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 recover the south, the old English feeling revived, for England was their best customer, and they had little in common with France.  It was, however, but a last flicker of the flame; in July, 1453, at the siege of Castillon, the aged Talbot was slain and the war at once came to an end; the south passed finally into the kingdom of France.  Normandy and Guienne were assimilated to France in taxation and army organisation; and all that remained to England across the Channel was Calais, with Havre and Guines Castle.  Her foreign ambitions and struggles over, England was left to consume herself in civil strife, while France might rest and recover from the terrible sufferings she had undergone.  The state of the country had become utterly wretched.

With the end of the English wars new life began to gleam out on France; the people grew more tranquil, finding that toil and thrift bore again their wholesome fruits; Charles VII. did not fail in his duty, and took his part in restoring quiet, order, and justice in the land.

The French Crown, though it had beaten back the English, was still closely girt in with rival neighbours, the great dukes on every frontier.  All round the east and north lay the lands of Philip of Burgundy; to the west was the Duke of Brittany, cherishing a jealous independence; the royal Dukes, Berri, Bourbon, Anjou, are all so many potential sources of danger and difficulty to the Crown.  The conditions of the nobility are altogether changed; the old barons have sunk into insignificance; the struggle of the future will lie between the King’s cousins and himself, rather than with the older lords.  A few non-royal princes, such as Armagnac, or Saint-Pol, or Brittany, remain and will go down with the others; the “new men” of the day, the bastard Dunois or the Constables Du Guesclin and Clisson, grow to greater prominence; it is clear that the old feudalism is giving place to a newer order, in which the aristocracy, from the King’s brothers downwards, will group themselves around the throne, and begin the process which reaches its unhappy perfection under Louis XIV.