The Duke of Bedford, Henry Fifth's brother, assumed the regency of France until the young son of Henry Fifth, Henry Sixth, was old enough to be crowned. Charles, the Dauphin, meantime declared himself king and rightful heir, and many upheld his claim. But there were some, among them the Duke of Burgundy, the most powerful of the princes of France, who because of private injuries suffered at the hands of the Dauphin, sustained the claim of the English. Thus the country presented the sad spectacle of French princes warring against each other and the king more furiously than they did against the invader. Frenchmen were not Frenchmen; they were Burgundians, Armagnacs, Bretons, or Provencaux. The country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries. Bands of mercenaries and freebooters ravaged and pillaged the people with a cheerful disregard of the political party to which they belonged. Under such conditions the distress of the country was great. Many regions were depopulated; in many the wild wood had over run the cultivated soil; in others agriculture could be practised only near castles and walled towns. Under the sound of the warning horn or church bell the cattle would run of themselves to places of refuge. When the country was so harried and devastated it behooved the villages and towns to keep a watchman ever on the lookout for the glitter of lances that the inhabitants might have time to gather their cattle and retreat to a place of safety. Nor had the march of Lorraine and Champagne, as the valley of the river was called, been exempt from the common woe. It was long an object of contention between monarch and duke, but had finally passed into the hands of the crown, so that its people were directly subject to the King. The march was not only the highroad to Germany, but it was, too, the frontier between the two great parties: near Domremy was one of the last villages that held to the Burgundians; all the rest were for Charles, the Dauphin. In all ages the valley had suffered cruelly from war: first, the war between duke and monarch for its possession; and now, the war between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. At a time when the whole of Christendom was given up to pillage the men-at-arms of the Lorraine-Marches were renowned as the greatest plunderers in the world. Therefore, life at Domremy was one perpetual alarm. All day and all night a watchman was stationed on the square tower of the monastery, and the inhabitants held themselves ready to fly at a moment's warning. And yet men sowed and reaped; women spun and wove; children romped and sang; and all the occupations of a rural people went on.