s,
to organize their bourgeois militia under officers elected by
themselves, even that of holding fiefs like the nobles, with the
accompanying privileges, provided they were well born, and of Paris. The
nobility, on the contrary, were even less disposed to pardon him for
thus seeking the aid of the populace than for having compromised the
seignorial inviolability by laying violent hands on a brother of the
king. The Comte d'Armagnac, father-in-law of one of the sons of the Duc
d'Orleans, placed himself at the head of the opposing party; both
parties made advances to the English to secure their aid on different
occasions, but it was the Armagnacs who fought Henry V at Azincourt and
sustained that disastrous defeat; the Duc de Bourgogne secured
possession of the queen and proclaimed her regent; negotiating first
with one and then with another, he finally ended by being assassinated
in his turn by Tanneguy Duchatel, _prevot_ of Paris, and other servants
of the dauphin, on the bridge of Montereau, at the confluence of the
Yonne and the Seine.

"That which neither Crecy nor Poitiers nor Azincourt had accomplished,
the assassination on the bridge of Montereau did,--it gave the crown of
France to a king of England." In the following year, 1420, the treaty of
Troyes, concluded between Henry V, the Queen Isabeau, and the new Duc de
Bourgogne, Philippe le Bon, recognized the King of England as regent and
heir to the throne of France, he having married Isabeau's daughter,
Catherine of France. "All the provisions of this treaty were read
publicly, in a general assembly held by the Parliament on the 29th of
April. The governor of Paris, the chancellor, the _prevot_, the
presidents, counsellors, _echevins_, merchants, and bourgeois, all were
unanimous in accepting this treaty." On the 30th of May it was formally
ratified in another general assembly, and on the 1st of December the
bourgeois turned out in great state and with much pomp to receive the
two kings, who entered, walking side by side, Charles VI on the right.
"The streets were richly decorated and tapestried from the Porte
Saint-Denis to Notre-Dame, 'and all the people cried _Noel!_ to show
their joy.'" The English king, with his two brothers, the dukes of
Clarence and of Bedford, were lodged at the Louvre; the poor French
king, at the Hotel Saint-Pol, and the Duc de Bourgogne, in his Hotel
d'Artois.

The madness of Charles VI was intermittent, but apparently hopeless; it