Ancient history

The French reconquest (1435-1453).

From the first months following the Franco-Burgundian reconciliation, the progress of the reconquest was rapid. Ile-de-France was cleaned up and, on April 13, 1436, the Constable de Richemont entered Paris. Hostilities also open between English and Burgundians, but economic interests regain the upper hand, truces are concluded between the adversaries of the day before. Charles VII finds himself again alone against a new English offensive. In 1440, he had to face another danger:several French princes, who considered the royal favors insufficient and the progress of monarchical centralization too rapid, joined forces to drive out the team in power. This Praguerie - by allusion to the barely ended Hussite insurrections - groups the dukes of Bourbon, Brittany, Anjou, the count of Armagnac, Dunois, bastard of Orleans, the own son of Charles VII, the Dauphin Louis, and soon the Duke of Burgundy. These princes even negotiated secretly with the English, without however going to the open alliance. But this time the response of Charles VII is energetic. Finally, in England itself, the warmongers must leave power to the champion of peace, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. A general truce, valid until April 1, 1446, was signed at Fours on May 28, 1444. The policy of Charles VII and his entourage, dominated by Pierre de Brézé supported by the favorite Agnès Sorel, became more active. Major financial and military reforms are set up (Nancy Ordinances, February 1445) and, from 1446-1447, the monarchy has around 7,000 mounted fighters distributed throughout the kingdom, permanently supplied and paid. . To these new companies of the Grande Ordonnance are added the troops who hold the border around Guyenne and Normandy. Militarily, everything is ready for the resumption of war.

From then on, events rush. In 1449, Le Mans was occupied. In 1449, the new Duke of Brittany, François Fer, much more Francophile than his brother Jean V, broke with the English. Finally Charles VII undertakes the reconquest of Normandy. The campaign, admirably conducted, lasted one year, from August 1449 to August 1450. After the fall of Rouen, November 4, 1449, Henry VI made a last effort in the spring of 1450, a relief army landed in Cherbourg on March 15, 1450. Moving towards the south-east, it encounters the French forces at Formigny (April 15). It was crushed and the French reconquest ended with the capture of Caen (July 19) then by that of Cherbourg (August 12). The loss of Normandy means the failure of Suffolk's policy. The latter, accused of high treason by the Parliament of England, tries to flee, but he is assassinated (May 1450). Its fall is the signal of a popular uprising in the south-west of the kingdom which prevents England from trying anything to save Guyenne. From October 1450, Bergerac was lost then, during the summer of 1451, Charles VII assembled a vast army which he entrusted to Dunois. Bordeaux capitulated on June 23, Bayonne on August 19. But the Gascons had not willingly joined the victors. The yoke of the French administration was heavy on them and they regretted the cessation of trade with England. The old Talbot is then entrusted with the command of a last English expedition. He entered Bordeaux in October 1452 and regained most of the places lost the previous year. But he was beaten by the army of Charles VII in front of Castillon (July 17, 1453), and Bordeaux, besieged, surrendered on October 19. At the same time, Henry VI lost his mind:the place was free in England for the Civil War of the Two Roses between the Lancasters and the Yorks.

The Hundred Years War therefore ended with the recapture of the province whose stake had been the origin. But no treaty came to sanction its end and, long after the resumption of Guyenne, the French feared an offensive return of the adversary. Edward IV of York thought several times of relaunching the war in France with the support of Burgundy and Brittany. His initiatives were short-lived. When he landed in Calais in July 1475, he found no one to support him and signed the Picquigny truce (August 29, 1475). It was this simple truce which put an end to English enterprises on the Continent. But the kings of England kept Calais until 1553 and bore the title of king of France for several centuries, until the Treaty of Amiens of 1802 which, in law, really put an end to the Hundred Years' War.

France emerged victorious from a conflict in which, twice, it had almost foundered. She came out bruised, materially exhausted, but more unified and more aware of herself. By its very duration, the confrontation, which began as a feudal war, had developed among the French as among the English a marked xenophobia and nationalism which, in turn, had nourished and prolonged the struggle. In France, the monarchical power, which could have broken up in the ordeal, had on the contrary emerged from it considerably strengthened and ready to continue its march towards absolutism. When the war ended, at the dawn of the great discoveries of the Renaissance and the Reformation, medieval France had therefore already given way, in many respects, to a modern nation.