HUNDRED YEARS' WAR, THE. This name has been given by historians, not quite accurately, to the long struggle between England and France which, interrupted by two treaties and numerous truces, went on in an intermittent fashion from 1338 to 1453. Its fundamental cause was the anomaly by which the Plantagenet kings of England held an immense fief in southern France, the remains of the heritage of their ancestress Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was natural that successive kings of France should endeavour to reunite to their crown-lands all the broad counties along the Garonne which had slipped out of the direct control of the Carolingian monarchs during the dark ages. It was equally natural that the kings of England should endeavour to cling to their ancient inheritance. Their task was made possible by the fact that so late as the 14th century French national conscious ness was still undeveloped, and most of the towns and many of the nobles of the South preferred the rule of an absentee duke of Aquitaine at London—who left them to manage for themselves for the most part—to that of the king at Paris with his grasping lawyers and tax-gatherers always on the spot.
The real character of the Hundred Years' War was disguised to a certain extent by the absurd claim of Edward III. and his successors to the crown of France—a claim adopted without sincere conviction from purely political reasons. Indeed Edward did not assume the title of King of France till the war had been running for several years (1338-4o), and he sold his pretensions for solid consideration in land at the treaty of Bretigny (136o). That Henry V. almost succeeded in turning the shadow into sub stance for a few years in the 15th century had nothing to do with King Edward's original claim. Henry conquered half France as the head of a French political faction rather than as an English dynastic claimant, and his son was only recognized as king at Paris so long as French party-spirit was stronger than French national spirit, whose resurrection was displayed in the career of Joan of Arc. The real character of the struggle is well shown by the fact that after Paris had been recovered by the enemy in 1436, Bordeaux still held out for its English "Duke of Aquitaine" for 15 years more, and after having been once sub dued, rose again in the name of King Henry VI., and fought for another year in the cause of southern particularism.
The dynastic side of the Hundred Years' War is a depressing story. Of its widespread economic and commercial effects this is not the place to speak, though they had much to do with the making of modern England. Its military aspect is most important, not only in the history of England and France, but in that of the general development of the art of war in Europe. Its opening years saw the end of the supremacy of feudal cavalry as the dominating power in battle : its last years witnessed the first instances of general actions decided by artillery.
Friction between the king of England as duke of Aquitaine and the duke's overlord at Paris had been intermittent for the last century. In 1338 it had reached one of its not infrequent crises, but the main cause of rupture was the help given by Philip of Valois to Edward's Scottish enemies. In retaliation Edward stirred up the Flemings and other Netherland neighbours of France, and bought the help of the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria. His first at tempts, however, to invade northern France with an army com posed for the most part of the emperor's vassals in the Low Countries were complete failures. And no profit was got by Edward's proclamation of himself as rightful king of France—a step which he took in order that the Flemings might be able to say that they were not engaged in a treasonable attack on their suzerain. For Flanders, unlike the rest of the Netherlands, owed homage to France (134o) . The only profit which Edward got out of the first period of the contest was the complete destruction of the French fleet at the battle of Sluys (June 25, 1340), which gave him the command of the sea for 3o years,—no small boon, for in the early days of the war French squadrons had raided and sacked Southampton, Portsmouth, Hastings and other seaports. But on land there was no decisive fighting—though Edward was eager to try against the French the tactics which the English had learned in their Welsh and Scottish wars, and of which he him self had given a victorious example at Halidon Hill (1 ,333 ). But Philip of Valois accepted no general action, and Edward was unlucky in his sieges of Tournai and other places on the northern border of France. The Flemish campaigns were a complete failure, nor did Edward meet with much success in an attempt to attack France on another flank—the duchy of Brittany—where he sup ported the claimant in a contested succession who had not the approval of King Philip. With his exchequer drained dry and his parliament growing discontented, Edward consented to a two year truce, which covered the years March Very different was the course of military affairs when the two years of fitful truce ran out, and Edward invaded Normandy (July 1346) apparently with the object of drawing off the French from a dangerous attack on Guienne then in progress—but strategical objects are sometimes attributed to mediaeval generals on in sufficient evidence. After wasting the whole duchy and capturing the rich town of Caen, Edward marched to the very gates of Paris; but when the whole power of France had been gathered against him, he judged that he had better not fight save under the most favourable tactical conditions. He swerved north, forced the passage of the Somme near its mouth, and then stood at bay, under the forest of Crecy, on a very cleverly chosen position, along a ridge of chalk downs, with a long easy slope like a glacis in front of him, and his flanks covered by the houses and en closures of the villages of Crecy and Wadicourt. Edward had deliberately adopted the formation which had served the Eng lish well in their Scottish wars—central blocks of dismounted men-at-arms, with long wings of archers thrown out on each side. After a preliminary skirmish, in which Philip's advanced line of Genoese crossbowmen was shot to pieces by the English archery—who could give them six missiles for one—the cavalry charges began (Aug. 26, 1346). The fight of Crecy (q.v.) con sisted in a dreadful slaughter by concentrated archery-shot of successive squadrons of the French knighthood ; each feudal contingent pushed to the front as it came on the field, and charged up the long slope, to be riddled and finally brought to a stop by the thick flights of cloth-yard arrows which poured in from the flanks as well as the front. The futility of cavalry charges against trained archery in a favourable position was completely demon strated, and Edward III. did not even need to put his reserves into action. Night only brought the battle to an end—and saw the wrecks of King Philip's chivalry disperse, leaving in front of the English line the bodies of John, king of Bohemia, the blind adventurer—the duke of Lorraine, ten counts and 1,5oo gentle men of coat armour—not to speak of thousands of mercenaries and retainers.
This frightful disaster to the cavalry arm shook to pieces the old theory of feudal war, which rested on the assumption that mailed knights charging in mass could ride over infantry of any sort. The English had taken to heart the results of Bannockburn, where cavalry had a severe lesson, and had gone over to the new tactics. Converging archery volleys, by highly trained professional bowmen, could prevent horsemen from closing, if the ground was favourable and steady supports of dismounted men-at-arms were :n the line to give the archers confidence and flank-protection.
King Edward only utilized his victory at Crecy to carry out the siege of Calais, whose surrender after a long and obstinate defence gave him a permanent bridge-head across the Channel for further invasions of France (Aug. 4, Next summer both England and France were smitten by the awful plague of the Black Death, which swept away a fifth or a third of the population of both countries and upset all social conditions. It was no wonder that truces were concluded, which lasted for over two years; and were renewed—despite some local bickerings and raids by both sides—till 1354. Negotiation with John of France, who succeeded his father, Philip of Valois, in 135o, for a per manent peace, coming to nothing, Edward resumed his policy of invasions of France, but apparently was aiming at breaking the enemy's spirit by destructive raids rather than at the reduction of provinces, for the armies made broad trails of devastation across the land, but did not linger to besiege large towns. In this spirit he wasted northern France in 1355, while his son Edward the Black Prince harried Languedoc almost as far as the shore of the Mediterranean. The French ref used battle and shut them selves up in fortified places. Next year the king's second son, John of Lancaster, ravaged Normandy, while the Prince of Wales made a second great sweep through central France as far as the gates of Bourges and Tours. While returning laden with plunder, towards Bordeaux, he found himself in contact near Poitiers (q.v.) with John of France and an army thrice as great as his own. The king had abandoned his passive defensive policy of the last two years, and had resolved to risk a general action, despite the English archery. Twice in recent combats on a small scale, at Saintes (13 51) and Mauron (1352), the French, when facing English archery, had dismounted the main body of their men-at arms, and kept on horseback only small detachments of picked horsemen, who tried to turn the line, or to slip in by rapid move ment without meeting the full effect of the volley. John tried these same tactics, judging, truly enough, that the fully armoured knight was much less vulnerable on foot than when mounted, and might hope to close with his enemy, if the latter was distracted by preliminary manoeuvres of lightly moving horsemen.
Unfortunately for King John, the Prince of Wales had got into a position which was absolutely unassailable by cavalry, the front line being covered by a long hedge along the brow of the hill of Maupertuis, with but a single gap in it. But the dismounted knights did reach the hedge, though much thinned by the arrow flight, and very bitter and prolonged fighting took place all along it. But the first French line was beaten back at last, the second flinched and turned away, and only the third, under King John himself, fought out the battle to the end. It finally broke up and retired, leaving King John and his younger son Philip prisoners. This was not so entirely an archery battle as Crecy, but could not have been won without the archers.
Poitiers might have been as indecisive a victory as Crecy, so far as the ending of the war was concerned, if it had not been that the French king had been captured, and naturally desired to ransom himself. It cured his subjects of any wish for general actions, and for the next our years they allowed the armies of King Edward to range about the land doing mischief to the open country, and shut themselves up in walled towns and castles, till the enemy had eaten up the countryside and was forced to move on for want of food. This destructive but inconclusive system of raids might apparently have gone on for an indefinite time, if King John had not made up his mind that captivity was in tolerable, and offered to sign almost any terms of peace that King Edward chose to inflict upon him. He assented in the Treaty of London (March 1359) to conditions so humiliating that the French States General refused to ratify them. But in the follow ing winter King Edward conducted a raiding tour all through Picardy, Champagne and the Isle de France with such ferocity that the spirit of the enemy was broken, and the regent of France and the States General assented to the terms which King John had already accepted, and preliminaries of peace were signed at the village of Bretigny, near Chartres, on May 8, 136o.
By this instrument Edward resigned his claim to the French crown in return for receiving back the whole duchy of Aquitaine, as it had been held by his ancestress, Queen Eleanor, free of vassal age to the king of France. He most unwisely reclaimed many counties which had been for a century and a half in French hands, and had quite lost all remembrance of their Plantagenet dukes— Poitou, the Limousin, Quercy, Rouergue, Marche, the Angoumois —a vast holding peopled by unwilling subjects. In addition Ed ward kept his conquest of Calais, and received back the county of Ponthieu by the mouth of the Somme, which had belonged to his grandmother, Eleanor of Castile, the queen of Edward I. But humiliating as were these renunciations, the French felt even more bitterly the charge of 4,000,000 gold crowns imposed as the ransom of their king. John, though a well meaning man enough, was an incapable sovereign, and, as everyone said, was not worth the money. Moreover he died only a few years after the treaty had been drawn up. Naturally only the early instalments of the ransom money were ever paid. Odd as it may seem, the com plete ratification of the treaty was never put on paper, though Edward duly dropped his French title and received all the lands that he had been promised. He handed over Aquitaine to be ruled by his son, the Black Prince, as a fief of England.
For nine years after the Treaty of Bretigny there was nominal peace between England and France, though it did not prevent English and French auxiliaries taking part against each other in the civil war of the duchy of Brittany and the kingdom of Castile. It was, in great measure, the unwisdom of the Black Prince's invasion of Spain—where he won, by force of archery, a great victory at Navarrete in 1367, but spent all his treasure and wrecked his own health—that led to the renewal of the French War. He had raised heavy sums in taxation from his unwilling subjects of the newly annexed regions, and in 1369 they rebelled, called for the aid of Charles V. as their rightful lord, and received it. There followed I 1 years of unlucky war, in which the English gradually lost all the lands which had been ceded at Bretigny, and were reduced to their original holding in Guienne. The enemy, captained by the great Constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, always refused open battle—the terror of archery was still ever present. But while permitting the English to march unopposed in devastating raids through France, and observing a strict defen sive behind walls when the invaders were in the field, the Con stable worked on a deliberate plan of picking up by sudden sur prises, often helped by treachery from within, outlying castles and cities where the enemy had no adequate garrisons, and from which his raiding army was far distant. The Black Prince, who might have made a good defence of his duchy, had collapsed under his Spanish fevers during the first campaign of the renewed war, and after taking the field once in a litter, and sacking the rebellious town of Limoges (137o), returned to England a broken invalid. The conduct of the war fell into the hands of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the Black Prince's younger brother. John was a convinced exponent of his father's old policy of bringing France to terms by continued circular raids and devas tations. It failed completely, though the invasions themselves were sometimes of the most sweeping sort ; in 1373 he marched, unfought, from Calais to Bordeaux, right past the gates of Paris. But he brought to Guienne only the wreck of an army ; thousands had perished by the way from privation or in petty ambushes. Lancaster persisted in the same policy, and he and his younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, led several more raids—almost as lengthy as the adventure of 1373 and quite as fruitless. Mean while region after region in the south was falling away to the French, and the command of the sea, won at Sluys in 134o, ceased to be certain after a naval defeat off La Rochelle in 1372.
Edward III. died in senile decay in 1377—his enemy Charles V. and Du Guesclin, the great Constable of France, both in 1380. After this the war slackened down. In England, and in France also, the Crown had fallen to a boy-king, oppressed with several ambitious and unscrupulous uncles, and in each country domestic politics took precedence of military adventure. It will be re membered that 1381 saw Wat Tyler's rebellion and all its wild scenes of massacre and reaction. But though there was no serious fighting of ter 1386, when there was much fear of a French invasion, and though the French encroachment in Aquitaine had nearly ceased, and a series of truces started in 1392, the war went on in theory till 1396. Then Richard II. having got the better of his uncles, concluded the peace of Paris with Charles VI. In form this odd document was only a truce for 3o years, on the territorial status quo, by which Richard kept Bordeaux and Bayonne and the Gascon lands between them, but tacitly abandoned all the other lost French dominions of his grandfather. As the agreement was technically only a truce, he was not forced to the humiliation of renouncing his vain title of King of France. But his marriage with Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI., sufficiently showed that the 3o years' truce was really a permanent settlement of peace.
When, three years only after the treaty of Paris, Richard II. was overthrown, imprisoned and finally murdered by his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, it appeared at first quite likely that the fate of the French king's son-in-law would lead to war. But no open war followed—partly because Charles VI. relapsed into one of his intermittent fits of insanity, but much more because civil strife broke out in France between the Orleanist and the Burgundian parties, who were too much interested in each other's affairs to spare much attention for those of England. The Orleanist party, however, intermittently indulged in acts of hostility— sending auxiliaries to help the enemies of Henry IV.—the Scots and the Welsh rebel Owen Glendower; and in 1403 the Constable and Admiral of France—both Orleanists—raided Plymouth and several Channel ports. In 1406, Orleanists and Burgundians, uniting for once, made attempts, the one on Guienne, the other on Calais—but both were foiled, and when in 1408, Burgundy murdered Orleans, the fight between their factions grew so much more bitter that molestations of the English coasts ceased, and civil war became permanent in France. Henry IV. was then able to revenge himself in much the same surreptitious ways that the French had been using in his earlier years. He played a most unscrupulous game—lending troops to Burgundy in 1411 and to the Orleanists in 1412, on the general principle that it was profit able to England that the French should have plenty of trouble at home.
Henry IV., long broken in health, died on March 20, 1413, leaving his usurped crown to the most capable and ambitious of all the Plantagenets, his son, Henry of Monmouth, the conqueror of France—a model of formal piety from the moment that he came to the throne, a great soldier and a very unscrupulous poli tician. He very deliberately resolved to attack France, with the idea that a successful foreign war was the best means of keeping his own unruly subjects in good temper. After making a secret pact with John of Burgundy, he sent ambassadors to Paris to renew all the old claims of Edward III. ; not only was all Aquitaine to be returned to him, but he was to be given the hand of one of the king's daughters with a competent dowry, and to receive the long-forgotten arrears of the ransom-money of King John, the prisoner of Poitiers. The French were in the throes of civil war, and to stave off invasion made liberal offers of restoration of lands in Aquitaine, and even prepared to discuss the marriage question. Henry professed himself shocked at their meanness and declared war (April 1415).
On Aug. 10, 1415, Henry V. set sail for Normandy with a well equipped army of 12,000 men, of whom two-thirds were archers. He was a strategist of a very different sort from Edward III. and John of Gaunt, and set before himself the splendid if tedious task of conquering France castle by castle and county by county, not that of indulging in futile raids of devastation. On landing he sat down before Harfleur, the town which commanded the mouth of the Seine (Le Havre did not yet exist), and captured it by force of artillery and mining after a month's siege. This gave him a bridge-head in Normandy, whose conquest was his first aim. As autumn was now drawing on, he had to choose between going into winter quarters in Normandy or marching to Calais. He chose the latter course, probably with the idea that the French would try to stop him and risk a battle, which he desired most of all things. He was not wrong; after he had crossed the Somme with difficulty, he found the whole levy of the Orleanist faction in front of the village of Agincourt (q.v.) blocking the road to Calais (Oct. 25). Here was fought the last and most decisive of the great battles of the English archery. D'Albret, Constable of France and the duke of Orleans, used the tactics of Poitiers—an attack by a picked body of horse against the English front, fol lowed by the advance of three solid lines of dismounted men-at arms. And the result was the same as at Poitiers—the horsemen being shot down with ease. Henry found the French—weighed down by their heavy armour, on a front of ploughed fields sodden with October rain—lurching at a snail's pace towards him. After the archery had played upon them with good effect, he saw them flinch, and charged in upon them, knights and archers all together. They were rolled over in heaps and slaughtered miserably. The Constable was slain, the young Charles of Orleans—head of his faction—and the duke of Bourbon, taken prisoners. The Orleanist faction was for the moment almost annihilated, but finally made head under new leaders—the apathetic dauphin Charles becom ing its nominal head, but the new Constable, Bernard of Armagnac, the real leader. And all such resistance as Henry was to meet was from this weakened party. The duke of Burgundy, under a secret agreement with the national enemy, held aloof from the war. Hence the renewed English invasion of France went on with steady progress—Normandy was conquered in three campaigns, 1417– 1418-1 9, with many sieges but no open battle in the field. Henry continued to make offers similar to those which he had formulated in 1414—he must have back all the old lands of Edward III. and the hand and dowry of the mad king's daughter, Catharine.
The whole aspect of affairs then suddenly changed owing to a murder. The Dauphin lured John of Burgundy to a conference on the Bridge of Montereau, and there the duke was assassinated under circumstances of calculated treachery (Sept. 1, 1419). Wildly indignant and left without a leader, the Burgundian faction suddenly threw itself into the arms of the English, and offered to accept Henry as ruler of France; their only desire was to avenge the murder of Montereau. The young Philip of Burgundy put himself at the head of the movement. Hence the Treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420), by which Henry, on marrying the Princess Catharine, was to be acknowledged as "heir of France," whose crown was to be entailed on their issue, the insane Charles VI. being allowed to retain the royal title till his death. The dauphin was to be completely disinherited "on account of his enormous crimes." The marriage being consummated (June 2), Henry found himself in possession of all those parts of France where the Burgundian faction was predominant—including Paris and a great part of the east and north. But everywhere towns and regions which adhered to the other faction lay in patches among the Burgundian lands. The dauphin was recognized as regent and representative of his incapable father, everywhere south of the Loire.
As head of the Burgundian party, and leading armies half of which consisted of his French supporters, Henry started on the tedious task of conquering in detail all the provinces where his title was denied. In 1420-21-22 he had taken Sens, Montereau, Melun, Dreux, Compiegne and Meaux, and was pushing ever southward, when he succumbed (Aug. 31, 1422) to an attack of fever and dysentery contracted in the trenches during the siege of Meaux. His insane father-in-law died only two months later, so that the infant Henry of Windsor, his only child by the Prin cess Catharine, was hailed as king of France, no less than of England, in his cradle.
The next 20 years saw the slow destruction of the work of Henry V. which had been from the first a triumph of misdirected military genius, assisted by the perverse spirit of French faction. Even if he had driven Charles across the Pyrenees or the Alps, it is incredible that his two realms could have held together after his death.
There was little to rouse sympathy or loyalty in the hearts of the French when a king in his second year and an English regent replaced the formidable Henry of Monmouth. The marvel is that the struggle went on so long after his death. But John, duke of Bedford, the little king's uncle, was a soldier of merit and the dauphin's favourites were not. Hence Bedford's victories of Cravant (Aug. 1, 1423) and Verneuil (Aug. 17, 1424), won with armies which were half French in composition, kept the unnatural fabric of the Anglo-French union together, and in 1428 Bed ford's advance reached the Loire and laid siege to Orleans. The high-water mark of progress had been attained. But the force before Orleans was but a few thousands strong, and northern France was sick of the English domination. The Burgundians, after ten years, were beginning to forget the murder of Monter eau and to remember that they were Frenchmen.
Only on these considerations can the astounding career of Joan of Arc become comprehensible. When the prophetess, or the witch as the English called her, presented herself before the puzzled dauphin and preached her crusade to his doubting ear, she represented the spirit of outraged and indignant France. He resolved to give her mission a trial. Obeying the "voices" which bade her march straight for Orleans under her white banner, she and her company entered the city (April 29, 1429), and she directed a series of sorties which broke the English lines, and finally caused the siege to be raised. This sudden display of spirit produced surprise and then panic among the enemy. "Be fore that day 200 English would drive Soo French before them but now 200 French would beat and chase 400 English." A series of disasters followed, ending in the battle of Patay (June 59, 1429), where, at Joan's orders, the French charged in "before the archers could fix their stakes," and destroyed a third or more of the army of Lord Talbot. She then conducted the dauphin to Reims, where, as she had promised him, he was duly crowned king: every town where there was not a large English garrison threw open its gates as she passed.
Probably the insurrection would have spread over the whole of northern France if Joan had been properly backed by her master's ministers and captains. But they secretly derided her inspiration in which the soldiers and peasantry believed, gave her grudging support, and when she failed in a surprise attack on Paris, removed her from her position as adviser and inspirer of the army. The revolt continued, however, to spread, though Joan herself, conducting a raid for the relief of Compiegne, fell by ill-chance into the hands of the Burgundians, who sold her to the regent Bedford. He handed her over to a spiritual court composed of French clergy of the opposite faction, and after many months of captivity she was condemned as a sorceress and heretic, and burned at Rouen on May 29, 1431.
But though Joan suffered the death of a martyr, the move ment which she had set going never ceased, though its progress was slow when it was no longer conducted by an enthusiast, but by politicians and captains of mercenary bands. But the basic fact in the situation was that the Burgundians were gradually dropping away from the English alliance : Duke Philip himself finally consented to make terms with his father's murderer at the Peace of Arras 5) and in the following year Paris fell into the hands of the French—the burgher militia having refused to man their walls, and allowing the enemy to enter, while the small English garrison took refuge in the Bastile, and were starved out in a few days (April 1436) . The regent Bedford was spared the humiliation of seeing his life's work undone—he had died in the previous autumn at Rouen.
The most astounding thing in the last weary period of the Hundred Years' War is that the fall of Paris was not immediately followed by the expulsion of the English from the whole of France. The struggle went on for no less than 17 years longer: The English Government in stupid national pride refused to make peace, as they might, by surrendering their boy king's French title, and contenting themselves with retaining the ever loyal Guienne, Calais, and perhaps Normandy, where they had fortified themselves very strongly. Charles of France was apathetic and his resources ran low, on account of the general exhaustion of his realm ; nevertheless it is surprising that those hard-fighting veterans, the earls of Warwick and Shrewsbury and the young duke Richard of York, kept Normandy practically intact, considering that the parliament at home grudged both men and money for the war, and that every French town revolted when revolt was possible. There was a long episode of truce in 1444-48, when--a peace party having at last appeared in England, led by the earl of Suffolk—an accommodation was almost se cured, the young king was married to a French princess, Mar garet of Anjou, and the English claims dwindled down to the retention of Normandy and Guienne. But the negotiations failed, and war broke out again in This time the end had come; the duke of Somerset, com manding in Normandy, was an incapable general, but a much better man might have failed when the enemy came against him with overwhelming numbers and a great train of artillery which blew castle of ter castle to pieces. By 1450 most of the towns of Normandy had fallen, and the duke was being beleaguered in Caen. To relieve him there came over from England a small army, the last but one that crossed the sea during the Hundred Years' War. It was led by two veteran soldiers, Sir Matthew Gough and Sir Thomas Kyriel, but only numbered 3,50o men. On its way towards Caen it was encountered and annihilated by French forces under the Constable Richemont and the count of Clermont at Formigny (April 15, 145o). This was a battle on a small scale, but of high tactical import : the English had formed themselves in their usual order in a position covered by orchards and houses—dismounted men-at-arms in the centre, archers in long flanking wings. The French, instead of charging, brought up light field-guns opposite the archers and, keeping out of arrow range, played on the English line with roundshot till their oppo nents were goaded into advancing into the open to capture the guns. They were then charged in flank; a general hand to hand melee followed, and the French were completely victorious. Of all Kyriel's army only a few hundred got away. This was the end of the English in Normandy—Somerset surrendered Caen on June 24. Nothing now remained to King Henry VI. in the north save Calais.
The next year saw the French army directed against Guienne; no succour came from England; Jack Cade's rebellion was re cently over and a bitter parliamentary contest between the dukes of York and Somerset was raging. The outworks of Bordeaux fell in May 1451, the city itself most unwillingly opened its gates on June 3o. Bayonne, the last stronghold of Aquitanian loyalism, fell on Aug. 20. It looked as if the war had come to an end. But particularism was still strong: within six months of the fall of Bordeaux, Gascon nobles and burghers were visiting London to implore the aid of an English army and pledging themselves for revolt. The duke of York, as head of the English war party, prevailed on the king's council to make a final effort, and in Oct. 1452 the veteran Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, the last surviving general of Henry V., came ashore in the Gironde with 3,00o men. On his arrival Bordeaux and all the minor towns rose in insur rection and expelled their French garrisons. But in the following summer the whole force of France was turned southward, and the fate of the duchy was settled. The French army, besieging the loyalist town of Castillon, had strengthened itself with trenches, palisades and guns of position against any relieving force. Talbot came against it with every man that he could raise, English or Gascon, but finding the enemy resolved not to leave his lines and fight in the open, risked an assault. Archery was of no use against entrenchments, and the relieving army tried to break through by main force in a great column. Its head was torn to pieces by a concentrated fire of artillery, and Talbot him self, overthrown by a roundshot, went down outside the trench. The assault having failed, the enemy sallied out from all sides of his lines and overwhelmed his leaderless troops. The last levy of Guienne and its English auxiliaries perished wholesale (July Yet so great was the hatred of the Bordelais for the French that they held out in despair for nearly three months after Castil lon, and only surrendered when it became certain that no more help from England could be expected (Oct. . King Henry had just been struck with the first sudden access of the insanity which he inherited from his grandfather, Charles VI. of France, and the Wars of the Roses were about to begin. For zo years no English ruler had the power or the leisure to think of sending troops to continue the long war overseas. This was the reason why secret emissaries from Guienne found no encouragement in London. It was a marvel that Calais did not share the fate of Bordeaux, and was still destined to remain English for a century, though in the stress of the Wars of the Roses, Queen Margaret of Anjou meditated selling it in exchange for a French mercenary army. If Charles VII. had been a man of energy, and not "le bien servi," he might have mastered the last English foothold in France. But though war continued for a few years more, and the Senechal of Normandy sacked Sandwich so late as 1457, the struggle petered out obscurely, and ended in a truce made by the Lancastrian party with Louis XI., whom they secured as their ally in English civil strife. So ended a contest which had been an unmitigated curse both to England and to France.
(C. W. C. 0.)