"Praguerie," as this new league was
called, in imitation, it is said, of the Hussite movement at Prague, the
enthusiastic defender of noble privilege against the royal power, was the
man who afterwards, as Louis XI., was the destroyer of the noblesse on
behalf of royalty. Some of the nobles stood firmly by the King, and,
aided by them and by an army of paid soldiers serving under the new
conditions, Charles VII., no contemptible antagonist when once aroused,
attacked and overthrew the Praguerie; the cities and the country people
would have none of it; they preferred peace under a king's strong hand.
Louis was sent down to the east to govern Dauphiny; the lessons of the
civil war were not lost on Charles; he crushed the freebooters of
Champagne, drove the English out of Pontois in 1441, moved actively up
and down France, reducing anarchy, restoring order, resisting English
attacks. In the last he was loyally supported by the Dauphin, who was
glad to find a field for his restless temper. He repulsed the English at
Dieppe, and put down the Comte d'Armagnac in the south. During the two
years' truce with England which now followed, Charles VII. and Louis drew
off their free-lances eastward, and the Dauphin came into rude collision
with the Swiss not far from Basel, in 1444. Some sixteen hundred
mountaineers long and heroically withstood at St. Jacob the attack of
several thousand Frenchmen, fighting stubbornly till they all perished.

The King and Dauphin returned to Paris, having defended their
border-lands with credit, and having much reduced the numbers of the
lawless free-lances. The Dauphin, discontented again, was obliged once
more to withdraw into Dauphiny, where he governed prudently and with
activity. In 1449, the last scene of the Anglo-French war began. In that
year English adventurers landed on the Breton coast; the Duke called the
French King to his aid. Charles did not tarry this time; he broke the
truce with England; he sent Dunois into Normandy, and himself soon
followed. In both duchies, Brittany and Normandy, the French were
welcomed with delight: no love for England lingered in the west. Somerset
and Talbot failed to defend Rouen, and were driven from point to point,
till every stronghold was lost to them. Dunois then passed into Guienne,
and in a few-months Bayonne, the last stronghold of the English, fell
into his hands (1451). When Talbot was sent over to Bordeaux with five
thousand men to re