es the Sixth died in 1422, and Charles, his
son, at the age of nineteen, succeeded under the title of "King of
Bourges," Paris was held by the Burgundians, who were in league with
the English. The Dukes of Burgundy and of Brittany were alike
vacillating in their policy, being at one time attached to the king's
party, and at another allied to the English. With the exception of a
few castles, the strongholds of lords loyal to the Crown, the English
possessed the whole of France north of the Loire, from the Meuse to
the Bay of Mont St. Michel. Hither the Duke of Bedford was sent as
regent for the English king, Henry the Sixth, then ten months old,
who, by the terms of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), was the lawful king,
the right of succession having been conferred on his father, Henry the
Fifth, when he married Catherine, the daughter of Charles the Sixth of
France.

Charles the Seventh divided his time between Bourges and Poitiers,
where the government was carried on, and Loches, Chinon, and Tours,
the places he dearly loved, and in which he sought the solitude he
craved for. But even in these seemingly peaceful retreats his lethargy
and indolence were disturbed by perpetual intrigues, which it must be
admitted were largely fostered by his own caprices and fickle
affections. Meanwhile a cry of misery was arising from the
war-devastated land. Churches and convents, castles and cottages, were
all fallen into ruin, and brambles grew on the untilled land where
once golden corn had waved. Peasants hid their horses during the day
and brought them out to graze at night. As Alain Chartier wrote at
the time, "Les pays champestres sont tournez a l'estat de la mer, ou
chascun a tant de seigneurie comme il a de force." Men of all
conditions, from the proudest lord to the poorest peasant, joined in
spasmodic and detached efforts to drive out the English, but with the
result that they did little else than harass them. Want of cohesion
was the characteristic of the national resistance until, from a small
village in the east of France, there appeared a deliverer in the
person of Joan of Arc. Instantly, as if her sword were a magic wand,
all the fighting men, impelled and inspired by the strength of her
personality, rallied around her, and victory was assured.

The story of the siege and surrender of Orleans, of the crowning of
Charles in Rheims Cathedral, of Joan subsequently falling into the
hands of the Burgundians, who sold her to the