The English people wept and lamented bitterly, when they found that they had lost their king. He was kind to them, and so true and honest, that even his enemies trusted entirely to him. He was very handsome, and so good-humoured, that everybody who knew him liked his company; so good and just, that wicked men were afraid of him; so wise, that his laws were the fittest for his people that could have been made at the time; so brave, that the very name of Henry, King of England, kept his enemies in fear. And above all this, he was most pious towards God. CHAPTER XXXI. HENRY VI.—1422 to 1461. How Henry the Sixth became King while he was an infant; how the Duke of Bedford governed in France; how Joan of Arc persuaded the Dauphin and the French soldiers to take courage; how they nearly drove the English out of France; how Joan was taken prisoner and put to death. Henry of Windsor, the poor little Prince of Wales, was not a year old when his father died. He was made King of England directly, and became King of France soon after. The parliament that his wise father left gave good guardians and protectors to the little king, and to England and to France. The war in France began again, for the mad king having died, his son, who was almost as good for France as our Henry of Monmouth had been for England, began to try to get back all his father’s kingdom. However, the Duke of Bedford, uncle to the little King of England, managed so well for the English, that it really seemed as if France was always to be subject to the King of England. It was fortunate, for the good of both countries, that it was not to be so. When the people of France were so tired of war that they were not able to fight longer, and the king himself had lost all hope of getting back his kingdom, one of the strangest things happened that I ever read about. A young woman called Joan of Arc, who was servant at a country inn at Domremy in France, had heard a great many people talk about the sad state of all the country, and the great unhappiness of the young French Prince Charles. She thought about this so much, that at last she fancied that God had sent her to help the Prince to get back his kingdom, and to drive the English out of France. So she dressed herself like a young man, and got a sword and spear, and went to Chinon, a castle where the prince was, and there she told him, and the few French nobles who were with him, that, if they would only follow her when they were next attacked, she would teach them how to conquer the English. I should tell you, that the eldest son of the King of France was called the Dauphin, as the eldest son of the King of England is called Prince of Wales.