. The name posterity has bestowed on the series of Anglo-French conflicts that occurred between 1337 and 1453. Two major issues were at stake: the claim of English kings to be rightful kings of France and the irritations arising from the fact that the king of England, as duke of Aquitaine, was a liege vassal of the king of France. The dynastic claim to the French throne was important to Edward III but was at best tenuous in the 15th century. The feudal status of Aquitaine, regarded by some scholars as the key to the whole conflict, was eliminated by the expulsion of the English from southwestern France in 1453.
The Hundred Years’ War in fact comprised three wars of particular intensity, each of twenty years’ duration, preceded and followed by lesser conflicts. The “Edwardian” war of 1340–60 was dominated by Edward III of England. The “Caroline” war of 1369–89 was dominated by the military establishment of Charles V of France. The “Lancastrian” war of 1415–35 was dominated by Henry V of England and his brother John, duke of Bedford. Besides these three major conflicts, there was indecisive Anglo-French fighting in the periods 1294–1303,1323–25,1337–39, and 1436–44, in addition to the French campaign of reconquest (1449–53), an abortive English invasion in 1475, and various war scares at other times.
The periods of intermittent conflict after 1294 were marked by fairly easy French victories that gave way to stalemate, but each monarchy also suffered one humiliating defeat at the hands of a supposedly inferior neighbor, Flanders (1302) and Scotland (1314), respectively. These were the first of many other European states to be drawn into the Anglo-French struggle over the course of a century.
In 1340, when Edward III first called himself king of France, the opposing kings assembled large and expensive armies that confronted each other without engaging in decisive action, to the annoyance of taxpayers on both sides of the Channel. A war of succession in Brittany broke out in 1341 and breathed new life into the Anglo-French war. France was weakened by a tradition of not collecting taxes in time of truce, and especially by internal divisions in which important segments of the politically influential classes opposed the government. Edward launched two well-organized campaigns, about a decade apart. The first of these, in 1345–47, produced decisive English victories at Auberoche in the southwest (1345), Crécy (1346) and Calais (1347) in the north, and La Roche-Derrien (1347) in Brittany. The crisis caused by the Black Death then intervened, but the second great campaign began in 1355, when the Prince of Wales ravaged upper Languedoc. In the next year, he defeated and captured John II at Poitiers. France was virtually paralyzed by social strife, political rivalries, and an empty treasury, while her captive king attempted to negotiate a treaty.
Six centuries of historical commentary have failed to give a satisfactory explanation for the French defeats. The noble knights, specialists in the traditional tactics of heavy cavalry, seemed reluctant to appreciate the military value of nonnoble infantry, to adapt to the problems posed by new and more powerful missile weapons, and to place coordination and discipline ahead of personal glory or the opportunity for booty. Yet neither the nobility nor heavy cavalry was obsolescent in 1350, as some have claimed, and we still await a convincing explanation of the reasons for their shortcomings in the 14th century.
Financial exigencies may have influenced the war in ways that have not received adequate emphasis. For Edward III, it was cheaper to transport quantities of long-bowmen across the Channel than to send an army made up exclusively of heavy cavalry. For the French government in 1357–60, it was financially impossible to assemble a large force and therefore desirable to avoid battle. The pitched battle had been the key to English success. When Edward III, in his final invasion of France (1359–60), failed to bring the French to battle, he had to conclude the Treaty of Brétigny, which gave him possession of all of Aquitaine but was less favorable to him than earlier peace proposals.
The Edwardian war was nevertheless an English victory and a French defeat. When it ended, France was plunged into even greater misery by the ravages of unemployed troops (routiers). This scourge forced people to acquiesce to a much higher level of taxation for military purposes than would have been conceivable a few years earlier. Just as important was the crown’s rapprochement with the disaffected nobility of the north and west. This regional aristocracy became the core of a regularly financed French army at a time when England began to face weak and divided leadership.
The war resumed in 1369, when Charles V agreed to accept appeals from Gascon lords who chafed under English rule. The Caroline war of the next twenty years was bitter and destructive but lacked dramatic battles. Bertrand du Guesclin (constable of France, 1370–80) was a master at the tactics of the routiers. His close associate and successor as constable, Olivier de Clisson, exerted a strong influence against pitched battles and commanded the respect of the northwestern nobles. Under these two able Bretons, the French regained large amounts of territory while the English squandered resources on expeditions that inflicted great damage without producing strategic results. Yet England did retain key ports in France, like Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais, while French attempts to carry the war across the Channel in the 1380s did not succeed.
Peace negotiations in 1389–96 produced a prolonged lull in the war but no definitive settlement, and the advantage in leadership swung back to England. The French military elite suffered dreadful losses on crusade at Nicopolis (1396) and became badly divided during the mental incapacity of Charles VI, as the dukes of Burgundy engaged in a power struggle with the Orléans-Armagnac faction. The English reopened the conflict, inaugurating the Lancastrian war in 1415 and winning a crushing victory at Agincourt in October of that year. The weakened nobility of northwestern France was decimated by death or capture. Leaderless Norman lordships were in no position to halt Henry V’s subsequent conquest of the region. Supported by Burgundy after the murder of John the Fearless in 1419, Henry in 1420 secured the Treaty of Troyes, which acknowledged him as heir to the French throne. His early death did not immediately change the situation because his able brother, John of Bedford, continued to advance, defeating the French badly at Verneuil (1424) and overrunning Anjou and Maine.
A new stalemate ensued only after the English failed to take Orléans in 1428–29. In stopping their advance, the French found an unlikely group of leaders: the bastard of Orléans Jean de Dunois, the routier captain La Hire, the young, rich, and unstable marshal Gilles de Rais, and, most celebrated of all, the teenaged visionary Jeanne d’Arc. Jeanne’s presence seems to have had an inspirational effect on French morale and a correspondingly negative impact on the English. Jeanne was involved in several French victories that culminated in the coronation of Charles VII at Reims, but in 1430 she fell into Burgundian hands, and the English, who accused her of heresy and sorcery, had her executed in 1431.
The pendulum of leadership began swinging back in favor of the French after the ouster of Georges de La Trémoille from court in 1433 and the rise of Arthur de Richemont, who had been constable since 1425 and favored a rapprochement with Burgundy. The English did not join in the Franco-Burgundian treaty of 1435, and Bedford’s death was a blow to Lancastrian unity. Richemont regained Paris in 1436, but after a new stalemate the two sides concluded a five-year truce in 1444. While the French were rebuilding Charles V’s system of regular taxes and a salaried army, England began to suffer from problems resembling those that had afflicted France at the turn of the century—princely rivalries around a weak and mentally unstable king, Henry VI. The French mastery of firearms rivaled the earlier English success with the longbow. When the truce expired, French victories at Formigny (1450) and Castillon (1453) sealed their rapid reconquests of Normandy and Aquitaine, respectively.
No treaty ended the Hundred Years’ War, but a new Anglo-Burgundian alliance in the 1470s was thwarted by the erratic but skillful Louis XI. England’s recurrent internal problems and the permanence of France’s restored fiscal and military institutions gave the Valois monarchy strength and stability at last. These factors, and a measure of good luck, permitted the crown to regain control of several important territories—Burgundy (1477), Anjou, Maine, and Provence (1481), Brittany (1491), and Orléans (1498)—and to become a major European power.
