The Lost Kingdom

AN INFANT KING INHERITS TWO CROWNS. A YOUNG WOMAN FROM FRANCE CHANGES THE COURSE OF A WAR.

When Henry V died in 1422, his nine-month-old son inherited the English crown and, under the Treaty of Troyes, a claim to the throne of France.

The extraordinary dual monarchy created by Henry V now had to survive without the warrior king who had built it. John, Duke of Bedford, defended the Lancastrian position in France, while Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Cardinal Henry Beaufort and the royal council governed in the name of a child.

For several years, the settlement endured. English armies remained formidable, Normandy stayed under Lancastrian control and Paris recognised Henry VI as king.

Then Joan of Arc appeared.

Claiming divine guidance, Joan helped lift the siege of Orléans and carried Charles VII to his coronation at Reims. Her intervention transformed French confidence, challenged the legitimacy of English rule and shattered the appearance that Henry V's conquests were permanent.

Joan's capture and execution could not reverse the change she had helped unleash. The Burgundian alliance collapsed, Paris returned to Valois control and Henry VI grew into a deeply religious but politically ineffective ruler.

As the French monarchy reorganised its armies, taxation and artillery, English power disintegrated. Normandy fell, Gascony was lost and the veteran commander John Talbot died at Castillon. At home, the fall of Suffolk, Jack Cade's rebellion and Henry's mental collapse pushed the English monarchy toward civil war.

THE LOST KINGDOM follows the rise of Joan of Arc, the failure of the dual monarchy and the destruction of English France. It examines how military defeat, diplomatic failure, faction and royal incapacity brought the House of Lancaster to the edge of the Wars of the Roses.

This is Book Five of THE LAST PLANTAGENETS, a ten-volume history of England from the Peasants' Revolt to Bosworth and the end of Plantagenet rule.