It is no small effort for the mind,even of the most well-informed,how much more of those whose exact knowledge is not great (which is the case with most readers,and alas!with most writers also),to transport itself out of this nineteenth century which we know so thoroughly,and which has trained us in all our present habits and modes of thought,into the fifteenth,four hundred years back in time,and worlds apart in every custom and action of life.What is there indeed the same in the two ages?Nothing but the man and the woman,the living agents in spheres so different;nothing but love and grief,the affections and the sufferings by which humanity is ruled and of which it is capable.Everything else is changed:the customs of life,and its methods,and even its motives,the ruling principles of its continuance.Peace and mutual consideration,the policy which even in its selfish developments is so far good that it enables men to live together,making existence possible,--scarcely existed in those days.
The highest ideal was that of war,war no doubt sometimes for good ends,to redress wrongs,to avenge injuries,to make crooked things straight--but yet always war,implying a state of affairs in which the last thing that men thought of was the golden rule,and the highest attainment to be looked for was the position of a protector,doer of justice,deliverer of the oppressed.Our aim now that no one should be oppressed,that every man should have justice as by the order of nature,was a thing unthought of.What individual help did feebly for the sufferer then,the laws do for us now,without fear or favour:
which is a much greater thing to say than that the organisation of modern life,the mechanical helps,the comforts,the easements of the modern world,had no existence in those days.We are often told that the poorest peasant in our own time has aids to existence that had not been dreamt of for princes in the Middle Ages.Thirty years ago the world was mostly of opinion that the balance was entirely on our side,and that in everything we were so much better off than our fathers,that comparison was impossible.Since then there have been many revolutions of opinion,and we think it is now the general conclusion of wise men,that one period has little to boast itself of against another,that one form of civilisation replaces another without improving upon it,at least to the extent which appears on the surface.But yet the general prevalence of peace,interrupted only by occasional wars,even when we recognise a certain large and terrible utility in war itself,must always make a difference incalculable between the condition of the nations now,and then.
It is difficult,indeed,to imagine any concatenation of affairs which could reduce a country now to the condition in which France was in the beginning of the fifteenth century.A strong and splendid kingdom,to which in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy of a united nation,had fallen into a disintegration which seems almost incredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationality which now illumines,almost above all others,the French nation.But Frenchmen were not Frenchmen,they were Burgundians,Armagnacs,Bretons,Proven?aux five hundred years ago.The interests of one part of the kingdom were not those of the other.Unity had no existence.Princes of the same family were more furious enemies to each other,at the head of their respective fiefs and provinces,than the traditional foes of their race;and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of patriotic resistance,one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to side with the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own flesh and blood than anything the alien could do.
When Charles VII.of France began,nominally,his reign,his uncles and cousins,his nearest kinsmen,were as determinedly his opponents,as was Henry V.of England,whose frank object was to take the crown from his head.The country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries.The English were but little farther off from the Parisian than was the Burgundian,and the English king was only a trifle less French than were the members of the royal family of France.These circumstances are little taken into consideration in face of the general history,in which a careless reader sees nothing but the two nations pitted against each other as they might be now,the French united in one strong and distinct nationality,the three kingdoms of Great Britain all welded into one.In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Scots fought on the French side,against their intimate enemy of England,and if there had been any unity in Ireland,the Irish would have done the same.The advantages and disadvantages of subdivision were in full play.The Scots fought furiously against the English--and when the latter won,as was usually the case,the Scots contingent,whatever bounty might be shown to the French,was always exterminated.On the other side the Burgundians,the Armagnacs,and Royalists met each other almost more fiercely than the latter encountered the English.Each country was convulsed by struggles of its own,and fiercely sought its kindred foes in the ranks of its more honest and natural enemy.