Charles VII, therefore, derived little advantage from this event which seemed likely to be so profitable to him. The only benefit that accrued to him from it was that the count de Foix, governor of Languedoc, comprehended that the duke of Burgundy would sooner or later turn against the English, and declared that his conscience obliged him to recognise Charles VII as legitimate king. He placed Languedoc in subjection to him, with the clear understanding that the king should draw from it neither money nor troops, and should not in any wise interfere with the little royalty which the count de Foix had contrived for himself in that province. The friendship of the houses of Anjou and Lorraine seemed to promise more direct advantage to the party of Charles VII. The head of the house of Anjou was then a woman, Queen Yolande, relict of Louis II, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and pretender to the throne of Naples; she was the daughter of the king of Aragon, by a lady of Lorraine, of the house of Bar. The English having committed the egregious mistake of troubling the houses of Anjou and Aragon, as regarded their pretensions to the throne of Naples, Yolande formed against them an alliance of Anjou and Lorraine with Charles VII. She married her daughter to the young king, and her son René to the only daughter of the duke of Lorraine. Yolande was of service to her son-in-law. By her sage counsels she removed the old Armagnacs from about him; she had the address to win the Bretons back to him, and caused the constable’s sword to be conferred on the count of Richemont, brother of the duke of Brittany. Charles VII, combining together the Bretons, Gascons, and Dauphinois, had thenceforth the real military strength of France on his side. Spain sent him Aragonese, Italy Lombards. But the war sped feebly for all that; money was wanting, and union still more so. The king’s favourites frustrated Richemont’s first enterprises; not, indeed, with impunity, for the stern Breton put to death two of them within six months, without form of trial. Since a favourite was necessary to the king, he gave him one of his own choosing, young La Trémouille, and the first use the latter made of his ascendency was to dismiss Richemont. The king, strange to say, forbade his constable to fight for him; the king’s men and Richemont’s were on the point of drawing their swords against each other. Thus Charles VII found his cause less advanced than ever.[c] Meanwhile the towns were resisting the foreign domination. La Ferté-Bernard underwent in 1422 a four months’ siege and only yielded to the earl of Salisbury in the last extremity. In 1427 the English, in order to get closer to the Loire, sent three thousand men-at-arms to besiege Montargis on the Loing. The town had only a small garrison under the brave La Faille, but the inhabitants supported him well.[b] MONSTRELET DESCRIBES THE SIEGE OF MONTARGIS (1427 A.D.)