rince, had been deposed in 1399,[31] and a new and vigorous line of
rulers, the Lancastrians, reached their culmination in Henry V
(1415-1422). Henry revived the French quarrel, and paralleled Crecy and
Poitiers with a similar victory at Agincourt.[32] The French King was a
madman, and, aided by a civil war among the French nobility, Henry soon
had his neighbor's kingdom seemingly helpless at his feet. By the
treaty of Troyes he was declared the heir to the French throne, married
the mad King's daughter, and dwelt in Paris as regent of the
kingdom.[33]

The Norman conquest of England seemed balanced by a similar English
conquest of France. But the chances of fate are many. Both Henry and his
insane father-in-law died in the same year, and while Henry left only a
tiny babe to succeed to his claims, the French King left a full-grown
though rather worthless son. This young man, Charles VII, continued to
deny the English authority, from a safe distance in Southern France. He
made, however, no effort to assert himself or retrieve his fortunes; and
the English captains in the name of their baby King took possession of
one fortress after another, till, in 1429, Orleans was the only French
city of rank still barring their way from Charles and the far south.[34]

Then came the sudden, wonderful arousing of the French under their
peasant heroine, Jeanne d'Arc, and her tragic capture and execution.[35]
At last even the French peasantry were roused; and the French nobles
forgot their private quarrels and turned a united front against the
invaders. The leaderless English lost battle after battle, until of all
France they retained only Edward III's first conquest, the city of
Calais.

France, a regenerated France, turned upon the popes of the Council of
Constance, and, remembering how long she had held the papacy within her
own borders, asserted at least a qualified independence of the Romans by
the "Pragmatic Sanction" which established the Gallican Church.[36]

This semi-defiance of the Pope was encouraged by King Charles, who, in
fact, made several shrewd moves to secure the power which his
good-fortune, and not his abilities, had won. Among other innovations he
established a "standing army," the first permanent body of government
troops in Teutonic Europe. By this step he did much to alter the
mediaeval into the modern world; he did much to establish that supremacy
of kings over both nobles and people which continued in France