"It is your will," said they; "we will take this oath; but if we do, we will keep it to the hour of death." Many less powerful lords, who had lived a long while in the household of Duke John the Fearless, quitted his son, and sorrowfully returned to their own homes.

They were treated as Armagnacs, but they persisted in calling themselves good and loyal Frenchmen.

In the duchy of Burgundy the majority of the towns refused to take the oath to the King of England.

The most decisive and the most helpful proof of this awakening of national feeling was the ease experienced by the _dauphin_, who was one day to be Charles VII., in maintaining the war which, after the treaty of Troyes, was, in his father's and his mother's name, made upon him by the King of England and the Duke of Burgundy.

This war lasted more than three years.