"We may think of the Hundred Years War as a fight between two crowns, but the reality is much larger, much more complicated and infinitely more interesting. These years of conflict drove enormous leaps forward in military technology and organization. They helped build political systems and national identities. They forged the myths and fundamentally shaped multiple modern states. Few periods in history have done so much to create our world." The era is best seen as "a sequence of steps in France's struggle to define itself."
Before the beginning of what the author refers to as the Two Hundred Years War, the Capetians and Plantagenets fought for about a century over the English monarch's claims in France. The fighting ended, and the English king, at least on the continent, was a vassal of France. The only meaningful holding that England retained was Gascony, a province along the Pyrenees border with Spain.
In 1292, pirates began fighting in the Channel, and Philippe V escalated matters by announcing Gascony was forfeit to France. A decade of fighting led to a truce in 1303. The early years of the new century saw continuing tension between the two crowns as Edward refused to pay homage for Gascony. The English queen placed her fourteen-year-old son Edward on the throne and dispensed with her husband. Edward III would reign for fifty years. In 1328, Philippe VI became the first Valois monarch. Two years later, Edward reached his majority and took full control in England. In 1337, the traditional start of the Hundred Years War, Edward renounced his oaths to Philippe.
In 1346, Edward launched one of England's greatest campaigns, Crecy. He landed in Normandy in early July, sacked Caen, and was trapped and outnumbered at Crecy in late August. The French charged into a line of English longbowmen and were slaughtered. It was a complete and total victory. A year later, France surrendered Calais after a lengthy siege.
The following year, the most devastating onslaught of the Black Death rampaged across the continent. Somewhere between one-third and one-half of the continent's people died. After a pause, hostilities continued. The Black Prince, Edward's son, spent two summers wreaking havoc through the south of France and, when the French pursued, prevailed at Poitiers while capturing the king. It was another battle where the longbow defeated a superior French force.
France was in chaos but refused to agree to the deal its captured king accepted. Edward and his son marched from Calais to Paris. The walls could not be breached. The peace that followed expanded the province of Gascony and assured that it was English land. No more would an English king, as Duke of Gascony, need to kneel to the French monarch.
Charles V succeeded his father in 1364 and began a decade-long reversal of all that England had accomplished in the war. He slowly and methodically pushed back against the English and also defeated them when they tried to intervene in a Spanish succession conflict. By 1380, Calais was all that England held on the continent. Both Edward III and the Black Prince died, leaving ten-year-old Richard II on the throne, while in France Charles too passed away. He was succeeded by an eleven-year-old. Both sides were under tremendous financial strain and agreed to terms in 1389.
As Richard came of age, he struggled to gain and maintain control. He disinherited a cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, who defeated him and became Henry IV. France went through decades of turmoil brought on by the madness of Charles VI and the ensuing succession crisis.
Henry V reinitiated the war in 1415. His first, and most memorable, success was at Agincourt on October 25th, St. Crispin's Day. Badly outnumbered, the English center settled in with their spears pointed forward, flanked by the ever-effective longbowmen. It was a slaughter that eviscerated France's nobility. Henry conquered Normandy and, under the terms of the treaty, married Catherine of Valois. Once again, sons of an English king married to a French princess would be contenders for France's throne.
However, fate intervened, as Henry died leaving a four-year-old son. During a long truce, Charles VII regrouped and defeated the English, eventually evicting them from France in the fall of 1453. This generally is considered the end of the war, but as the author points out that no one knew it at the time. Defeat in France left England on the cusp of the Wars of the Roses. As England descended into civil war, France reinforced its western lands. Henry VII made an attempt to invade but failed and signed the Peace of Étaples in 1492, renouncing any claims in France.
The war changed both countries, as they now had vastly superior methods of collecting taxes and maintained standing armies. Parliament was strengthened in England. The French hailed their victory, and the English remembered the three great battles they won. Each country began to look beyond its borders. "Thus the Two Hundred Years War gave birth to England and France as we know them. It gave birth to our world."
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