. The money levied by the fifteenth
was not to be put into the king's hands but to be kept in religious
houses; and if the expedition into France should not take place, it
was immediately to be refunded to the people. After these grants, the
parliament was dissolved, which had sitten near two years and a half,
and had undergone several prorogations; a practice not very usual at
that time in England.

{1475.} The king passed over to Calais 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 Lewis
continually made him for an accommodation.

That monarch, more swayed by political views than by the point of honor,
deemed no submissions too mean which might free him from enemies who
had proved so formidable to his predecessors, and who, united to so
many other enemies, might still shake the well-established government of
France. It appears from Comines, that discipline was at this time very
imperfect among the English; and that their civil wars, though long
continued, yet, being always decided by hasty battles, had still left
them ignorant of the improvements which the military art was beginning
to receive upon the continent.[**]

* Comines, liv. iv. chap. 5. This author says, (chap. 11,)
that the king artfully brought over some of the richest of
his subjects who, he knew, would be soon tired of the war,
and would promote all proposals of peace, which he foresaw
would be soon necessary.

** Comines, liv. iv. chap. 5.

But as Lewis was sensible that the warlike genius of the people would
soon render them excellent soldiers,