1412, Processions, pp. 62-63

As soon as people heard in Paris that the King was in his enemies' country, they arranged by common consent the most touching processions that anyone had ever seen in living memory. On Monday, the next to last day of May in the same year, the people of the Palais in Paris and the mendicant orders and others all went in procession barefoot, carrying various most worthy shrines and the Holy True Cross of the Palais; also the members of the Parlement of every rank, all two by two, with some thirty thousand people following after, and all of them barefoot. On Tuesday, the last day of May in the same year, some of the town's parishes made processions, the parishioners going around their own parishes. All the priests wore copes or surplices, each carried a candle and relics, all barefoot; the shrine of St. Blanchard, of St. Magloire, and two hundred or more little children going in front, all barefoot and each with a candle or taper in his hand. Everyone who could afford it carried a torch; all were barefooted, women and men.

On Wednesday, June 1st, same year, there was another procession as on the Tuesday. The Thursday was the day of the Holy Sacrament; the traditional procession took place. Next Friday, June 3rd, same year, there was the most beautiful procession ever seen. All the parishes and all the orders of every rank went barefoot and carrying candles or reliquaries in their devotion, as is described above. More than forty thousand ordinary people went too, all barefoot and fasting, not to mention other secret abstinences; more than four thousand torches burning. Thus they bore the holy relics to St.-Jean-en-Grève and here, with great weeping, with many tears and great devotion they took up the precious body of Our Lord which the false Jews boiled. It was handed over to four bishops who carried it from this church to St. Geneviève, accompanied by an enormous number of the common people, more, it was affirmed, than fifty-two thousand. There they sang high mass very devoutly and then, still fasting, brought the holy relics back to the place they had taken them from. Next Saturday, the 4th, same month, same year, the entire University went in procession, everyone of every rank on pain of deprivation; also the little schoolchildren, all barefoot, and everyone great and small carrying a lighted candle. They assembled thus humbly at the Mathurins and from there went to St-Catherine-du-Val-des-Ecoliers carrying countless Holy relics. There they sang high mass and came fasting back again.

1417, Queen, p. 103

The Queen was deprived of everything; she was no longer to be one of the Council and her establishment was reduced.

1418, Queen, p. 123

On Thursday 14th July the Queen arrived in Paris; the Duke of Burgundy brought her and presented her to the King at the Louvre. She had been away from France for a long time, as it were banished by the confederates. If the Duke of Burgundy had not helped her - ! Always during her exile he treated her with the honour due to his liege lady, now this day he restored her with great honour to his lord the King of France. The Porte St. Antoine was unblocked for their arrival; all the citizens of Paris wore blue; they were welcomed with more honour and joy than ever any lady or lord had been in France before - everywhere they passed, the crowds shouted 'Noel!' and there was hardly a soul there who did not weep with joy and emotion.

1418, Death, p. 131

The death rate in and around Paris this September was higher than it had been for three hundred years, so old men said. No one who was struck by the epidemic escaped, particularly young people and children. So many people died so fast towards the end of the month that they had to dig great pits in the cemeteries of Paris and lay thirty or forty in at once, in rows like sides of bacon, and then a bit of earth scattered over them. You could not go out into the street day or night without encountering Our Lord being carried to the sick, and all the dying had the clearest perception of Our Lord God at the end that any Christian ever had. But, by what the clergy said, no one had ever experienced or heard of so dreadful or so fierce a pestilence nor one from which so few people once struck by it recovered. More than fifty thousand people died in Paris in less than five weeks. So many priests died that four or six or eight heads of households would be buried with one sung mass; even then it was necessary to bargain with the priests, what price they would do it for, and often people had to pay 16s. or 18s. p. and a low mass 4s. p.

1419, War, pp. 145-147

For this damned war has caused so much misery that I believe France has suffered more in the past twelve years than she had done in the previous sixty. Alas! First, there is Normandy entirely ruined. Almost all of them, the men who used to have the land tilled, each dwelling in his own place with his wife and his household in peace and safety, merchants and merchant-women, clergy, monks, nuns, people of all walks of life, have been turned out of their homes, thrust forth as if they were animals, so that now those must beg who used to give, others must serve who used to be served, some in despair turn thief and murderer, decent girls and women through rape or otherwise are come to shame, by necessity made wanton. God Almighty knows how many monks, how many priests, how many ladies of the religious orders and other gentlewomen have been forced to abandon everything and surrender bodies and souls to despair! Alas! how many children have been born dead for lack of aid, how many men have died without confession, through torture or otherwise, how many dead lie unburied in forests and out of the way places! How many intended marriages have been abandoned, how many churches burned and chapels, hospitals, and infirmaries, where once Our Lord's holy service and works of mercy were done, of which now only the sites remain. How much wealth is hidden that will never do any good, and churches' relics and jewels too and other things that will never be any use except perhaps by chance. In short, I do not think that anyone, not the most brilliant, could enumerate all the unhappy, appalling, monstrous, and damnable sins that have been committed since the disastrous and damnable appearance in France of Bernard, Count of Armagnac, Constable of France. Ever since France first heard the names of 'Burgundian' and 'Armagnac', every crime that can be thought or spoken of has been done in the Kingdom of France, so that innocent blood cries for vengeance before God. It is my sincere opinion that this Count of Armagnac was a devil in the shape of a man, because I cannot see that anyone who belongs to him or who holds by him or who wears his sash ever obeys the law or the Christian faith. On the contrary, they behave towards all those over whom they have power like men who have denied their creator, as is perfectly plain throughout the kingdom of France. I am sure that the King of England would never have dared to set foot in France in the way of war but for the dissensions which sprang from this unhappy name. Normandy would still have been French, the noble blood of France would not have been spilt nor the lords of the kingdom taken away into exile, nor the battle lost, nor would so many good men have been killed on that dreadful day of Agincourt where the King lost so many of his true and loyal friends, had it not been for the pride of this wretched name, Armagnac.

Alas! nothing will be left to them, of all their wickedness except the guilt. If they do not amend during this poor bodily life they will be for ever damned in great pain and grief, for certainly no one can hide anything from God. He, full of mercy, knows everything, so let no one put his trust in that not in long life nor any other foolish hope or vainglory. He will indeed render to everyone according to his deserts. Alas, never, I think, since the days of Clovis the first Christian King, has France been as desolate and as divided as it is today. The Dauphin and his people do nothing day or night but lay waste all his father's land with fire and sword and the English on the other side do as much harm as Saracens. (It is better, though, much better, to be captured by the English than by the Dauphin or his people who call themselves the Armagnacs.) And the poor King and Queen have not moved from Troyes since Pontoise was taken, where they are with their poor retinue like fugitives, exiled by their own child, a dreadful thought for any right-minded person.

1420, Daily Life, p. 150

The King was still at Troyes and kept Easter there this year, 1420. This year there were more violets, yellow and blue, in flower in January than there had been in March the year before. Roses were in flower on Easter day in 1420, 7th April, and were all over by 15th May. Good cherries were on sale early in May and the corn was riper by the end of May than it had been at St. John the year before. Other things were similarly advanced, which was a great help to poor people, since everything was still very expensive, as is described above, and clothing even worse. 16s. cloth cost 40s. p.; an ell of good linen, 12s.; fustian, 16s. p.; serge, 16s.; and hose and shoes even more than before.

1420, War, pp. 150-151

The Armagnacs now devoted themselves to their brutalities more wholeheartedly than ever. They murdered, plundered, raped, burned churches and the people inside them, children and pregnant women; in short they committed every outrage, every atrocity that man or devil could do. It was therefore necessary, however distressing, to negotiate with the English King France's ancient enemy, because of the Armagnacs' barbarity. He was given one of the daughters of France, Catherine. He stayed at the abbey of St. Denis the night of 8th May 1420, and next day went past the town outside the Porte St. Martin, accompanied, it was said, by seven thousand bowmen and a very large number of well-armed troops. A helmet encircled by a golden crown was carried before him as a cognizance; his device was a fox's brush, embroidered. He went and stayed at Charenton bridge, on his way to Troyes to see the King, and there the Parisians presented him with four wagon-loads of excellent wine of which he did not seem to think very much. None of the commons of Paris was allowed out of the city that day. From there he went on to Troyes, meeting no opposition from the Armagnacs, who had boasted that they would fight him but never dared appear.

1420, Marriage, p. 151

At Troyes on Trinity Sunday, 2nd June 1420, the English King married the daughter of France. On the Monday the English and French knights intended to hold a tournament to celebrate the marriage of such a prince, as is usually done, but the King of England, for whose pleasure the tournament was meant, said, of his own accord, in everyone's hearing, 'I beg my lord the King whose daughter I have married, and all his servants, and I command all my own servants that tomorrow morning we all of us be ready to go and besiege Sens, where my lord the King's enemies are. There we may all tilt and joust and prove our daring and courage, for there is no finer act of courage in the world than to punish evildoers so that poor people can live.' The King granted this, everyone agreed, and so it was done. They succeeded in taking the city by St. Barnabas's day, June 11th.