It is difficult, indeed, to imagine any concatenation of affairs which
could reduce a country now to the condition in which France was in the
beginning of the fifteenth century. A strong and splendid kingdom, to
which in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy of
a united nation, had fallen into a disintegration which seems almost
incredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationality
which now illumines, almost above all others, the French nation. But
Frenchmen were not Frenchmen, they were Burgundians, Armagnacs, Bretons,
Provençaux five hundred years ago. The interests of one part of the
kingdom were not those of the other. Unity had no existence. Princes of
the same family were more furious enemies to each other, at the head of
their respective fiefs and provinces, than the traditional foes of their
race; and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of patriotic
resistance, one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to side
with the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own flesh
and blood than anything the alien could do.

When Charles VII. of France began, nominally, his reign, his uncles and
cousins, his nearest kinsmen, were as determinedly his opponents, as was
Henry V. of England, whose frank object was to take the crown from his
head. The country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries.
The English were but little farther off from the Parisian than was the
Burgundian, and the English king was only a trifle less French than
were the members of the royal family of France. These circumstances are
little taken into consideration in face of the general history, in which
a careless reader sees nothing but the two nations pitted against each
other as they might be now, the French united in one strong and distinct
nationality, the three kingdoms of Great Britain all welded into one.
In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Scots fought on the French