78 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chap so strong that the Normans still wished to have a duke of their own, and the duchy was often granted as an appanage to a son or a brother of the reigning king. 36. French Conquest of Aquitaine, 145 1 — 1453. — Next Charles proceeded to attack the cities which were left to Henry in Aquitaine. Many of the Aquitanian nobles had become partisans of France, but the cities, especially Botirdeaux, were much attached to their ancient princes. But Henry VI. was helpless in the hands of factions, and could do nothing to save them. In 145 1 the whole land was conquered, Bourdeaux being the last place to fall. But the French rule was unpopular, and when in 1453, the aged Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury brought an army from England, he was welcomed as a deliverer, and the French were driven out. Charles brought all his force to win back what he lost, and besieged Castillon on the Dordogne. Talbot came to relieve it ; but while attacking their camp, he was set upon by another army led by the Count of Penthievre. The English presented an undaunted face to the enemy, but Talbot, at eighty years old, fighting nobly, was slain on the bridge of Castillon ; his son died in trying to save him. Bourdeaux and Bayonne were now left without defence ; the whole land was again conquered by France, and Bourdeaux lost the great privileges which it had enjoyed under its own dukes. The great object at which the French kings had been so long striving was now accom- plished, namely the union of Northern and Southern Gaul by the annexation of Aquitaine to France. It had been twice done for a moment, when Lewis VII. married Eleanor, and when Philip the Fair occupied the land. It was now done for ever. France now stretched along the whole line of the Pyrenees, except where the kings of Navarre held a small part to the north of them, and where the kings of Aragon still held Roussillon. The people of the languc-d- oc had been brought into sub- jection to the people of the langue-d- oil through all the lands holding of the French crown; Lyons and the Dauphiny had been severed from the Empire, and Pro- vence was held by a French prince. F" ranee had still much to add to reach its present extent ; but the French kingdom in the modern sense may be said to have fully come into being by the conquest of Aquitaine. Thus ended the hundred years' war. All the brilliant victories had been on the English side ; the French had only
