Nevers; and he sent forthwith a herald to the King of England, who was
still at Calais, with orders to say, that in consequence of the death of
his brother, the Duke of Brabant, who was no vassal of France, and held
nothing in fief there, he, the Duke of Burgundy, did defy him mortally
(fire and sword) and sent him his gauntlet. "I will not accept the
gauntlet of so noble and puissant a prince as the Duke of Burgundy," was
Henry V.'s soft answer; "I am of no account compared with him. If I have
had the victory over the nobles of France, it is by God's grace. The
death of the Duke of Brabant hath been an affliction to me; but I do
assure thee that neither I nor my people did cause his death. Take back
to thy master his gauntlet; if he will be at Boulogne on the 15th of
January next, I will prove to him by the testimony of my prisoners and
two of my friends, that it was the French who accomplished his brother's
destruction."

The Duke of Burgundy, as a matter of course, let his quarrel with the
King of England drop, and occupied himself for the future only in
recovering his power in France. He set out on the march for Paris,
proclaiming everywhere that he was assembling his army solely for the
purpose of avenging the kingdom, chastising the English, and aiding the
king with his counsels and his forces. The sentiment of nationality was
so strongly aroused that politicians most anxious about their own
personal interests, and about them alone, found themselves obliged to pay
homage to it.

Unfortunately, it was, so far as Duke John was concerned, only a
superficial and transitory homage. There is no repentance so rarely seen
as that of selfishness in pride and power. The four years which elapsed
between the battle of Agincourt and the death of John the Fearless were
filled with nothing but fresh and still more tragic explosions of hatred