In Summer 1550 King Henry II of France commissioned the renewal of a special military tax, the taillon. In his commission, chancery draftsmen asserted that this recently-introduced tax and associated military reforms had been so successful "que de tous costes s'en levent et rendent graces à Dieu." They added that provinces previously complaining of garrisons now clamored for them "pour en avoir le prouffit." Such assertions were patently ridiculous in an era when soldiers were about as welcome as a horde of locusts, yet the royal government did not scruple to offer them.

By 1445, a century of war had proven catastrophic for all that it touched in France. Each apparent revival of Valois fortunes degenerated into a new status quo that increased the horrors of war by creating a surplus of mercenary soldiers without any legitimate use for their talents. Left to their own resources, these troops imposed throughout France a reign of terror which the Valois monarchy was, for decades, unable to end. Finally, Charles VII seized the opportunity provided in 1445 by a truce with the English to cashier many of his nominal defenders and to assemble the rest into a limited number of compagnies d'ordonnance. These companies were to be paid regularly, assigned to specific garrisons, and commanded by captains commissioned by the king. This process, completed with surprising ease, has since been regarded as an undisputed success. The campaigns from 1448 to 1451, which restored most of France to Valois control, vindicated the initial reforms. After 1451 the new military force proved responsive to royal authority to a degree unprecedented in medieval Europe. Charles found the companies useful not merely against the English, but against domestic enemies as well: in the reconquest of Guienne, in the campaign against the Armagnacs, and the seizure of Dauphiné. By 1461 the value of this new standing army to the continued success and growth of the Valois state was manifest.

At the beginning of 1445 the kingdom of France lay in ruins after a century of warfare. Yet in the spring of that year a reform began which ultimately brought military victory to the house of Valois and restored peace and effective political direction to the lands of the French monarchy. Charles VII, acting with the support of many elements of French society, created the famed Compagnies d'ordonnance which proved instrumental in ending the chaos which had threatened the destruction of the realm. Charles's military innovation was strikingly simple and clearly evolutionary. It amounted to little more than the enforcement of many previous royal edicts concerning military affairs directed against independent mercenary companies.