Henry's marriage with Catherine was solemnised on the 2nd of June. On the second day after he resumed his military operations, and some months were spent in reducing successively the towns of Sens, Montereau, Villeneuve-le-Roi, and Mclun. On the 18th of November, Henry and Charles entered Paris together in triumph, and here the treaty of Troyes was unanimously confirmed (December 10th) in an assembly of the three estates of the kingdom. Henry eoon after set out with his queen for England, and on the 2nd of February 1421 entered London amidst such pageants and popular rejoicings as that capital had never before witnessed.
He did not however remain long at home. On the 22nd of March his brother, the Duke of Clarence, whom he had left governor of Nor mandy, was defeated in a battle fought at Baugh, iu Anjou, by a force chiefly composed of a body of Scottish auxiliaries under the Earl of Buchan, who slew Clarence with his own hand, an exploit for which the dauphin conferred upon the Scottish earl the office of Constable of France. This victory appears to have produced n wonderful effect in reanimating the almost broken spirits and extinguished hopes of the dauphin's party. Feeling that his presence was wanted in France, Henry again act sail for Calais in the beginning of June, taking with him a Scottish force commanded by Archibald, earl of Douglas, and also his prisoner, the Scottish king, to whom he promised his liberty as soon as they should have returned to England. His wonted success attended him in this new expedition; and he drove the dauphin before him, from one place after another, till he forced him to retire to Bourges, in Berry. He then, after taking the strong town of Meaux, which coat him a siege of seven months, proceeded to Paris, which he entered with great pomp on the 30th of May 1922, accompanied by his queen, who had come over to join him, after having given birth to a son at Windsor Castle on the 6th of the preceding December. But the end of Henry's triumphant career was now at hand. The dauphin and the constable Buchan having again advanced from the south, and laid siege to the town of Cosne, Henry, though ill at the time, set out to relieve that place, but was unable to proceed farther than Corbeil, about 20 miles from Paris when, resigning the command to his brother the Duke of Bedford, he was carried back in a litter to the Bois de 'Vincennes, in the vicinity of the capital, and there, after an illness of about a month, he breathed his last, on the Slat of August, in the thirty-fourth sear of his ago and the tenth of his It is unnecessary in the present day to 'Pewits) a word on either the Injustice or the folly of the enterprise ou which Henry thus threw away the whole of his reign. In estimating his character, it is of
more importance to remember that the folly And injustice, which arc now FO evident, were as little perceived at that day by his subjects in general as by himself, and that there can be no doubt whatever that both ho and they thought he was, in the assertion of his fancied rights to the crown of France, pursuing both a moat important and a most legitimate object. That motives of personal ambition mingled their influence in his views and proceedings must no doubt be admitted; but that is perfectly consistent with honesty of purpose and a thorough belief in the rightnees.both of the object sought and the means em ployed to secure it. In following the bright though misleading idea that had captivated him, he certainly displayed many endowments of the loftiest and moat admirable kind—energy, both of body and mind, which no fatigue conld quell ; the most heroic gallantry ; patience and endurance, watchfulness and activity, steadiness, determination, policy, and other moral constituents, as they may be called, of genius, as well as mere military skill and resources. Nor does any weighty impu tation dim the lustre of these virtues. His slaughter of Ins prisoners at the battle of Agincourt, almost the only stigma that rests upon his memory, was an act of self-preservation justified by what appeared to be the circumstances in which he was placed. No monarch ever occupied a throne who was more the idol of his snbjects than Henry V.; nor is any trace to be found of popular dissatisfaction with any part of his government from the beginning to the end of his reign.