Introduction: The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) was an intermittent conflict between Britain and France that lasted 116 years.
It started largely because Kings Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) and Philip VI (reigned 1328-1350) escalated a dispute over Gascony feudal rights into a battle for the French throne.
The French eventually won and took control of all of France except Calais.
At first the English enjoyed great victories at the battles of Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), but then Charles V of France (reigned 1364-1380) steadily regained the most of the lost land.
After a period of peace, when Richard II of England (reigned 1377-1399) married the daughter of Charles VI of France (reigned 1380-1422), war broke out again and Henry V of England (reigned 1413-1422) Won the Battle of Agincourt (1415).
Henry was nominated as heir to the French throne, but his early death and the ineffective reign of Henry VI of England (reigned 1422-61 and 1470-71) caused Charles VII of France (reigned 1422-1461) to regain the initiative .
With the help of figures such as Joan of Arc (1412-1431), the French won key battles at Fomini (1450) and Castillon (1453), leading to their eventual victory.
War and Peace
The Hundred Years' War was a conflict between the French and English monarchs.
Beginning in 1337 and not finally ending in 1453, the war lasted 116 years, with constant fighting but also a long period of peace. The names we use for war today were all coined in the 19th century.
The Hundred Years' War is traditionally divided into three phases to study and reflect an important period of peace between the two nations:
Edwardian Wars after Edward III of England (1337-1360)
The Caroline Wars after Charles V of France (1369-1389).
The Lancastrian Wars (1415-1453) followed the Lancaster crown in England.
cause of war
The causes of the Hundred Years' War were as complex as the subsequent conflict itself. Also, motivations changed as various monarchs came and went. The main reasons can be listed as:
Philip VI of France captures British control of Gascony (Aquitaine in southwest France).
King Edward III of England claimed to be the rightful king of France through his mother.
Edward III's expeditions took French territories by force, protected international trade, and won trophies and estates for his nobles.
The ambition of Charles V of France to drive the English out of French feudal territories.
Charles VI of France descends into madness, debilitating infighting among the French nobility.
The ambition of Henry V of England was to legitimize his rule in England and make himself king of France by conquest.
The crown prince, the future King Charles VII of France (reigned 1422-1461), was determined to regain his birthright and unify all of France.
Edwardian Wars (1337-1360)
Edward III was able to make strong claims to the French crown through his mother Isabella.
Whether this claim was serious or merely an excuse to invade France is debatable.
Of course, on paper, Edward does have a point.
The current King of France is Philip VI of France, who succeeded his cousin Charles IV of France (reigned 1322-1328), and even when Charles died, Edward was his closest male relative, Charles' nephew and The eldest grandson of Philip IV of France (reigned 1285-1314).
The English king didn't claim it at the time because he was a minor, and the French nobility, who despised the legitimacy of inheritance through female blood, naturally preferred the French as their rulers.
By the mid-1330s, however, Edward changed his tack, perhaps annoyed at the technicality that, under the rules of medieval feudalism, the English king, as duke of Gascony, was effectively a vassal of the French king.
Gascony was a useful trading partner for England, exporting wool and grain and importing wine.
When the French king confiscated Gascony to the French crown in 1337 and raided England's south coast the following year - an attack that included the destruction of Southampton - Edward had the perfect excuse to wage war.
In January 1340, Edward proclaimed himself king of France at a ceremony in Ghent.
In addition, the king revealed his newly divided coat of arms - the three lions of the Plantagenet dynasty - which now includes the golden iris of France.
The Low Countries were an important trading partner of Britain, while other allies included rivals of Philip VI such as King Charles II of Navarre (reigned 1349-1387) and Count Gascon of Armagnac.
One of the first major actions of the war came in June 1340, when a French invasion fleet was sunk by an English fleet at Sluis at the mouth of the Scheldt (Low Countries).
This was followed by the capture of Gascony in 1345 and the invasion of Normandy, where the strategy of chevauchées, which terrorized the local population by burning crops, pillaging livestock and allowing general looting, was employed in the hope of drawing the French king into open battle.
The strategy worked, and the French army, unable to respond to the combination of English archers and foot knights, suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Crecy in August 1346.
Far from defeated, however, Philip subtly called on his Scottish allies to invade northern England, hoping this would force Edward to withdraw his troops from France.
David II of Scotland (reigned 1329-1371) formally invaded England in October 1346, but was defeated by English forces at the Battle of Neville's Cross (October 17, 1346).
As an added bonus, King David was captured and not released until 1357 as part of the Treaty of Berwick, the Scots paid the ransom and a 10-year truce was agreed between the two countries.
In 1347, Calais was occupied, but the arrival of the Black Death plague in Europe interrupted hostilities. The next major victory was another English victory, again against a much larger French army, this time at the Battle of Poitiers in September 1356.
Here, the British army was led by Edward's capable son, Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376). The defeated King John II of France (reigned 1350-1364) was captured at Poitiers and spent four years in detention.
The Treaty of Bretigny in 1360 was then signed between England and France, recognizing Edward's claim to 25% of France's territory (mainly in the north and south-west) in exchange for Edward giving up his claim to the French crown.
Caroline Wars (1369-1389)
The peace of Bretigny ended in 1369, when the new French king Charles V (aka Charles V the Wise, reigned 1364-1380) began to get serious about reclaiming what his predecessor had lost.
Charles does this by avoiding public combat, focusing on harassment and relying on the safety of the castle when needed. Charles also possessed a navy superior to that of England, and was therefore able to raid the south coast of England frequently.
Most of Aquitaine was captured in 1372, and an English fleet was defeated near La Rochelle that same year, and by 1375 the only lands in France that belonged to the English crown were Calais and a stretch of Gascony.
In 1389, the truce was announced again, and the relationship further improved. On March 12, 1396, Richard II of England married Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI of France. The alliance cemented a two-decade truce between the two countries.
Under the next king, Henry IV (reigned 1399-1413), the royal family was too preoccupied with rebellions in England and Wales to do much in France.
Lancastrian Wars (1415-1453)
Henry V made the next big move in this power game because he was more ambitious than Edward III. He wanted not only to loot French territory, but to take it over permanently and create an empire.
For the king, success in war was also a useful tool to legitimize his rule, as he inherited the crown from his father, Henry IV, who had usurped the throne by murdering Richard II.
The madness of Charles VI of France and the ensuing split of the French nobility between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians over who might control the king and France greatly helped Henry V.
Henry invaded Normandy, capturing the important port of Harfleur in 1415, followed by a stunning victory at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October.
Caen was captured in 1417, and by 1419 Henry managed to conquer all of Normandy, including the capital, Rouen.
These victories, especially at Agincourt, where most of the French nobles were massacred, made Henry V a national hero, and in May 1420 he forced the French to sign a peace treaty, the Treaty of Troyes, on very generous terms.
The King of England was nominated as regent and heir to Charles VI, and to cement the new alliance Henry married Charles' daughter Catherine of Valois (l.1401-c.1437).
It was the pinnacle of British success in the war. As a condition of the deal, Henry had to promise that he would continue to fight Burgundy's arch-enemy: the now disinherited Crown Prince Charles (the bloodline heir to Charles VI), thus perpetuating the Hundred Years' War and setting up another round of the conflict.
In March 1421, the English were defeated at the Battle of Bauge, and Henry's brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was killed. Henry himself traveled to France to resume the war, and on May 11, 1422, after an eight-month siege, he captured Meaux.
Henry never had the chance to become King of France, as he died unexpectedly, probably of dysentery, on August 31, 1422, in the Vincennes forest in France.
Henry's infant son became the next king, Henry VI, but neither his regent nor his maturity could prevent France's great revival, which included the heroic efforts of Joan of Arc.
Joan of Arc, a peasant girl inspired by celestial visions, helped dramatically lift the siege of Orléans in 1429, which marked the beginning of the French revival as the crown prince, now King Charles VII of France, was at war took the initiative.
The French were also victorious at the Battle of Patay (18 June) in 1429, with English archers effectively surrounded by French cavalry. Henry VI of England continued to push his family's claim to the French throne, culminating in a coronation at Notre Dame Cathedral in December 1431, but it was a hoax without substance.
For England, the war was now largely defensive rather than offensive.
Sir John Talbot (1384-1453) was the great medieval knight known as the "Achilles of England" who did win victories and successfully defended England due to his aggressive tactics and surprise attacks Controlled Paris and Rouen.
However, France is now too rich in manpower and resources to stop for long. In 1435, the English badly lost the support of their allies, the Burgundians, when their leaders Philip I of Burgundy and Charles VII ended the French Civil War with the Treaty of Arras.
Dieppe was captured in 1435, Paris was recaptured by France in 1436, and Hafleur was recaptured in 1440.
Henry's marriage to Charles VII's niece Margaret of Anjou (d. 1482) on April 22, 1445, and the renunciation of Maine, both showed the English king's clear disapproval of continuing the war with France.
In contrast, Charles VII was determined to retake parts of Normandy from 1449; he won the Battle of Formigny in 1450, blocked Bordeaux in 1451, and captured Gass in 1452 Coney.
At the end of the war in July 1453 and the French victory at the Battle of Castillon, the English crown controlled only Calais.
The French crown then went on to combine regions like Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany into a nation-state that was wealthier and more powerful than ever before through a mixed strategy of conquest and marriage alliances.
Meanwhile, England plunged into bankruptcy and civil war. Henry VI suffered from insanity, and his tenuous reign finally came to an end when he was murdered in the Tower of London in May 1471.
aftermath of war
The Hundred Years' War had many consequences, both immediate and long-lasting.
The first is the deaths of men in battle, and those civilians killed or robbed by marauding soldiers in between battles. A large number of French nobles died in the conflict, destabilizing the country as those still vie for power.
In England, the opposite was true, with the king creating more and more nobles in order to tax them and finance wars. However, this was not enough and England eventually went to the brink of bankruptcy due to the high cost of fielding an army in another country.
While the British scored some great victories, the end result was the loss of all French territory except Calais.
Trade was negatively affected, and farmers had to endure endless taxes to pay for the war, leading to several rebellions, such as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Even the medieval church suffered as the kings diverted the papal taxes and kept them for themselves to pay for the armies, resulting in the churches in England and France having their own "national" identities.
England's defeat in war caused many nobles there to question their monarch and his right to rule. This, and the inevitability of finding a scapegoat for France's collapse, eventually led to dynastic disputes known today as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487).
Military technology developed during this time, notably the use of more effective gunpowder weapons and the strengthening and adaptation of castles and fortified towns to counter this threat. Furthermore, by the end of the war, Charles VII had created France's first permanent royal army.
Some of the more positive consequences are centralization of government, increased bureaucratic efficiency, and a more regulated tax system.
Britain's parliament must meet to approve each new crown tax, becoming an institution with its own strong identity, which later helps it curb the power of the absolute monarch.
There is also more professional diplomacy between European countries.
Heroes were also created and celebrated in song, medieval literature, and art—figures like Joan of Arc and Henry V, who to this day are considered the best examples of statehood in their respective countries.
In the end, such a prolonged conflict with a clearly identifiable enemy led to a greater sense of belonging to a nation among peoples on both sides.
To this day, the two countries are still at odds, but fortunately they are now mainly expressed in the field of international sports.
references
Armand, Christopher. Hundred Years' War. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Brockmans, Wim. An Introduction to Medieval Europe 300-1500. Routledge, 2017.
Cannon, John. King and Queen of England. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Crouch, David. Medieval England, ca. 1000-1500. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Curry, Anne. Hundred Years' War. Osprey Press, 2002.
Holmes, George. Oxford History of Medieval Europe. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Jones, Dan. Plantagenet Dynasty. Penguin Books, 2014.
