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military talent rendered him, in truth, a most | efficient chief of the league; and his pride of family, which was said to have made him secretly aim at obtaining the throne itself, was appeased by all favours and honours which his confederates could safely grant him. Charles, the young Duke of Orléans, whose first wife had died recently, was married to Bernard's daughter Bonne. Soon after this event the Count's forces twice devastated the country around Paris, and aroused in the capital an indignant hatred, which greatly injured the cause of the confederates. Henry IV. of England, who at first assisted the party of Burgundy, was detached from their alliance in 1412; a feeble semblance of support which he gave to the Armagnacs increased their unpopularity, without materially advancing their interests; and their relations with the English were broken off in the course of the same year, by an agreement concluded between the parties at Auxerre. In it, however, the Count of Armagnac refused to acquiesce, continuing to co-operate with the English forces, and not condescending to be reconciled to the court till the following year.

Constable in leaving her chamber at Vincennes, was thrown into the Seine, wrapped in a sack, on which were written these words, "Let the king's justice pass!" The queen herself was put in confinement at Tours.

In

In August, 1417, about the time when Henry V. landed in Normandy to begin his second invasion of France, the Duke of Burgundy, at the head of 60,000 men, and supported by several revolted cities, commenced his march upon Paris to free the king and the nation from the obnoxious minister. Releasing the queen from her captivity, the duke held with her a parliament at Troyes, while his army blockaded Paris for several weeks. During the blockade the hatred of the Parisians towards the Constable was increased tenfold, both by his obstinate rejection of all overtures for peace, and by the vigorous measures to which he had recourse for protecting himself and his troops against several abortive plots. At length the private resentment of an obscure individual proved more successful than the combined efforts of powerful conspirators. One Perrinet-le-Clerc, the son of an ironmonger, had been beaten by some men of rank, whom the authorities, on In 1414, taking possession of Paris at the his complaint, refused to punish. He enhead of the army of the princes, Count Ber- tered into correspondence with the besiegers, nard repressed the Burgundian inclinations and engaged to steal the keys of the gate St. of the citizens by ruthless severities. Next Germain from beneath the pillow of his fayear, while the kingdom was in a state of ther, under whose charge the gate was. helpless anarchy, Henry V. invaded France; the night between the 28th and 29th of May, and in October the victory which he gained 1418, he executed his design successfully, and at Azincourt threw the court into conster-opened the gate to the Burgundian troops. nation, and obliged Queen Isabelle and the Dauphin to solicit assistance from the Count of Armagnac. He insisted on being appointed principal minister of state and Constable of France. Both demands were instantly complied with, and he began to exercise his functions in the commencement of the year 1416. His administration, lasting scarcely two years and a half, was marked by despotism, by haughty imprudence, and by the exercise of implacable revenge upon the enemies of himself and his party. A conspiracy against him in Paris, in the first year of his power, was suppressed by merciless executions. Taxes were augmented; an expensive and lawless army oppressed the inhabitants of all the provinces; and the universal discontent, multiplying everywhere the adherents of the Duke of Burgundy, gave rise to continual scenes of violence. The royal family were treated by the minister with open contempt. The weakness of the king made him submit passively to all indignities. His son, the young dauphin Jean, whose spirit threatened to become troublesome, died suddenly, and was believed to have been poisoned. The new dauphin (afterwards Charles VII.) was still almost a child. Queen Isabelle's debaucheries furnished, in 1417, a pretence for her disgrace. Boisbourdon, her maître-d'hôtel, surprised by Charles and the

The populace joined the besiegers in a mass, as soon as they were satisfied that the attack was not a stratagem of the Constable. The king was seized in his bed: the Dauphin escaped only through the courage of one of the magistrates all the public officers who could be found (including several dignified ecclesiastics), with other prisoners of rank, seized in an unsuccessful attempt of the Armagnacs to retake the city, were imprisoned, to await the will of their enemies. The Constable, who, in the night of the surprise, had escaped in the disguise of a beggar, was given up two days afterwards by a mason with whom he had sought refuge. He was carried to the Grand Châtelet, where the principal captives were collected, and where for a fortnight they were allowed to lie in suspense. The queen, still at Troyes, declared that she would never enter Paris while the Constable and his partisans remained unpunished; and the populace, incited, it is said, by their superiors of the Burgundian faction, were allowed to dispose of the prisoners at their pleasure. On the 12th of June, 1418, a mob of 60,000 persons attacked the prisons. Those Armagnacs who had been lodged in occasional places of confinement were called out one by one, and butchered as they presented themselves. The more important prisoners of the Châtelet, encouraged by the Constable, resolved to sell

Gallia Christiana, i. 833; Thuanus, Historia Sui Temporis, lib. lxxxii. A.D. 1585; Montluc, Mémoires (collection of 1785-91), xxiv. 1, 229, 388, 392; Mergey, Mémoires (same collection), xli. 85, or in Petitot (First Series), xxxiv. 64.) W. S.

their lives dear, and refused to open the alike from heresy and from civil usurpation. doors. The mob set fire to the building. De Thou bestows on him a praise which is Those prisoners who, fearing to perish in less equivocal, as having been a kind and the flames, leaped from the walls, were re- constant patron of deserving men of letters. ceived upon the pikes of the assailants. (Anselme, &c., Histoire Généalogique ; MoThe dead body of the Constable was pub-reri, Dictionnaire Historique; Sainte Marthe, licly exhibited. The ruffians then scattered themselves through the city, of which they were masters for twenty-four hours, murdering, with circumstances of horrible atrocity, all whom they had any cause for disliking. According to the lowest estimate, 1600 persons were killed in this massacre; and other accounts make the number exceed 3000. From many of the corpses, it is said (and, among others, from that of the Constable himself), the murderers cut off with their knives a strip of skin, in the form of the white scarf (bande) which had been a distinctive token of the Armagnacs. (L'Art de Vérifier les Dates; Anselme, &c., Histoire Généalogique; Sismondi, Histoire des Français, tome xii.; Petitot, Tableau du Règne de Charles VI.; Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI.; Le Laboureur, Histoire de Charles VI. par le Religieux de Saint Denis; Monstrelet, Chroniques, A.D. 1400A.D. 1418.) W. S. ARMAGNAC, GEORGE D', usually called the Cardinal d'Armagnac, was born in 1501. His father, Pierre d'Armagnac, Count of l'Ile-Jourdain, was a natural son of Charles, the last Count of Armagnac. [ARMAGNAC, JEAN V., COUNT OF.] Entering the church, and being related to distinguished families, both by the father's and by the mother's side, George d'Armagnac received rapid and repeated promotion. He became Bishop of Rhodez in 1529. He stood high in the favour of Francis I., who first sent him as an extraordinary envoy to Venice, and then, as resident minister of France, to the court of Rome, where he remained for many years. In 1544 he received a cardinal's hat; and in 1547 he was appointed archbishop of Toulouse. Soon after the death of Henry II. he returned to France; and during the reign of Charles IX. he was intrusted with more than one employment of confidence and dignity. In 1565, on the appointment of Cardinal de Bourbon as papal legate of Avignon, the Cardinal d'Armagnac undertook to execute the duties of the office, and in 1577 he was likewise nominated Archbishop of Avignon. He died there in 1585, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. His death is said to have been accelerated by grief for the assassination of one of his officers, who, having been denounced as a secret adherent of the Hugonots and the party of Navarre, was poniarded (by the pope's order, as it is asserted) almost before the old man's eyes. The Cardinal's own orthodoxy was beyond suspicion, although he entertained close relations with the house of Navarre. The Catholic writers praise him for having preserved Avignon

ARMAGNAC, JEAN I., COUNT OF, succeeded in 1319 to his father, Count Bernard VI., and distinguished himself as a servant of the French crown in the reigns of Philip of Valois, John, and Charles V. In 1333 he crossed the Alps as one of the leaders of a force, chiefly recruited from Languedoc, which King Philip of France had granted to John of Bohemia to support his designs on Italy. In the defeat which the army of John suffered beneath the walls of Ferrara, the Count of Armagnac was taken prisoner; and, when it was proposed to exchange him for one of the Este, his Gascon vanity, or ignorance, made him refuse the offer as derogatory to the dignity of his birth. Being set at liberty in 1334, on payment of a heavy ransom, he returned to France, and was frequently employed in the wars with the English, holding appointments as LieutenantGeneral in several provinces of the kingdom. In Languedoc he was especially active; and an assembly of the states of that province, held under his presidency in 1356, after the capture of King John at the battle of Poitiers, was signalized by a spirited series of resolutions against the English. These decrees, however, produced a sedition among the people of Toulouse, who were unwilling to submit to a new levy of troops, and knew that King John had already concluded a truce with England. The Count of Armagnac was repeatedly engaged in private wars with his kinsman the Count of Foix, disputes about inheritance having arisen between the two houses; and in 1362, in a fierce battle which closed one of those feuds, the Count of Armagnac was taken prisoner, with nine hundred gentlemen of his party. In the mean time, the treaty of Bretigny, assigning the sovereignty of the fief of Armagnac to the crown of England, had altered the Count's political position: accordingly in 1366 he accompanied the Black Prince into Spain, on the unhappy expedition to assist Pedro the Cruel. He soon, however, resumed his old attachments. He was one of those vassals of Aquitaine whose complaints against the Black Prince furnished the King of France, in 1369, with a pretext for issuing the summons to him, which led to a renewal of hostilities, ending in the loss of Aquitaine to the English. The Count of Armagnac died in 1373. (L'Art

W. S.

de Vérifier les Dates; Anselme, &c., Histoire | di Milano, ed. 1554, part iii. p. 270; SisGénéalogique; Vic and Vaissette, Histoire mondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, Generale de Languedoc, tome iv.; Sismondi, chap. 54. tome vii.) Histoire des Français, tome x.; Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. 32, tome v.; Froissart (Lord Berners'), vol. i. chap. 212, 241; Petitot, Mémoires (First Series), iv. 400, 408, 412.) W. S. ARMAGNAC, JEAN III., COUNT OF, was grandson of Jean I., and eldest son of Jean II., whom he succeeded in 1384. Soon after his accession he was appointed CaptainGeneral of Languedoc and Guienne, and distinguished himself by his attempts to free the southern provinces of France from those companies of military adventurers who, since the close of the wars with England, continued to infest the country. His endeavours were partially successful; and the expenditure which his expeditions and negotiations had caused was compensated by a grant from the crown. However, the jealousy of the Counts of Foix (which a recent alliance between the houses had not entirely removed), and the ambition and avarice of one or two of the most powerful among the leaders of the companies, concurred in preventing the total extirpation of the evil. In 1390, with the chimerical design of asserting claims bequeathed to him by Isabelle, daughter and heiress of the King of Majorca, he sold his county of Charolois to the Duke of Burgundy. By marrying a daughter of the Count of Comminges he likewise acquired claims on that fief, which became the cause of much trouble to his successors. Count Jean's career was brought prematurely to a close in a new undertaking in which he engaged soon afterwards. With the approval of Charles VI.'s council, he undertook to conquer Milan from Gian-Galeazzo Visconti, who had usurped it from his nephew Carlo Visconti, the husband of Count Jean's sister. For this purpose the Count, assisted by taxes laid on Languedoc and other provinces, raised an army of fifteen thousand men, chiefly from the remnants of the companies of adventure. The Florentines sent their famous captain Hawkwood to co-operate with the French troops; but, before a junction could be effected, the design was ruined by the presumption and rashness of Armagnac and his officers. In July, 1391, advancing with five hundred horsemen to the walls of Alessandria della Paglia, he defied Gian-Galeazzo's garrison, a detachment of which accepted the challenge. The French were defeated, and taken prisoners to a man; and the Count himself died in Alessandria, in the course of the same night, having been either wounded, or (according to another account) having injured himself fatally by drinking water while overheated. (L'Art de Vérifier les Dates; Anselme, &c., Histoire Généalogique; Froissart (Lord Berners'), vol. ii. chaps. 110, 177; Muratori, Annali d'Italia, A.D. 1391; Corio, Historia

ARMAGNAC, JEAN IV., Count of, was the eldest son of Count Bernard, the Constable of France. Although he succeeded to the possessions of his family on his father's murder, in 1418, his mother, partial to her second son Bernard (who founded the house of Nemours), had recourse to violence for the purpose of inducing Jean to renounce his inheritance. About the year 1425 she imprisoned him in a convent in the town of Rhodez; and his release was not obtained until the family disputes, together with feuds of other parties arising out of them, were brought under the notice of the king. In the civil wars which distracted France during the reign of Charles VII., the Count maintained the same attitude of favour to the English which had become habitual to the chiefs of his house; and having, since his father's death, married as his second wife a princess of Navarre, he endeavoured unsuccessfully to strengthen himself yet more by negotiating a marriage between his youngest daughter Isabelle and Henry VI. of England. In 1443, on the ground of relationship, through his grandmother, to the deceased Countess of Comminges, he seized her estates, which she had made over to the crown. At the same time he arrogated to himself, in his own county, prerogatives which the king, now freed from the worst of his distresses, was powerful enough to dispute successfully. The count coined money in his own name, refused to let his vassals contribute to the defence of the kingdom, and called himself "Count by the grace of God," as his ancestors had done since the time of Jean I. He imprisoned refractory ecclesiastics, and allowed his wild followers all excesses of cruelty, lust, and violence, over the unfortunate peasantry of the province. In this turbulent career he was supported by several brave and unscrupulous soldiers. The most eminent of these was his nephew Jean, bastard of Lescun or Armagnac, and afterwards Count of Comminges. This energetic soldier was a natural son of Anne of Armagnac, one of Count Bernard's daughters. In 1444 the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI., was sent with an army to reduce the county of Armagnac; an expedition which he conducted with characteristic cunning and complete success, taking all the principal towns, and carrying off the Count and the greater number of his family as prisoners. Count Jean was kept in prison till next year, and threatened with a trial before the parliament of Paris, which would inevitably have been followed by a sentence of death. The intercession of powerful friends, however, aided by considerations of policy, saved his life; and letters of pardon were issued in favour of him, and of his son and

impudent invention. Both were disallowed. Finding that he would certainly be condemned, he broke the parole, and, after a perilous journey, escaped into Franche-Comté. In 1460 he was condemned to banishment, and his property was confiscated.

His fortunes, however, were for a time re

successor, Jean. After his release, Jean IV. retired to his castle of l'Ile-Jourdain, and there, sickly and humiliated, spent in quiet the few remaining years of his life. He died in 1450. (L'Art de Vérifier les Dates; Anselme, &c., Histoire Généalogique; Sismondi, Histoire des Français, xiii. 402, 404, 410; Histoire Générale de Languedoc, livretrieved on the accession of Louis XI., who xxxv. tom. v. pp. 3-7; Mémoires concer- made it a rule to undo all his father's acts, nant La Pucelle (in Petitot, First Series), viii. and who, moreover, had been assisted by the 115-117.) W. S. Count in his own rebellion. Count Jean was ARMAGNAC, JEAN V., COUNT OF, was re-established in his possessions. He showed the eldest son of Jean IV., and born very the gratitude of an Armagnac by joining soon after 1419, the year of his father's mar- against the king in the League of the Public riage. Escaping into Spain on his father's Good, and sharing in the advantages which, capture in 1444, he returned in 1450 to do in 1465, were conferred on the revolted homage for the estates to which he had just princes by the treaty of Conflans. His plotsucceeded. Thenceforth his history, both ting and inconstant disposition soon gave public and private, was an uninterrupted Louis the means of revenging himself for his series of crimes and misfortunes, which ter- ingratitude. The Count of Dammartin, sent minated in his own destruction and the ex- to reduce the county of Armagnac, overran tinction of his family. The house of Ar- it without resistance: the Count fled across magnac was one of those rivals of the crown the frontiers; and, in this second flight, his which Louis XI. was bent upon annihilating; unfortunate sister is not mentioned as having and, although Count Jean was hardly less been his companion. Separated from her, fond of plotting than the king himself, and in he obtained as his wife, in 1468, Jeanne, a no respect more conscientious, yet he was daughter of the Count de Foix. In 1470, neither powerful nor wise enough to main-having failed to appear when summoned by tain the contest with success.

the parliament of Paris, he was pronounced guilty of high treason. His estates were forfeited, and divided among several of the king's favourites. Having engaged in his interest the king's brother, the Duke of Guienne, Count Jean re-entered France, and was able to make himself master of the town of Lectour in Lower Armagnac. Thither the king sent a force to besiege him, which reduced the place by famine, in June, 1472; soon after which the royal general Beaujeu, interest disbanded his troops, was treacherously seized by Count Jean. The king, enraged beyond measure, sent against him a powerful army, commanded by the Cardinal d'Albi, whose cruelties to the Vaudois in his diocese had gained for him the name of "The Devil of Arras." The siege lasted for two months; after which the place capitulated. It was expressly covenanted that the Count of Armagnac should receive a safe conduct to present himself for trial, or, ac

No long time had elapsed after Count Jean's accession to the earldom, when it became known all over France that he lived in incest with his youngest sister Isabelle, who had been once contracted to Henry VI. of England. Two children were born of the incestuous intercourse; and the Count, refusing to dismiss his sister, and threatening to stab his uncle who remonstrated, was excommunicated by Pope Nicholas V. Soon afterwards, however, he was absolved, on giving a promise of amendment. In 1555, Calixtus III. having been elected to the popedom, Jean presented to his family chaplain a bull allowing him to marry Isabelle; and the priest, influenced by the bull or terrified by threats, consented to solemnize the marriage. The bull was afterwards said to have been forged; but it has been thought more likely that it had been really obtained from the Apostolic Chancery through the connivance of some of the officers. A quar-cording to another account, that he should be rel about the investiture of a bishopric aggravated the king's indignation at the Count's outrage upon morality. The county of Armagnac was seized by a royal army, and Jean fled with his sister into Aragon. In 1457 the parliament of Paris put him on his trial. Presenting himself to his judges with royal letters of safe conduct, he was told that they were irregular or surreptitious; and accordingly he was thrown into prison, whence, however, he was released on his parole. He declined the jurisdiction of the parliament, first as a prince of the blood, afterwards as a tonsured priest. The former plea had some plausibility; the latter was an

allowed to quit the kingdom. At any rate, personal safety was promised to him; the treaty was sworn to on the holy sacrament; and the Count, surrendering the castle, took up his lodging in a house of the town. Next day, the 5th of March, 1473, two of the royal officers entered the house, and made one of their attendants poniard him in his wife's presence. The Cardinal then gave up the town to be sacked and burned by his soldiers. It was said that none of the inhabitants escaped, except three women and three or four men, who were allowed to attend the captive countess. She, a few days afterwards, was waited upon by two of the king's secre