trait of Katherine, "which," says Monstrelet, "he gazed upon with raptures, and pronounced it matchlessly beautiful, but withal he would not abate one jot of his demands," Whilst these négociations were going on, Henry was busily occupied besieging the city of Rouen. The exertions made to save this important city were prodigious, but ineffectual. In January, 1419, Rouen fell, and its fall was received by the people of France as the death-knell of their nation's independence. Roth the Dauphin and the Queen now solicited a separate interview with the victor ; that with the Dauphin dropped through, but the Duke of iiurgundy prevailed on Henry to meet the Queen in person. A plain on the bank of the Seine, near Maulent, was the spot chosen for the interview. Here an enclosure was formed with palisades, and two magnificent pavilions erected in the centre, afforded the royal negoeiators the convenience of withdrawing from the gaze of the spectators. Meanwhile, Henry took up his residence at Mantesc, and Charles and his councillors hastened to Pontose. It chanced that on the thirtieth of May, theappointed day,thcKing of France was seized with a fit of insanity ; but about eight in the morning, Isabella, her daughter Katherine, and the Duke of Burgundy, left Pontose, escorted by one thousand men-at-arms, and King Henry, with his brothers of Clarence and Gloucester, departed at the same time with an equal number of horsemen, from Mantese. At a signal given, they entered the enclosure by opposite barriers, and met in the centre at the same moment. Henry bowed to the Queen and the Princess, saluted them, and taking the former by the hand, led her into the pavilion, placed her in one of the chairs of state, and seated himself in the other. His intended bride was placed opposite him ; it was the first time that he had seen her ; and as she was young, graceful, and beautiful, and withal anxious to become Queen of England, she employed all her charms to captivate the heart of' the conqueror. Whilst the Earl of Warwick was delivering a long address in French, Henry gazed on the fair Kathe rine with fond earnestness—"in fact," says Monstrelet, "he fell desperately in lore with her ;" and though he strove to suppress, he could not conceal his emotion from the penetrating eye of Isabella, who, vainly believing that she could compel him, by hopes of again seeing her daughter, to consent to more favourable conditions, withdrew her from that moment from the conferences. But strong as love might be in the heart of the English king, ambition was stronger, At the end of a month, the conferences so artfully schemed and conducted by Isabella were brought to an abrupt termination, and Henry again betook himself to the, tohim, more genial occupation of warfare. Success, as heretofore, attended the efforts of the sanguine Henry. Fortress after fortress fell into his hands, and at length the tragical murder of the Duke of Burgundy, on the eleventh of September, 1419, by the partizans of the Dauphin, prostrated bleeding France at his feet. In her eagerness to be revenged upon her foes, the Queen forgot the true interests of her country ; and, as a peaceoffering, proffered the conqueror the hand of Katherine, the regency of France during the lifetime of the King, and the succession to the crown at his death. To these terms Henry acceded. The important preliminaries were signed in December. On the twentieth of the subsequent May, Henry, attended by sixteen thousand men at arms, entered Troycs, the residence of the French court, and on the day following, the "perpetual peace" was signed; and the conqueror was betrothed, in the presence of a brilliant assemblage of English and French nobles, in the church of Nôtre Dame. King Charles was not present,—neither his health nor his feelings would permit him to take part in the scene, which apparently destroyed the independence of F'rance, and deprived his young heir of the succession. The marriage of King Henry and the Princess Katherine was completed at Troyes on the second of June, in the presence of the Emperor Sigismund, and several European princes, with extraordinary pomp and