Just before Christmas, 1421, came the news of the birth of a son to the King and Queen of England. In Paris as in London bells rang and bonfires blazed in the streets; for the child, afterwards the unfortunate Henry VI., was born the heir of both England and France. The winter was an unusually cold one, the frost being so severe that no corn could be ground except in windmills, all the watermills being frozen up.
In May, 1422, Queen Catherine came back escorted in great pomp by a great body of English troops. She arrived at Vincennes, where she stayed some weeks with her parents and husband who received her, as an ancient chronicler observes, “as if she had been an angel.” The court kept Whitsuntide at Paris, Charles VI. and Isabeau at the hôtel St. Paul, Henry V. and Catherine at the Louvre. The people thronged to see the great banquets at which the King and Queen of England feasted in splendid robes, crowns, and jewels; while those of the King and Queen of France were neglected, and at neither were food and wine given away according to ancient custom, which caused much discontent. But these were the last great fêtes of the French court in the reigns of Charles and Henry. In the following August the King of England, who had for some time been suffering from a dangerous and, in those days, incurable malady, died at Vincennes, and his death was followed in October by that of Charles VI. at the hôtel St. Paul. Henry died at thirty-six, in the midst of a brilliant and victorious career King of England and almost King of France, leaving a widow of twenty-one overwhelmed with grief, an infant heir to two kingdoms, and a nation in mourning. Charles, whose reign began so magnificently, passed away in the half-deserted palace of St. Paul. Although Isabeau was living there at the time, only his confessor, almoner, and the first gentleman of his household were with him when he died, at the age of fifty-three.
The Queen does not seem to have been present at the funeral, the Dauphin was an exile and an enemy, and the chief mourner was the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France for Henry of Lancaster. The funeral waited till his arrival at Paris and there was much dispute as to what the arrangements should be, it having been so long since a King of France had been buried that very few people remembered, and there were no records on the subject.