now in fact hard
pressed. Henry negociated with them both. But while the Orleanists
made difficulties about granting him the independent possession of the
old English provinces, Burgundy declared himself ready to acknowledge
him as King.[67] The common interests moreover of home politics allied
him with this house.

Henry could reckon on the sympathies of a part of the population of
France, when he led the power of England across the sea. A successful
battle in which he destroyed the flower of the French nobility gave
him an undoubted superiority. The vengeance which the Orleanists
wreaked even under these circumstances on the Duke of Burgundy, who
was now murdered in his turn, brought the Burgundian party over
completely to his side, together with the greater part of the nation.
Things went so far that Charles VI of France decided to marry his
daughter to the victorious Lancaster and to acknowledge him