Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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199

The Siege of Saint-James

Henry VI’s campaign to confirm himself as King of France looked to be in trouble after the Duke of Brittany switched sides.

In 1425, England’s Henry VI and France’s Charles VII were still fighting the Hundred Years’ War for the French crown. That October, John V, Duke of Brittany followed his brother Arthur’s example and backed Charles. The Earl of Salisbury and other English generals replied with raids on Brittany from their base at Saint-James in Normandy, and by February, Arthur could see that brother John needed help.

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Picture: © Voshubert65, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

200

George VI to Elizabeth II

The final part of this series is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, the country’s longest-serving monarch and arguably the most popular in our history.

Below is a brief overview of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the country’s longest-serving monarch and one of the most popular in our history.

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Picture: By Bill Ingalls, NASA, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

201

Fuel of Freedom

Victorian economist Alfred Marshall argued that it was no accident that free societies and coal-powered industries are found together.

In 1878, Alfred Marshall, one of the most influential British economists of his day, looked back over a hundred years of social progress. For some, the French Revolution (1789) was the key, for some the Communist Manifesto (1848). But Marshall believed that what had liberated the people and raised their standard of living to new heights was not political idealism, but coal and steam.

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Picture: © Peter, Wikimedia Commons. Licence CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

202

A Tail of Woe

Reynard the Fox was mortified to hear his efforts to rescue Isegrim’s wife from a frozen lake had been misinterpreted.

In his landmark 1481 translation of political satire ‘Reynard the Fox’, William Caxton told how the animals gathered at Stade near Hamburg to charge Reynard with a catalogue of shocking crimes, and how the wily Fox emerged without a stain on his character. The allegation underpinning the whole story was that Reynard had tried to force his attentions on Erswynd, wife of Isegrim the Wolf.

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Picture: © Peter Trimming, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

203

‘If They Can Stand It I Can’

However loud his critics shouted their disapproval, Abraham Lincoln would neither deprive them of free speech nor change his opinions.

In 1864, as the American Civil War progressed, talk in Washington had turned to how rebellious Confederate States ought to be handled should the Union win. President Lincoln’s appeals for reconciliation were brushed aside by supporters of the Wade-Davis Reconstruction Bill, a cock-a-doodle-do of victory designed to give Washington sweeping powers.

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Picture: Winslow Homer (1836–1910). Source.

204

Dmitry the Pretender

Boris Godunov was crowned Tsar of All Russia in 1598 in the belief that Tsar Ivan’s son Dmitry was dead — but was he?

In 1604, Tsar Boris of Russia faced almost exactly the same scenario that had confronted Henry VII of England in the 1490s: a young man claiming to be a prince everyone thought had died years before, marching on the capital with an army of rebellion. The chief difference was that in Russia’s agonised Time of Troubles, the impostor actually got to play King.

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Picture: By Nikolai Nevrev (1830–1904), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.