"A Year of Disasters" Topic

"The coronation of Henry VI should have been a triumphant moment in the history of the English kingdom of France. Never before had the two crowns been united in one person, nor would they ever be again. Yet the whole episode was somehow shabby, rushed and unsatisfactory. Only six months earlier the English council had still anticipated that the ceremony would take place, as tradition demanded, in Reims. Instead, because Reims was still in Armagnac hands, Henry was crowned in Paris – not even at Saint-Denis, where Pepin the Short had been crowned by Pope Stephen II in 754 in the presence of the future Charlemagne, but in the cathedral of Notre Dame.

At almost every stage of the proceedings the English managed to cause offence to their French subjects. The bishop of Paris was aggrieved that Cardinal Beaufort usurped what he felt was rightfully his role within his own church by crowning the king and singing the mass. The canons were annoyed because the royal officials failed to give them their customary offering of the gilded cup used in the service. Officials from the municipality, university and parlement were offended because they were not treated with the dignity they expected at the coronation feast: worse still for Frenchmen, the English had cooked the food four days earlier and it was ‘shocking'. The traditional celebratory jousts were a small-scale affair and did not give rise to the usual distribution of largesse. The new king also failed to grant the customary release of prisoners and abolition of certain taxes. These were all petty quibbles, but they were symptomatic of a wider discontent. As the chronicler Monstrelet noted, everything concerning the coronation was carried out ‘more in accordance with the customs of England than of France'. The citizen of Paris concluded that it was ‘probably because we don't understand what they say and they don't understand us' but there must have been many who felt that this lack of sensitivity to French concerns was simply the arrogance of an English conqueror…"
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