ible
coronation. As he rode by the Hotel Saint-Pol, he perceived the Queen
Isabeau on the balcony; he doffed his hat to her and she returned his
salute, then burst into tears. On the 17th of December, he was anointed
and crowned in Notre-Dame by Cardinal Winchester--which gave great
offence to the Bishop of Paris--and surrounded entirely by English
lords; there was no liberation of prisoners, no largess to the people,
no removal of taxes. "A bourgeois who marries off his daughter would
have done the thing better," said the Parisians. However, he manifested
some desire to secure their good-will by confirming a number of their
minor privileges, their right to acquire titles of nobility, etc.

The discontent grew among the citizens; no coronation of a king of
France could be as sacred as that celebrated according to the ancient
ceremonial at Reims; the English garrison felt constrained to take such
strong measures of precaution as to forbid any one to leave the city
without passports, or to mount upon the ramparts under penalty of being
hanged. It was not till the 29th of May, 1436, that six citizens, whose
names history has preserved, contrived to open the Porte Saint-Jacques,
in the quarter of the Halles, to their countrymen outside; the Constable
of France, Arthur de Bretagne, Comte de Richemont, with the Comte de
Dunois and some two thousand horsemen, were waiting for them; the first
twenty men introduced through a little postern gate opened the great
doors and let down the drawbridge, all the cavalry trooped in without
meeting the least resistance. "Then the Marechal de l'Isle-Adam mounted
upon the wall, unfurled the banner of France, and cried '_Ville
gagnee!_' [City taken!]."

Captain Willoughby, who commanded the English, finding the whole
populace rising against him, was compelled to take refuge in the
Bastile with some thousand or twelve hundred men, and soon after
capitulated and left the city by the Porte Saint-Antoine, pursued by the
hootings of the people. Charles VII made his triumphal entry in the
following November, and was received with abundant demonstrations of
welcome. It was, however, a city devastated by pestilence and famine and
with troops of wolves in all the suburbs. Bands of brigands, largely
made up of unpaid soldiers, and called, from their outrages,
_escorcheurs_, traversed the country and the environs and were more
feared even than the wolves. The universal demoralization caused by the
war