The Hundred Years War in two thousand words

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Taking a long view, the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) started a few hundred years before the count begins, in 1066, with a careless invasion of England. You know how these things happen. You look across the ocean and see a country that needs a king. Sure, it’s got some guy who says he already is king, but it so clearly needs you as king, because let’s face it, you don’t want to stay home and be nothing more than a duke. So you invade and become both a king and a duke. 

Sounds good. You just planted the seeds of a war that won’t blossom for centuries. 

You do have problems, of course. One is that between your kingdom and your dukedom lies that body of water you were looking out over, so you can’t just hop on a bus to move between them. Another is that your dukely self owes fealty and loyalty and several other -ties to a king who isn’t you: the French king.

It’s all a bit awkward, but even so it’s lucrative, and it won’t become a serious problem until after you die, and that makes it somebody else’s problem. 

In case your dual identity as king and duke has left you confused, I’ll clarify: you’re standing in for William the Conqueror today, and what with being dead and all, you now drop out of the picture and we move on to everyone who follows you.

Irrelevant photo: Valerian growing in a neighbor’s hedge.

More kings

The tension between being a duke in one place and a king in another will continue and be made more complicated by the nobility’s habit of marrying only people whose families have land and power and titles, all of which are inherited. High-end medieval marriages are supposed to cement alliances, and they probably do in the short term, but they also lead to disagreements over who gets to inherit what. They also blur the line between (in this case) what’s English and what’s French.

Hold onto that idea of conflict. We’ll get to it, but first let’s dredge up an example of how those lines get blurred. In 1154, when he becomes king of England and duke of Normandy, William the C’s great-grandson Henry II is already the count of Anjou and duke of Aquitaine. So he has four titles and three of them are in France, although his top-ranking title is English. That makes him not only the king of France’s theoretical equal but also the most powerful of the king of France’s subordinates. Under those circumstances, it can’t be simple figuring out who bows and who gets bowed to. It may depend on whose living room they’re in and whose TV they’re going to watch. Not to mention who’ll make the popcorn.

At times, the French king has direct control over less of France than the English king does, although (this being feudalism and all) the English king always plays second fiddle to the French king for those French lands, and it can get dangerous when the second fiddle is powerful enough to challenge the first violinist. So the French kings do what they can to strip away English holdings in France. In return, the English do what you’d expect: try to hang onto them. 

This is a time bomb, and it’s going to explode only a few episodes into the miniseries. But since I promised you a 2,000-word limit, we’ll skip a lot of the details.

 

Dynastic marriages

Let’s go back to those marriages and the conflicts they plant. Edward III of England is the nephew of Charles IV in France because all the appropriate people married other appropriate people. You wouldn’t expect them to marry (gasp) commoners, would you?

When Charlie dies, he doesn’t have a male heir, and French law won’t accept a (more gasps) female on the throne. So the French barons unroll the genealogical charts and–eek!–the closest male heir is the king of England.  Right. They unroll a few more inches of chart and find a cousin, Phillip, who’s not only certifiably male but French.

Eddie protests. France argues that Ed’s claim to the throne comes through his mother and, what with being female and all, she couldn’t transmit the right to a crown she couldn’t claim herself. 

After a bit of grumbling, Eddie caves–at least, that is, until Phil takes away one of his French toys, Gascony, at which point Eddie decides he really is the king of France. He takes the title King of France and the French Royal Arms. 

Why France and its royal arms are separate things is beyond me, but he’s convinced that they are and that he’s king of them both. The year is 1337. The Hundred Years War is about to start, although nobody’s calling it that yet.

 

War

For a while, the war goes well for the English. Eddie stirs up enough of the discontented nobility to make war on the cheap, because even when the English aren’t fighting, France still has to. Parts of the country become ungovernable–or at least Paris can’t govern them. The local lords can.

It’s in this period that England has the victories at Crecy and Poitiers that wander happily through the fields of English memory, often without much in the way of context, leaving the impression that it’s always summer, the wildflowers are always in bloom, and England always prevails. 

But don’t trust me too far on that business of English memory. I’m not English and I imported my memory from elsewhere. What you can trust is that the early signs are all good from the English point of view. They do major damage to the French economy and at Poitiers take the French king (not Phillip; by now it’s John II, or John the Good) prisoner, forcing him to sign a treaty so unfavorable to France that the country repudiates it.

Short digression: I’m having a little trouble figuring out why he’s John the Good, unless it’s because his primary enemy was Charles the Bad and it does make for some pleasing symmetry. John not only signs a bad truce, he marries his daughter to his bitter enemy (would you marry your kid to someone called John the Bad?) then doesn’t come through with her dowry, giving Charles even more reasons to be bad. And if that’s not enough, he gives some of Charles’ lands to his (that’s John’s) constable, no doubt causing further unhappiness in  his daughter’s home. He looks like a shady character to. But John the Good he is. 

Different era, different standards. 

Somewhere in the midst of all that, the Black Death sweeps through and conquers everything it damn well wants. 

 

Peace, and then more war

Starting in 1360, we get nearly ten years of peace, which breaks down when France and England back different claimants for the throne of Castile. Which, I remind you, is in Spain. You’d think that would make it irrelevant, but you’d be wrong. 

This is why I’m going light on the detail. My hair would catch fire if I spent too much time with this stuff. 

The French and the English start fighting again. The English launch raids into French territory. The French, in alliance with Spain, raid English cities along its south coast. France narrows England’s French possessions down to a strip along the coast.

Everyone’s tired and takes a couple of decades off. Mostly. They give serious thought to a lasting peace and say, “Nah, let’s not.” 

And this is where another English victory wanders triumphantly into the National Memory Banks: Agincourt. It’s all going so well that the English are within spitting distance of taking Paris.

In response, the splintered French powers meet to form an alliance against England. But instead of forming an alliance, though, one side assassinates the leader of another side and the French end up signing a treaty that will lead to the English king marrying the French king’s daughter, because these marriages work out so well for everyone, right? The English king will also inherit the French throne once the current king–who’s already not well–dies, and the English king will be regent for the French king while he lives. That disinherits the dauphin–the French heir–who was the guy who messed up that three-way meeting.

The muse of history (that’s Clio, in case you want to invite her to your next party) laughs at their plans. The English king dies before the French king, which leaves a nine-month-old, in all his wisdom, in charge of both countries. 

 

But it’s not over yet 

The south of France backs the dauphin against the baby king, Joan of Arc rides in on her pony, winning a victory for the French, and the dauphin is crowned. France now has two kings. One speaks French, the other (I’m guessing) has yet to speak a full sentence.

Joanie’s captured, tried, and burned for heresy. The French take Paris back. A truce is negotiated. The English indulge in a little last minute sacking and looting, since that’s what medieval warfare’s all about. The truce is abandoned. 

Are you starting to feel hopeless about this thing? Just imagine how people felt at the time. 

The French take back all of France except for Calais. Effectively, although not officially, the war’s over. 

 

Why do we care about any of this?

Many reasons. 

Since the war’s been fought on French soil, and since civilians are fair game (unlike, ahem, in our enlightened times), France has been devastated. All that looting and pillaging has had a massive impact on France. 

And even where they’re not looting and pillaging, soldiers are like a plague of locusts. They need to eat, and guess who gets to feed them? Local people, and payment is not guaranteed. That felt not only in France but also in southeast England, where English armies were been stationed before they shipped out. 

In England, though, most ordinary people feel the impact primarily in the form of taxes, and there’ve been a mass of them. War’s expensive. All those taxes led, among other things, to the Peasants Revolt.

They also led to Parliament becoming more powerful, because each time the king introduces a new tax, Parliament has to wave its magic feather to approve it. As gets Parliament stronger, the king gets weaker. 

Another way for the king to raise money has been to increase the number of nobles, and by the end of the war the size of the nobility has tripled and the crown’s created new ranks–esquire and gentleman.

It all brings in money. It’s also never enough. By the time the war ends, the English treasury is just about empty. 

 

Nationalism

Throughout the war, assorted kings and the church have drummed up a patriotic frenzy, as governments do when they have a war brewing. Among other things, this has led to the country adopting St. George as its patron saint. Hell, he’d been a soldier, hadn’t he? What could be better? 

The problem with patriotic frenzy, though, is that it turns against the leader who loses a war. You’ll find a box of historical examples by the door. Grab a handful on your way out. They’re both instructive and sobering. This particular patriotic frenzy, according to the BBC, which knows all, “had much to do with the outbreak in the mid-1450s of civil war (the ‘Wars of the Roses’). The recovery of the lost lands in France long remained a wishful national aspiration.” No one introduced the slogan Make England Great Again, but that’s only because the baseball cap hadn’t been invented.

Both England and France came away with an increased sense of nationhood and an increased indulgence in nationalism, not to mention a habit of looking down on each other. The English are still snippy about the French, and as far as I can tell with my limited French, the French are the same about the English, although they haven’t gone to war with each other lately. 

One final, and surprising outcome is the development of diplomacy. You wouldn’t expect such a mess of a war to lead to that, but it did. Experience began to be recognized as a surprisingly useful quality in negotiations. 

Who’d have thunk?

*

I’m now fifty-two words over my limit. If you send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope, I’ll send your money back.

42 thoughts on “The Hundred Years War in two thousand words”

  1. The French are very snippy about the English. Have you ever heard Macron say a nice word about England? Mind you, have you ever heard Macron say a nice word about anything? If only Henry V hadn’t inconveniently managed to die of dysentery at such a crucial moment …

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    • I confess, I don’t think I’ve heard Macron say a word, although I’m sure he says many. I’ve been elsewhere when he does, though, so I’m not in a position to judge. But I do hear the English being snippy about the French as well, which is interesting, since most of the time it’s in the context of nothing in particular. It just seems like the pressure to say something snippy about them builds until it demands a way into the world.

      To be fair, Minnesotans are like that about people from the surrounding states, and I’m sure the reverse is true. And New Yorkers are like that about people from New Jersey. And none of that has any history to (allegedly) explain it. None of those states have been to war with any of their neighbors. It just seems to be something we do.

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      • Because, if other people and places were as nice as we and our place are, why would we be here and not there?

        in Virginia we take a general approach. “Never ask people where they’re from. If they’re from Virginia, they’ll tell you which town. If they’re not, don’t embarrass them.”

        In cyberspace the equivalent might be “Oh wow, is this version of WordPress handling comments competently now?” Though some versions of Blogspot are now behaving as unaccountably, for me, as Wordmess at its messiest…

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        • As far as programs go, I thought the general attitude was that some one we’re not using must be better than the one they are. That’s as opposed to the general run of we’re-better-than-they-are. Because surely there’s one floating around out there that works seamlessly. But I will admit to finding the Virginia approach to that pretty funny.

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  2. Your post Ellen, is much more entertaining than the real thing.Here is the commercial break when the popcorn may or may not appear.

    I’ve just (I thought) finished reading an excellent series under the banner Master of War by the author David Gilman. I only thought I’d finished (after book 5) when I found that three more had been added, the last of which is due for release in September I think. The series follows one English bowman through much of the war, providing great details of the various battles and intrigues of the time. English and Welsh bowmen were much prized at the time and credited with much success on the battlefields. This Bowman won a knighthood and upped his way through the ranks, gaining and losing a French wife along the way. Tissue time……… rubbing shoulders with many of the leading Royals of the day. I found the books to be unputdownable and am hoping Father’s Day this Sunday will see my library increase with the latest titles. For any fans of History, they add the meat to the bones you kindly provided us.

    T’is my humble opinion that those European Countries that abandoned their Royal families and became Republics have not fared as well as those who retained crowned heads, France, Greece, Portugal etc. may just have been better off retaining their Monarchy. Though Mme Guillotine might have been unemployed, the Tourist industry might have fared better? (Just sayin’,) Huge Hugs Ellen.

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    • That’s called the Hundred Years Series, right? I hope you’ve dropped hints in all the right places about the next volume in the series.

      I’m not historian (I just play one on the internet) but I wouldn’t want to put a lot of money on monarchy being the reason a country fares well or badly in this days of their political irrelevance. Sweden and the Netherlands have certainly taken theirs down several notches, and I’d gamble a small sum that they spend less on them.

      How did I get into all this gambling nonsense? I don’t actually gamble. I discovered two things when I drove cab: I’m a lousy card player and I could work up a real love of gambling. I quit immediately on recognizing that those two things didn’t have a happy relationship with each other. But never mind all that, I’ll part company with you on the monarchy and let’s both keep our wallets in our pockets.

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  3. Strictly speaking, there wasn’t a law against being ruled by a woman in France at this point. There had never been a queen regnant in France and, since medieval kings led their armies into battle, there was unlikely to be one. The English had tried having one, but that had led to civil war, which was probably another good reason not to repeat the experiment in France.

    Edward III had the best claim and he was already a king. He had also spent some time at his grandfather’s court, so knew everyone involved and understood the politics. Unfortunately he was still a teenager and not even in control of his own country, so he was really a non-starter. He couldn’t even raise his own army and go to France to claim the crown.

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    • Interesting. I think that was the BBC I was quoting about a law against having a ruling queen. Maybe it was like England’s unwritten constitution–an unwritten law.

      Okay, I’m getting sarcastic. It’s time to go make a cup of tea. As always, I appreciate your comments and your knowledge.

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      • They did make it a law a bit later. Up until this point there had always been enough male heirs, but all three of Edward III’s uncles died fairly young and their only heirs were young girls, one of whom challenged (unsuccessfully) the succession of her father’s younger brother. When I went to check that the child born after his father’s death was a girl (it was a boy) I realised that I’d liked about Edward II visiting his grandfather’s court; it was his uncle’s.

        Somewhat ironically, the uncle who beat off his niece’s challenge left behind four daughters and no sons.

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  4. Heck, Ellen New Yorkers are like that abut the rest of the country ! Texans too.

    What did they call this/these wars while they were going on ? Mindful of a long ago quip by Dick Cavett : “Farewell my dear, I’m off to the Thirty Years War.” We of course have the Civil War, the War of Rebellion, The War of Northern Aggression…

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    • And the Vietnamese have the American War. I don’t know what they called the Hundred Years War at the time–I haven’t stumbled over that. The Two Years War? The Nineteen Years War? The Twenty-one Years and Counting War? Maybe just the French War.

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    • I have no idea what percent of British students take French. The closest I can come is to say that the British consider themselves famously bad at learning languages. Or maybe that’s teaching them to kids. As for the reason, I doubt it.

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    • French replaced Latin as the “international language” back in the day, before in turn being replaced by English. So people learnt French because it was the easiest way of being understood abroad. It’s still the *official* language of diplomacy, although in practice English is the international language now. Things are changing now. In my day (I was at school in the 80s and 90s), everyone still learnt French, but kids now get a choice of first foreign language – my nephews both take Spanish rather than French.

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      • When I was in high school, we had a choice of French or Spanish. My understanding–based, I guess, on ideas I breathed in–was that French was the language of art and culture and all that stuff. I took Spanish.

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        • We had the option to take a second language at 14. I chose Spanish rather than German, but traditionally German was the second foreign language, partly because a lot of scientific stuff was in German and partly because, in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German was the second language of much of Central Europe.

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          • Interesting reasons. I would never have thought to bring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into it, probably because we were a lot further away. That’s geographically, not time-wise. Funny how languages gain certain reputations, weights, cachet.

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            • ” I would never have thought to bring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into it”

              I don’t blame you. Once, in Austria, I came across this recitation of the various titles accumulated/inherited/assumed by the Hapsburg emperor in the early 18th century (though, in context, this was a local bigwig making his own position in government sound extra-important):

              Karl VI, Roman Emperor and German King, King in Castile, Aragon, Leon, the Two Sicilies, in Jerusalem, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca, Seville, Sardinia, Corsica, Cordoba, Murcia, Jaen, Algarve, Algeciras, Gibraltar, of the Canaries and West Indian Islands of the American Continent, and King of the Atlantic Ocean; Archduke in Austria, Duke in Burgundy, Brabant, Milan, Styria, Carinthia, Krain and Limburg, Luxembourg, Geldern, Wurttemberg, Upper and Lower Silesia, Calabria and Athens, Prince in Swabia, Catalonia and Asturias, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire in Burgau, Moravia, Upper and Lower Lausitz, Prince-Count in Habsburg, Flanders, Tirol, Pfirt, Kieburg, Gorz and Artois, Landgrave in Alsace, Margave in Christano, Count in Namur and Roussillon, Lord of the Wendish March, in Portenau, Biscaya, Molins, Salins, Tripolis and Mechelen,

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  8. Thank you for this informative post on the Hundred Years War, sir. Your explanation of the complex relationships and conflicts between England and France, as well as the impact of dynastic marriages, helps clarify this historical period.
    I have a question: Were there any critical moments or turning points during the war that, if managed differently, could have led to a quicker resolution?

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    • It’s a good question, but unfortunately I’m not the right person to answer it. I’ve breezed through looking for an overview, skimming over the mass of details where the answer to your question lies.

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      • Thank you for your response, sir. I appreciate your honesty about focusing on the overview rather than the specific details. If you have any recommended sources or insights that delve deeper into the critical moments of the Hundred Years War, I would be grateful for your guidance.

        Thank you again for your time and consideration.

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        • I’ve embedded links–the blue type in the text–in the post for anyone who wants to look at the sources I drew on. The most useful may be the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/hundred_years_war_01.shtml. None of those sources–as far as I can remember–addressed your question directly, though. We’re looking at two countries, or at least two kings, vying for land and power. From our perspective, it’s easy to ask whether they missed a chance for peace, but it might be better to ask if they wanted peace–or if they could afford peace. Could either of them, politically speaking, afford to look weak by making a peace that wasn’t a total victory? Probably not. Neither one could afford to look weak.

          Keep in mind, though, that I’m speculating . I’m not a historian or even an amateur expert on this period. History fascinates me and I do a bit of research, but that’s about it.

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          • Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate you sharing the link to the BBC source and offering your insightful perspective on the complexities of the Hundred Years War. I will certainly take the time to explore the link and delve deeper into this fascinating period of history. Your research and insights are greatly valued.

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              • Thank you for your response and clarification, Ellen. I appreciate your welcoming attitude and your willingness to engage with readers.

                Regarding the photo, thank you for letting me know. I value the opportunity to interact with you and learn from your insights on history.

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