Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot


They exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without any great
dispute between themselves--the Duke of Burgundy's influence being
predominant--or with the king, who, save certain lucid intervals, took
merely a nominal part in the government. During this period no event of
importance disturbed France internally. In 1393 the King of England,
Richard II., son of the Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of
Charles VI., Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and
in both countries there was a desire for peace. An embassy came in state
to demand the hand of the princess. The ambassadors were presented, and
the Earl of Northampton, marshal of England, putting one knee to the
ground before her, said, "Madame, please God you shall be our sovereign
lady and Queen of England." The young girl, well tutored, answered, "If
it please God and my lord and father that I should be Queen of England, I
would be willingly, for I have certainly been told that I should then be
a great lady." The contract was signed on the 9th of March, 1396, with a
promise that, when the princess had accomplished her twelfth year, she
should be free to assent to or refuse the union; and ten days after the
marriage, the king's uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a
truce, which promised--but quite in vain--to last for eight and twenty
years.

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