Six years after Agincourt, the English conqueror and the wretched phantom of kingship called Charles the Sixth descended to their graves. [A.D. 1421.] Military honour and patriotism seemed utterly at an end among the French population, and our Henry the Sixth, the son of the man of Agincourt, succeeded in the great object of English ambition and was recognised from the Channel to the Loire as King of France. In the Southern provinces a spark of the old French gallantry was still unextinguished, but it showed itself in the gay unconcern with which the Dauphin, now Charles the Seventh, bore all the reverses of fortune, and consoled himself for the loss of the noblest crown in Europe by the enjoyments of love and festivity. Perhaps he saw that the whirligig of time would bring about its revenges, and that the curse of envious faction would vex the councils of the conquerors as it had ruined the fortunes of the subdued. The warriors of Henry still remained, but, without the controlling hand, they could direct their efforts to no common object. The uncles of the youthful king speedily quarrelled. The gallant Bedford was opposed by the treacherous Glo'ster, and both were dominated and supplanted by the haughty prelate, the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester. Offence was soon taken at the presumption of the English soldiery. Religious animosities supervened. The Churches of England and France had both made successful endeavours to establish a considerable amount of national independence, and the French bishops, who had withdrawn themselves from the absolutism of Rome, were little inclined to become subordinate to Winchester and Canterbury. A court gradually gathered round the Dauphin, which inspired him with more manly thoughts. His feasts and tournaments were suspended, and, with his hand on the hilt of his sword, he watched the proceedings of the English. These proceedings were uniformly successful when restricted to the operations of war. They defeated the men of Gascony and the reinforcements sent over by the Scotch. They held a firm grasp of Paris and all the strong places of the North, and cast down the gauntlet to the rest of France by laying siege to the beautiful city of Orleans in the winter of 1428. [A.D. 1428.] Once in possession of the Loire, they would be able at their leisure to extend their conquests southward; and all the loyal throughout the country took up the challenge and resolved on the defence of the beleaguered town. The English must have begun by this time to despise their enemy; for, in spite of the greatness of the stake, they undertook the siege with a force of less than three thousand men. To make up for the deficiency in numbers, they raised twelve large bastions all round the walls, exhausting the troops by the labour and finding it impossible to garrison them adequately when they were finished. It seems that Sebastopol was not the first occasion on which our soldiers were overworked. To surround a city of several thousand inhabitants, strongly garrisoned, and with an open country at its back for the supply of provisions, would have required a large and well-directed force. But the moral effects of Agincourt, and even of Cressy and Poictiers, were not yet obliterated. Public spirit was dead, and very few entertained a hope of saving the doomed place. Statesmen, politicians, and warriors, all calculated the chances of success and decided against the cause of France. But in the true heart of the common people far better feelings survived. They were neither statesmen, nor politicians, nor warriors; but they were loyal and devoted Frenchmen, and put their trust in God.