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 rival parties had reduced England to comparative impotence. Her successive losses in France were due as much to her neglect of her subjects there as to any desire on their part to become French, or as to the ability of France to compel them against their will to range themselves on her side. This was shown in 1452, when the Gascons betrayed a decided desire to resume their old allegiance, and when, had they been properly supported, they would probably have returned to it. The Earl of Shrewsbury, who was sent thither, took Bordeaux by surprise, and gained some other successes; but the advantage was not followed up, and the Gascons, disgusted, easily resigned themselves a few months later to final severance from England, after three hundred years of union with it.

The misfortunes of England were precipitated by the insanity from which the king began to suffer in 1453. The queen's party could not prevent the appointment of the Duke of York as Protector; but when Henry temporarily recovered his faculties in 1455, the duke found it expedient to retire to the north, and to take up arms. The first battle of St. Albans and the death of Somerset in May, 1455, combined with the renewed insanity of the king, restored York to the Protectorship, and, for a brief space, some sort of quiet to the country; but the intrigues of the queen did not cease; and, Henry once more recovering in February, 1456, the duke was again displaced, and Margaret found better opportunity than ever for the prosecution of her treasonable designs.

One of the results of her machinations was a descent by France upon the coast of Kent. In August, 1457, Pierre de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, with a fleet and four thousand soldiers, threw eighteen hundred men ashore near Sandwich, surprised the place, taking some vessels which were there, pillaged and burnt the town, and then retired, though not until the inhabitants had caused them considerable loss. In the fight, three hundred English are said to have fallen. The moral effect of the raid was not great, for the French remained at Sandwich only for one tide; and, on the other hand, the more than suspected complicity of the queen increased the distrust with which she was regarded, and improved the position of the Yorkists in the estimation of the more patriotic of the people. Nevertheless, in March, 1458, a solemn pacification was agreed to in St. Paul's between the rival parties; and, for the