was always exterminated. On the other side the Burgundians, the
Armagnacs, and Royalists met each other almost more fiercely than the
latter encountered the English. Each country was convulsed by struggles
of its own, and fiercely sought its kindred foes in the ranks of its
more honest and natural enemy.

When we add to these strange circumstances the facts that the French
King, Charles VI., was mad, and incapable of any real share either in
the internal government of his country or in resistance to its invader:
that his only son, the Dauphin, was no more than a foolish boy, led by
incompetent councillors, and even of doubtful legitimacy, regarded with
hesitation and uncertainty by many, everybody being willing to believe
the worst of his mother, especially after the treaty of Troyes in which
she virtually gave him up: that the King's brothers or cousins at the
head of their respective fiefs were all seeking their own advantage, and
that some of them, especially the Duke of Burgundy, had cruel wrongs
to avenge: it will be more easily understood that France had reached a
period of depression and apparent despair which no principle of national
elasticity or new spring of national impulse was present to amend. The
extraordinary aspect of whole districts in so strong and populous a
country, which disowned the native monarch, and of towns and castles
innumerable which were held by the native nobility in the name of
a foreign king, could scarcely have been possible under other
circumstances. Everything was out of joint. It is said to be
characteristic of the nation that it is unable to play publicly (as
we say) a losing game; but it is equally characteristic of the race
to forget its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come out
intact when the fortune of war changes, more French than ever, almost
unabashed and wholly uninjured, by the catastrophe which had seemed
fatal.

If we had any right to theorise on such a subject--which is a thing the
French themselves above all other men love to do,--we should be disposed
to say, that wars and revolutions, legislation and politics, are things
which go on over the head of France, so to speak--boilings on the
surface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a word
may be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while she
herself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusually
obstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pur