VI., scarcely ten years old,
and had him crowned at Notre-Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for
pomp, but not for warmth. The Duke of Burgundy was not present; it was
an Englishman, the Cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the young
Englander King of France; the Bishop of Paris complained of it as a
violation of his rights; the parliament, the university, and the
municipal body had not even seats reserved at the royal banquet; Paris
was melancholy, and day by day more deserted by the native inhabitants;
grass was growing in the court-yards of the great mansions; the students
were leaving the great school of Paris, to which the Duke of Bedford at
Caen, and Charles VII. himself at Poitiers, were attempting to raise up
rivals; and silence reigned in the Latin quarter. The child-king was
considered unintelligent, and ungraceful, and ungracious. When, on the
day after Christmas, he started on his way back to Rouen, and from Rouen
to England, he did not confer on Paris "any of the boons expected, either
by releasing prisoners or by putting an end to black-mails, gabels, and
wicked imposts." The burgesses were astonished, and grumbled; and the
old queen, Isabel of Bavaria, who was still living at the hostel of St.
Paul, wept, it is said, for vexation, at seeing from one of her windows
her grandson's royal procession go by.

Though war was going on all the while, attempts were made to negotiate;
and in March, 1433, a conference was opened at Seineport, near Corbeil.
Everybody in France desired peace. Philip the Good himself began to feel
the necessity of it. Burgundy was almost as discontented and troubled as
Ile-de-France. There was grumbling at Dijon as there was conspiracy at
Paris. The English gave fresh cause for national irritation. They
showed an inclination to canton themselves in Normandy, and abandon the
other French provinces to the hazards and sufferings of a desultory war.
Anne of Burgundy, the Duke of Bedford's wife and Philip the Good's
sister, died. The English duke speedily married again without even
giving any notice to the French prince. Every family tie between the two
persons was broken; and the negotiations as well as the war remained
without result.

An incident at court caused a change in the situation, and gave the
government of Charles a different character. His favorite, George de la
Tremoille, had become almost as unpopular amongst the royal family as in
the country in general