In addition, his father, Charles VI, had disinherited him in 1420 and recognized Henry V of England and his heirs as the legitimate successors to the French crown.

Joan and Jean de Dunois led French troops to lift the sieges of Orléans and other strategic cities on the Loire river, and to crush the English at the Battle of Patay.

Six years later, he ended the English-Burgundian alliance by signing the Treaty of Arras with Burgundy, followed by the recovery of Paris in 1436 and the steady reconquest of Normandy in the 1440s using a newly organized professional army and advanced siege cannons.

Born at the Hôtel Saint-Pol, the royal residence in Paris, Charles was given the title of Count of Ponthieu six months after his birth in 1403.

[2] Almost immediately after becoming dauphin, Charles had to face threats to his inheritance, and he was forced to flee from Paris on 29 May 1418 after the partisans of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, had entered the city the previous night.

[2] The assassination marked the end of any attempt of a reconciliation between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions, thus playing into the hands of Henry V of England.

However, Frenchmen loyal to the Valois regarded the treaty as invalid on grounds of coercion and Charles VI's diminished mental capacity.

At one point after becoming Dauphin, he led an army against the English dressed in the red, white, and blue that represented his family;[citation needed] his heraldic device was a mailed fist clutching a naked sword.

The English regent, the Duke of Bedford (the uncle of Henry VI), was advancing into the Duchy of Bar, ruled by Charles's brother-in-law, René.

Then in the little village of Domrémy, on the border of Lorraine and Champagne, a teenage girl named Joan of Arc (French: Jeanne d'Arc), demanded that the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs, Robert de Baudricourt, collect the soldiers and resources necessary to bring her to the Dauphin at Chinon,[10] stating that visions of angels and saints had given her a divine mission.

[10] Second-hand testimony by witnesses who were not present when Joan and the Dauphin met state Charles wanted to test her claim to be able to recognise him despite never having seen him, and so he disguised himself as one of his courtiers.

Tried for heresy by a court composed of pro-English clergy such as Pierre Cauchon, who had long served the English occupation government,[12] she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431.

Nearly as important as Joan of Arc in the cause of Charles was the support of the powerful and wealthy family of his wife Marie d'Anjou, particularly his mother-in-law, Queen Yolande of Aragon.

But whatever affection he may have had for his wife, or whatever gratitude he may have felt for the support of her family, the great love of Charles VII's life was his mistress, Agnès Sorel.

With this accomplishment, Charles attained the essential goal of ensuring that no Prince of the Blood recognised Henry VI as King of France.

[13] Over the following two decades, the French recaptured Paris from the English and eventually recovered all of France with the exception of the northern port of Calais.

Charles's later years were marked by hostile relations with his heir, Louis, who demanded real power to accompany his position as the Dauphin.

He quarrelled with his father's mistress, Agnès Sorel, and on one occasion drove her with a bared sword into Charles' bed, according to one source.

Louis thereafter refused the king's demands to return to court, and he eventually fled to the protection of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1456.

Although Charles VII's legacy is far overshadowed by the deeds and eventual martyrdom of Joan of Arc and his early reign was at times marked by indecisiveness and inaction, he was responsible for successes unprecedented in the history of the Kingdom of France.