The Hundred Years' War: a Sketch

The Era of the Hundred Years’ War lasted from 1337 to 1453 (totaling 116 years).  The war pitted England against France, and it would be fought not only in those countries but also in the Low Countries (part of the Holy Roman Empire) and Spain. Five English kings (Edward III to Henry VI) would set their teeth against five French kings (Philip VI to Charles VII). France would find a helpful ally in Scotland, and England would forge an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. The war was fought for the Throne of France, which was, at the time, the largest kingdom in western Europe. The Hundred Years’ War marks both the height of medieval chivalry and its decline; by the end of the conflict, feudal armies were largely replaced by professional soldiers, and aristocratic dominance kowtowed to the democratization of manpower and weaponry. This conflict would lead to the first standing armies in western Europe since the days of the Roman Empire. During the course of the war, France’s population plummeted due to civil wars, famines, roving bandits, and epidemics like the Black Plague; at the same time, the cost of the war for England turned popular sentiment against it, and many English barons, dissatisfied with the gradual loss of hard-won French territories, helped plunge England into her most famous civil war: The Wars of the Roses (which lasted from 1455 to 1487). Though England would gain much territory in France during the Hundred Years’ War (notably under Henry V), the eventual loss of all her continental possessions except the port of Calais rendered her an “Island Nation.”

Soldiers of the Hundred Years' War

There were three main catalysts for the Hundred Years’ War: (1) issues regarding the French royal succession, (2) contests over the County of Flanders, and (3) conflict in English-held Aquitaine and Ponthieu. The first catalyst occurred when the direct Capetian bloodline of France, which had produced male heirs for three centuries, came to an abrupt end with the death of the last Capetian king in 1328. Unfortunately for France, the nearest living male relative to the deceased king was King Edward III of England! The French didn’t want their throne united with that of their long-running enemy, so the supreme court of France (the Parlement) dug up ancient laws from the Salian Franks that denied women from inheriting or transmitting a claim to the throne. Because Edward III’s claim came through a woman, Parlement declared his claim to be null and void. Though this was hailed as the “law of the land,” in truth it was dubious, enacted not to preserve bloodlines but to keep the English from ruling over France. According to the resurrected Salian law, Philip Valois, who was a first cousin of the previous king, became the best claimant to the French throne. He was crowned Philip VI, and though Edward II at first resisted Parlement’s decision, he acquiesced out of fear of losing his French fiefs of Aquitaine and Ponthieu.

An uneasy peace settled between the two countries, but it was soon cut short with conflict in Flanders. Flanders, which belonged to France, was preeminent in cloth-making, but its industry depended on the wool trade from England. The Flemings rebelled against their Count in 1302 and would remain quasi-independent until 1328 when Philip VI defeated the Flemish troops and restored the Count (because the Flemish government stood against Philip VI, Queen Isabella of England and her compatriot and lover Roger Mortimer were able to seek sanctuary there and plot against Edward II). Once the original Count of Flanders was reinstated, he ordered all English merchants in Flanders to be arrested. Edward III, who succeeded his father in 1327, retaliated to this outrage by cutting off Flanders’ supply of wool. Such a move all but crippled the French county’s economy, and widespread unemployment turned the Flemings against the reinstated Count. They rebelled yet again, ousting him, and seeking friendship with the English king, they petitioned Edward III to assert his claim to the French crown, which he held through his deceased father. The Flemings preferred English lordship, whose wool was the lifeblood of their cloth trade, over against Philip VI, who was sovereign over the county. Edward and Philip set their teeth against each other, but war wasn’t guaranteed—at least until the French king began harassing Aquitaine and Ponthieu, which Edward held in vassalage to France. Philip declared these English fiefs forfeit in 1337, and the English king was emboldened in his support of the rebellious Flemings. Tensions continued to escalate: Philip encouraged French privateers to disrupt England’s cross-Channel wine trade, and Edward responded by taxing all wool leaving England and encouraging Flemish weavers to migrate to England under his special protection. At this point open conflict seemed unavoidable, and Philip took the first steps: he authorized an invasion of England. Preparations were underway, and Edward knew he would have to respond. He scrambled to piece together a counter-invasion force: he aimed to cripple the French fleet and grab a toehold in France from whence the war would be fought. The war would be most brutal for whoever’s land was invaded, and neither king wished to carry that burden. The race was on.

more soldiers from the Hundred Years' War

The ensuing “Hundred Years’ War” wasn’t fought continually throughout that time. Rather, it occurred in different phases, and these phases were little wars all on their own. Though a number of vicious, large-scale battles were fought on both land and at sea, most of the war consisted of drawn-out sieges and wars of attrition against the local populations. The deprivation and suffering of the French populace, through both military and economic attrition, coupled with French civil wars and outbreaks of Plague, did more for England than her outright military maneuvers. Medieval historians have acknowledged three main phases to the conflict, and have given them their own names: The Edwardian War (1337-1360), in which the English were victorious; The Caroline War (1369-1389), in which the French and English came to a grueling stalemate, and The Lancastrian War (1415-1453), which was, ultimately, a French victory, even though, at one point, the English controlled half of France. Here is a rough breakdown of these three phases:

(1) The Edwardian War (1337-1360). In 1340 the English won the first major battle of the war in the naval battle at Sluys. The decimation of the French fleet ensured English dominance in the Channel, and Edward III’s foothold in France determined that France, rather than England, would be the theater of fighting. Edward returned to England but left a small garrison to keep the foothold secure. He returned six years later to maraud through the French countryside; Philip VI pursued him, and in 1346 the two met at the Battle of Crecy. The English were victorious, and it enabled Edward to take the important French port of Calais in 1347.  The Black Plague brought a stalemate to the war until 1356. Edward III’s son, known in history as the Black Prince, was marauding through France when he was cornered by King John II, who had succeeded the late Philip VI. Despite having the upper hand, King John was defeated at the Battle of Poitiers, 1356, and he was captured (he would be held for ransom in England, but France was too poor to pay for his return, and he would die while imprisoned). The French, exhausted by their defeats at Sluys, Crecy, and Poitiers, and struggling with fiscal depletion and the ravages of the Plague, sued for peace. Edward didn’t want to put an end to his glorious string of victories, but a deadly hailstorm dampened English morale (they perceived it as a foreboding sign from God). Edward agreed to talk peace. The Peace of Bretigny in 1360 brought The Edwardian War to a close. According to the terms, England kept Calais and enjoyed an enlarged Aquitaine, and Edward renounced his claim to the French throne.

(2) The Caroline War (1369-1389). The French weren’t comfortable with England’s enlarged French territories, and when they gathered both the nerve and muscle, they launched the second period of the Hundred Years’ War. The late John II’s successor was Charles V, and he embraced a strategy of avoiding pitched battles (which the English had a propensity for winning) and instead seeking to “wear out” English forces by way of sieges, hit-and-run raids, and general harassment. This strategy worked, and by 1380 the English were all but pushed into the Channel but for a narrow strip of coastal territory. They clung to the port of Calais, and they weren’t about to give it up. The war devolved into a back-and-forth wrestling match consisting of attrition: both forces wasted enemy-held countryside, plundered enemy villages, ruined enemy crops and vineyards, and forced the locals to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

(3) The Lancastrian War (1415-1453). By 1415 England had a king whose reputation would succeed even that of Edward III. Henry V of England won this reputation by invading France, shattering the French army at Agincourt in 1415, and conquering nearly half of France. The resultant Treaty of Troyes in 1420 was just short of a total French surrender. King Charles VI of France declared his son, the Dauphin (the future Charles VII) illegitimate, named Henry V his successor and current regent of France, and gave the English king direct control over all French territory as far south of the Loire River. Charles also gave Henry his daughter Catherine in marriage, with the understanding that their first surviving son would become the next King of France. The Dauphin loathed his forced abdication, and from his capital at Bourges he launched an expedition of liberation across the Loire River. The English forced him back, taking the towns and castles along the Loire that had been loyal to the Dauphin. By 1428 the English were besieging the critical French city of Orleans, whose dukes had remained loyal to the Dauphin. By taking Orleans, the English would gain the premier position in the Loire Valley and render the Dauphin’s cause ill-fated. But English plans were thwarted by a young French peasant girl, known in history as Joan of Arc, who in 1429 led the French forces that relieved the beleaguered Orleans. She had the Dauphin crowned as King Charles VII in Rheims, the historic coronation city of France; his crowning bought him legitimacy as a French king and won him popular support. Joan of Arc would eventually be captured by a French faction allied with the English and handed over to the enemy to be burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431. But she had made her mark, and Charles VII won a slew of victories against the English. By 1453 only Calais remained in England’s hands. No formal treaty brought the war to a close, but both sides were exhausted and accepted the outcome.

a depiction of Joan of Arc

France was victorious in the end, as she not only recaptured all that she’d lost in the previous century but also regained Aquitaine and Ponthieu. England, now confined to the British Isles except for the port of Calais, was now truly an “Island Nation.” But the more long-reaching effects of the war went beyond mere territorial changes. The Hundred Years’ War resulted in revolutions in warfare, changes in both the English and French governments, and led to the crowning era of medieval England: the Wars of the Roses.

(1) Revolutions in Warfare. The military revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War were many. First, the war marked a shift from the medieval reliance on heavily-armored knights supplemented by infantry (including longbowmen, crossbowmen, pikemen, etc.) to armies relying on infantry supplemented by cavalry. This shift was seen most vividly at Crecy and Poitiers, when the gallant French cavalry stormed the English positions only be to massacred by the English longbowmen. Not even the magnificent armor of the late medieval period could withstand the force of an arrow from a longbow, and the cavalry were sifted like wheat from the chaff. While the French saw warfare as an opportunity to prove their courage and to win glory, the English saw it as an opportunity to crush the enemy, no matter how “dishonorable” the techniques. Second, the Hundred Years’ War reintroduced the “War of Attrition” in the countryside. While “total war” had been practiced since 2000 BC, it had fallen out of vogue in much of western Europe. By subjecting the French populace to pain and misery, England aimed to turn France’s people against the war—and she succeeded. “Total War”—which included the slaughter of peasants, the devastation of crops, and the plundering of villages—would become a major mode of war up through the modern era; we see it in the Thirty Years’ War, the American Civil War, and in both of the World Wars (though this list is certainly not exhaustive). Third, the Hundred Years’ War stimulated the development of firearms. Firearms originated in China sometime around the middle of the 13^th century, and by the 14^th century Europe began to implement them. The Ottoman Turks would show the power of cannon in their capture of Constantinople in 1453, and rudimentary cannons had a minor presence in the later stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Though these cannons were unreliable, unwieldy, inaccurate, and often wasteful, military geniuses saw their capabilities. Fourth, the Hundred Years’ War showed the importance of having standing armies (armies that didn’t disband during peacetime). Standing armies would become commonplace after the Hundred Years’ War.

an artillery crew from the Hundred Years' War

 

(2) Changes in the English and French Governments. Though their governments remained largely decentralized and “feudal” (in that privileged persons and institutions, such as the nobles and clergy continued to exercise elements of private jurisdiction in their own courts), both the English and French monarchies solidified their role at the top of the feudal pyramid. In England the cost of the war forced the kings to request more money through taxation, and thus parliament gained a widened role in return for granting new taxes. The Hundred Years’ War cemented the tradition that parliament had the right to grant or reject new taxes, to uphold or veto legislation, and to advise the king on major decisions regarding war and peace. The House of Commons particularly gained the right to introduce tax legislation, since the Commons (rather than the Lords) represented the shires and boroughs. The Commons also gained the power to impeach royal officials and established that a king’s ministers were answerable to both the king and parliament. The Hundred Years’ War strengthened parliament like nothing else could. England’s loss of her continental possessions (minus Calais) put England on a cultural course that would prepare it for overseas expansion and catalyze a surge in national pride and self-consciousness in being “English”. The fact that English slowly replaced French and Latin as the language of England’s administration and law courts testifies to this. In France, the crown’s need to implement more taxes to finance the war effort strengthened the monarchy while weakening the Estates General, and the king’s reliance on local estates prevented the rise of a centralized assembly that could vouchsafe for the whole kingdom. By the time of Charles VII’s reign, the French crown had gained the right to impose national taxes absent any input from the Estates General. Ultimately the French monarchy emerged from the Hundred Years’ War with no clear restrictions on its exercise of power, a vibrant taxation system, and a permanent standing army. Triumph at the end of the conflict solidified the monarchy’s prestige and confirmed the king as both protector and benefactor of his people.

(3) The Wars of the Roses. Both England and France had undergone violent internal conflicts during the drawn-out Hundred Years’ War. After the death of Edward III in 1377, England plunged into a century of internal turmoil as nobles sought to retain their economic fortunes through factional conflicts.  Revolts plagued the reigns of both Richard II and Henry IV, and though the reign of Henry V brought England to a pinnacle of greatness, that greatness would corrode under his half-crazed successor, Henry VI. As Henry VI vacillated between moments of clarity and insanity, two off-branches of the Plantagenet line vied to take his place: the Houses of York and Lancaster. Dynastic struggles, as we’ve seen, were nothing new in England, but there was one particular element that turned this struggle into something altogether different: masses of unemployed soldiers and vast hoards of accumulated wealth within noble families (accrued during the conquest of France and its fallout). After the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the garrisons that had kept English-controlled France territories under wraps were hauled back to the island. Most of these men couldn’t find unemployment, and they formed a pool from which the wealthy nobles could draw support. The ensuing Wars of the Roses was led by nobles vying for the throne, but it was largely fought by unemployed Englishmen turned mercenaries selling their swords to the highest bidder. While the Wars of the Roses wasn’t as violent as The Shipwreck centuries earlier, it lasted for 35 years and decimated the English nobility. Richard III of the House of York came out on top, but he would be the last of the so-called Plantagenets. He was defeated by a distant Lancastrian-by-blood, Henry Tudor, at Bosworth Field in 1485. Henry Tudor became king, united the Houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Elizabeth of York, and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. The death of Richard III in 1485 marks the end of “Medieval England,” and the Rise of the Tudors ushers in the Early Modern Era.