13.  Conquest of Aquitaine (1450).—­By these successes Charles had recovered all, save Calais, that Henry V. or Edward III. had taken from France.  But he was now able to do more.  The one province of the south which the French kings had never been able to win was Guienne, the duchy on the river Garonne.  Guienne had been a part of Eleanor’s inheritance, and passed through her to the English kings; but though they had lost all else, the hatred of its inhabitants to the French enabled them to retain this, and Guienne had never yet passed under French rule.  It was wrested, however, from Eleanor’s descendants in this flood-tide of conquest.  Bordeaux held out as long as it could, but Henry VI. could send no aid, and it was forced to yield.  Two years later, brave old Lord Talbot led 5000 men to recover the duchy, and was gladly welcomed; but he was slain in the battle of Castillon, fighting like a lion.  His two sons fell beside him, and his army was broken.  Bordeaux again surrendered, and the French kings at last found themselves master of the great fief of the south.  Calais was, at the close of the great Hundred Years’ War, the only possession left to England south of the Channel.

14.  The Standing Army (1452).—­As at the end of the first act in the Hundred Years’ War, the great difficulty in time of peace was the presence of the bands of free companions, or mercenary soldiers, who, when war and plunder failed them, lived by violence and robbery of the peasants.  Charles VII., who had awakened into vigour, thereupon took into regular pay all who would submit to discipline, and the rest were led off on two futile expeditions into Switzerland and Germany, and there left to their fate.  The princes and nobles were at first so much disgusted at the regulations which bound the soldiery to respect the magistracy, that they raised a rebellion, which was fostered by the Dauphin Louis, who was ready to do anything that could annoy his father.  But he was soon detached from them; the Duke of Burgundy would not assist them, and the league fell to pieces.  Charles VII. by thus retaining companies of hired troops in his pay laid the foundation of the first standing army in Europe, and enabled the monarchy to tread down the feudal force of the nobles.  His government was firm and wise; and with his reign began better times for France.  But it was long before it recovered from the miseries of the long strife.  The war had kept back much of progress.  There had been grievous havoc of buildings in the north and centre of France; much lawlessness and cruelty prevailed; and yet there was a certain advance in learning, and much love of romance and the theory of chivalry.  Pages of noble birth were bred up in castles to be first squires and then knights.  There was immense formality and stateliness, the order of precedence was most minute, and pomp and display were wonderful.  Strange alternations took place.  One month the streets of Paris would be a scene of