Isabeau's enjoyment of her pension was not destined to be of long continuance. The brilliant Henry V. died on August 31, 1422; and less than two months later died Charles VI., _le bien aimé_. During thirty of the forty-two years of his reign he had been incapacitated by madness or by idiocy, and in the intervals France had been worse misgoverned than ever before in her history; so that, with wars foreign and domestic and with the shameless extravagance of the court, the kingdom had been reduced to a deplorable state, scores dying in the streets of Paris of sheer hunger while the English king was spending his first triumphant winter in that city. For all these evils and miseries the people placed the blame where, in good truth, it belonged, on the queen and the royal princes. For the mad king there was nothing but a compassionate love, a tender sympathy; the people pitied this kindly unfortunate, abandoned by his wife, used as a tool by first one set of princes and then another. At the funeral of Charles VI. not a single prince of France was present; the English Bedford conducted the whole sad affair. "As the body of the King was put in the sepulchre beside his predecessors, the heralds broke their rods and cast them into the grave... And then the Berri king-at-arms, accompanied by several heralds and pursuivants, cried out over the grave: 'May God have mercy upon the very noble and very excellent Prince Charles, sixth of the name, our lawful and sovereign lord!' And after this the aforesaid king-at-arms cried out: 'May God grant long life and prosperity to Henry, by the grace of God King of France and of England, our sovereign lord!' And then the heralds raised aloft their truncheons with the fleur-de-lis, crying: _'Vive le roi! Vive le roi!'_ And some of those present answered _Noël_ (the ancient salutation to the King); but there were some who wept."