Association de Sauvegarde du

CHATEAU DE GAVRAY

The Reconquest of Normandy 1437 - 1450

1440 – The inhabitants of Louviers, Verneuil, Harcourt and Pont-de-l'Arche drive out the English.
1443 – Charles VII sends his eldest son, the Dauphin Louis, the future Louis XI, to retake Dieppe and its fortress from Lord Talbot.
1444 – On May 28, a five-year general truce is signed at Tours.
1448 – On March 16, Le Mans surrenders to French troops commanded by Martial de Paris, known as Martial d'Auvergne. After this capture, the Breton troops assembled in Rennes under the orders of André de Monfort-Laval, known as André de Lohéac.
At the beginning of September, these troops left Dol de Bretagne and advanced towards Mont Saint Michel, which failed to be captured.  Mortain was won over.
1449 – On March 23, while a new truce is signed between France and England, an adventurer in the pay of the English, Surienne called the Aragonese, seizes the Breton town of Fougères. This action swung Brittany into the French camp. The Duke of Brittany, François I, signs with the King of France, Charles VII, an alliance that opens a campaign in Normandy.The constable, Arthur de Richemont, convinced the Duke of Brittany to enter Normandy, they take Coutances, Saint Lo which surrenders in two days, then Carentan, the Ponts-d'Ouve, the bastille of Beusiville, the Haye-du-Puits,  Bricquebec, Le Hommet, and Lausué surrendered without resistance. Arthur de Richemont laid siege to Gavray, one of the best defended places in the Cotentin region, which was taken.
On 12 October, only the places of Avranches, Bayeux, Caen, Cherbourg and Saint Sauveur le Vicomte were still held by the English in the Cotentin.   
On 29 October, Rouen also fell.  

1450 – On 15 March, taking advantage of the winter return of the Bretons to Brittany, a new English army commanded by Sir Thomas Kyriel, Duke of Suffolk, landed at Cherbourg and was to join the 2,000 men of the garrison of Caen.
On 20 March, Valognes, held by the French, was besieged on their way with reinforcements from other garrisons. Informed, Charles VII organized an army of 3,000 men led by Jean II de Bourbon, Count of Clermont, which was joined by one commanded by Arthur de Richemont.
On 12 April, this army arrived in front  of Carentan where it learned of the surrender of Valognes two days earlier.
On 13 April, Arthur de Richemont arrived in Coutances, misinterpreted a message from Jean de Bourbon and headed for Saint Lo.
Sir Thomas Kyriel, who had taken the risk of finding a ford in the marshes  of Grand Vey  Bay, reached the village of Formigny.
On 15 April, as he was about to leave for Bayeux, he was joined by the army of Charles de Bourbon who gave him battle. The arrival of Arthur de Richemont's team was the decisive blow, and the English were defeated.
In July, Caen handed over the keys to the city to Charles de Bourbon.
On 12 August, the last English place in Normandy, Cherbourg, fell.

The Hundred Years War ends in Normandy, it will last another three years in the southwest of France, until the final departure of the English. Arthur de Richemont was appointed governor of Normandy by Charles VII.

According to Jean Favier, the Hundred Years' War was not a century of war that began in the time of Edward III, King of England and his eldest son the Black Prince, but the third and last century of a war that began at the time of the First Crusades and a princess called Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Beautiful, intelligent and strong-willed, her marriage to Louis VII made her a queen of France. Capable of seduction, after a few infidelities, she fell into the arms of the young and elegant Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy, to whom she remarried on 18 May 1152. Two years later, Henry became King of England and a formidable vassal of the King of France by possessing the English crown, Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Aquitaine following his marriage to Eleanor.