The misfortunes of the English after 1428 are easily explained.

While in peaceful Guyenne they engaged in agriculture, in commerce, in navigation, and set the finances in good order, the country which they had rendered prosperous was strongly attached to them.

On the banks of the Seine and the Loire it was very different; there they had never taken root; in numbers they were always too few, and they had never obtained any hold on the country.

Shut up in fortresses and chateaux, they did not cultivate the country enough to conquer it, for one must work on the land if one would take possession of it.

They left it waste and abandoned it to the soldiers of fortune by whom it was ravaged and exhausted.