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 Romantic painting of Joan of Arc at the Siege of Orléans. | |||||||||
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 House of Valois Castile Scotland Genoa Majorca Bohemia Crown of Aragon Brittany |
 House of Plantagenet Burgundy Brittany Portugal Navarre Flanders Hainaut Aquitaine Luxembourg Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||
| Hundred Years' War | |
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| Hundred Years' War Edwardian phase (1337–1360) | |
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| Hundred Years' War Caroline phase (1369–1389) | |
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Template:FixHTML {{Campadu Guesclin]] became one of the most successful French generals of the Hundred Years' War.
Simultaneously, the Black Prince was occupied with war in Iberian peninsula from 1366 and due to illness was relieved of command in 1371, whilst Edward III was too elderly to fight; providing France with even more advantages. Pedro of Castile, whose daughters Constance and Isabella were married to the Black Prince's brothers John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley, was deposed by Henry of Trastámara in 1370 with the support of Du Guesclin and the French. War erupted between Castile and France on one side and Portugal and England on the other.
With the death of John Chandos, seneschal of Poitou, in the field and the capture of the Captal de Buch, the English were deprived of some of their best generals in France. Du Guesclin, in a series of careful Fabian campaigns, avoiding major English field armies, captured many towns, including Poitiers in 1372 and Bergerac in 1377. The English response to Du Guesclin was to launch a series of destructive chevauchées. But Du Guesclin refused to be drawn in by them.
With the death of the Black Prince in 1376 and Edward III in 1377, the prince's underaged son Richard of Bordeaux succeeded to the English throne. Then, with Du Guesclin's death in 1380, and the continued threat to England's northern borders from Scotland represented by the Battle of Otterburn, the war inevitably wound down to a truce in 1389. The peace was extended many times before open war flared up again.
Second peace: 1389–1415
See also: Civil war between the Armagnacs and the BurgundiansAlthough Henry IV of England planned campaigns in France, he was unable to put them into effect due to his short reign. In the meantime, though, the French King Charles VI was descending into madness, and an open conflict for power began between his cousin, John the Fearless, and his brother, Louis of Orléans. After Louis's assassination, the Armagnac family took political power in opposition to John. By 1410, both sides were bidding for the help of English forces in a civil war.
England too was plagued with internal strife during this period, as uprisings in Ireland and Wales were accompanied by renewed border war with Scotland and two separate civil wars. The Irish troubles embroiled much of the reign of Richard II, who had not resolved them by the time he lost his throne and life to his cousin Henry, who took power for himself in 1399. This was followed by the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in Wales which was not finally put down until 1415 and actually resulted in Welsh semi-independence for a number of years. In Scotland, the change in regime in England prompted a fresh series of border raids which were countered by an invasion in 1402 and the defeat of a Scottish army at the Battle of Homildon Hill. A dispute over the spoils of this action between Henry and the Earl of Northumberland resulted in a long and bloody struggle between the two for control of northern England, which was only resolved with the almost complete destruction of the Percy family by 1408. Throughout this period, England was also faced with repeated raids by French and Scandinavian pirates, which heavily damaged the trade and navy. These problems accordingly delayed any resurgence of the dispute with France until 1415.
Resumption of the war under Henry V: 1415–1429
| Hundred Years' War Lancastrian phase (1415–1453) | |
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The final phase of warmaking that engulfed France between 1415 and 1435 is the most famous phase of the Hundred Years' War. Plans had been laid for the declaration of war since the rise to the throne of Henry IV, in 1399. However, it was his son, Henry V, who was finally given the opportunity. In 1414, Henry turned down an Armagnac offer to restore the Brétigny frontiers in return for his support. Instead, he demanded a return to the territorial status during the reign of Henry II. In August 1415, he landed with an army at Harfleur and took it. Although tempted to march on Paris directly, he elected to make a raiding expedition across France toward English-occupied Calais. In a campaign reminiscent of Crécy, he found himself outmanoeuvred and low on supplies, and had to make a stand against a much larger French army at the Battle of Agincourt, north of the Somme. In spite of his disadvantages, his victory was near-total due to his momentous speech (popularised by Shakespeare) and the use of a new invention, the longbow; consequently, the French defeat was catastrophic, with the loss of many of the Armagnac leaders.
Henry took much of Normandy, including Caen in 1417 and Rouen on January 19, 1419, making Normandy English for the first time in two centuries. He made formal alliance with the Duchy of Burgundy, who had taken Paris, after the assassination of Duke John the Fearless in 1419. In 1420, Henry met with the mad king Charles VI, who signed the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry would marry Charles' daughter Catherine and Henry's heirs would inherit the throne of France. The Dauphin, Charles VII, was declared illegitimate. Henry formally entered Paris later that year and the agreement was ratified by the Estates-General.
Henry's progress was now stopped by the arrival in France of a Scottish army of around 6,000 men. In 1421, the Earl of Buchan crushed a larger English army at the Battle of Bauge, killing the English commander, Thomas, 1st Duke of Clarence, and killing or capturing most of the English leaders. The French were so grateful that Buchan was immediately promoted to the High Constable of France. Soon after this setback Henry V died at Meaux in 1422. Soon, Charles too had died. Henry's infant son, Henry VI, was immediately crowned king of England and France, but the Armagnacs remained loyal to Charles' son and the war continued in central France.
The English continued to attack France and in 1429 were besieging the important French city of Orleans. An attack on an English supply convoy led to the skirmish that is now known as Battle of the Herrings when John Fastolf circled his supply wagons (largely filled with herring) around his archers and repelled a few hundred attackers. Later that year, a French saviour appeared in the form of a peasant girl from Domremy named Joan of Arc.
French victory: 1429–1453
By 1424, the uncles of Henry VI had begun to quarrel over the infant's regency, and one, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, married Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut, and invaded Holland to regain her former dominions, bringing him into direct conflict with Philip III, Duke of Burgundy.
By 1428, the English were ready to pursue the war again, laying siege to Orléans. Their force was insufficient to fully invest the city, but larger French forces remained passive. In 1429, Joan of Arc convinced the Dauphin to send her to the siege, saying she had received visions from God telling her to drive out the English. She raised the morale of the local troops and they attacked the English Redoubts, forcing the English to lift the siege. Inspired by Joan, the French took several English strong points on the Loire. Shortly afterwards, a French army, some 8000 strong, broke through English archers at Patay with 1500 heavy cavalry, defeating a 3000 strong army commanded by John Fastolf and John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. The first major French land victory of the wars, this opened the way for the Dauphin to march to Reims for his coronation as Charles VII.
After Joan was captured by the Burgundians in 1430 and later sold to the English and executed, the French advance stalled in negotiations. But, in 1435, the Burgundians under Philip III switched sides, signing the Treaty of Arras and returning Paris to the King of France. Burgundy's allegiance remained fickle, but their focus on expanding their domains into the Low Countries left them little energy to intervene in France. The long truces that marked the war also gave Charles time to reorganise his army and government, replacing his feudal levies with a more modern professional army that could put its superior numbers to good use, and centralising the French state.
Generally, though, the tactical superiority of English forces remained a potent factor; John Talbot, for instance, who specialised in fast attacks, routed French forces at Ry and Avranches in Normandy in 1436 and 1439 respectively. Talbot, one of the most daring warriors of the age, was the victor in 40 battles and skirmishes. This was one of the main reasons the war was so prolonged. The biographer of the Constable Richemont put it plainly when he wrote that "The English and their captains, above all Talbot, had a well established reputation for superiority, Richemont knew them better than anyone".
But a repetition of Du Guesclin's battle avoidance strategy paid dividends and the French were able to recover town after town.
By 1449, the French had retaken Rouen, and in 1450 the count of Clermont and Arthur de Richemont, Earl of Richmond, of the Montfort family (the future Arthur III, Duke of Brittany) caught an English army attempting to relieve Caen at the Battle of Formigny and defeated it, the English army having been attacked from the flank and rear by Richemont's force just as they were on the verge of beating Clermont's army. The French proceeded to capture Cherbourg on July 6 and Bordeaux and Bayonne in 1451. The attempt by Talbot to retake Gascony, though initially welcomed by the locals, was crushed by Jean Bureau and his cannon at the Battle of Castillon in 1453 where Talbot had led a small Anglo-Gascon force in a frontal attack on an entrenched camp. This is considered the last battle of the Hundred Years' War.
Significance
The Hundred Years' War was a time of military evolution. Weapons, tactics, army structure, and the societal meaning of war all changed, partly in response to the demands of the war, partly through advancement in technology, and partly through lessons that warfare taught.
England was what might be considered a more modern state than France. It had a centralised authority—Parliament—with the authority to tax. As the military writer Colonel Alfred Burne notes, England had revolutionized its recruitment system, substituting a paid army for one drawn from feudal obligation. Professional captains were appointed who recruited troops for a specified (theoretically short) period. This "modern army", to some extent a necessity—many barons refused to go on a foreign campaign, as feudal service was supposed to be for protection of the realm—also gave England a military advantage early on.
Before the Hundred Years' War, heavy cavalry was considered the most powerful unit in an army, but by the war's end this belief had shifted. The heavy horse was increasingly negated by the use of the longbow and fixed defensive positions of men-at-arms—tactics which helped lead to English victories at Crécy and Agincourt. Learning from the Scots, the English began using lightly armoured mounted troops—later called dragoons—who would dismount in order to fight battles. By the end of the Hundred Years' War, this meant a fading of the expensively-outfitted, highly-trained heavy cavalry, and the eventual end of the knight as a military force and the nobility as a political one.
Although they had a tactical advantage, "nevertheless the size of France prohibited lengthy, let alone permanent, occupation," as the military writer General Fuller noted. Covering a much larger area than England, and containing four times its population, France proved difficult for the English to occupy.
An insoluble problem for English commanders was that, in an age of siege warfare, the more territory that was occupied, the greater the requirements for garrisons. This lessened the striking power of English armies as time went on. Salisbury's army at Orleans consisted of only 5,000 men, insufficient not only to invest the city but also numerically inferior to French forces within and without the city. The French only needed to recover some part of their shattered confidence, the result of many years of defeat, for the outcome to become inevitable. At Orleans they were assisted by the death of Salisbury through a fluke cannon shot and by the inspiration of Joan of Arc.
Furthermore, the ending of the Burgundian alliance spelled the end of English efforts in France, despite the campaigns of the aggressive John, Lord Talbot, and his forces to delay the inevitable.
The war also stimulated nationalistic sentiment. It devastated France as a land, but it also awakened French nationalism. The Hundred Years' War accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a centralised state. The conflict became one of not just English and French kings but one between the English and French peoples. There were constant rumours in England that the French meant to invade and destroy the English language. National feeling emerged out of such rumours that unified both France and England further. The Hundred Years War basically confirmed the fall of the French language in England, which had served as the language of the ruling classes and commerce there from the time of the Norman conquest until 1362.
The latter stages of the war saw the emergence of the dukes of Burgundy as important players on the political field, and it encouraged the English, in response to the seesawing alliance of the southern Netherlands (now Belgium, a rich centre of woollen production at the time) throughout the conflict, to develop their own woollen industry and foreign markets.
Weapons
The most famous weapon was the English and Welsh longbow of the yeoman archer: while not a new weapon at the time, it played a significant role throughout the war, giving the English tactical advantage in the many battles and skirmishes in which they were used. The French mainly relied on crossbows, often employed by Genoese mercenaries. The crossbow was used because it took little training or skill to operate effectively. However, it was slow to reload, heavy, and vulnerable to rain-damage; and it lacked the accuracy of the longbow. The longbow was a very difficult weapon to employ, and English archers had to have practised from an early age to become proficient. It also required tremendous strength to use, with a draw weight typically around 620–670 newtons (140–150 lbf) and possibly as high as 800 N (180 lbf). It was its widespread use in the British Isles that gave the English the ability to use it as a weapon. It was the strategic developments that brought it to prominence. The English in their battles with the Scots had learned through defeat what dismounted bowmen in fixed positions could do to heavy cavalry. Since the arrows shot from a longbow could kill or incapacitate armoured knights (and particularly their costly horses), a charge could be dissipated before it ever reached an army's lines. The longbow enabled an often-outnumbered English army to pick battle locations, fortify them, and destroy opposing armies. As the Hundred Years' War came to a close, the number of capable longbowmen began to drop off. Given the training required to use such powerful bows, the casualties taken by the longbowmen at Verneuil (1424) and Patay (1429) were significant. As a result, the longbow became less viable as a weapon since there were not enough men to wield them. Improvements in armour-plating from the 15th century meant that expensive armour was almost arrow-proof. Only the most powerful longbows at close-range could stand a chance of penetrating.
A number of new weapons were introduced during the Hundred Years' War as well. Gunpowder for gonnes (an early firearm) and cannons played significant roles as early as 1375. The last battle of the war, the Battle of Castillon, was the first battle in European history in which artillery was the deciding factor.
War and society
The consequences of these new weapons meant that the nobility was no longer the deciding factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows or firearms could gain access to the power, rewards, and prestige once reserved only for knights who bore arms. The composition of armies changed, from feudal lords who might or might not show up when called by their lord, to paid mercenaries. By the end of the war, both France and England were able to raise enough money through taxation to create standing armies, the first time since the fall of the Western Roman Empire that there were standing armies in Western or Central Europe (excluding the Eastern Roman Empire). Standing armies represented an entirely new form of power for kings. Not only could they defend their kingdoms from invaders, but standing armies could also protect the king from internal threats and also keep the population in check. It was a major step in the early developments towards centralised nation-states that eroded the medieval order.
At the first major battle of the war, the Battle of Crécy, it is said that the age of chivalry came to an end in that heavy-cavalry charges no longer decided battles. At the same time, there was a revival of the mores of chivalry, and it was deemed to be of the highest importance to fight, and to die, in the most chivalrous way possible.The notion of chivalry was strongly influenced by the Romantic epics of the 12th century, and knights imagined themselves re-enacting those stories on the field of battle. Someone like Bertrand Du Guesclin was said to have gone into battle with one eye closed, declaring "I will not open my eye for the honour of my lady until I have killed three Englishmen." Knights often carried the colours of their ladies into battle.
In France, during the captivity of King John II, the Estates General attempted to arrogate power from the king. The Estates General was a body of representatives from the three groups who traditionally had consultative rights in France: the clergy, the nobles, and the townspeople. First called together under Philip IV “the Fair”, the Estates had the right to confirm or disagree with the “levée”, the principal tax by which the kings of France raised money. Under the leadership of a merchant named Etienne Marcel, the Estates General attempted to force the monarchy to accept a sort of agreement called the Great Ordinance. Like the English Magna Carta, the Great Ordinance held that the Estates should supervise the collection and spending of the levy, meet at regular intervals independent of the king’s call, exercise certain judicial powers, and generally play a greater role in government. The nobles took this power to excess, however, causing in 1358 a peasant rebellion known as the Jacquerie. Swarms of peasants furious over the nobles’ high taxes and forced-labour policies killed and burned in the north of France. One of their victims proved to be Etienne Marcel, and without his leadership the Estates General divided.
England and the Hundred Years' War
The effects of the Hundred Years’ War in England also raised some questions about the extent of royal authority. Like the French, the English experienced a serious rebellion against the king during a gap in the succession caused by the death of Edward III when his grandson had not yet reached maturity. Called the Peasants' Revolt and also Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, the 1381 uprising saw some 100,000 peasants march on London to protest the payment of high war taxes and efforts by the nobility to reduce English peasants to serfdom. The mob murdered and burned the houses of government officials and tax collectors. The young king-to-be, Richard II, met the peasants outside his castle, defusing their violence by promising to meet their demands. At the same time, agents of [[Media:the throne murdered Wat Tyler, a key leader of the revolt, and Richard II sent the peasants back to their homes in the countryside. After they left, however, he reneged on his promises and kept taxes high.
i999] of France continuously being brought back by the nobles. The English monarchy began to seek truce, abandoning many of their subjects in France. Many English subjects with claims and holdings were greatly disillusioned with the crowns. The conflict became one of the major contributing factors to the Wars of the Roses.
Major battles
- 1337, November—Battle of Cadsand: initiates hostilities. The Flemish defenders of the island were thrown of Auray]]: end of Breton War of Succession Du Gueschlin captured.
- 1367, April 3—Battle of Nájera (Navarette): Black Prince defeats a Castilian/French army at Nájera in Castile.
- 1372, June 22—Battle of La Rochelle: Castilian-French fleet defeats the English fleet, leading to loss of dominance at sea and French piracy and coastal raids.
- 1380—Cthe Herrings]]: English force under Sir John Fastolf defeats French and Scottish armies.