Medieval France
(1421–1471). The son of Henry V of England and Catherine of France, Henry VI of England was the unfortunate heir to his father’s kingdom and conquests. He was born in fufillment of the hopes of the Treaty of Troyes. Within nine months, the deaths of his father and his grandfather made him the only Plantagenêt ever to be widely recognized as king of France. His uncle John, duke of Bedford, regent in France, could not preserve his throne despite Henry’s belated coronation in Paris in the aftermath of that of Charles VII in Reims. By 1436, the reconciliation of Charles with the duke of Burgundy left Henry only the duchies of Normandy and Aquitaine as he came of age.
Henry’s reign was marked by an admirable devotion to charity, factionalism in England, and a hopeless entanglement in a France he could neither govern nor abandon. Henry sought to reinforce his French position by releasing the duke of Orléans and by negotiating for an Armagnac marriage during the Praguerie, but his greatest success came later with his marriage in 1445 to Margaret of Anjou. The policy of reconciliation it represented having failed, Henry’s reign as king of France ended in the disastrous campaigns of 1449–53, when he lost both his father’s Norman conquests and his ancestors’ duchy of Guyenne.
Henry’s incapacity for government became unmistakable when he went insane in autumn 1453.
Thereafter, he was little more than a tool in the hands of others. His formidable wife worked ceaselessly for their desperate cause, but Henry was deposed by Edward of York in 1461. Ironically, Margaret then won support from Louis XI, who felt that any prolongation of the Wars of the Roses would preclude English activity in France. However, neither Louis’s diplomacy nor French military assistance under Pierre de Brezé could salvage the Lancastrian cause. Restored briefly by Warwick in 1470, Henry was murdered shortly after the death of his son Edward at the Battle of Tewkesbury.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: ARISTOCRATIC REVOLT; BEDFORD, JOHN OF LANCASTER, DUKE OF; CATHERINE OF FRANCE; CHARLES VII; RECONQUEST OF FRANCE]
Griffiths, Ralph A. The Reign of King Henry VI. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
Wolffe, Bertram P. Henry VI. London: Eyre Methuen, 1981.
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