and defeats, which more than balanced the glories of Edward the Black
Prince and Henry V. Provinces were gained and lost, yet no decisive
results followed either victory or defeat. The French kings, driven
hither and thither, with a decimated people, and with the loss of some
of their finest provinces, still retained their sovereignty.

At one time, about the year 1347, Edward III. had seemed to have
attained the supreme object of his ambition. France lay bleeding at his
feet; he had won the greatest victory of his age; Normandy already
belonged to him, Guienne was recovered, Aquitaine was ceded to him,
Flanders was on his side, and the possession of Brittany seemed to open
his way to Paris. But in fourteen years these conquests were lost; the
plague scourged England, and popular discontents added to the
perplexities of the once fortunate monarch. Moreover, the House of
Commons had come to be a power and a check on royal ambition. The death
of the Black Prince consummated his grief and distraction, and the
heroic king gave himself up in his old age to a disgraceful profligacy,
and died in the arms of Alice Pierce, in the year 1377.

Fifty years pass by, and Henry V. is king of England, and renews his
claim to the French throne. The battle of Agincourt (1415) gives to
Henry V. the same _éclat_ that the victory of Crécy had bestowed on
Edward III. Again the French realm is devastated by triumphant
Englishmen. The King of France is a captive; his Queen is devoted to the
cause of Henry, the Duke of Burgundy is his ally, and he only needs the
formal recognition of the Estates to take possession of the French
throne. But in the year 1422, in the midst of his successes, he died of
a disease which baffled the skill of all his physicians, leaving his
kingdom to a child only nine years old, and the prosecution of the
French war to his brother the Duke of Bedford, who was scarcely inferior