Medieval France
. The Valois campaigns of 1449–53 ended in triumph for Charles VII, with the En-glish expelled from Normandy and Guyenne. In July 1449, armies under Dunois had entered Normandy, meeting feeble resistance. His troops were welcomed as liberators. Although English reinforcements landed in March 1450, on April 15 the French won a decisive victory at Formigny. More formidable resistance came in Guyenne. Dunois’s main force entered the region in April 1451, and, after a series of sieges the final Lancastrian citadel at Bayonne fell on August 20, 1451.
The English returned in autumn 1452 with considerable local support, and a second Valois army was dispatched. The destruction of Talbot’s army at Castillon, July 17, 1453, effectively ended the war, though the threat of renewed English incursions troubled France for many decades.
These campaigns revealed not only the bankruptcy of Lancastrian government but the wisdom of the recent French reforms that had professionalized the army, mobilized a popular militia, and regularized an effective artillery force. The real genius of Charles VII, however, was to be revealed not in his reforms and conquests but in the subsequent retention of these territories and the reconciliation of their people to Valois rule.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: DUNOIS, JEAN, COMTE DE; HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR; RICHEMONT, ARTHUR DE; TALBOT, JOHN]
Allmand, Christopher T. Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
Burne, Alfred Higgins. The Agincourt War. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1956.
Perroy, E. The Hundred Years War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1951.
Vale, Malcolm G.A. English Gascony, 1399–1453. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
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