The battle of Poitiers was a sad blow indeed to France. Many hundreds of her noblest knights were there slain; and all sorts of disorders arose during the captivity of her King. The peasants rose in rebellion against their masters, and civil war broke out. And when, after four years of comfortable captivity, King John was set free, he was obliged to pay a heavy ransom and sign a peace in which he surrendered to the English, in full right, all of Aquitaine. Soon after this "Good King John," as he was called, died, leaving his kingdom in great disorder He was a good knight and brave man; but he was a poor general and a weak king. His eldest son, Charles, who was styled Charles V., or Charles the Wise, now became King. He was very different from his father; and though he was not nearly so knightly a warrior, he proved a much better king. He improved the government and the army; and when the war with the English began again, he at once began to be successful. The Black Prince was now broken in health, and died in the year 1376; the old English King, Edward III., died the next year; and then Richard II., the twelve-year-old son of the Black Prince, became King of England. Troubles, too, broke out in England, so the English were not able to carry on the war as vigorously as they had done before. At the same time the French King found a general named Du Guesclin, who proved to be the best general that the Middle Ages ever saw.

One trouble with the French had been that they scorned the "base-born" foot-soldiers, and thought that war should be the business of the heavy-armed knights alone; and another was that the knights thought it disgraceful to retreat, even when they knew they could not win. With Du Geusclin, all this was different. He was willing to use peasants and townsmen if their way of fighting was better than that of the nobles; and he did not think it beneath him to retreat if he saw he could not win. So, by caution and good sense, and the support of wise King Charles, he won victory after victory; and though no great battles were fought, almost all of the English possessions in France came into the hands of the French once more.

Then the French successes stopped for a time. Du Guesclin died, and after him King Charles V.; and now it was the French who had a boy king. When this King, Charles VI., grew to be a man, he became insane; and his uncles quarreled with one another and with the King's brother for the government. Soon the quarrel led to murder, and the murder to civil war; and again France was thrown into all the misery and disorder from which it had been rescued by Charles the Wise.

In England, about this time, King Henry V., came to the throne. He was a young and warlike prince; and he wished, through a renewal of the war, to win glory for himself. Besides, he remembered the old claim of Edward III., to the French crown; and he thought that now, when the French nobles were among themselves, was a fine opportunity to make that claim good.

So, in the year 1415, King Henry landed with an army in France, and began again the old, old struggle. And again, after a few months, the English found their retreat cut off near a little village called Agincourt, by a much larger army of the French. But King Henry remembered the victories of Crecy and Poitiers, and did not despair. When one of his knights wished that the thousands of warriors then lying idle in England were only there, King Henry exclaimed:

"I would not have a single man more. If God gives us the victory, it will be plain that we owe it to His grace. If not, the fewer we are, the less loss to England."

At Agincourt there was no sheltering hedge to protect the English archers. To make up for this, King Henry ordered each man to provide himself with tall stakes, sharpened at each end; these they planted slantwise in the ground as a protection against French horsemen. Most of the English force was again made up of archers with the long-bow, while most of the French were knights in full armor. The French, indeed, seemed to have forgotten all that Du Guesclin and Charles V., had taught them. To make matters worse, their knights dismounted and sought to march upon the English position on foot. As the field through which they had to pass was newly plowed and wet with rain, the heavy-armed knights sank knee deep in mud at every step. For the third time the English victory was complete. Eleven thousand Frenchmen were left dead upon the field, and among the number were more than a hundred great lords and princes. In after years Englishmen sang of the wonderful victory in these words:

Even so great a defeat as this could not make the French princes cease their quarrels. Again the leader of one party was murdered by the follower of another; and the followers of the dead prince became so bitterly hostile that they were willing to join the English against the other party. In this way the Burgundians, as the one party was called, entered into a treaty with Henry of England against the Armagnacs, as the other party was called; and it was agreed that Henry should marry Katherine, the daughter of the insane King, and Henry should become King of France when the old King died. No one seemed to care for the rights of the Dauphin (the French King's son) except the Armagnacs; they, of course, were opposed to all that the Burgundians did.

Both Henry V. of England and poor old Charles VI. of France died within two years after this treaty was signed. Henry had married Katharine as agreed; and though their son (Henry VI.) was a mere baby, only nine months old, he now became King of both England and France. In neither country, however, was his reign to be a happy or a peaceful one. In England the little King's relatives fell to quarreling about the government, just as had happened in France; and when he grew up, like his French grandfather he became insane. At the same time the English found their hold upon France relaxing and the land slipping from their grasp.

Only the Armagnacs at first recognized the Dauphin as King; and for seven years after the death of his father he had great difficulty in keeping any part of France from the hands of the English. In the year 1429, however, a great change took place. A young peasant girl, named Joan of Arc, appeared at the King's court in that year, and under her inspiration and guidance the French cause began to gain, and the English and Burgundian to lose ground.

Joan's home was in the far northeastern part of France, and there she had been brought up in the cottage of her father with her brothers and sisters. There she helped to herd the sheep, assisted her mother in household tasks, and learned to spin and to sew. She never learned to read and write, for that was not thought necessary for peasant girls. Joan was a sweet, good girl, and was very religious. Even in her far-off village the people suffered from the evils which the wars brought upon the land, and Joan's heart was moved by the distress which she saw about her. When she was thirteen she began to hear voices of saints and angels,—of Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, and of the angel Gabriel. When she was eighteen her "voices" told her that she must go into France, aid the Dauphin, and cause him to be crowned king at Rheims, where the kings of France had been crowned before him.

The cause of the Dauphin at this time was at its lowest ebb. The English were besieging the city of Orleans, on the Loire River; and if that was taken all France would be lost. So the first work of Joan must be to raise the siege of Orleans. With much difficulty she succeeded in reaching the Dauphin. When she was brought into the room where he was, she picked him out from among all, though she had never seen him, and many of the courtiers were more richly dressed than he. After many weeks she succeeded in persuading his councillors that her voices were from God, and not the evil one. Then, at last, she was given a suit of armor, and mounted on a white horse, with a sword at her side and a standard in her hand, she rode at the head of the Dauphin's troops to Orleans.

When once Joan had reached that place, she so encouraged the citizens that within eight days the English were forced to raise the siege and retire. It seemed to the French a miracle of God, while the English dreaded and feared her as a witch or sorceress. From this time Joan is called "the Maid of Orleans." Nor did her success stop with the relief of that city. Within a few months, the Dauphin was taken to Rheims, and crowned as true King of France. After this many flocked to his standard who before had taken no part in the war. From that time on the French began to get the advantage of the English; and it was mainly the enthusiasm and faith aroused by the Maid that caused the change.

Joan's work was now almost done. Twice she was wounded while fighting at the head of the King's troops. At last she was taken prisoner by a party of Burgundians, and turned over to the English. By them she was put on trial for heresy and sorcery. She showed much courage and skill before her judges, but she was condemned and sentenced to be burned to death at the stake. The next day the sentence was carried out. To the last she showed herself brave, kind, and womanly. As the flames mounted about her an Englishman cried out: "We are lost; we have burned a saint." Such indeed she was, if a saint was ever made by purity, faith, and noble suffering.

The English burned the Maid and threw her ashes in the river Seine; but they could not undo her work. The French continued to gain victory after victory. Soon the old breach between the Armagnacs and Burgundians was healed, and the Burgundians abandoned the English. Then Paris was gained by the French King. Some years later Normandy was conquered, and finally Aquitaine.

In the year 1453, the long, long war came to an end. Of all the wide territories which the English had once possessed in France, they now held only one little town in the north; and the shadows of a civil war—the War of the Roses—were rising in England to prevent them from ever regaining what they had lost. Down to the time of George III. the English kings continued to style themselves kings of France; but this was a mere form. The French now felt themselves to be a nation, and only a national king could rule over them. That this was so was mainly due to the Maid of Orleans. She was the real savior of France, and remains its greatest national hero.