The French Recovery

The Treaty of Troyes of 1420 ¹ and its ratification by the French estates marked the lowest tide in the fortunes of France. The English, assisted by Burgundy, held most of northern France, and their king had been accepted as heir to the French throne. The finances of France were in a disastrous condition. The extravagance of the royal household was notorious; the ‘Remonstrances’ of Paris in 1413 claimed that the expenditure of the queen's household alone had recently risen from 36,000 to 154,000 livres a year. Even more serious were the financial consequences of the pressure exerted on the demented king by both Orléans and Burgundy during the years of their struggle for power; Louis of Orléans, besides an annual pension from the Crown of 12,000 livres, received 500,000 livres for renouncing his claims to Genoa, the same amount on the occasion of his son's marriage to the widow of Richard II of England and much else. The currency of the unoccupied zone was chaotic—and at Rouen groats were minted bearing the menacing legend ‘Henricus rex Angliae heres Franciae’ (‘Henry, king of England and heir to France’). In Paris the population was for the most part more bitterly anti-Burgundian or anti-Armagnac (according to individual sympathies) than anti-English. Henry V of England was joyfully received in the city in 1420 and the following year the birth of his son was feted. This desertion of the French cause was not, of course, unanimous; when the Parisians took the oath of loyalry to the English in 1423 it was noted that ‘some did so with a good heart, others most unwillingly’. ² The effect of the treaty, in fact, was that the French were no longer clear where their allegiance lay.