Hundred Years' War (1337–1453): England and France at War

The Hundred Years’ War was a long series of conflicts between the kingdoms of England and France fought from 1337 to 1453. It began with Edward III of England’s claim to the French throne and his struggle to keep English lands in south-west France, and it ended with the English driven from almost all of France. The war shaped the national identities, armies and governments of both kingdoms.

Causes

The English kings had held lands in France since William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, took the English crown in 1066. By the early fourteenth century these had shrunk to the duchy of Aquitaine, or Gascony, around Bordeaux, and the county of Ponthieu. For these lands the king of England was a vassal of the king of France and owed him homage, a situation that caused constant friction.

The succession added a second cause. When Charles IV of France died in 1328 without a son, the direct line of the Capetian kings ended. Edward III of England was Charles’s nephew through his mother Isabella, but the French nobility chose Philip of Valois, a cousin through the male line, who became Philip VI. In 1329 the young Edward did homage to Philip for Aquitaine.

Tensions grew over trade and alliances. Flanders, whose cloth towns depended on English wool, was politically tied to France, while France supported Scotland against England. On 24 May 1337 Philip VI declared Aquitaine confiscated, and Edward responded by reasserting his claim to the French crown, formally adopting the title of king of France in 1340.

The Edwardian War (1337–1360)

The first phase was dominated by English victories. In June 1340 the English fleet destroyed the French navy at the Battle of Sluys, securing the Channel. In 1346 Edward III invaded Normandy and crushed Philip VI’s army at the Battle of Crécy, then captured Calais after an eleven-month siege in 1347.

The Black Death interrupted the fighting from 1348. When war resumed, Edward’s eldest son, Edward of Woodstock, later called the Black Prince, defeated the French at Poitiers in 1356 and captured King John II. France was paralysed by the king’s captivity, peasant revolt and the ravages of unemployed soldiers.

The Treaty of Brétigny of 1360 gave Edward an enlarged Aquitaine, Calais and Ponthieu in full sovereignty, and set John II’s ransom at three million gold crowns. In return Edward was to drop his claim to the French throne, although the formal renunciations were never completed.

The Caroline War (1369–1389)

War resumed in 1369 under Charles V of France, known as “the Wise”. He avoided large pitched battles and instead used sieges, raids and diplomacy to wear down the English. His constable, the Breton soldier Bertrand du Guesclin, recaptured town after town.

By the time Charles V died in 1380, the English held little beyond Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne and a few coastal strongholds. Both kingdoms were exhausted and troubled at home. A truce was agreed in 1389 and extended in 1396, when Richard II of England married Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI.

The Lancastrian War (1415–1453)

The final phase began when Henry V of England exploited a civil war in France between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions, made worse by Charles VI’s mental illness. Henry won a famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 and then conquered Normandy between 1417 and 1419.

The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 made Henry V heir to the French throne, disinheriting the dauphin Charles, and Henry married Charles VI’s daughter Catherine. But Henry died in 1422, a few weeks before Charles VI, leaving a baby, Henry VI, as king of England and, in English eyes, of France.

The English advance stopped at Orléans. In 1429 a young peasant woman from Domrémy, Joan of Arc, helped relieve the siege of Orléans and led the dauphin to his coronation as Charles VII at Reims on 17 July 1429. Joan was captured in 1430 and burned at Rouen on 30 May 1431, but the momentum had shifted.

In 1435 the Duke of Burgundy made peace with Charles VII at the Congress of Arras, depriving England of its most important ally. Paris returned to French control in 1436. After the Truce of Tours of 1444 broke down, the French reconquered Normandy, winning at Formigny on 15 April 1450, and then Gascony, winning at Castillon on 17 July 1453. Bordeaux surrendered on 19 October 1453.

Key people

Edward III (reigned 1327–1377) began the war and won its greatest early victories. His claim to France gave the conflict its dynastic character.

Charles V of France (reigned 1364–1380) reversed most of England’s gains through careful strategy, with Bertrand du Guesclin as his commander.

Henry V of England (reigned 1413–1422) came closer than anyone to uniting both crowns, through Agincourt and the Treaty of Troyes.

Joan of Arc (c. 1412–1431) inspired the French recovery and became a national symbol, canonised as a saint in 1920.

Charles VII of France (reigned 1422–1461) completed the expulsion of the English and reformed French royal finances and armies.

By the numbers

Consequences

The war was devastating for France, whose countryside was repeatedly plundered by armies and by bands of unemployed soldiers known as routiers. Combined with plague and famine, it contributed to a severe fall in population in many regions during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Both monarchies grew stronger as institutions. French kings developed regular taxation and, in 1445, created the compagnies d’ordonnance, an early permanent standing army. In England, the need for war taxes increased the importance of Parliament.

Military methods changed. English armies of longbowmen and dismounted men-at-arms dominated the battlefield for decades, but by the 1440s and 1450s French artillery was capable of breaking castle walls quickly and played a major part at Formigny and Castillon.

In England, defeat discredited the government of Henry VI. Within two years of Castillon the country slid into the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between rival branches of the royal family.

Society, language and identity

The war encouraged a sense of national belonging on both sides. In England, French had been the language of the court and the law since 1066, but war with France helped English rise in status. The Statute of Pleading of 1362 required court cases to be pleaded in English, and Henry V used English in his official letters. Writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, who served on campaign in France in 1359–1360, wrote in English for a growing audience.

In France, the long struggle against the English and the figure of Joan of Arc became central to later ideas of French nationhood. The idea that the crown of France could not pass through a woman, used against Edward III’s claim, hardened into the so-called Salic law of succession.

The war also brought new burdens on ordinary people. Heavy taxation helped provoke the Jacquerie, a peasant uprising in northern France in 1358, and contributed to discontent that erupted in England’s Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Soldiers who lived by ransom and plunder became a familiar and feared presence across France.

Myths and facts

Myth: the war lasted exactly a hundred years of continuous fighting. Fact: it lasted 116 years and included long truces. The label “Hundred Years’ War” was coined by French and English historians in the nineteenth century.

Myth: the war ended with a peace treaty in 1453. Fact: no treaty ended it; fighting simply stopped after Castillon. English kings kept the title “King of France” until 1801, and Edward IV’s invasion of 1475 ended with the Treaty of Picquigny.

Myth: the war was a struggle between two fully formed nations. Fact: it began as a feudal and dynastic dispute, with Gascons, Bretons, Burgundians and Flemings often fighting on the English side. National feeling grew during the war rather than causing it.

Timeline

• 1328: Charles IV dies; Philip VI becomes king of France instead of Edward III.
• 1337, 24 May: Philip VI confiscates Aquitaine; the war begins.
• 1346, 26 August: English victory at Crécy.
• 1356, 19 September: The Black Prince wins at Poitiers and captures John II.
• 1360: Treaty of Brétigny.
• 1415, 25 October: Henry V wins at Agincourt.
• 1420, 21 May: Treaty of Troyes names Henry V heir to France.
• 1429, May–July: Joan of Arc relieves Orléans; Charles VII is crowned at Reims.
• 1453, 17 July: French victory at Castillon.
• 1453, 19 October: Bordeaux surrenders, ending English rule in Gascony.

Why it matters

The Hundred Years’ War ended more than three centuries of English territorial power in France and helped turn both kingdoms into more centralised states with stronger national identities. It transformed warfare, from the longbow to gunpowder artillery, and left heroes and legends, from the Black Prince and Henry V to Joan of Arc, that still shape how England and France see their past.