The English narrowly escaped giving Charles VII an ally far more useful and important than the Scotch--the duke of Burgundy. So little concert was there between the two brothers, that at the selfsame time Bedford married the duke of Burgundy’s sister, and Gloucester was commencing war against him. A word as to this romantic story. The duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, never thought himself secure of his Flanders until he should have flanked it with Holland and Hainault. These two counties had fallen into the hands of a girl, the countess Jacqueline, widow of the dauphin John. The duke of Burgundy married her to a cousin of his own, a sickly boy. Jacqueline, who was a handsome young woman, did not resign herself to so irksome a fate, but left her sorry mate, nimbly crossed the Straits, and herself proposed marriage to the duke of Gloucester. Gloucester committed the folly of accepting the proposal (1423). He espoused Jacqueline’s cause, thus beginning against the duke of Burgundy, the indispensable ally of England, a war which, for the latter, was a question of actual existence, a war without treaty, in which the sovereign of Flanders would risk his last man. The incensed duke of Burgundy concluded a secret alliance with the duke of Brittany, and then he made pecuniary demands on Bedford. What could Bedford do? He had no money; instead of it, he offered an inestimable possession worth more than any sum of money--his whole barrier on the north (September, 1423). The bands of Charles VII came and lodged themselves in the very heart of English France, in Normandy; a pitched battle was fought before they could be expelled. It took place on the 17th of August, 1424, at Verneuil. In June, Bedford had regained the good will of the duke of Burgundy by an enormous concession, having pledged his eastern frontier to him, Bar-sur-Seine, Auxerre, and Mâcon. All northern France was greatly in danger of thus falling bit by bit into the duke of Burgundy’s hand; but suddenly the wind shifted. The sapient Gloucester, in the midst of this war begun for Jacqueline, forgets that he has married her, forgets that at that very moment she is besieged in Bergues, and weds another, a fair English woman. This new folly had the effect of an act of wisdom. The duke of Burgundy consented to be reconciled to the English, and made a show of believing all Bedford told him; the essential thing for him was to be able to despoil Jacqueline, and occupy Hainault, Holland, and afterwards Brabant, the succession to which could not but soon be opened.