Then, extending his hand to his enemy of Orleans, brother of the king, they were reconciled: the past was to be buried.
Then it is a pleasant picture we behold of the period: the two friends partaking together of communion, and dining, and then embracing at parting with effusive words and promises to meet at a dance on the morrow, the unsuspecting Duke of Orleans going out into the dark, where hired assassins were waiting to hack him in pieces.

Then a court of justice trying and acquitting this confessed murderer of the king's brother, upon the ground that tyrannicide is a duty; the sad, crazed wraith of a king saying the words he had been taught: "Fair cousin, we pardon you all." And the tragedy and comedy were over! There was now no check upon the Burgundian power.

In the worst days of English occupation of her land, France had been in less danger from Edward III.

than she now was from the Duke of Burgundy, champion and defender of the people! The immediate object of the Burgundian or people's party, and the Orleans and aristocratic party, was the possession of the person of the king, and control of his acts during his few lucid moments.
There was civil war in a land divested of every vestige of government.
England would have been blind had she not seen her opportunity; but, too much occupied with her own revolution, she had to wait.

And when Henry IV., the first Lancastrian, was king, he needed both hands to hold his crown firmly on his head.