The king, however, with a want of faith that he rarely displayed, refused to put Somerset on trial, and retained him as his minister. He endeavoured to distract the attention of the nation from his favourite's misdoings, by proposing that a vigorous attempt should be made to recover Guienne. The Gascons hated the French conqueror, and had sent secret messages to London offering to rise if assured of English aid. No one could refuse their appeal, and with the consent of all parties a new army was enrolled for the recovery of Bordeaux. It was given to the charge of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, the last survivor of the old captains of Henry V. The gallant veteran landed near Bordeaux with 5000 men, retook the city by the aid of its citizens, and overran the neighbouring districts. But fortune had definitely turned against England: in the next year he was slain and his army cut to pieces at the bloody battle of Castillon (July, 1453). Bordeaux held out for three months more, but was forced to yield to starvation before the year was out. Thus was lost the last remnant of the great inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine, after it had remained just 300 years in the hands of the Plantagenets (1154-1453). England now retained none of her old possessions beyond sea save Calais and the Channel Islands, a strange surviving fragment of the duchy of Normandy. The house of Lancaster and the English nation had sinned in company when they embarked so eagerly in 1415 on the wanton invasion of France. They had already paid for their crime by lavish expenditure of life and treasure on foreign battle-fields: they were now to incur the worse penalty of a savage and murderous civil war. CHAPTER XVIII. THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 1454-1471. In mediaeval England there was but one way of getting rid of political grievances which the king refused to redress--the old method of armed force, the means which we have seen used in the cases of Gaveston, the Despensers, and the favourites of Richard II. Henry VI. was not idle and vicious like Edward the Second, nor did he yearn for autocratic power like the second Richard. He was merely a simple, feeble, well-intentioned young man, who always required some prop to lean upon, who chose his servants unwisely, and adhered to them obstinately. A wise king would have dismissed Somerset after the disasters in Normandy and Guienne, and taken a more profitable helper in the hard task of governing England. York was the obvious man to choose; he was an able general, and the first prince of the blood. But Henry distrusted York, and Henry's young queen viewed him with keen and unconcealed dislike. The thought that, if any harm should come to her husband, Duke Richard must succeed him, filled Margaret of Anjou with wrath and bitterness. [Sidenote: =Policy of the Duke of York.=]