100 Years War

it is 1520 and we are in France and the 8 is king of England with his time and the King of France is Francis the first and 10 to the 8 like many English kings like to think of himself as king of France in 1510 Henry had joined the anti French league as the then King of France Louis had waged something of a war with not only the papacy but with the Holy Roman Empire and therefore when Henry saw an opening he joined the anti French League and went in to conquer France only this is the new King of France and this was a new day and in 15-20 we have a really extraordinary moment in history where both the English and the French kings and all their courts got together in something that is known as the field of cloth of gold and it was known as such because all of the tapestries in the tents and the festivities were draped with this elaborate and beautiful gold fabric and the festivities were carried on for several days with the hope that England and France would embark on a new friendship and that their friendship and their alliance light in some ways check the rising power and the incredible might of the holy roman emperor charles v and the quest for friendship was really punctuated by a strange moment at least by modern eyes and wits Henry and Francis end up in the middle of a ring having a wrestling match now in this day Kings believe that they were strong they believed that they had military prowess and so when the two kings got together for a wrestling match it was essentially a display of their individual strength but no one could escape the fact that if either King got upset that very often this could precipitate war and in fact by a few accounts it very nearly did because during the wrestling match Francis somehow managed to throw Henry that is to say toss him onto his back and Henry always the baby what will often soaked in his tent and though it is unlikely that Henry would have attacked France for the simple reason of his own embarrassment nevertheless the times were not tense and the friendship was on rocky soil already from the very beginning and so what ends up happening is Francis does a masterstroke politically he enters into Henry's tent he swears fealty to Henry bowing down offering his life and his kingdom to his new friend Henry and while this might seem to be a strange concept of political theater to Kings wrestling and then one King sulking and another king having to make restitution what is going on behind this is a long-standing feud between the English and the French that goes back centuries all the way back into the 11th century and one of the most wide-ranging and important Wars between England and France though there had been many and though long after the sixteenth century there would continue to be wars between England and France all the way down until after the time of Napoleon still at this point by the time of Henry one of the most important wars have been fought and ended just a generation or two before Henry came to the throne and that war was the Hundred Years War and the Hundred Years War is staggeringly important for both England and France not only for the churning of the tide between colossal powers and the later Middle Ages but also for the rearrangement of the lands owned by England and by France and for the future power and might of either kingdom in both the early modern period and on down until today and so in this lecture we're going to take a look at the Hundred Years of war we're going to examine exactly what happened that gave rise to this century long conflict between England and France we're going to note the breakdown and the break up of various English and French territories and then we're going to look at the important figure of Joan of Arc and we can begin by discussing the context of the Hundred Years War now the Hundred Years War has always been a joke for historians because it was a war that was neither a hundred years nor was it one single war it was rather a series of conflicts between England and France that lasted actually a bit over a hundred years but that being said in the 19th century historians writing about this period of time dubbed it the Hundred Years War and that's what we've known it by ever since but the conflict itself between England and France goes back all the way to 1066 with the Norman invasion or the Norman conquest of England by the Dukes of Normandy and what happened after that conquest is you had a real kind of tense relationship between England and France on the one hand England was technically a vassal of the French King at least in terms of his holdings of certain areas of France so for example the King of England was the Duke of Aquitaine that area down in southwest France that had been formally held by the Carolingians what happened is over time France lost certain regions to England not through war per se sometimes through war sometimes just by takeovers of England of wide areas of what would today call modern France and so by the time of the beginning of the Hundred Years War you had a strange relationship where the King of England technically in his role over certain regions of France was a vassal to the French King and yet in terms of power and influence England had the upper hand in ruling France during this time was a line of Kings known as the cepacia Kings and the compassion line had run all the way back to 987 all the way back to the 10th century and the cepacia line has a storied history all the way down even until today in fact the Grand Duke of Luxembourg today and the kings of Spain in fact descend from this capacious line all the way down until today but in 328 just several years before the outbreak of the Hundred Years War the cepacia line dies out there is no longer a direct air from the cepacia line in France itself and so whatever this happens in the Middle Ages and all the way through the history of monarchies what happens is people break out the genealogies and they start to look to see who has as they say the strongest claim to the throne now there was a certain arithmetic to this determining who had the strongest claim and whenever a line died out like this very often it was a bit of a toss-up sometimes between who had a strong claim and who had the strongest claim and technically speaking the current king of England Edward the 3rd had a pretty strong claim to the French throne he was descended a good bit back all the way to the patient line and technically he himself could have claimed the French throne for himself now the French of course don't want this and so they put forward another claimant a man by the name of Philip of Valois and Philip is proclaimed and he is coronated Philip the sixth now Edward the third by all accounts seems to give up his right to the throne he doesn't even seek to try to take the French throne and this is certainly understandable the King of England can't be expected to be both King of England and king of France at the exact same time however what precipitated the war and what precipitated Edward the 3rd finally claiming the French throne for himself at least by name was the fact that over the period of time from roughly the Norman Conquest and the height of the English claim over French territories what has happened is England has lost territory in France all the way down until all that it has at this point is the area of Gascony and just as Philip the six comes to the throne what happens is Philip decides that Gascony should be part of the French territories and so in 1337 Philip claims Gascony for himself and he does so on the precedent that England and the English King have not been proper vassals to the French King and therefore they have rescinded their rights over this last territory and so in 1337 the Hundred Years War begins and by and large it really was not much of a contest for much of the Hundred Years War England wipes the floor with France by most accounts England has a superior armed force and they have superior tactics and for the first peer to the war from 1337 down until thirteen sixty Edward takes a unique tactic for medieval warfare at this time which is that Edward does not seek to have a series of pitched and bloody battles where all the forces come crashing together and one fell swoop and see who wins what Edward does instead is he has a series of skirmish Wars he attacks he retreats he attacks he retreats and what he seeks to do by doing this is to demoralize the French and their desire to even wage war against the English Edward also manages to create an alliance with Flanders stupid Flanders and what he does is by partnering with the area Flanders Edward managed to have a home base there on the continent where he can launch a series of naval attacks on ports and where he has a quick strike location to most of the areas of France and the two most important battles during this period of the Battle of Crecy in the Battle of poitiers the Battle of Crecy was in 1346 in the Battle of Portier was in 1356 both are major battles in both or decisive routes for the English over the French and so during this period of time as England is winning decisive battles over the French what happens is the locals end up rebelling and so from 1357 to 1358 there is actually a series of peasant Wars in the French countryside and around the city of Paris the peasants are upset that France is losing that it's losing decisively and so in 1360 they're assigned the Treaty of Britain a which was a treaty that was entirely lopsided all in favour of the English and very little was in favor of the French and the French King was essentially forced to do this the military losses and now the riots by the peasants were simply too much for the French King to endure and the treaty again was very English favourable that is to say England was allowed to keep most of the lands that had conquered including the pivotal city of Calais England no longer has to refer to itself as a French vassal and more importantly at the Battle of poitiers the English had managed to capture the French King and with the treaty they ransomed the King back to the French people for an enormous sum of money and essentially over a period of time the only thing that the French managed to get back in return is that the English King would cease to call himself the heir to the French throne so at this point England has essentially won at least the most decisive parts of the beginning of the Hundred Years War and as often happens in human history the treaty while verbose and grandiose and its desires to have both sides ceased their fighting in fact England and France did not manage to call a full truce and the hostilities for the next nine years only continued to escalate and so in 1369 the battle between England and France resumed and on the side of England in 1413 there rose to the throne one of the most important English kings in all of English history and that king was Henry v the King's so important in his legacy so large that he is enshrined in one of Shakespeare's most famous plays named after him the play henry v and henry takes the fight to France Henry takes on a different tactic in fact than Edward the third rather than embarking on skirmishes on hit and run campaigns henry v actually takes a systematic approach to the occupation of france and perhaps the most important technological advance that occurs right about this time that actually gives england the victories is the adoption of the longbow now the longboats history is a bit shrouded in mystery we think it was invented in the area of Wales and that it was then subsequently adopted into the English army but you recall in our lecture on Knights and chivalry that the knight the mounted knight had both advantages and disadvantages the principal advantage is that it was very difficult to beat a mounted man if you were a common foot soldier he was higher than you he had the value of the horse he could slam into you often horses would be trying to kick and bite and do all kinds of things in war as well and of course with the Lance a night barreling down upon you you on the ground on your own two feet really didn't stand much of a chance the only projectiles in war that were any potential advantage against the night was both a short bow a short stubby bow that would fire off a small arrow had the unfortunate disadvantage of being unable really to pierce nightly armor whether it was plate or chainmail he just couldn't get enough velocity off of this thing the crossbow had enough velocity but the crossbow then was a really seriously cumbersome contraption you could fire a bolt and you could have a certain amount of lethal impact if it struck true the problem was is it then took you any number of seconds if not half a minute to rearm the thing meanwhile the knight is barreling down upon you with the adopting the longbow however into the English army this advanced essentially neutralized the speed and the power and the armor of the mounted Knight not only that but relatively speaking compared to the knight it was dirt cheap long bows could be fashioned out of all kinds of pieces of wood all you needed was a long enough single piece that could be carved you could get enough velocity out of the arrows they could pierce all kinds of things and as we've seen in innumerable movies a volley of arrows could from a very far distance be rained down upon enemy lines from the back lines and Hendra v uses the longbow to bloody and bruised the French armies it demoralizes them there are arrows raining down if the Knights charge they are easily picked off by these long bowmen and essentially for the first time in medieval history at least your average foot soldier stood a chance against a mounted knight and so Henry v systematically begins to occupy towns and major cities throughout France as he makes his way towards Paris and towards the heart of France and there is a decisive battle in 1415 which is the Battle of Oz encore and this battle is again won overwhelmingly by the English and not only that but because of the Battle of and core and because of the defeat of the French there is signed the Treaty of Troy a in which the then King Charles the sixth actually names Henry the fifth himself as the heir to the French throne now officially in the will now officially according to the sitting French King the heir apparent was the sitting English king the reigning English King not only that but Henry took the daughter of Charles for his wife Catherine of Valois now historians love to speculate what would have happened if Henry had lived long enough to realize this throne take it for himself but as it turns out both charles king of france and henry v king of england both died in the same year of 1422 and because of that the possibility that england would take france for itself was unrealized because back in england henry the fifth son Henry the sixth was at this time only nine months old and no matter how strong his claim would be to the French Kingdom the fact remains is that a boy of nine months is not going to make a very good King either of England much less of England and France now throughout the story of the Hundred Years War we've been saying or Peterlee that the English were essentially wiping the floor with France so what turned the tide well the answer to that question is not what turned the tide but who turned the tide because into this quagmire steps Joan of Arc Joan of Arc all the way down until today is a legendary figure for the French her role in ending the Hundred Years War in salvaging France from near total annihilation in some senses plus her colorful character as this cross-dressing peasant woman who put on men's armor and went off to war in an effort to beat the English has a certain panache to it that has drawn people for centuries but Joan of Arc was a real figure despite all the legendary tales that are associated with her we're not actually sure of her birth date this was very common for peasants that didn't keep very good track of when they were born and by the age of 13 apparently she began to hear voices and she interpreted these voices as angelic voice giving her pronouncements from on high as to what to do and how to conduct her life and by the age of 16 Joan believes that these voices are encouraging her to go and see the dolphin and the dolphin is the heir apparent to the French Kingdom and she goes in to visits him and she says I have heard from God and he has told me to come to tell you to let me lead the French armies now in many ways it is a sign of how desperate the French Kingdom is that they actually cave in and allow this the French King doesn't simply give her full control over the entire army but it does allow her to go be sort of a figurehead over the army and then he asked his double men to sort of keep an eye on this and she goes out to the armies and Joan stresses that if they are going to protect France and if they are going to win the war then they need to take two strategic cities the city of oleo and the city of rang and these two cities are very important because if you remember back to our lectures on the Merovingians and on the reign of Charlemagne these cities have a historic past that goes all the way back to the Frankish kingdoms Berlin was a powerhouse it was where a significant number of dynasties based their power out of and the city of Rome was and was all the way down until the French Revolution ended the French monarchy the location where the French king was always coronated and so to have two of your most important cities one of whom is the place where your king is always coronated in English hands Joan realized was a demoralizing slap in the face and the only modern equivalent for us would be let's say that the city of Washington DC was somehow taken over by an invading army and while America itself still stood and while the presidency was still intact let's say the presidency had to move up to Connecticut and conduct its business up there and so inaugurations no longer take place there in Washington DC and there's no parades and there's no festivities well you can imagine the demoralizing effect it's sort of a sense of king of the hill who's on top as a Joan of Arc encourages and stresses and back relative bands that the armies go after allele and rain and surprisingly the French armies are successful they managed to take these regions back and so Joan is a popular figure particularly with the soldiers there is just something about late medieval life late medieval religion that they believe that if someone has heard visions and now not only heard visions but has brought success in victory to the French in a way that it had not before suddenly the word of Joan of Arc was to be listened to what happens is this as the Hundred Years War draws to a close in the final decades France claws its way back into taking over piece by piece by piece of areas that were formerly owned or recently taken over by the English and at the end of it by the end of the Hundred Years War all of the victories in all the successes of the English government were reduced simply to England holding religious two cities the most important of which is Calais in that city of Calais within another hundred years during the reign of him to the eighth would itself be lost to France now what happens with Joan of Arc some of you will know that she was burned at the stake so how can this heroine how could this victor of the French peoples be burned at the stake well what happens is she is captured not by the French but by the Burgundians and the Burgundians really saw themselves as sort of stand office they were a separate group from the French themselves and so they captured Joan and really what they believed is that they had the opportunity for a ransom on their hands and so they'll offer to the French government to the French King the right to ransom her back for a certain price but the French King realizes that if he ransoms Joan back and that if she comes back to a certain amount of fanfare for her role in the French victories over the English that the English King himself would actually be weakened as a result and so the French King opts not to ransom Joan instead passes and so the Burgundians ransom Joan of Arc to the English and in 40 31 joan is burned at the stake for being a witch now she is called a witch because she has heard these voices and it was known that she was being directed by some sort of spiritual force or she interpreted as God and her success in battle she believed was proof positive that it was God that was directing her but of course the English having lost the battle believed that she was a witch and that the voices she was listening to were demonic and so in 1431 joan dies on the stake and so just on the eve of the early modern period just on the eve of the Reformation the Hundred Years War leaves England and France essentially in the makeup that they would be for the remaining modern period England no longer holds much of France at all again they only hold the city of Calais and even that they lose within the time of him to the 8th and France by contrast now holds the vast majorities of the areas that were part of the Frankish kingdoms they now have Aquitaine Brittany Gascony in these areas as well but there are a few other things that begin to arise at the end of the Hundred Years War things that become more or less permanent that shape the modern world perhaps the most important of which is that France now has a standing army now a standing army is not a normal thing in the medieval period armies are expensive with the feudal system with the parceling of land amongst all of your lesser Nobles and allowing them to hold their own small armies most medieval wars were fought by the summoning of feudal vassals and their small armies into a larger sort of checkerboard of different armies whenever you needed them of course that has a problem of lack of discipline lack of cohesion these kinds of things but the Hundred Years War because it was more or less constant battle forced France to enact a policy than which they eventually had more or less a standing army for a period of time that in and of itself is one of the principle developments towards the modern world again as we go into the early modern world what we begin to see or some of these things that we take for granted a standing army for example it would begin to see the kernel of these things begin to take shape the other major thing that is going to arise at both England and in France is the constant problem of taxation in the Middle Ages it was only allowed for the king to tax for Wars in very specific cases for example in England the Parliament was really principally summoned by the king in order to affect taxation he had to ask Parliament if it'd be all right to levy attacks and if they said no at least in general the answer was no but with both England and France what begins to happen is you see a more or less regular tax system at least attempt to come into existence by the Kings it's more successful in France the French King more regularly will tax its citizens for the sake of armies and defense and for the standing army itself in England however as the years wear on and as we get into the sixteenth century what begins to happen is the King and Parliament don't always see eye to eye on the right of Taxation and if we look down the corridors of time we see the English Civil War the principal spark for this was when Charles summon Parliament to levy attacks to go and attack Scotland and Parliament said no and Charles said we'll be gone with you the Parliament said no we're not going anywhere and before too much longer they were at war well some of the Colonels of this are going to emerge just about the time of the Hundred Years War England itself is going to have more trouble with this but France is going to become more easily taxable in the end the Hundred Years War is something of a gateway between the late medieval period in the early modern period things that begin to emerge tensions kingdoms land holdings taxation armies these kinds of things the reduction of the night - not so much of superior force but rather actually very much beatable with the longbow begins to churn Europe into something more or less early modern now it doesn't do this on its own but again it's kind of a gateway it kind of signals a significant transition in time so that by the time you get to 1453 which is the end of the hundred year war is you begin to notice that England and France are essentially now in the early you

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: Hundred Years' War (Military Conflict), Joan Of Arc (Author), Middle Ages (Event), France (Country), Roman Catholic Church (Organization Founder), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, England (Country), Medieval Literature (Field Of Study), Theology (Field Of Study), Flemish Region (Administrative Division), War (Quotation Subject)

Id: ckHJOeR0BBQ

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 02 2014