Hundred Years' War

The causes

In 1328, King Charles IV of France died without a son. King Edward III of England, grandson of Philip IV the Fair through his mother, claimed the crown, but the French chose Philip VI of Valois. Tension also grew over Guyenne, a French duchy held by the English king, and Flanders, a rich cloth-making region. In 1337, Philip VI confiscated Guyenne: the war began.

The conflict was rooted in complex feudal relations. The kings of England were also dukes of Guyenne, and for that fief owed homage to the king of France, an ambiguous legal situation that fed conflict. The French invoked the Salic law, which excludes women from succession, to set aside Edward III, whose mother, Isabella, was a daughter of Philip IV the Fair. The kingdom was also more populous than England, and commercial rivalries developed with Flanders: the cloth towns, dependent on English wool, leaned toward Edward III.

The course of the war

The English won the great battles of the 14th century: Crécy (1346) and then Poitiers (1356), where King John II the Good was taken prisoner. Thanks to their archers armed with the longbow, they beat the French knights. King Charles V and the constable Bertrand du Guesclin then won back much of the territory through a war of attrition.

In the 15th century, the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians weakened the kingdom. The English crushed the French at Agincourt in 1415. The Treaty of Troyes (1420) named Henry V of England as heir to the French crown. In 1429, Joan of Arc relieved Orléans and led Charles VII to his coronation at Reims; captured, she was tried and burned at Rouen in 1431. The French retook Normandy and then Guyenne, and won the battle of Castillon in 1453.

The Black Death, which struck Europe from 1348, hit both kingdoms and slowed the fighting. In 1358, the Jacquerie, a peasant revolt against the nobility, broke out in the north of the kingdom before being crushed. Negotiations led to the Treaty of Brétigny, in 1360: King John II was freed in exchange for a heavy ransom, and Edward III gave up the crown of France in exchange for full sovereignty over a vast territory in Aquitaine.

In 1419, at Montereau, supporters of the Dauphin Charles assassinated John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. His son Philip the Good then drew closer to the English, whose regent, the Duke of Bedford, secured his alliance. The Treaty of Arras, in 1435, reconciled Philip the Good with Charles VII, which isolated the English. The death of Bedford, the same year, deprived the English army of its most experienced leader, and in 1436 Paris fell back into the hands of Charles VII.

French successes also rested on the army. At Patay, in June 1429, the English vanguard was defeated and its commander John Talbot was taken prisoner. Charles VII then relied on artillery, led by Jean Bureau, whose guns contributed to the capture of English strongholds. In 1450, the victory at Formigny, in Normandy, opened the way to the complete reconquest of the province. Three years later, at Castillon, the French artillery crushed Talbot's army, and Talbot died on the battlefield.

The consequences

England lost almost all of its French possessions. The French king emerged stronger: he raised permanent taxes and built a standing army, which consolidated the royal state. The conflict also encouraged a sense of national identity on both sides of the Channel. Exhausted, England soon sank into the Wars of the Roses.

For France, the war became a founding moment of national memory. Joan of Arc, burned at Rouen in 1431, was rehabilitated in 1456 by a retrial. She was canonised in 1920, and her figure, taken up by very different political currents, became a patriotic symbol. Historians debate the effect of the war on the state: some stress the standing army and the permanent tax, others the economic effects of destruction and fundraising. In England, the loss of Calais, in 1558, ended the English presence on the continent.

Timeline

1. 1337Philip VI confiscates Guyenne: the war begins
2. 1346English archers win at Crécy
3. 1415French defeat at Agincourt
4. 1429Joan of Arc relieves Orléans
5. 1453Battle of Castillon: the war ends

Key figures

• Edward III, king of England who claimed the French crown
• Charles V, king of France who reconquered much of the kingdom
• Joan of Arc, young woman from Lorraine who backed Charles VII and relieved Orléans
• Henry V, king of England, victor at Agincourt