It is now our sad duty to watch the military glory of the Plantagenets wane¹ fainter and fainter, until it disappears, to be followed by a period of darkness until the light is slowly rekindled² at the flame of foreign fires. The decline of our supremacy⁴ in arms was not at first rapid. John, Duke of Bedford, possessed⁵ a combination of military and administrative⁶ talent little less remarkable⁷ than that of his brother the late King, and as Regent of France he took up the reins⁸ of government and command with no unskilful hand. Everything turned upon the maintenance of existing factions¹⁰ in France. England working with Burgundy, the red cross of St. Andrew with the red cross of St. George, could preserve the English dominion¹¹; otherwise that dominion must inevitably¹² fall. The French, after the lull¹³ created by Henry's death, gathered an army together of which the kernel¹⁴ was three thousand Scots, and marched into Burgundy to besiege¹⁵ Crevant. A body of four thousand picked English and Burgundians at once hastened after them, and although outnumbered, and compelled, by the advance of a second French army in their rear, to fight their battle and win it at whatever cost, they defeated the enemy completely and cut the Scots to pieces almost to a man. All was still done as King

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