The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446. In 1443 a goldsmith was at _déjeuner_ with a baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade, of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The goldsmith[95] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times. Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands leagued with them. The general unrest which this incident illustrates soon burst forth in plot after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened by some citizens to the Duke of Richement, Constable of France, who, with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of _Ville gagnée_! the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo in 1815. CHAPTER X LOUIS XI. AT PARIS--THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING Six centuries have failed to efface from the memory of the French people the misery and devastation wrought by the hundred years' wars, as travellers in rural France will know. Paris saw little of Charles who, after the temporary activity excited by the expulsion of the English, had sunk into his habitual torpor, and his bondage to women. In 1461 the wretched monarch, morbid and half-demented, died of a malignant disease, all the time haunted by fears of poison and filial treachery. The people named him Charles _le bien servi_ (the well-served), for small indeed was the praise due to him for the great deliverance.