A FRENCH WRITER ON ENGLISH KINGS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 216, 15 June 1877, Page 15

A FRENCH WRITER ON ENGLISH KINGS.

When M. Guizot conies to the English wars in France he has a congenial subject, and we are bound to say handles his story with great impartiality. He evidently has not much opinion of his King John any more than he has of our Lackland, and says that after his capture at Poictiers "he consoled himself easily enough in his captivity," though he had to stay longer than he thought, because of the refusal of the States-General, who had much on their hands with the insurrection of Jacques Bonhoinme, to accede to the English terms, even after they had been accepted by their own Sovereign. The insolent and spendthrift Richard 11. is not much to M. Guizot's mind, who, on the other hand, is impressed by the mixture of hereditary pretensions of popular rights, with which Henry IV. pretended to the throne. " Ambitious and inflexible, harsh towards his enemies, skilful and cunning, as well as enterprising, Henry IV. had always continued to treat the Parliament with respect, and had never made any attempt against its authority." These are the words in which he sums up the character and policy of the usurper. His reliance on Parliament j was, indeed, bis mainstay, for it constituted his sole title to the Throne. The claim of Henry V. to the Crown of France he considers to have been suggested by Henry IV. on his deathbed as a matter of policy, in order to divert the nation from the conspiracies from which the new dynasty had so often suffered. " The situation of France was more than ever deplorable," M. Guizot says, divided between three factions ! contending for power under a mad king. But France's misfortune was England's opportunity. Henry V. set out to conquer France, and won it. After the battle of Agincourt, M. Guizot, with something of the complacency with which a Greek at Borne might have | read the line " Gracia capta ferum victorem tulit," says that " for , 20 years the history of England takes place in France." The I Continent had conquered the island and absorbed it into itself. With the fall of Rouen, his marriage with Catherine, and his entry into Paris, Henry V. became as completely a sovereign of France as any prince of the house of Capet. On his early death at 34 in Vincennes, M. Guizot remarks, "no life in its brevity had been more active than his, and no Monarch was more bitterly regretted ; he was so even in France, for the people saw themselves thrown back into the horrors of internal dissensions." It is an easy task for him to tell how these splendid conquests were lost one by one by the weak King Henry VI., until, in August, 1450, everything was gone but Calais on French soil. "My sword shall never return to its scabbard while I shall not have retaken all that I have lost," cried the poor King Henry VI., who had never drawn a sword in hia life. France no longer feared him. — Mail.