seemed now to be utterly
extinguished. Every legitimate prince of that family was dead; almost
every great leader of the party had perished in battle or on the
scaffold; the Earl of Pembroke, who was levying forces in Wales,
disbanded his army when he received intelligence of the battle of
Tewkesbury, and he fled into Brittany with his nephew, the young Earl of
Richmond. The bastard of Falconberg, who had levied some forces, and
had advanced to London during Edward's absence, was repulsed; his men
deserted him; he was taken prisoner and immediately executed; and peace
being now fully restored to the nation, a parliament was summoned, which
ratified, as usual, all the acts of the victor, and recognized his legal
authority.

This Prince, who had been so firm and active and intrepid during the
course of adversity, was still unable to resist the allurements of a
prosperous fortune; and he devoted himself, as before, to pleasure and
amusement, after he became entirely master of his kingdom. But while he
was thus indulging himself in pleasure, he was roused from his lethargy
by a prospect of foreign conquests. He passed over to Calais, 1475, with
an army of one thousand five hundred men-at-arms and fifteen thousand
archers, attended by all the chief nobility of England, who,
prognosticating future successes from the past, were eager to appear on
this great theatre of honor. But all their sanguine hopes were damped
when they found, on entering the French territories, that neither did the
constable open his gates to them nor the Duke of Burgundy bring them the
smallest assistance. That Prince, transported by his ardent temper, had
carried all his armies to a great distance, and had employed them in wars
on the frontiers of Germany and against the Duke of Lorraine; and though
he came in person to Edward, and endeavored to apologize for this breach
of treaty, there was no prospect that they would be able this campaign to
make a conjunction with the English. This circumstance gave great disgust
to the King, and inclined him to hearken to those advances which Louis
continually made him for an accommodation.

Louis was sensible that the warlike genius of the people would soon
render them excellent soldiers, and, far from despising them for their
present want of experience, he employed all his art to detach them from
the alliance of Burgundy. When Edward sent him a herald to claim the
crown of France, and to carry him a defiance in