France and the exhaustion of its treasury
prevented any formal denunciation of the truce or declaration of war.
Though Henry could spare not a soldier for Guienne Armagnac did little
hurt. An English fleet repaid the ravages of the Bretons by harrying the
coast of Britanny; and the turn of French politics soon gave Frenchmen too
much work at home to spare men for work abroad. At the close of 1407 the
murder of the Duke of Orleans by the order of the Duke of Burgundy changed
the weak and fitful strife which had been going on into a struggle of the
bitterest hate. The Count of Armagnac placed himself at the head of the
murdered duke's partizans; and in their furious antagonism Armagnac and
Burgundian alike sought aid from the English king.

[Sidenote: Prince Henry]

But the fortune which favoured Henry elsewhere was still slow to turn in
the West. In the opening of 1405 the king's son, Henry Prince of Wales,
had taken the field against Glyndwr. Young as he was, Henry was already a
tried soldier. As a boy of thirteen he had headed an incursion into
Scotland in the year of his father's accession to the throne. At fifteen
he fought in the front of the royal army in the desperate fight at
Shrewsbury. Slight and tall in stature as he seemed, he had outgrown the
weakness of his earlier years and was vigorous and swift of foot; his
manners were courteous, his air grave and reserved; and though wild tales
ran of revels and riots among his friends, the poets whom he favoured and
Lydgate whom he set to translate "the drery piteous tale of him of Troy"
saw in him a youth "both manful and vertuous." There was little time
indeed for mere riot in a life so busy as Henry's, nor were many
opportunities for self-indulgence to be found in campaigns against
Glyndwr. What fitted the young general of seventeen for the thankless work
in Wales was his stern, immoveable will. But fortune as yet had few smiles
for the king in this quarter, and his constant ill-success continued to
wake fresh troubles within England itself. The repulse of the young prince
in a spring campaign in 1405 was at once followed by a revolt in the
north. The pardon of Northumberland had left him still a foe; the Earl of
Nottingham was son of Henry's opponent, the banished Duke of Norfolk;
Scrope, Archbishop of York, was brother of Richard's counsellor, the Earl
of Wiltshire, who had been beheaded on the surrender of Bristol. Their
rising in May might have proved a seri