It is significant however that, in the year before he came to France, the figure of Joan of Arc emerged as the inspiration and hope of the French army. That is one of the reasons why Henry was so prominently displayed in Paris. In May 1429, in a series of brilliantly executed skirmishes, she had lifted the English siege of Orleans and proceeded to recapture other French towns that had submitted to the enemy. Orleans had been the key to the English strategy, its fall meant to anticipate the general defeat of the French army. That victory had been snatched away. In a letter Joan wrote at the end of June to the citizens of Tournai, she declared that ‘the Maiden lets you know that here, in eight days, she has chased the English out of all the places they held on the river Loire by attack or other means; they are dead or prisoners or discouraged in battle’. She had begun a process that would end in the complete unravelling of the victories of the previous reign. At Joan’s urgent instigation the dauphin rode in triumph to the cathedral in Rheims, where he was crowned as Charles VII. Two kings, Henry VI and Charles VII, were now claiming supremacy over the French people. It would take another twenty years to assign victory to one of them.
The affairs of France, ever since the death of Henry V, had not been well managed. Without the presence of this inspiring king, the enthusiasm for conquest seems slowly to have been dissipated. Disputes over strategy, between Bedford and Gloucester, did not augur well; Bedford was also denied the finances that he needed. It was said in the parliament house and elsewhere that French actions should be subsidized by the taxpayers of France. Among the English themselves the virtues and advantages of a dual monarchy were openly questioned. What was the point of owning or seizing territories in France when there was so much amiss in England? The king of England should reside in England, not in Paris or in Normandy.
Yet the war continued, the French and English possessing neither the will nor the resources effectively to decide the matter. Charles VII entered an alliance with the new duke of Burgundy, formally apologizing for the assassination of the duke’s predecessor and promising to punish the guilty parties. Those areas of France under the influence of Burgundy now reverted to their allegiance to the Valois king, and Charles could truly claim to be the king of most if not all of the French. In the process Burgundy had deserted his English allies, in a move that profoundly shocked the infant king; Henry had burst into tears when he read the letter from the duke renouncing fealty. More than twenty years later he still recalled the event. ‘He abandoned me in my boyhood,’ he said, ‘despite all his oaths to me, when I had never done him any wrong.’ We might notice here the innate simplicity of the remark.
The story of Joan of Arc is well known. Bedford led the war of words against her, denouncing her as a witch and an unnatural hag in the service of the devil. She had declared that the purpose of her mission was to recapture Orleans and expedite the coronation of the French monarch; after she had completed the latter object she seems to have faltered. She was wounded during a military skirmish in Paris, and was then captured by a force of soldiers led by John of Luxemburg. He sold her to Bedford, claiming a large ransom, and the Maid of Orleans was put on trial for witchcraft. The French king made no attempt to save her, and seems to have regarded her as no more than a casualty of war. In the spring of 1431 she was dragged to the stake in the marketplace of Rouen.
The council of nobles held together for the duration of the young king’s minority; they were all men who had served under Henry V, and the shared memory of that king was at least as strong as their individual self-interest. The uneasy triumvirate of the three brothers survived until the death of Bedford in 1435. In 1437, in his sixteenth year, Henry declared that his minority had come to an end and that he would now begin to govern for himself. It is more likely, however, that someone made the decision for him. He relied on the judgment and advice of others, and it was said that he always agreed with the last person who had spoken to him. For two years he had been coached in the rights and duties of a king. It was time now to take the centre of the stage. Beaufort and Gloucester, the pre-eminent nobles after the death of Bedford, would in theory be obliged to incline to his wishes. Beaufort had been raised from bishop to cardinal eleven years before, but his elevation still left him below the rank and power of his sovereign. In the summer of 1437 Henry VI embarked upon a grand tour of his kingdom.
So we may now survey the young king. The extant portraits, albeit somewhat idealized, display a man with a prominent jaw and a faintly pious or innocent expression. Concerning his character and judgment, no general agreement exists. He was of an honest and simple nature, but the virtues of ordinary life may not sit well upon a monarch. For some chroniclers he became the model of the saintly king, ‘without any crook of craft or untruth’; he was ‘pure and clean’, modest in success and patient in adversity. Yet to others he seemed to be a simpleton, an idiot, half-witted, a veritable ‘sheep’. Pope Pius II said of this devoted son of the Church that he was ‘more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit’. The English churchmen had been gossiping to him. In truth a fifteenthcentury king had to be aggressive and brutal; he had to possess innate authority; he had to be shrewd and courageous. Henry VI seems to have possessed none of these qualities. Those who condemned him as an imbecile and a natural fool were simply registering their disappointment. In any other sphere he would no doubt have passed as a devout and kindly man.
Of his piety itself there can be no doubt. He would never conduct business, or move his court, on a Sunday. He rebuked any of his lords who swore, and his only declamatory language was ‘Forsooth, forsooth!’ His eminent contemporary, William Caxton, wrote that he ‘made a rule that a certain dish, which represented the five wounds of Christ as it were red with blood, should be set on his table by his almoner before any other course, when he was to take refreshment; and contemplating these images with great fervour he thanked God marvellous devoutly’.
After the adhesion of the duke of Burgundy to the French cause, the endless war did not go well for the English. They still held on to Normandy, as well as parts of Gascony and Maine, but their aspirations to French supremacy were now at an end. Bedford, the commanding presence on the English side, proved impossible to replace. All the spirit had gone out of the enterprise of France. Step by step Normandy was being reclaimed by the French. It was perhaps unfortunate that Henry VI himself had no military experience or aptitude. His only visit to France was at the time of his coronation, and never once did he lead his forces into the field. He was emphatically a man of peace, more at home with his studies or his devotions; he was more intent upon his foundations, at Eton and elsewhere, or with his building works at Cambridge. In this he may not have been wholly misguided. Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, remain the most enduring manifestations of his reign.
When Paris fell to Charles VII in the spring of 1436, and the state of Normandy grew more disordered, Henry was inclined ever more favourably towards peace. Negotiations between the two sides accomplished precisely nothing, however, while the French continued their slow conquest of the disputed territories. The English did not have the men or the materials successfully to defend both Gascony and Normandy, while the central market town and garrison of Calais was always under threat from the forces of the duke of Burgundy. The French king offered a truce, and the possibility of England maintaining its control of Gascony and Normandy, on the condition that Henry VI renounced his claim to the French crown. The king and his council prevaricated, and sent out a series of confused responses. Henry’s council in Normandy said that they were dismayed and apprehensive like ‘a ship tossed about on the sea by many winds, without captain, without steersman, without rudder, without sail’. The king could be construed as the substitute for captain and steersman, rudder and sail.