that where his popular historian has mentioned that an alliance
was concluded between two powers, or a treaty of peace agreed
upon, he first of all resolves to consult the actual documents
themselves, as they are to be found in some one of the great
collections of European treaties, or, if they are connected
with English history, in Rymer's _Foedera_. By comparing the
actual treaty with his historian's report of its provisions, we
get, in the first place, a critical process of some value,
inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once tested: but
there are other purposes answered besides. An historian's
report of a treaty is almost always an abridgement of it; minor
articles will probably be omitted, and the rest condensed, and
stripped of all their formal language. But our object now being
to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is possible, the very
life of the period which we are studying, minute particulars
help us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration of titles,
and the specification of towns and districts in their legal
style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their
very particularity. Every common history records the substance
of the treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the succession to
the crown of France was given to Henry V. But the treaty in
itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to
England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively
impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and
the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles VI., in the
ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his
formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded
to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union
hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government.