Norman lords deserted the English flag, refusing to fight against the King of France.  On the 26th of September, 1423, at La Gravelle, in Maine, the French were victorious, and Du Guesclin was commemorated in their victory.  Anne de Laval, granddaughter of the great Breton warrior, and mistress of a castle hard by the scene of action, sent thither her son, Andrew de Laval, a child twelve years of age, and, as she buckled with her own hands the sword which his ancestor had worn, she said to him, “God make thee as valiant as he whose sword this was!” The boy received the order of knighthood on the field of battle, and became afterwards a marshal of France.  Little bands, made up of volunteers, attempted enterprises which the chiefs of the regular armies considered impossible.  Stephen de Vignolles, celebrated under the name of La Hire, resolved to succor the town of Montargis, besieged by the English; and young Dunois, the bastard of Orleans, joined him.  On arriving, September 5, 1427, beneath the walls of the place, a priest was encountered in their road.  La Hire asked him for absolution.  The priest told him to confess.  “I have no time for that,” said La Hire; “I am in a hurry; I have done in the way of sins all that men of war are in the habit of doing.”  Whereupon, says the chronicler, the chaplain gave him absolution for what it was worth; and La Hire, putting his hands together, said, “God, I pray Thee to do for La Hire this day as much as Thou wouldst have La Hire do for Thee if he were God and Thou wert La Hire.”  And Montargis was rid of its besiegers.  The English determined to become masters of Mont St. Michel au peril de la mer, that abbey built on a rock facing the western coast of Normandy and surrounded every day by the waves of ocean.  The thirty-second abbot, Robert Jolivet, promised to give the place up to them, and went to Rouen with that design; but one of his monks, John Enault, being elected vicar-general by the chapter, and supported by some valiant Norman warriors, offered an obstinate resistance for eight years, baffled all the attacks of the English, and retained the abbey in the possession of the King of France.  The inhabitants of La Rochelle rendered the same service to the king and to France in a more important case.  On the 15th of August, 1427, an English fleet of a hundred and twenty sail, it is said, appeared off their city with invading troops aboard.  The Rochellese immediately levied upon themselves an extraordinary tax, and put themselves in a state of defence; troops raised in the neighborhood went and occupied the heights bordering on the coast; and a bold Breton sailor, Bernard de Kercabin, put to sea to meet the enemy, with ships armed as privateers.  The attempt of the English seemed to them to offer more danger than chance of success; and they withdrew.  Thus Charles VII. kept possession of the only seaport remaining to the crown.  Almost everywhere in the midst of a war as indecisive as it was obstinate local patriotism and the spirit of chivalry successfully disputed against foreign supremacy the scattered fragments of the fatherland and the throne.