The Armagnac faction, now . : name from a marriage of the heir of tie' of Orleans with the heiress of that intait gin to press upon the Burgundian pow! was undoubtedly favored by the people n eral, and secretly by the poor king. Tie cons, the chief military element on dx magnac side, were marching on Paris, i war of the most desolating kind when the moment appeared propitious new descent on the part of the English 'm In 1415 he landed in Normandy. i originally, like the earlier wars, a mere rv: it was far more successful than had been. Normandy was completely cm, after the utter breakdown of the Freoch • at Agincourt, and finally on 21 May 1-21 Treaty of Troyes was signed, '... V married Catherine the daughter of - • VI, and was declared heir in remainder: Crown, with his descendants. The Dat:p1; legally outlawed, and the position seemed for Henry, when in 1422 he died, follow! mediately afterward by . Charles VI l' reign of 42 years. There immediately bta struggle for the recapture of the territor. that struggle was successful. Althougll . had been born to Henry V before his ..- and had been solemnly crowned on his ' death, as Henry VI of France and Erg'''' ' the age of barely 12 months, the armies. Dauphin began the reconquest. The chic' ments in this were the defection of 13:17: and the appearance of Joan of Arc. struggle had continued with doubtful for seven years, this child of 19, cy... of a supernatural mission, approached thy of the exiled Dauphin—Chinon, refac". there by some supernatural power bothll'• and various historic relics presented to h.
l Orleans, had the Dauphin crowned in ns after a successful march across country, n general roused in the army and the a confidence of success. She was taken ner in the second year of this marvelous outside Compiegne, after being wounded !r failure to capture Paris. She was sold e English and burnt alive at Rouen. Never ss the English garrisons perpetually re ed or surrendered, and in 1435 the Duke of t-undy himself abandoned the English Alli , and, with that act, of course, after the de on of so many of his supporters, all further ish successes became hopeless. A few garri.; still held out, notably the Saint Michael in Tiandy, but Paris was taken the next year Rouen in 1453 ; and when Charles VII died, 161, the French territory was clear. He was ceded by a son who bad rebelled against a man approaching 40 years of age, of a acter dark, intelligent, very powerful and cious, deeply religious, and a little mad, wn to history as Louis XI.
-ouis XI, who next succeeded to the throne, to meet a combination, common enough at close of any great epoch, coming as he did he close of the Middle Ages; that is, a cora ition of forces which depended upon the rit service still paid to old names and old ideas, which only survived as clumsy anachronisms. this case the forces with which he had to tend were-the last forces of feudalism. Feu
ism had long lost its vitality, and instead of ing to meet a rebellion of local lords numer and well founded in their localities, he had meet a combination of very great men most them of blood royal hut depending upon 'dal theories and technicalities for their rebel ' against him. His brother, Charles of ance, the Duke of Brittany, and the heir to the chy of Burgundy, banded themselves under name of League of the Public Good, m the battle of Adontlhery and proceeded they thought to a complete success. It was re that for the first time Louis XI's powerful not quite sane character appeared. He imme ately gave way, where a weaker man would inly have resisted, granted Normandy to his other, made Saint Pol a Constable, and in nieral did all that could be done with the mouth id the pen. But it is a rule throughout French story that periods in which the French execu ye acts in this fashion are those which accom any an increase of force for such an executive, nd for the nation. Within three years of the efeat he summoned his Parliament at Tours. 'he nation as a whole was now, as always, in upport of the Crown against the wealthier mer hants and the aristocracy. Louis received the trongest popular support, he incited the com mercial towns of the Lowlands to rise against its enemy of Burgundy, he organized the mili ary force of Paris, and though Charles of Bur tundy, who had now succeeded to that throne Ind who is known to history as Charles the Bold, was still far stronger than the French king, compelled him to attend the sack of Liege and even to sign the Treaty of Perronne in which Louis granted Burgundy complete inde pendence, the Capetian could not hut win. On his return to France he summoned an assembly of the notables, they denounced the Treaty of Perronne, and Charles of Burgundy's invasion of France which immediately followed was checked by the resistance of Beauvais: Every where in the Lowlands, in the heart of France, in his Parliament and in the small provincial towns, it was the Commons who sustained Louis XI. And the Commons in France were begin ning to be that which they had long ceased to be in England, peasants and small tradespeople. For in France the end of the Middle Ages tend ed to be democratic: in England aristocratic.
The end of Louis XI's reign emphasized at once his curious character and his successful policy. The extravagance of his religion and the cruelty of his revenge were never more ap parent than in the last years of his seclusion; and yet it was during these last years that the death of Charles of Burgundy in battle against the Swiss gave him that province. When he died on 30 Aug. 1483, with all the provinces he had reunited to the Crown he governed almost automatically by far the greater part of the ter ritory of modern France. Brittany alone was quasi-independent.