They exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without any great dispute between themselves--the Duke of Burgundy’s influence being predominant--or with the king, who, save certain lucid intervals, took merely a nominal part in the government. During this period no event of importance disturbed France internally. In 1393 the King of England, Richard II., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of Charles VI., Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and in both countries there was a desire for peace. An embassy came in state to demand the hand of the princess. The ambassadors were presented, and the Earl of Northampton, marshal of England, putting one knee to the ground before her, said, “Madame, please God you shall be our sovereign lady and Queen of England.” The young girl, well tutored, answered, “If it please God and my lord and father that I should be Queen of England, I would be willingly, for I have certainly been told that I should then be a great lady.” The contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she should be free to assent to or refuse the union; and ten days after the marriage, the king’s uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a truce, which promised--but quite in vain--to last for eight and twenty years. About the same time Sigismund, King of Hungary, threatened with an invasion of his kingdom by the great Turkish Sultan Bajazet I., nicknamed Lightning (El Derfr), because of his rapid conquests, invoked the aid of the Christian kings of the West, and especially of the King of France. Thereupon there was a fresh outbreak of those crusades so often renewed since the end of the thirteenth century. All the knighthood of France arose for the defence of a Christian king. John, Count of Nevers, eldest son of the Duke of Burgundy, scarcely eighteen years of age, said to his comrades, “If it pleased my two lords, my lord the king and my lord and father, I would willingly head this army and this venture, for I have a desire to make myself known.” The Duke of Burgundy consented, and, in person, conducted his son to St. Denis, but without intending to make him a knight as yet. “He shall receive the accolade,” said he, “as a knight of Jesus Christ, at the first battle against the infidels.” In April, 1396, an army of new crusaders left France and traversed Germany uproariously, everywhere displaying its valiant ardor, presumptuous recklessness, and chivalrous irregularity. Some months elapsed without any news; but, at the beginning of December, there were seen arriving in France some poor creatures, half naked, dying of hunger, cold, and weariness, and giving deplorable accounts of the destruction of the French army. The people would not believe them: “They ought to be thrown into the water,” they said, “these scoundrels who propagate such lies.”