By the cession of Aquitaine to him in full sovereignty the traditional claim on which his strength rested lost its force.

The people of the south had clung to their Duke, even though their Duke was a foreign ruler.

They had stubbornly resisted incorporation with Northern France.

While preserving however their traditional fealty to the descendants of Eleanor they still clung to the equally traditional suzerainty of the kings of France.

But the treaty of Bretigny not only severed them from the realm of France, it subjected them to the realm of England.