"These were terrible times for the Armagnac princes. They were among the greatest noblemen in France and traditionally the closest to the Crown. Yet they had been cut off from the King and expelled from their domains. Their networks of clients and protégés in the administration had been destroyed. Their access to government funds had been terminated. Across northern France their supporters were being attacked and murdered. Some towns like Dijon took their cue from Paris and banished known Orléanists, confiscating their property. In Champagne mobs attacked the castles of prominent Armagnacs. The Count of Roucy, one of the greatest lords of the region, was besieged in his castle at Pontarcy on the Aisne by more than 1,500 irate peasants with the overt encouragement of the royal bailli of Laon. In the lands that remained to them the princes found themselves attacked as traitors as their erstwhile friends began to slip away in search of better fortune elsewhere.
The burden of rallying his battered party and financing the continuance of the war fell on the eighteen-year-old Charles of Orléans, already struggling to pay the arrears of the previous year's disastrous campaigns. He sold off or melted down most of what remained of his family's silver plate. He taxed his domains in the Loire valley. He continued to hope for wider recognition of the justice of his cause next time. The mercers of Orléans were making banners bearing the motto ‘Justice!', with which the young duke planned to confront the Duke of Burgundy in the spring. An order for 4,200 cavalry pennons suggests that an army of at least 10,000 men was planned, which was much the same as he and his allies had deployed in 1411. But when the leaders of the coalition came to assess their position at the beginning of 1412 it was apparent that it would not be enough to confront the great armies that the Duke of Burgundy was now able to recruit. In desperation the princes resolved upon another attempt to recruit an English army for their cause. To do this they would have to outbid the Burgundians, with their extensive resources and established connections in England.
It is unlikely that either of the warring parties in France understood the complex and volatile political situation in England. When the Earl of Arundel left England the Prince of Wales had been the dominant figure in government. He had consistently favoured an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy. But although Arundel's expedition had contributed much to the triumph of Burgundian arms, it had achieved very little for England. The diplomats who had accompanied him to Arras had been unable to extract anything but money in return for his services. By the time that Arundel returned to England the ailing Henry IV had succeeded in wresting power back from the Prince and his friends. The circumstances are obscure, like all of the court intrigues of Henry IV's declining years, for the chroniclers observed a prudent reticence on the subject. On 3 November 1411, while the Earl of Arundel was in Paris, Parliament opened at Westminster. As the day approached it became obvious that the King was too ill to preside in person at the opening. The Prince appears at this point to have confronted his father and suggested that it was time for him to abdicate. He told him, according to the only surviving account, that he was ‘no longer capable of acting for the honour and profit of the realm'. The King indignantly refused. During the sessions of the assembly the Prince and Henry Beaufort Bishop of Winchester called a meeting of the leading lay and ecclesiastical peers to consider the issue. One of them, they said, would have to summon up the courage to persuade the King to go. He was disfigured by ‘leprosy' and therefore unfit to perform the public duties of his office…"
More here
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Part II here
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Armand
