On each
of these occasions, a strong and not dishonourable personal
motive determined his behaviour. In 1407 and the following
years, he had his father's murder uppermost in his mind.
During his English captivity, that thought was displaced by a
more immediate desire for his own liberation. In 1440 a
sentiment of gratitude to Philip of Burgundy blinded him to
all else, and led him to break with the tradition of his
party and his own former life. He was born a great vassal,
and he conducted himself like a private gentleman. He began
life in a showy and brilliant enough fashion, by the light of
a petty personal chivalry. He was not without some tincture
of patriotism; but it was resolvable into two parts: a
preference for life among his fellow-countrymen, and a barren
point of honour. In England, he could comfort himself by the
reflection that "he had been taken while loyally doing his
devoir," without any misgiving as to his conduct in the
previous years, when he had prepared the disaster of
Agincourt by wasteful feud. This unconsciousness of the
larger interests is perhaps most happily exampled out of his
own mouth. When Alencon stood accused of betraying Normandy
into the hands of the English, Charles made a speech in his
defence, from which I have already quoted more than once.
Alencon, he said, had professed a great love and trust
towards him; "yet did he give no great proof thereof, when he
sought to betray Normandy; whereby he would have made me lose
an estate of 100,000 livres a year, and might have occasioned
the destruction of the kingdom and of all us Frenchmen.
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