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THE DEATH OF THE MAID.

FROM Orleans, Charles with his army set out for Rheims. The country through which he would have to pass was in the hands of the enemy; but the English fought as those having no hope, and every town upon the way was easily taken. Then, in the cathedral where his forefathers had been crowned, Charles too was crowned.

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Joan, having thus kept her word, asked leave to return home. "Would," she said, "it were the pleasure of God that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be very glad to see me." It would have been well for her had the king granted her request, because next year she was taken prisoner by the Burgundians, and by them

handed over to the English. A French bishop tried her, and found her guilty of witchcraft.

Then the noble girl, for no other crime than a passionate love of her country, was burnt to death, where now her statue stands, in the market-place of 2 Rouen. She behaved with such meekness and humility as softened the hearts even of the brutal soldiers who

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dragged her to the stake. "We are lost!" cried one of them, "for we have burned a saint."

The wickedness of the English did not advance their cause: five years after the burning of Joan, the Duke of Burgundy left their side and joined his own countrymen. In the same year the great Duke of Bedford died; next year Charles recovered Paris, and little by

little he won back all France except Calais. Then the Hundred Years' War was brought to an end.

1 Burgundians, the followers of the Duke of Burgundy. They were one of the two parties referred to on page 22, and were then fighting on the side of the English. 2 Rouen, on the Seine, seventy miles below Paris.

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It would have been well for Henry VI. if he had not been born heir to a kingdom, for he lacked many of the qualities necessary for a king. He was gentle and

pious, but of small ability and weak character; sometimes he was altogether out of his mind, and at all times he was very helpless. As during the whole of his reign the government was carried on by other people, the nobles were constantly struggling among themselves for power.

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For the first five and twenty years the rival parties were headed by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V., and Cardinal Beaufort, half-brother of Henry IV. In 1447 both these men died.

Two years before, the king had married Margaret of Anjou. She was a woman daring, able, and of great energy, but she was proud and overbearing, thus making many enemies She and Cardinal Beaufort's nephew,

Edmund, Duke of Somerset, now became the leaders of one party. Richard, Duke of York, the Earl of Salisbury, and his son the Earl of Warwick, were the leaders of the other.

The Duke of York was descended from Lionel, the third son of Edward III., and judging by blood alone had a better right to the throne than Henry, who was descended from John, Edward's fourth son. Many therefore looked upon him as the next king, till a son was born to Henry.

The birth of this son hastened on the Wars of the Roses, for by it the Duke of York saw himself shut out from a crown which would otherwise have probably come to him. When fighting did begin, it lasted off and on for thirty years. Yet there was no principle to fight for the war was only a struggle for power between ambitious nobles-a war for men, not measures.

THE DEPOSITION OF HENRY VI. ST. ALBAN'S was the scene of the first battle in the Wars of the Roses. Henry having gone out of his mind, Parliament appointed the Duke of York protector. When the king recovered, the duke was dismissed, not only from the office of protector, but from every other office he held, and all his friends were likewise dismissed. A council being summoned, he wrote to say that he would attend it; but that as he feared some injury might be done to him if he came alone, he would bring men enough to protect him. The king and the Duke of Somerset went out with a small army to prevent his coming. The two forces met at St. Alban's, and a sharp fight followed, wherein Somerset was slain and the king wounded.

BOOK III.

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