Welcome back, history enthusiasts, to another
exciting journey through the annals of time! Today, we delve into the epic and tumultuous
saga known as the Hundred Years' War. This century-spanning conflict between the kingdoms
of England and France was a clash filled with daring knights, cunning tactics, and epic
battles that would shape the course of European history. The Hundred Years' War can be divided
into three distinct phases, each with its own unique character. The first phase, called
Edwardian, featured the battles of Crécy and Poitiers, which saw the English longbowmen
rise to prominence, wreaking havoc on the French forces with their deadly arrows as
the legends of Edward III and the Black Prince emerged. The second, Carolinian phase, started
with a balance between two sides and soon spilled in Spain and beyond, immortalizing
John of Gaunt and Bertran du Guesclin, as well as the English chevauchée and the French
professional troops, with the battles of Cocherel and Pontvallain. The third - Lancastrian phase,
started with a devastating English victory at Agincourt by king Henry V. A civil war
within France between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs began, but the country was saved
by the famous heroine Joan of Arc, who turned the tide at Orleans, allowing prince Charles
to regain the throne and then win the war with the battles of Patay, Formigny and Castillon,
marking the end of this epic conflict and the reclamation of French territories. We
are going to talk about all this in this video, so, buckle up for an exhilarating ride through
history, as we explore the Hundred Years' War, its main battles, and the incredible
stories of various characters that make it one of the most epic chapters in the chronicle
of warfare. Let's embark on this journey together and relive the battles and legends of the
past! It’s a mission also taken up when it comes
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limited time. Hit the link in the description. How the Hundred Years’ War Started
When William - Duke of Normandy - conquered England in 1066, his status as a vassal of
France’s Capetian kings gave rise to a paradoxical situation in Western Europe. The monarchs
of England now held ancestral territories on the continent as a vassal of the French
kings while also being rulers of a strong realm. Sometimes they controlled even larger
territories in France than their overlords, a trend which reached its zenith between 1154
and 1204 when the Angevins ruled more than half of the country. This didn’t last for
too long however, as a succession of strong French kings beginning with Philip II Augustus
gradually conquered more territory, and by 1224 all English possessions on the continent,
save for Gascony in the southwest. This narrow strip of maritime territory had grown prosperous
under English rule and developed into an important source of royal income through the wine trade,
often raising more in annual revenue than England itself. Gascony’s population valued
the connection it had with the island monarchy, and were not ‘French’ as we know the French
in our time. The duchy’s language in the middle-ages was a separate Gascon tongue,
and its people had little to no ties with the people of northern France or its Capetian
monarchy. Contemporary author Jean Froissart goes so far as to call the inhabitants ‘the
English’. In 1259 King Henry III was forced to sign
the Treaty of Paris, in which he renounced his claims on most continental lands but was
confirmed in his status as overlord of Gascony, but only as a vassal of the French kings,
to whom was obliged to pay homage. This is widely thought to be one of the factors which
made the Hundred Years’ War inevitable. Despite the peace, a number of dynastic and
territorial wars over the next half-century ratcheted up the tension between England and
France even more, giving both sides experience in raising armies and waging war. This state
of affairs probably would’ve continued for a long time, but on January 31st 1328 Charles
IV - last king of the main branch of the Capetian dynasty, died without a male heir and left
his kingdom in a dynastic crisis. Despite the fact that the English king Edward III
Plantagenet was a nephew of the dead king, the French lords decided that his cousin Philip
of Valois, which was the cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, would inherit the throne.
To justify it, they cited the ancient Salic Law which prevented women from inheriting
any land, a ruling which affected Edward because he was related to Charles IV through his mother
Isabella. Edward at the time was young and England was under control of Isabella and
her lover Roger Mortimer, so in 1329 he paid homage to Philip VI. A year later, the now
majority-age Edward and his supporters slew the despised Roger Mortimer and exiled Isabella
to Norfolk, which allowed him to assume control of his kingdom. The newly minted English king
marched north in 1333 and crushed France’s Scottish allies at Halidon Hill, leading David
II to seek refuge in Paris at his ally’s invitation, who then announced that any future
talks must take Scotland’s interests into account. Edward was not amused, and thereafter
considered the French king - his nominal overlord, an adversary.
This is probably what led England’s king to grant the fugitive French count Robert
de Artois refuge in 1336. He had been found guilty of poisoning his aunt in a dispute
over the inheritance of the eponymous County of Artois, condemned to death and then chased
out of France. Robert arrived in London and was warmly welcomed by Edward III, who granted
him an Earldom, a few castles and stipends despite the fact that Philip VI had declared
himself a foe of any who harboured the criminal. When Philip sent a demand to Edward through
the Seneschal of Aquitaine ordering his vassal to surrender Artois, the demand was rejected
and both parties began preparations for war. Since Robert was actually in England, where
Philip VI technically had no jurisdiction over Edward, rather than in French territory,
the order was viewed to have no legal legitimacy, which further displayed the king-vassal paradox
created by the Norman conquest of England. All of these tensions came to a head on May
24th 1337. On that day, Philip declared that Aquitaine no longer belongs to Edward ‘because
of the many excesses, rebellious and disobedient acts committed by the King of England and
against Us and Our Royal Majesty’, in particular citing his granting of haven to Robert Artois.
The king then called his feudal lords to summon to war - the so-called arriere ban and this
is widely seen as the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, despite the lack of actual declaration.
Instead, it was the culmination of many growing tensions - such as the gradual centralisation
of government, the unworkable nature of the Plantagenet’s vassal status and other factors.
Start of the Edwardian phase The conflict began on two fronts almost immediately
as the French began raiding an under-garrisoned Gascony. While that was happening in the south,
a cash-strapped Edward III crossed the channel into Flanders - England’s closest commercial
partner through the lucrative wool trade, and purchased the Holy Roman Emperor’s Ludwig
IV allegiance, but didn’t gain too much benefit from the expense. After even being
forced to sell the royal crown of England off for funds, Edward launched a campaign
into France with around 12,000 troops and eventually faced off against Philip and his
army - who outnumbered him 2:1, at Flamengerie in October. After a tense standoff, Edward
retreated back into friendly territory and Philip didn’t pursue him.
Though it was brief, the 1339 campaign was nightmarish for the local populations in Edward’s
wake. Medieval military strategy was to inflict as much carnage against hostile cities and
agriculture as possible, which would weaken the enemy government, economy and ultimately
hamstring its ability to wage war. The English king had seen the effectiveness of such tactics
especially in rich and densely populated lands such as those in northern France, and so the
notorious chevauchée was born. While not yet fully developed, these chevauchées were
low-cost raids, using limited resources with the deliberate aim of systematically devastating
and lowering the productivity of territories through which the raiders marched, all the
while enriching the invader and weakening the allegiance between the conquered and their
king. As the Hundred Years’ War progressed, the utility of this strategy was to prove
itself indisposable. By the time 1340 began though, Edward’s campaign had left the king
even more monetarily destitute than ever, but this didn’t stop him from formally proclaiming
himself King of England and France in Ghent during January of that year.
The situation in the channel wasn’t going in Edward’s favour. Ever since 1336, English
coastal towns3 had continuously fallen victim to seaborne raids from French attacks. While
the Plantagenet king’s own captains often managed to retaliate with equal rapacity,
Philip VI had the larger navy, and there was a real possibility of England being invaded.
Edward III therefore returned to England two months after his coronation in Flanders. The
fact that he owed money to prominent creditors in the area also provided adequate reason
to get off the continent. Battle of Sluys (1340) and Battle of Saint
Omer (1340) After making landfall, the king raised a new
tax and immediately began assembling new forces for the war. Reinforcements and ships - mainly
converted merchant vessels known as ‘cogs’, were assembled at Orwell in Suffolk, ready
for the attack. The French fleet, which had wreaked havoc upon the English shores with
Castillian and Genoese support, had suffered heavy losses in a surprise attack and could
no longer organise raids on the English coast, so they instead limited themselves to defend
their shores. To help in this endeavour, Philip ordered the creation of an armada and had
it sent to Sluys, the most important port in Flanders, to cut off Edward from his mainland
allies. When his fleet was ready, the English king announced against the advice of many
of his close officials that he was going to attack France’s 200 vessel-strong armada,
which was anchored in modern-day Belgium, and destroy it. In defiance of those members
of his entourage who decried the apparently foolhardy naval assault, Edward III proclaimed
that “I shall cross the sea, and those who are afraid may stay at home!”. He set sail
on June 22nd 1340 and reached the outskirts of the estuary of the Zwin river in the afternoon
of the following day. The French fleet anchored outside Sluys was
composed of 6 Genoese galleys, 22 oar barges, 7 royal sailing ships, 167 merchant ships
and 11 Spanish and Flemish allies, for a total of 212 vessels manned by 19000 sailors, 500
crossbowmen and 150 men at arms. It was commanded by two knights, Nicholas Béhuchet and Hugh
Quiéret, both without any naval experience, The English fleet was composed of three warships
and around 120 to 160 Cogs but had more men trained in the art of war: exact numbers are
unknown but high estimates put the combatants at 4000 men at arms and 12000 archers. The French fleet was drawn up in three lines
across the mouth of the Zwin, with the biggest vessels in the first line, though their tight
formation came at a cost in manoeuvrability. Edward’s spies had informed him of the French
formation, describing it as “like a great wood”. The King decided to attack in the
early afternoon of the following day, the 24th. With the tide and winds in their favour
and the sun in their back, the English fleet advanced in three rows with the bigger ships
in the front, having one vessel filled with men-at-arms for every two hosting longbowmen.
The French ships, already in a tight spot, had, while anchored, drifted eastward removing
even more space for manoeuvre, so they could not make use of their second lines. As the
two frontlines crashed into each other at 3 pm, the English longbowmen rained arrows
from a distance upon their adversaries from wooden towers and crows nests purposely built
on the trade cogs. Standing on a lower level, sun in their eyes and armed with slower shooting
and less accurate crossbows, the French shooters couldn't do anything and were riddled with
arrows or they jumped overboard to escape the mayhem. Once a French ship was weakened
it would be entangled with hooks and swarmed by English soldiers, making short work of
the defenders and capturing the ship, among which were the Christopher and the Edward,
two English royal vessels recently taken by the French. The Genoese galleys, who had protested
the approach to the battle, fled swiftly when the situation turned sour for the French. After four hours of fighting, the French front
line had sunk or been captured and the English advanced upon the smaller vessels of the second
line, gaining an even greater advantage. At the same time, many flemish boats set sail
from local ports and attacked the French lines from behind: it was a complete disaster for
the Valois fleet. By nightfall, the battle ended: the French had lost either to the English
or to the sea 190 vessels, with only 23 managing to escape during the night. No quarter was
given to the captives and many Frenchmen drowned or were killed by the locals on the shore:
the loss of life was between 16.000 and 18.000 men, and it is said that only Philip VI’s
jester dared to inform him of the disaster. The English lost only a few ships, but the
loss of men was quite substantial. The English victory was crushing for French
morale. The French Army had campaigned in the Schlecht Valley in early 1340 against
the Count of Hainaut and Flemish rebels and now had to move to Arras to cover the entrances
to the French kingdom. Edward decided to attack northern France in a two pronged attack with
his Flemish and Imperial allies: the king himself would lead the bigger contingent to
Tournai and besiege it, while a second army placed under the command of Robert d’Artois
would be sent to Saint-Omer, as it was believed he still had many allies in the region. D’Artois arrived in the vicinity of Saint-Omer
on the 16th of July, but he had been preceded the previous day by Eudes, Duke of Burgundy
and Count of Arras. The Duke reinforced the town and would be followed a few days later
by the Count of Armagnac, bringing the number of the defenders up to 3000 men at arms and
a few thousand militias. Robert d’Artois was accompanied by 1000 longbowmen, 10 to
15 thousand poorly-disciplined Flemings and a few hundred men at arms, who razed the town
of Arques and made camp there. By the 26th Robert knew that the main French army was
approaching so he offered battle to the garrison, hoping to draw them out. He placed himself
on the right wing with the archers behind him, while the centre and the left flank were
manned by Flemish soldiers from minor towns of southern Flanders, with a contingent in
reserve. In front of them, he ordered camouflaged obstacles to be built against cavalry charges.
The Duke of Burgundy had ordered to stay behind the walls, as he knew the King would soon
arrive, but after a few hours, a contingent of eager knights with part of the garrison
sortied out and attacked the flemish left flank. The French were swiftly repulsed, in
part thanks to the defensive positions, but once the Flemish began to pursue them they
regrouped and charged again, beginning a vicious melee that lasted all afternoon. Seeing this,
the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Armagnac decided to join the fray and they burst out
of the gates. The Count and his retinue of 300 heavy armoured knights smashed into the
flemish left side, decisively cutting them to pieces. The second line began to flee back
to the camp and was pursued and cut down, with around 8000 perishing. Meanwhile, the
Duke of Burgundy went towards the right flank where the English were positioned. Seeing
their approach, Rober d’Artois ordered a charge against the Burgundians who were surprised.
After the initial contact, the French men at arms were forced to fall back to the safety
of their walls, where the garrison could support them, but the Duke suffered heavy losses.
While returning to camp at nightfall after their victory, the English crossed paths with
the jubilant French who had just pillaged the enemy camp. It was dark and both sides
were too tired to continue the fighting so they just passed each other, where a surprised
Robert d’Artois could attest to the massacre and loss of the camp. The day after, he had
to follow his fleeing allies and he returned in good order to Edward. Following the Battle at Saint-Omer, the French
army slowly approached Tournai and encamped at Beauvines by the start of September. Edward
and his allies had besieged the town of Tournai from the 23rd of July, battering the walls
with siege equipment, assaulting the walls and raiding the countryside, but the town
stood firm. With his enemies in the vicinity but strapped for cash, Edward wanted to confront
his enemy, but his allies were less keen to do so. After some weeks of negotiation, the
siege was lifted by the 24th and the Truce of Esplechin was signed. Back in England,
Edward was confronted by his many creditors and he lashed after his tax collectors and
ministers. Breton Civil War (1341-1343)
At this point, the Hundred Years’ War transformed into a proxy war when Duke John III of Brittany
died in April of 1341. In the previous year, the old childless duke had promised the duchy
to both his half-brother John of Monfort and to the French noble Charles of Blois, married
to his niece Jeanne de Penthièvre. Thus, when he passed away, both Charles and John
claimed the throne and this made the ensuing civil war inevitable. The one who made the
first move was Monfort by entering the capital of Nantes in May 1341 and taking possession
of the ducal treasury. He then took control of the eastern part of the duchy, while the
central and northern regions were ruled by great feudal nobles and were out of his reach.
Generally, the duchy’s merchants and its peasantry largely supported John, while the
higher nobility sided with Chalres. The garrisons of the breton towns were confused about the
situation and did not know what to do, some opened their gates while others resisted.
By the end of the summer Monfort was in control of much of the duchy. The French king was
in the beginning uncertain on what to do, more preoccupied with preparing for the impending
end of the truce with the English, which would be extended for another year. Still, rumors
that John of Montfort would pay homage to the English king pushed him to have the Parisian
parliament declare the duchy in favour of Charles of Blois and he prepared for an invasion
of Brittany, thus pushing Monfort further into English hands, though no help materialized
that year. In Autumn 1341 a strong French army gathered
in the Loire valley and advanced towards the town of Champtoceaux, laying siege to it.
Montfort rode out with his retinue to relieve the city, but after two days of bloodshed
the Breton nobleman had to retreat. After capturing Champtoceaux, the french army advanced
down the valley until they reached the Breton capital of Nantes, where a short siege ensued,
but once the citizens themselves threatened to rebel, Monfort had to surrender himself
to his adversaries, who after failed negotiations threw him in prison. Charles of Blois could
then occupy most of the eastern half of the duchy, with many of Montfort's old supporters
flocking over to him. Jeanne of Flanders, Montfort’s wife, took control of her husband’s
party and treasury and retreated to Finestère, where she waited for English reinforcement
in spring of 1342. For Edward this was a great opportunity: as
well as opening up another front against Philip VI, Edward’s geopolitical interests were
served by getting involved. English trade, reinforcement and communication routes by
sea to Aquitaine went around the coast of Brittany, and a hostile ruler in the duchy
might sever those vital connections. However Edward had found difficulties to amass the
fleet needed to transport his troops, so real help only materialized in August 1342. By
this point Charles of Blois had besieged the towns on the southern coast of Brittany and
was encircling Brest, but the arrival from England of the Earl of Northampton and Robert
of Artois broke the siege. Northampton then advanced out of Brest and besieged Morlaix,
where a relief force under Blois arrived. On the 30th of September, in the outskirts
of Morlaix, the French cavalry charged twice against the English positions covered by forest,
pike traps and ditches, taking heavy casualties. While Blois’ attempt was unsuccessful, the
siege draggen to a standstill. In November, King Edward himself had arrived in Brittany
and besieged Vannes unsuccessfully, while many raids were launched in other areas of
Brittany, causing devastation and ruining French morale. In December a French royal
army counterattacked, reaching the English army encamped at Ploermel. Here, Papal envoys negotiated a 3-year truce
and the English king returned to his kingdom in January 1343. Pope Clement VI tried to
end hostilities by mediating a peace conference at Avignon the year after, but neither side
would agree to the terms put forward by the other and the war continued unabated. In fact, the war in Brittany continued as
Charles of Blois considered the civil war for the duchy as a personal war between himself
and Monfort and not a matter between England and France. During late 1343 English partisans
took control of Vannes and Redon, but the following year Blois traversed southern Brittany
and captured the important town of Quimper. This conquest, the many monfortist casualties
and the complete inaction of John of Monfort who hoped to return in the graces of the French
king collapsed the pro-English party, with many fleeing to the court of Blois. Edward’s
men could only hold on to Vannes, Brest and Hennebont. Battle of Crecy (1346)
1345 saw the first major English military venture into Gascony, with several thousand
men under the Earl of Derby retaking Bergerac and then defeating a French counterattack
in October. This action gave Edward time to plan and amass his forces in England. He sailed
from Porchester in July of 1346 and landed at the Norman town of La Hogue with a large
army, much to the surprise of the local population. This new theatre of war in Normandy was virgin
land heretofore untouched by the conflict, and because of that its devastation would
massively affect any taxation that the Valois king hoped to extract from it. In addition,
the destruction would diminish Philip’s prestige and hopefully goad him into an ill-considered
battle. Whether Edward actually planned to campaign in Normandy is a matter of debate
though, with some historians even claiming that the plan was to campaign in Gascony,
but was thwarted by unfavourable winds. Whatever the case, the English army rested for the
night and then set off at dawn, launching a blistering chevauchée throughout the Cotentin
Peninsula. Normandy’s rich countryside was intentionally ruined, mills, barns and orchards
were burned while barrels of wine were smashed or stolen - nothing was to be left for the
French. Edward III reached Caen on July 26th, but despite accepting the garrison’s surrender
his army raped, plundered, torched and killed without quarter. When the three-day sack was
complete, 3,000 townspeople were dead and the king began sending barges filled with
looted riches back to his kingdom. As a wave of terrified refugees fled before
him, the English king marched inland towards Paris. At the same time, Philip VI had received
word of the landing and was massing a large army near Saint-Denis. However, it wasn’t
ready for battle yet, and therefore couldn’t intervene as Edward reached Poissy, from where
he sent raiding parties out to burn Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain, within sight of Paris’
very walls. The English had shown Philip’s subjects
that he couldn’t protect them and began marching north again, but now the French army
began chasing them and only narrowly missed an opportunity to pin Edward on the Somme’s
south bank. After he managed to cross, the now campaign-hardened army of England encamped
in the forest of Crecy on August 26th 1346. Though Edward had managed to evade Philip’s
larger army so far, the Valois monarch’s vanguard was getting unnervingly close, so
his Plantagenet foe prepared to turn and fight. After a brief reconnaissance, a plan was devised.
As Philip’s host - the flower of Medieval Europe, slowly got closer, Edward drew up
his now-reduced forces on an elevated ridge between Crecy and Wadicourt which looked south
into a valley, daring the French to try and knock him off it.
Exact figures for army size are impossible to calculate, but Edward’s was probably
just over 14,000 strong - made up of 2,500 chainmail-clad men-at-arms and dismounted
knights, 2,500 spearmen and 3,250 light cavalry known as hobelars. A further 7,000 were England’s
lethal archery corps armed with longbows and armour-piercing bodkin arrows. Since the reign
of Edward I, every English village had been tasked with contributing men to the national
reserve of archers precisely for this kind of battle, and were legally obliged to train
in the longbow’s use each week. This force was divided into three groups. Two were in
front on the left and right - the former was commanded by Earls Arundel and Northampton
while they followed Edward III’s son - the sixteen-year old Black Prince - into battle.
The king’s division remained in the rear as a strategic reserve. All three had infantry
in the center and longbowmen on the flanks, while fronted by a series of pits, trenches
and stakes to deserve as a defence. Edward went among his men, inspiring and encouraging
them so that men who were inclined to cowardice became brave, whilst also warning them not
to plunder until he gave permission - as doing so would endanger the army. Morale and discipline
taken care of, the king allowed his troops to break ranks so they could sit, eat, drink
and replenish their strength before battle was joined. The king himself took up command
of the field on an elevated windmill near his reserve division.
Philip’s strung-out French army began its approach by late afternoon, consisting of
just over 30,000 troops - 12,000 mounted knights, 12,000 infantry and 6,000 crossbowmen. Since
the sun was about to set and the army was exhausted from the days’ march, France’s
Valois king intended to heed the counsel of his outriders to encamp for the night and
attack at dawn, when the soldiers would be better rested and prepared. However, a combination
of chivalric pride and Philip’s lack of control created a situation where he had to
attack. It was close to 6PM by the time Valois contingents began their assault.
First to advance up the ridge were the Genoese and French crossbowmen, who lacked their protective
pavise shields. As they went forward, a short but incredibly intense thunderstorm soaked
the battlefield, slowing them down. The English longbowmen had the longer range and as soon
as the crossbowmen were within it, they stepped forward and let loose a storm of arrows, slaying
a great number of their French counterparts and setting the rest to flight. Witnessing
what they saw as detestable cowardice from their fleeing skirmishers, the Count of Alençon7
bellowed “Ride down this rabble who block our advance!”, at which point the first
contingent of knights charged forward and unceremoniously cut down their own infantry.
This pointless exertion bogged down the knightly advance and left it struggling at the base
of the ridge. At this range the longbowmen loosed with deadly precision, slaying French
and panicking their horses - the latter helped by three organ guns which made a clamour of
noise. Though some of the heavily armoured warriors managed to reach the English line,
they were hacked to pieces by Edward’s dismounted knights. The first charge had been a complete
disaster, but the day was not yet over. Undaunted by the initial failure, France’s
mounted knights continued to mount charges on the English line, putting particular pressure
on the English right flank - where the young Black Prince was almost killed. Almost surrounded
by the superior numbers of his enemy, the Black Prince sent for help from his father,
who refused and famously stated “Let the boy win his spurs, for I want him, please
god, to have all the glory!”. After a while, however, the king did send twenty handpicked
knights to assist his son, who found that the Black Prince’s contingent had already
managed to repulse the charge and were now recovering before the enemy returned.
In a subsequent attack, the blind King of Bohemia John ordered his knights to tie their
horses to his own and lead their liege into battle. This charge began well, managing to
get past the archers, but they were then all cut down by the English infantry. The French
unsuccessfully charged fifteen times in all, each becoming more disorganised and hopeless
than the last. As the battle progressed, even Philip VI himself joined the fighting. He
was injured by an arrow and had more than one horse killed under him before the battle
finally calmed. Witnessing the disaster that was unfolding, one of the Valois king’s
vassals persuaded him to withdraw. He did so reluctantly, fleeing with what was left
of his army to a nearby royal chateau and then all the way to Amiens.
In the dark the English slept on their ridge, not realising just how much of a terrible
toll they had inflicted on the French. They had lost less than a hundred men, while Philip
had lost over 10,000, including 1,500 lords and knights.
Siege of Calais (1346-1347) and the Black Death
While Edward III’s tired troops were in no position to chase Philip, he had gained
a great victory and wanted to exploit it. After having buried the French princes who
fell in the battle, the English army marched north, sacking the countryside and the unwalled
towns, until they reached the town of Calais. Close to allied Flanders, easy to resupply
and reinforce from England and with a port, Calais was seen as the best gateway to enter
France in future endeavours: Edward began the siege of the town on the 4th September
1346, which was defended by Jean du Fosseux and Jean de Vienne. A great encampment was
built nearby and trenches and fortifications were constructed around the main pathways
to defend from French relief forces and to starve out the city, while reinforcement and
supplies arrived from England and Flanders with a huge operation of transport of food
and clothes. Small raids were also launched into the interior. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the French
attention to the north, the Earl of Derby, now Earl of Lancaster, expanded the English
control in Gascony. He then launched in September a three-pronged attack into the French heartland
- two to expand the Gascon border and another to sow confusion in Paris. Lancaster led north
a chevauchée that sacked the opulent city of Poitiers and other nearby towns, before
returning to his base in Gascony. Further good news for the English came that a Scottish
invasion - prompted by France, had been crushed at Neville’s Cross near Durham in October,
and the Scottish king and many of his nobles had been captured. The attack on two fronts completely paralyzed
the French state, unable to decide on which front to concentrate. The successes in disturbing
British supplies were minimal, and any serious military action was postponed. The siege of
Calais dragged on during the winter, with neither side being able to gain the upper
hand. The French managed to resupply the besieged men by sea, while Edward launched numerous
unsuccessful assaults at the city walls supported by canons and stone-throwers. Desertion and
sickness decreased the numbers of the besiegers. Philip raised his banners in the spring, but
it was only in June that he had mustered enough men to advance. In the meantime, Edward had
managed to cut off the supply routes to Calais, starving the city of resources. The French
wanted to attack through Flanders and encircle the English from the north but two vanguards
found little success in this endeavour and having the situation in Calais become desperate,
Philip moved towards it. After reaching the outskirts of the siege, the French army found
their adversaries to be too strongly entrenched to relieve the town: Philip had to give up
Calais. It fell on August 3rd 1347 - it would remain in English hands until 1558. In September
more small chevauchees were launched, but by this point, both sides were exhausted.
Following the glorious victory of Edward III at Crecy and his capture of Calais a year
later, the English who had once been ‘the most timid of all the uncouth races’, were
now considered by Petrarch as the most revered warriors of Europe. Nevertheless, such glory
didn’t pay Edward’s bills, and the war’s massive cost convinced the king to withdraw
from the continent and return to England after the Truce of Calais was agreed on September
27th 1347. Returning as a victorious conqueror, he celebrated the Crecy campaign with a tournament
including all of the monarch’s notable prisoners, displayed to all Edward’s subjects as a
mark of prestige. Over the channel in France, the mood of Philip
VI and his subjects was entirely different. In December, the Valois king was castigated
by his Estates-General in Paris for his humiliating defeat and wasn’t allowed to raise taxes.
However, the shock of defeat and prospect of capitulation to the English forced France’s
proud aristocracy into agreement - together they would fund a great invasion of England
to end the war for good. Orders were immediately issued and preparations began. By the start
of 1348 a new fleet was under construction and local officials had begun assessing towns
and villages for the coming levy - it seemed as though the full-scale war was about to
resume. However, an apocalyptic twist of fate was about to ensure that this would never
happen - the Black Death. The deadly Yersinia pestis, which previously
decimated the Byzantine Empire from the sixth to eighth centuries, originated in Central
Asia in the early fourteenth-century, proliferating east and west on the medieval silk road until
it reached the Golden Horde. Its Khan - Janibeg, besieged the Black Sea city of Caffa in 1346,
but the plague began annihilating his army and he ordered that diseased corpses be catapulted
into the city. By the time besieged Italian citizens began fleeing west by sea to Europe,
most of them were infected or dying. First appearing in Italy near the end of 1347, the
nightmarish Black Death entered France through its thriving Mediterranean ports2 and then
spread north like a wildfire until it reached England in mid 1348. It was the greatest demographic
crisis in European history. Untold thousands perished, from the highest noble to the lowliest
peasant farmer, the agrarian economy fell apart and the tax base collapsed. Overall,
it is estimated that a third to a half of Europe might have been killed by this first
wave of the plague. Many on the continent believed that the world itself was ending.
By 1350, the resulting shortage of men and money from the first plague wave stalled the
war for the foreseeable future as both realms tried to recover from the disaster. In late
August of that year king Philip VI died, leaving the devastated, plague-ridden kingdom to his
son - the Duke of Normandy, who took the throne as Jean II. If that wasn’t bad enough, a
fleet of French-allied Castilian mercenaries - which had been threatening Edward’s trade
with Flanders and link with Gascony, was beaten by the English at Winchelsea.
With the exhaustion of both English and France, back and forth diplomacy was the order of
the day, while at the same time Edward’s countrymen continued to intervene in the ongoing
small-scale action of the Breton Succession War.
Breton Civil War (1347-1353) In fact in Brittany the situation had changed
in favour of the English, as Charles the Blois had been captured and his forces annihilated
by English and Monfortist forces in 1347, but lack of soldiers and the subsequent plague
halted most campaigns in the duchy. What followed was a series of small conflicts between the
partisans of the Blois and the Monforts. On the 26th of March 1351 a duel was agreed upon
between the Blois commander Jean de Beaumanoir and the English commander Robert of Bamborough.
The Combat of the Thirty as it was remembered took place between the castles of Josselin
and Ploermel, which pitched two teams of thirty knights and men at arms against each other.
After a melee that lasted all day, the English had lost eight men and were forced to surrender,
while the French at most six. The motives for the start and outcome of the duel eludes
us, and the duel had little influence on the outcome of the war, but the event became subject
to a long and famous Breton ballad and is one of the better known episodes of chivalric
duels of the war. In 1352 a French army under de Nesle entered
Brittany and was confronted by the English lieutenant Sir Walter Bentley. The two armies
met near the village of Mauron on the 14th of August 1352: the English, less than one
thousand men, were located on top of a small hill with a hedgerow in their back - archers
on the wings and dismounted men at arms in the center: they refused to surrender when
called to. De Nesle, whose army outnumbered greatly his adversaries, sent his cavalry
against the English right flank while his men at arms attacked the other two units.
The cavalry charge was successful, cutting through the archers who fled and opening up
Bentley’s center to a double-sided attack. While the men at arms desperately held on
with the bushes in their back, the archers on the left repelled their assailants who
fled down the hill, creating an opening for their companions. The English center counterattacked
on the French right flank and forced the enemies to retreat, who were picked off by the English
longbowmen. The casualties were high on both sides but were especially catastrophic for
the French, who lost their commander and a great number of Breton knights loyal to the
French cause. Having heard of the defeat, Charles of Blois made an agreement with King
Edward: in exchange for being recognized as Duke of Brittany, Charles would pay a huge
ransom for his release and declare Brittany neutral in the war. Although the agreement
was not exactly kept, this brought Brittany under English influence for the following
years, but attrition between the two rival claimants remained.
The first chevauchées In 1353, the English king announced that he
was willing to abandon his claim to the French throne in return for all of Aquitaine ‘as
his ancestors had ruled it’, Normandy and suzerainty over Flanders. Jean II accepted
the terms at first, but reneged soon after, possibly having been playing for time. The
war finally flared up again when England began correspondence with the maverick King of Navarre
- Charles II ‘The Bad’ who, as a snubbed grandson of Louis X, had an even greater claim
to the French throne than Edward. Emboldened by his new English ally, Charles
felt confident enough to act against a hated enemy - the Franco-Castilian Constable of
France, Don Carlos de la Cerda. King Jean II had given him the great county of Angoulême
as a fief, lands which Charles considered his personal property. Hungry for vengeance,
Charles had the constable lured into one of his own estates3 in Normandy, where the unfortunate
victim was hacked to death. The Navarrese king then proudly proclaimed - “Know that
it was I who, with God’s help, killed Carlos of Spain!”. Jean II was furious that his
favourite had been slain, but that was overruled by his fear of encirclement by Edward III
and a disgruntled ruler of Navarre with a good claim to the throne of France. Aiming
to resolve the dispute, French and Navarrese kings made a tentative peace in 1355, but
it was clear that Charles wasn’t satisfied. Seeking to take advantage, Edward III decided
to resume military operations now that the worst effects of plague had receded. Also
at the start of the same year, prominent members of the Gascon nobility4 sailed north to attend
the birth of their king’s son Thomas. They brought bad news and asked for assistance.
Ever since 1352, Edward’s hereditary lands in Gascony had been under continuous attack
by the French king’s lieutenant in the southwest - Count of Armagnac Jean I. The incursions
had made such progress that, by May of 1354, Armagnac forces were encamped only a few days'
march from the region’s capital Bordeaux. The understrength Gascons needed help, so
the English king ordered his son Edward of Woodstock to raise an army and sail to southern
France. The Black Prince and his 2,700 professional
English troops arrived in Bordeaux in September 1355 and absorbed further 4,000 Gascon reinforcements
there. At about the same time, the French king ordered a general mobilisation of forces.
It wasn’t in time to save the south of his kingdom. Around October 5th, the Black Prince’s
army departed Bordeaux on what would become known as one of the greatest chevauchées
ever launched. Marching in three parallel columns to maximise destruction, the raiding
force went 100 miles south before swinging east, crossing the River Gers and entering
Armagnac territory. There, Edward’s army began mercilessly slaughtering every living
creature it came across, torching everything that would burn and smashing everything that
wouldn’t, to ensure that this land would not assist the French war effort for years
to come. His foe, the outnumbered Count of Armagnac, remained in fortified Toulouse as
his enemy passed by, watching as they forded two nearby rivers and arrived at Carcassonne
on November 2nd. That city attempted to bribe the Black Prince with 250,000 gold coins,
but he responded by ravaging its suburbs before moving on, reaching Narbonne on the Mediterranean
coast by the 8th. After desolating its entire outer city and agricultural hinterland, the
Prince of Wales’ army withdrew back towards Gascony, shadowed by, but not challenged by
2 smaller French armies5. Whilst only suffering minor casualties, this great raid had destroyed
over 500 settlements, drastically reduced Jean II’s tax revenue and doomed his military
reputation. With his soldiers billeted along Gascony’s
northern marches6, the Black Prince occupied the winter with administrative and governmental
matters in the duchy, dealing with friendly feudals and internal disputes within the Gascon
lands. While he was doing this, both sides embarked on small-scale military expeditions,
taking and retaking castles - the French are said to have retaken 30 fortifications during
this time. The level of success that the first chevauchée enjoyed and the fresh reinforcements
from England7 and from new allies in north Gascony made it clear that a second assault
into the French lands would be undertaken. The prince departed northeast from Bergerac
with his army on August 4th 1356, arriving first at Perigueux and then Ramefort, Brantome,
Quisser, Nontron, Rochechouart and Lesterps, all within 10 days of setting off. Despite
once again leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake, when the Black Prince’s army
reached Bellec on August 16th it was ordered to do no damage at all, as it belonged to
the noble related to the English royal family. After leaving Bellec, the English started
to encounter more French resistance, as the population began to fight back. Nevertheless,
on the 24th Edward reached Issoudun but failed to take the fortified city, moving on after
razing its suburbs. Four days later, as the army was nearing Vierzon, a flying column
of 200 raiders skirmished with a French reconnaissance party and took a few prisoners. From them
they learned that, to the north, Jean II was rallying a massive army and was about to march
against the Black Prince. To see why Jean had been delayed so much we’ll
have to turn back the clock a bit to early 1356, where events in the north of France
were considerably impacting the situation. Since his tenuous peace with the French king,
Charles the Bad had managed to pry even more concessions from the monarch by intentionally
spreading rumours that he was going to flee to Edward III, thereby increasing Jean’s
desperation to keep him in line. However, this time the Navarrese king pushed his luck
too far, as his amiability with the French ‘Dauphin’ Charles, made king Jean paranoid
that they were plotting to overthrow him. So, in April 1356 the French king stormed
into Rouen with his men, beheaded four supposed conspirators and imprisoned Charles. This
led to an alliance between the latter’s brother Philip and the King of England, which
in turn gave Jean the excuse he needed to confiscate Navarrese holdings in northern
France. Battle of Poitiers (1356)
On July 12th he began trying to take them by besieging the town of Breteuil, a move
which locked the king in place with greater threats were materialising to the north and
south, as the Black Prince was preparing another destructive chevauchée, while Normandy itself
was invaded by Henry - Duke of Lancaster. This was designed to split French attention
more than anything else, and after resupplying a few of Philip’s besieged castles, Lancaster
went to Penthievre in order to continue his distraction tactics. To his credit, at this
critical juncture King Jean II acted decisively. After a month of his pointless siege of Breteuil,
he realised that events in the south desperately required his immediate attention, and concluded
the siege by paying the Navarrese to surrender. With that done, the Valois king marched to
Chartres and called his nobles to service. The Prince of Wales learned of this during
the three days his army remained in plundered Vierzon, and realised that he was about to
be chased. Knowing that he had to get back to friendly
territory as soon as possible, Edward immediately started withdrawing west along the Cher River,
but was delayed for five days in a siege at Romorantin and a further four days waiting
for the Duke of Lancaster’s unsuccessful attempt to link up with him. All of this gave
Jean’s army the time it needed to catch up with the Black Price’s plunder-laden
forces, and by the time the latter reached La Haye his enemy was only a day’s march
behind. Rather than coming up behind the English, Jean, using his better knowledge of the area,
decided to remain east of the Vienne River and then cross at Chauvigny with a cavalry-heavy
portion of his army. When the Prince learned he’d been overtaken on the 16th he tried
to march off-road to evade Jean, but an encounter the next day between outriders at La Chabotrie
made it clear there was no real chance of flight. The battle was inevitable.
Edward’s army camped for the night in a nearby forest. They emerged the next day and
seized a hilltop position about a mile in front of the French, who had spent the night
camped in battle formation. Compared to the great medieval hosts which had done battle
at Crecy a decade earlier, the armies facing off near Poitiers in late September 1356 were
small - perhaps due to the effects of the plague and war exhaustion. Edward of Woodstock’s
previously retreating chevauchée army was made up of just over 6,000 troops - 1,000
mainly spear-armed Gascon infantry, 3,000 English men-at-arms including mounted knights
and their squires and just over 2,000 Anglo-Welsh longbowmen wielding their infamous ranged
weapons. These troops were divided into three mixed divisions of 1,500 soldiers each on
the left, right and in the centre8, while about a thousand remained in a rearguard reserve.
Opposite him, the French king’s magnificent army had 3,000 infantry and 8,000 mounted
knights, but the majority were ordered to dismount due to Jean’s fear of a second
Crecy taking place. Only an elite contingent of several hundred remained on their steeds.
French cavalry and crossbowmen were on the right commanded by Marshal Arnoul d’Audrehem,
while manning the left were some Franco-German cavalry and more missile units under Marshal
Jean de Clermont. The majority of dismounted knights and peasant infantry were arrayed
in three central lines of battle, one in front of the other. They were led, from front to
back, by Charles - Dauphin of France, Philip - Duke of Orleans and King Jean II himself
respectively. As the two armies faced off, a French Cardinal
rode to the Black Prince begging him to listen, and was met with the frosty response “Say
it quickly then, this is no time for a sermon.”. The prelate argued for a peace for the sake
of all the Christian lives which would be wasted should the battle break out. Despite
his hostility, the prince was still anxious about fighting a pitched battle and was willing
to make significant concessions. Unfortunately, Jean II demanded unconditional surrender,
and so battle became the only way out. As the French commanders Audrehem and Clermont
surveyed the English position, they saw an unusual amount of movement and believed the
enemy to be retreating - it was in fact probably an intentional ruse. Not willing to let the
enemy get away, Audrehem charged with his cavalry towards Warwick’s left, while Clermont
reluctantly took the same action, heading towards Salisbury’s right. The former’s
well-armoured knights and horses initially resisted English arrow fire and crashed into
the English infantry, inflicting significant damage on the first line. However, when longbowmen
advanced up the river bank anchoring their left wing and began to loose volley after
volley into Audrehem’s flank, the attack turned into a massacre. French knights were
either felled by arrows, crushed by their own steeds or routed, while the marshal himself
was made a prisoner. On the other side of the field Clermont’s horsemen charged up
the ridge towards Salisbury’s division but were funnelled into a narrow open section
in the hedge protecting the English line. There, the bunched-up cavalry suffered terrible
losses before breaking through, and when they did were engaged by Salisbury’s dismounted
knights. After a fierce clash, the French were thrown back.
The French infantry vanguard under the Dauphin followed behind in good order along the entire
front. However, they too were forced to funnel themselves through the hedge’s gaps and
many were killed by devastating arrow fire whilst doing so. Those who broke through met
the Anglo-Gascon men-at-arms in vicious hand-to-hand fighting which lasted two hours, but were
finally pushed back with heavy losses and nothing to show for it. As the Dauphin’s
forces had been defeated, King Jean II ordered that his son be escorted from the field in
case of a disaster, but it turned out to be a disastrous move. The Dauphin’s withdrawal
convinced the Duke of Orleans - who led the second line of infantry, to leave the battlefield
with the troops in that formation as well. Advancing with a battle-axe in hand, Jean
II led the largest and final division - crossbowmen in front and infantry behind, up the ridge
towards the English. With the Black Prince’s archers running
out of arrows, the French king’s contingent closed with the English almost unscathed,
his most elite knights and the fresh third division outnumbering the nevertheless stubborn
and high-morale army of the prince. When archers ran out of arrows, they left their positions
and took up swords, knives and axes, joining their comrades in the melee. At the combat’s
fiercest moment, the Captal de Buch gathered 200 reserve cavalry and led them in a wide
swinging arc around to the French rear. He raised the flag of St. George and then charged
at Jean’s rear ranks. Seeing this, the Black Prince withdrew some of his dismounted knights
from the line, mounted them and had an impetuous knight called Sir James Audley lead them to
crash into the other French flank. The remnant of Jean’s army scattered in
every direction, a significant portion of them towards a marsh called the Champ d’Alexandre,
where English longbowmen slew many of them. In the chaos, the King of France was surrounded
by enemy soldiers who demanded his surrender. He refused to give himself up to common soldiers,
but then the Earl of Warwick rode through and formally took Jean prisoner. All in all,
while the English suffered minimal losses - probably around a hundred or two, the French
had lost at least 2,500 dead - including Clermont and many other nobles. Around 3,000 were also
taken prisoner, including the French king himself, who was led to the Black Prince with
full medieval honour. Treaty of Bretigny (1360) and end of Edwardian
Phase When the Black Prince removed his royal Valois
prisoner from France, he also removed the anchor which kept the ship of state afloat.
As military historian John Corrigan stated in his book ‘A Great and Glorious Adventure’
- ‘France was effectively in a state of civil war’. The three years following Poitiers
were some of the worst in French history. Rabid discontent with the government spread
like a plague among the nobility and Paris’ Third Estate even asserted its authority under
the provost of the merchants of Paris Étienne Marcel. This wasn’t the end of it. Demobilised
soldiers, deserters and common bandits from England, Gascony, France and even further
afield went renegade and formed so-called routiers - or ‘free companies’. These
bands of armed men roamed and ravaged the lawless countryside almost at will, serving
any who would pay them and sometimes even setting themselves up as robber barons in
their own right. They would remain a problem for decades to come.
Even in lands where feudal control was maintained, it didn’t do France any good. Extortionate
ransom payments paid to the English for the swathe of highborn prisoners taken at Poitiers
prompted a ruthless tax hike, and this finally enflamed the peasants into a revolt. A horrific
bloodletting known as the Jacquerie began in the Oise Valley, with peasants lynching
and murdering any noble they could get their hands on. The uprising lasted for weeks before
Charles of Navarre brutally put it down. Threatened by another large assault by Edward
III, the beleaguered Dauphin signed the Treaty of Bretigny in October 1360 - giving the Plantagenets
all of Aquitaine, Ponthieu and Calais in return for the English king’s renunciation of his
own claim to the French throne, in addition to a £600,000 ransom for Jean’s return.
When two-thirds of the ransom had been paid, Jean II was allowed to return to France. However,
one of his imprisoned sons escaped contrary to the agreement, which prompted the French
king to voluntarily return to Edward’s captivity in exchange for the younger Valois. He finally
died there in 1364 and was succeeded as king by Charles V.
Bertrand du Guesclin and Battle of Cocherel (1364)
The coronation of the young king was preceded by an important success. Following the death
of the last Capetian Duke of Burgundy in 1361, the duchy had returned to the crownland and
John II had given the title to his son Philip the Bold. Another pretender to the duchy was
the Navarrese king Charles whose claim was ignored. Insulted by this snub and harbouring
rancour against the French crown from his previous years of unsuccessful scheming, he
decided to prepare an army under the command of Captal de Buch. The army departed from
the landlocked nation of Navarre in spring 1364 for Normandy, traversing the lands of
the Black Prince. From here the goal was to threaten Paris and have the title assigned
to him. Unfortunately for the Navarese, the young king had an army to deal with routiers
in Normandy, under the command of the son of a minor Breton nobleman, Bertrand du Guesclin.
The man had risen to fame as a formidable guerilla commander in Brittany in the previous
year, fighting in the many small raids that had taken place there in the previous decade.
The French launched a preemptive strike against many of the Navarrese positions in Normandy,
where Charles was Count of Evreux. When Captal de Buch arrived in Evreux, he hastily called
to him the local forces loyal to him and English routiers, assembling an army of around 2000
knights. They marched out of Evreux towards the town
of Vernon, where they found du Guesclin with 1200 men on foot in front of a bridge near
the hamlet of Cocherel. Both armies set up camp and waited for two days for either side
to make a move. On the 16th of May, the French began to retreat over the bridge, probably
because they had exhausted their supplies. Seeing this and not wanting to let his foes
escape him, Captal de Buch sent a small contingent to blockade the bridge while the rest of his
Navarrese and Gascon knights charged the main body of the royal army. Having a numbers advantage,
de Buch’s men had the upper hand over the French men supported by Gascon and Breton
routiers. Suddenly, a Breton reserve that had not joined initially the fray smashed
into the side of the Navarrese, scattering their lines and forcing them to retreat, leaving
their commander on the battlefield to be captured. The victory came three days before the coronation
of Charles V and was crucial to constrain the power of Charles the Bad, who following
the defeat at Cocherel lost his capability to seriously threaten the French crown. Most
of his holdings in Normandy were occupied and peace was reached in 1365 after a small-scale
counterattack failed. Breton Civil War (1356-1365) and Battle of
Auray (1364) Meanwhile, in Brittany, the conflict was coming
to a close. The agreement between Edward and Charles of Blois had been trembling. Charles
was only released from his captivity in England in 1356, but in the same year, after the Battle
of Poitiers, much of his domain had been occupied by the Duke of Lancaster, who attempted to
capture Rennes but his attack was thwarted by a young Bertrand du Guesclin. The English
were followed by the young John of Monfort, son of the previous claimant John who had
died in 1345. In 1362 John came of age and swore fealty to Edward in exchange for the
duchy, to which he returned. This flared up the civil war up again in 1362, where Charles
of Blois besieged the town of Bécherel, which was followed by a short truce in 1363 where
an agreement could not be reached. Finally, in 1364, John of Monfort besieged the coastal
town of Auray. As he was losing support both in Brittany and at the French court, Charles
of Blois desperately attempted to relieve the town. John of Monfort fielded around 2000 men, many
of them from the English garrisons of Brittany and Navarese men who had come to recover their
possessions in Normandy. Charles of Blois' army numbered in the three to four thousand,
having received the help of Bertrand du Guesclin and his Breton companies. On the 29th of September
Blois arrived at Auray and both armies formed up for battle. The English placed themselves
on a hill behind the river, north of the town, dividing themselves into three divisions with
Sir Chandos taking command. Similarly, Blois deployed his army into three battle divisions
with a reserve. Before the battle, diplomatic talks were held to resolve the conflict. It
seems that Monfort was ready to make large concessions to his adversaries which delighted
the Bretons on both sides, but the English and du Guesclin insisted on fighting. Right before the battle commenced a large
contingent of Bretons in the de Guesclin contingent deserted. The English-Breton left wing clashed
with the French right, capturing their commander Jean de Chalon which caused his side to collapse
and crash into the centre, where de Guesclin was still attempting to reorganise his division.
Seeing this, the Bretons with Charles decided to follow their compatriots and left the pretender
isolated, an opportunity which was pounced upon by Monfort and Chandos. In the melee,
Charles of Blois was slain with his companions, which caused the definitive route of the rest
of his army pursued by the English reserve. The defeat was complete for the Blois faction,
with around 1500 men being captured including de Guesclin who was ransomed for 100.000 francs. All the Blois supporters submitted soon after
to the young Monfort. In 1365 the Treaty of Guérande was ratified which put an end to
the Breton Civil War. John of Monfort offered his homage to Charles V for the duchy, while
Blois widow, Jeanne de Penthièvre was allowed to keep her lands in the duchy for herself
and her heirs. While the conflict had ended for the English-supported faction, the lack
of a threat meant that the Monforts no longer needed the support of their previous guardians,
and after 1365 the English influence in the peninsula slowly declined. Castilian Civil War (1350-1373) and Battle
of Najera (1367) Following the end of the two civil wars, Charles
had to deal with the rampaging routiers while the Treaty of Bretigny was in effect. To do
this and to secure the kingdom of Castille as an ally, Charles decided to intervene in
the Iberian peninsula as did the Black Prince. To understand the situation in the region,
we must turn back the clock to the year 1350, when the King of Castile Alfonso the Eleventh
passed away. He was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son Pedro, who was under the strong influence
of his mother Maria of Portugal and the Portuguese noble Alburquerque in the first years of his
reign. Maria had been ignored by Alfonso for his favourite Leonora de Guzmán, who bore
him ten illegitimate children, so when Pedro ascended the throne Leonora was executed in
1351, with a number of nobles hostile to the Crown. The illegitimate children of Alfonso,
the oldest being Henry, Count of Trastamara, shortly rebelled a few times against Pedro
but were pardoned. In 1354 another rebellion exploded, led now by Alburquerque and Henry
de Trastamara, which was nearly successful and captured the king, but internal disagreements
among the nobles proved detrimental for their effort, as Pedro escaped from captivity and
retook control of his kingdom. In 1356 war broke out between the Kingdoms
of Aragon, ruled by King Pere IV, and Castille, known as the War of the Two Peters, officially
over Aragonese piracy in Castilian ports, but in reality, it was a conflict fomented
by the Aragonese who saw a moment of weakness in its rival and wished to conquer the disputed
region of Murcia. After an unsuccessful attack against Ibiza, in 1357 Pedro moved into Aragon
with blistering chevauchees, or cavalgadas, and occupied the town of Tarazona. After the
swift action at the start of the war, the conflict slowed soon down, where some short
truces were often broken by Pedro in low-intensity operations and sieges along the border, where
captured Aragonese towns had their population expelled and repopulated with Castilian settlers,
while Aragonese counterattacks were mostly organized by the exiled brother of Pedro,
Henry de Trastamara. In 1359 the Castilians were defeated at the Battle of Araviana, but
by this point, Castilian soldiers occupied large swaths of Aragonese land and a Castilian
fleet, with Portuguese and Granadan contingents, came to threaten Barcelona.
In 1361, after a coup in Granada had toppled Pedro’s ally Muhammad V, the Castillian
king was forced to seek a truce where he relinquished his conquests in Aragon. Pedro then moved
to Granada, where he reinstated his ally to the throne, and in 1362 he broke the truce
capturing by surprise the town of Calatayud, and once again Castille occupied much of western
Aragon and Pedro’s troops came to threaten Valencia in 1364. Meanwhile, the s and French
courts’ relations were bad: Pedro had married Blanche of Bourbon, cousin of John II, in
1353, but three days after the marriage he had abandoned her for another woman and imprisoned
her in a castle where she would die in 1361 in mysterious circumstances. Also in 1362
Pedro and the Black Prince had signed a formal alliance.
So by 1364, a plan was prepared by the French and Aragonese to move the many routiers out
of southern France and to create problems for the pro-English Castillian kingdom. Henry
de Trastamara would lead as the figurehead an expedition into Iberia, with the Breton
Bertrand de Guesclin being the one actually in command of the routiers that the expedition
was composed of. The expedition would have Papal support using the pretext of a crusade
against the Islamic remnant of Granada as the final goal.
In Autumn 1365 the mass of men, composed of routiers of all ethnicities and French noblemen
traversed France and entered the Kingdom of Aragon by the end of the year. They followed
the course of the River Ebro, destroying the countryside in the process. In February 1366
the vanguard commanded by the Englishman Hugh Calveley retook the Castilian-occupied towns
of Magellón, Borja and Tarazona, and by March the whole army traversed the southern tip
of the Kingdom of Navarre and entered the Castilian town of Calahorra, where Henry was
proclaimed king on the 16th of March. Pedro, who expected Navarre to close its borders
and had placed his army at the approach to Soria, saw his cause collapse and he fled
south to Seville and from there to Galicia. Soon after Henry entered Burgos and from there
he crossed the Kingdom arriving at Seville, where the royal treasury had been captured
and was used to pay off the many routiers among his ranks, who were dismissed except
for a select few, like de Guesclin and Calveley. The attack on the Black Prince’s ally had
taken the Gascon court by surprise, and no relief army had been formed in time. In August
Pedro met with Prince Edward and Charles of Navarra where an agreement was reached: Gascony
would organize an army to retake the Castilian throne and Navara would allow free passage.
In exchange, Pedro would reimburse the cost of the whole expedition and cede the Basque
provinces to his allies. In January 1367 a heterogenous army of around 10000 to 8000
men, composed of many of the same men who had participated in de Guesclin’s expedition
the previous year, traversed the Pyrenees and entered Castille. Henry’s position was
extremely precarious much like his rival had been just 12 months before: he had dismissed
most of the troops that had accompanied him and his treasury was exhausted. Many towns
and nobles flocked to Pedro’s side as news of his arrival filtered from Gascony. The
invader’s plan was to flank north around the main approach to Burgos, the old capital
of Castile, to surprise the enemies, but the land was barren and hard to forage on, so
once they reached Vitoria they found their road barred by the Trasmara army. After a
stalemate, at the end of March, the Black Prince moved south and encamped at the town
of Logroño, while Henry shadowed them to the town of Nájera. Going against his military advisors, Henry
decided he needed a victory to save face and stop the haemorrhaging of support in his lines:
on the first of April, he advanced towards his enemies and left his entrenched position
behind the river Najerilla to take up a new one behind the smaller stream Yalde. The following
day Pedro and the Black Prince moved out of Logroño and encamped at Navarrette. The invading
army numbered around 8000 archers and men at arms, formed up as follows: the vanguard
was commanded by a young John of Gaunt and Sir Chandos, where 3000 English and Gascon
routiers and the majority of archers were located. Both wings, approximately 2000 men
each, were composed on the left by the men of the Count of Foix, who was also in command
with Captal de Buch, while the right was led by the Count of Armagnac and Lord of d'Albret
at the head of their retinues. Finally, the main body under the Black Prince himself numbered
in the 3000 and was composed of Gascon and English knights, other routiers, and companies
of Navarrese and Majorcans, Pedro’s loyalists, Castilian defectors and Aragonese outcasts. The Castilian army was only around 4500 men,
of which 1000 were French and Breton men at arms under de Guesclin and other French routiers.
Similarly to his opponent, the Trastamaran army had a vanguard with the French men at
arms accompanied by the best Castilian knights who fought dismounted and a handful of missile
troops and mustered recruits. Right behind it was the main body under Henry composed
of around 1500 Iberian men at arms and infantry. A group of 1000 light cavalry was placed on
the left flank, while the right wing was composed of another 1000 men from Aragon under the
Count of Denia, cousin of King Pere. On the third of April, at dawn, the Black
Prince marched his army out of Navarette. Instead of taking the main road as his opponents
expected, Edward went north around a steep ridge and fell upon his unprepared enemies
from a position that took them by surprise. The first to react to this was de Guesclin,
who in good order managed to reposition his men to confront the enemies. While his contingent
performed the manoeuvre with ease, most of the Castilian infantry and part of the light
cavalry began to flee. Seeing this, the Breton commander ordered them to charge out of their
position and they clashed against the English vanguard, where the fresher defenders found
initial success, but soon their adversaries found their footing and the battle devolved
into a fierce melee. The Castilian left under Don Tello, brother of Henry, tried to come
to the rescue of their companions but they were met by the arrows of the enemy right
flank - the unarmoured horses were cut down by the hail of missiles and the attack became
first a retreat and then a complete rout. Henry tried the same with the remaining cavalry,
first trice against the English left, and then against the main body where their horses
fell. At the same time, the wings of Edward’s army fell upon the Trastamaran vanguard. Isolated,
the different parts of the army were crushed, while the main Castilian body who did not
participate in the battle was then attacked, routed and massacred as they attempted to
flee. The defeat of Henry was total and around half of his army was killed, while the English
only suffered light casualties. Most of the French-Castilian command was taken captive,
who were nearly hunted for their ransom, but not Henry himself, who managed to flee to
France. Following the victory, Pedro swiftly reoccupied
the Kingdom of Castile, but he continuously delayed the cession of the Basque provinces
and was unable to reimburse the Duke of Gascony, which crippled the Gascon finances for decades
since much of the sums for the invasion had been anticipated by Edward himself: he could
do little but return home by the end of the summer. It did not take long for the French
court to resupply Henry with arms and already in September 1367 he traversed the Pyrenees
with 500 men at arms and on the 26th he reentered the Kingdom, where many nobles flocked to
him, either previous supporters or new enemies of Pedro who had suffered his vengeful wrath.
He reoccupied Castile proper and Leon and by the end of April 1368, he laid siege to
the capital Toledo. Pedro retreated with his army to the valley of Guadalquivir, close
to his allies in Granada and Portugal, where he unsuccessfully besieges the town of Cordoba,
supporter of the Trastamara cause. In winter 1369 Henry was once again joined by de Guesclin
at Toledo, while Pedro was forced to relieve the besieged capital: he moved north to join
up with his loyalist in Leon and then east. He was surprised by the forces of Henry and
de Geusclin near the Castle of Montiel on the 14th of March 1369, where his forces were
routed and he barricaded himself in the castle with few followers. Here he attempted to bribe
de Guesclin to switch sides and join him, but instead the Breton led the king out of
the castle and into his camp, where he was accompanied into a tent and met face to face
with his half brother. The two pretenders began to wrestle each other with their knives
which ended when Henry killed his brother. Henry could be crowned king of Casile. In
exchange for the help received, he would support the French fleet in the Atlantic with his
own and remained loyal to the French in their cause. While the Civil War between the two
half brothers finished, Henry still had to subdue internal rebels, especially in Galicia,
and he had to fend off his position against a number of pretenders, such as the King of
Portugal Ferdinand I who attacked with Aragon in 1369-70 and in 1372-73, and John of Gaunt,
brother of the Black Prince, who married Pedro’s eldest daughter Costanza to claim the throne
of Castille in 1371, but this had the effect of strengthening the alliance between France
and the Trastamaras. The conflict continued between Castille against Portugal and Navarre
up until 1373, while the peace of Almazan which ended the conflict with Aragon was signed
in 1375. Start of Caroline Phase
By the time Edward returned to Bordeaux in the late 1360s, he was growing ill from a
disease contracted in Spain, and his direct rule in Aquitaine was creating discontent
among long-time English subjects, not only the lands gained at Bretigny. To pay for his
military campaigns and the court of Bordeaux, Aquitaine’s overlord had been imposing harsh
taxes for years, but when he declared yet another fouage - or ‘hearth tax’ in 1368,
some of the highest feudal lords in the realm revolted, petitioning Charles V for assistance
- it was the chance he had been waiting for. Technically Charles no longer had sovereignty
over Aquitaine, but used a loophole in the Treaty of Bretigny as an excuse to receive
the discontented nobles and again formally confiscate English possessions in France during
late 1369. Despite attempted peace overtures by Edward III, Charles V was eager for revenge
and the war was back on. The French attacked immediately, seizing the thinly defended counties
of Ponthieu and Rouergue with new tactics - smaller, mobile contingents of soldiers
replaced the large, massed armies which had been defeated at Crecy and Poitiers. Charles
V also commanded that his generals refuse battle with the English, wary of suffering
the bitter defeats of the 1340s and 1350s again.
Battle of Pontvallain (1370) and Siege of Limoges (1370)
As Aquitaine’s unwieldy new borders were being attacked, Edward III’s son John of
Gaunt launched a limited chevauchée in Normandy before withdrawing back to Calais not long
after. In the following year - 1370, a notorious captain called Sir Robert Knolles was contracted
to lead 4,000 troops to do the same thing. The English columns, composed of different
companies of English routiers, set out on a devastating raid from Calais in August and,
from there, devastated northern France before approaching Paris from the southeast. Again,
Charles V restrained his knights from meeting the English in open battle and realising he
needed a military leader with whom he saw eye to eye. France’s Valois king made the
pragmatic Breton routier captain Bertrand de Guesclin the new Constable of France. The
English then split up into two columns: one began to pillage in lower Normandy while the
others remained south of Paris until they again met up around Vendôme and Tour where
they idled, attempting to coordinate with other English routiers. Bertrand de Guesclin
quickly made a base at Caen and raised a force to meet Knolles’ 4,000, while another army
formed up at Vendôme under Marshal Sancerre. Bickering among the English officers on where
to winter broke the army up, as Knolles, with the greater contingent headed for Brittany,
while the rest split up into three smaller parts. But it was too late: unbeknownst to
the English, on the first of December, Guesclin had marched out of Caen and swiftly reached
Le Mans on the third, while simultaneously the army at Vendôme approached from the east. Hearing of the English positions, the Breton
ordered a night march even though his men were exhausted, and at the dawn of the fourth
of December, the French army, numbering in the 4000, reached the village of Pontvallain.
Here, they ambushed one of the English contingents under the command of Sir Grandison, completely
unaware of the enemy's position. Grandison and some of his men tried to form a line and
move north to a more defensive position, but they were caught and overwhelmed by 300 French
dismounted men at arms after a bloody melee. Most of Grandison’s contingent, numbering
between 600 to 1200, were either killed or captured. A second English contingent under
Sir Fitzwalter headed south to the fortified Abbey of Vaas. Beneath its walls, Fitzwalter
was assaulted by Sancerre’s army coming from the east, who were soon joined by Guescelin’s
vanguard. After a day of fighting, the French defeated their enemies and stormed the abbey,
massacring its defenders. Knolles and the fourth English contingent managed to enter
Brittanny unscathed with their loot, but when they attempted to return to England in the
spring, they were harassed by French cavalrymen, while the survivors of the Battles of Pontvallain
and Vaas were pursued into English-held Aquitaine. The victory at Pontvallain gave a great morale
boost to the French, who had finally defeated the English in a pitched battle.
In the south, French forces under Charles V’s brother, the Duke of Anjou, continued
the English disaster by capturing Agenais, Limousin and Buzac, with many local lords
defecting from their Plantagenet overlords and going over to the Valois. The now-ailing
Black Prince was livid about the treachery of his lords and reacted violently when the
bishop of Limoges - his own son’s godfather - betrayed the town to the French.
Three weeks after the French army had left Limoges, he marched there, and a five-day
siege commanded by his brother John of Gaunt began. It was noted that part of the wall
was built upon softer limestone, so mines were excavated underground to reach the wall.
The defenders tried to dig their own counter-mines and managed to enter the enemy mines, but
here they were beaten back in hand-to-hand combat. On the 19th of September 1370, the
timber supporting the English mine was set ablaze, causing the mine to collapse and,
with it, the wall laying upon it. The attacker seized the opportunity and the city was stormed
and brutally sacked, causing significant damage to the town.
Sickly and demoralised by the death of his eldest son, the Black Prince went home to
England in 1371 a tired man, leaving John of Gaunt in charge of Aquitaine. Meanwhile,
Du Guescelin and other French commanders spent 1371 securing the many castles that were occupied
by English garrisons following the chevauchées of the previous years and continued the campaign
against the English positions in the south-west, while John of Gaunt recaptured some towns
in Perigord. England’s position in France was plagued by disastrous finances and the
loss of some of their best commanders, such as the Earl of Warwick and Sir Chandos, who
died, and Captal de Buch, who was captured the following year. In late 1371, Limoges
submitted to Charles the Fifth, although the province remained under the control of English
routiers, while in 1372, Bertrand de Guesclin and the Duke of Berry began the recapture
of the Poitou. Battle of la Rochelle (1372)
Edward III realised more help was needed, and so he sent the Earl of Pembroke3 to Aquitaine
with 160 soldiers in 20 ships, 3 of which were larger battle-worthy vessels with archery
towers on them. As Pembroke was approaching La Rochelle harbour
at the head of a coastal inlet, however, he was confronted by a smaller fleet of Castilian
combat galleys which were waiting for him to arrive. Castile’s ships launched their
attack first and came into close quarters with the outnumbering but outmatched English,
inflicting a few losses among the non-combat craft. Nevertheless, Pembroke’s meagre number
of archers managed to do their job incredibly well, laying down a precise rain of arrows
on the Iberian ships. At the same time, his spear-wielding men-at-arms managed to bravely
fight off boarding attempts by the enemy until dusk, when the fleets separated. Pembroke
sailed slightly out to sea and set anchor while the Castilians waited just off La Rochelle
until dawn the next day. The English were nervous - they couldn’t escape because the
enemy galleys were faster than their own ships, nor could they pass through the treacherous
shallow waters of La Rochelle at low tide. However, some Poitevin knights and their retinues
did row out to join the English during the night. Pembroke kept his ships anchored, not
expecting an enemy attack until high tide. However, the Castilian ships used their shallower
draught and closed on the English while they were still immobile, spraying their decks
and rigging with oil before lighting the fuel with flaming arrows. This was the end of the
battle in a complete victory for France’s Iberian ally - many English were burned alive,
most of their ships were destroyed and Pembroke himself was taken prisoner. English naval
superiority established at Sluys in 1340 met its end at La Rochelle, and a planned expedition
by Edward III himself was cancelled. Following the disaster at La Rochelle, the
English defences began to shatter: Poitiers capitulated in the summer, as did many castles
in southern Aquitaine, such as Aiguillon and Port-Saint-Marie, while La Rochelle itself
surrendered in September. Soon after, Thouars, the Saintogne and Angoumois fell to the French.
In 1373, the remaining English forces around Niort were defeated by the Constable at the
Battle of Chizé, bringing the last pockets of resistance in Poitou to surrender.
In Britany, nobles commanded by Olivier de Clisson had brought John of Montfort to ally
himself with the English again, but when the French army arrived under the walls of Rennes
in 1372, he reneged the treaty; however, the English had managed to create a foothold in
the west around Brest, and John did little to dislodge them. Losing their patience, the
Duchy was occupied by French officials in 1373, and Monfort left for England, leaving
only Brest, Derval and Auray in the hands of the English.
In August 1373, John of Gaunt led around 10,000 men out from Calais on the so-called ‘Great
Chevauchée’, laying waste to a massive swathe of Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy.
From there, he entered Bourbonnais and Auvergne, where the harsh winter conditions killed many
English, and finally, they entered Bordeaux in December. Nevertheless, the French did
not engage the English in pitched battle, instead harassing John’s vulnerable supply
lines and picking off any stragglers or raiding columns that strayed too far: only half of
John's men reached Gascony. This effectively limited the damage, and even
though the Chevauchée pulled Valois soldiers away from Aquitaine, by the close of 1373
almost all of the province was under French control. In the summer of 1374, a truce was
discussed thanks to the mediation of the Pope, which brought to peace talks which took place
in the spring of 1375 at Bruges, led by Philip of Burgundy and John of Gaunt. While these
talks were taking place, the war continued both in Aquitaine, where de Geusclin was mopping
up different English strongholds - Cognac among them, and the English routiers base
at Saint Sauveur was taken after a year-long siege, in the first siege where cannons were
a decisive factor. An English army of 4000 men led by John of Monfort landed in Brittany,
and after three months of slow progress, he managed to encircle the Breton nobility that
opposed him at Quimperlé, but as they were about to surrender, news came from Bruge.
A two-year truce would take place, and all hostilities were to be halted, while current
positions were to be maintained. Montfort could do nothing but let his foes go and leave
the duchy. After six years of war, English territory in France had been reduced to its
pre-war levels once again. Between 1376 and ‘77, the truce mostly held
between the two sides, although skirmishes in Gascony nearly broke down the peace talks
in Bruges. In England the Parliament of 1376 was called, where many of the grievances that
had accumulated in the previous years of war came to light, and a commission was set up
to make amends and create reforms. However, the demands of the Parliament were overturned
by John of Gaunt in the Parliament of the following year, becoming increasingly unpopular
with the population. As the truce between the two countries was about to expire, disaster
struck the English crown. Death of the Black Prince and Edward III
In June of both 1376 and 1377, England suffered a great loss. The bedridden Black Prince - formerly
the great model of medieval chivalry, succumbed first, followed the year after by his legendary
father, Edward III, who perished after a reign of half a century, widely viewed as a golden
age for the Kingdom of England. The successor was Richard II - the second son of the Black
Prince. Since he was still a minor, however, true authority would be wielded by a regency
council until the king came of age. Only days after Richard II’s coronation, the boy king’s
realm was beset by a series of lightning shipborne raids on its channel ports. From Rye in the
east to Plymouth in the west, the French pirates, led by a talented knight and admiral called
Jean de Vienne, used their dominance of the sea to viciously plunder and loot.
Simultaneously, the Duke of Burgundy launched an unsuccessful attack against the heavily
fortified town of Calais, where after taking a few castles, he was forced away by the inhospitable
conditions of the marshy terrain. In Gascony, the Duke of Anjou advanced in Périgord, retook
Bergerac and successfully conquered the towns up till Saint-Macaire before the arrival of
winter. The English responded by expanding their hold in Brittany and occupying Cherbourg,
in order to keep a series of strongpoints on the French north coast from where to launch
maritime raids and other chevauchees much like Calais had been used in the previous
decades. In the same year, 1378, the Western Schism took place, splitting the union of
Catholic Europe. In late 1378, the Bretton Duchy was officially
confiscated by Charles V, who accused John of Monfort of treason. The Duchy was already,
for the most part, controlled by French officials following their invasion in the previous years,
but this political action sparked the revolt of the great Breton nobles that had supported
the French up til that point, including the Blois. They recalled John IV of Monfort from
England, who, in the summer of 1379, retook control of nearly all his duchy without a
fight. As an agreement could not be reached between the French and the Bretons, the latter
formulated an alliance with the English, giving them free passage through their territory
to relieve Gascony. In 1380, Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham and fifth son of Edward
III, was put in command of an army of around 6000 men that was meant to reinforce the Gascon
holdings. He departed from Calais and followed the same route that John of Gaunt and Robert
Knolles had marched the previous decade. After a month, they reached the great town of Troyes
in Champagne. Here 4000 French defenders had been concentrated under the Duke of Burgundy,
who was prepared to give battle, but after surveying the battlefield, he thought against
it and brought his men back behind the walls. Woodstock moved west, followed by the Duke,
but news in Paris shook the campaign. On the 16th of September, Charles V suffered a stroke
and died, following the great Bretton commander De Geusclin, who had died in July. The French
army melted away as the succession struggle commenced in Paris while the English arrived
in Brittany without obstacles, where they besieged the French-held city of Nantes from
November until January 1381 without any success. John IV of Montfort was meant to help the
English, but following the death of Charles V, he came to an agreement with the Parisian
throne, being reconfirmed as the Duke of Brittany with the same freedoms he had before the confiscation
in exchange for a lump sum of money and the breaking of all ties with the English. The
lack of resources on both sides brought war operations to a halt. End of Caroline Phase
Thus, France’s political situation changed when, in mid-September 1380, Charles V ‘the
Wise’ - France’s Valois monarch who had held his kingdom together in its darkest hour
and doggedly led the reconquest of Aquitaine, died of an illness. He left the crown to the
eleven-year-old Charles VI, who was also in his minority. This situation gave the king’s
four uncles - the so-called ‘princes of blood,’ an opportunity to form a regency
council as well - the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Bourbon and Burgundy. The Duke of Burgundy
- Philip the Bold - was the younger son who was captured with Jean II at Poitiers in 1356,
and his dynasty would bring Burgundy to power in the fifteenth century. Unfortunately for
France, the regency also gave the dukes an opportunity to exploit their positions to
gain more power, and they squandered the carefully maintained treasury of Charles V.
Wat Tyler Rebellion Also England was rocked by rebellions caused
by high taxes and war exhaustion. In 1377 and 1379, two “poll taxes” had been raised
on the population, a fixed-sum tax on every person in the realm. In 1381, a third one
was raised, and when officials began to enforce it, peasant rebellions broke out in Essex
and Kent, which came under the leadership of Wat Tyler, a tiler, and John Ball, a priest.
After destroying documents and killing people who were accused of collaborating with the
Ministers of the King and John of Gaunt, who were seen as the culprits of the bad governance
of the latter years, the rebels stormed London on the 11th of June, where the lower classes
of London joined them. The king and his closest collaborators barricaded themselves in the
fortified Tower of London. The king tried to discuss terms with the rebels two days
later at Greenwich, sailing there by boat, but the rebels would not talk unless he landed.
The rebels had broken open most of London’s prisons and destroyed the property of those
seen as their enemy, including John of Gaunt’s palace. On the 14th, the king rode out to
Mile End to meet with the head of the rebellion. Here, their demands were known, which consisted
of the abolishment of serfdom, removal of most laws and taxations, the execution of
the officials who were responsible for the latest taxation increases, and the abolishment
of noble privileges, to create a society of all men equal under the King. Richard was
forced to accept these demands at least nominally, hoping to disperse some of the peasant’s
numbers. While Richard was out, 400 men stormed the Tower, which had its drawbridge lowered,
awaiting the king's return. The treasurer Hales and the Archbishop of Canterbury were
executed, as were many other officials, judges and foreigners. As the appeasement strategy had not worked,
a plan to kill the ringleaders was prepared. The following day, the king, with a 200-strong
retinue who had their weapons concealed, met with them at Smithfield, where the peasant
mob had assembled drawn up in military ranks. As the king asked Wat Tyler why his men had
not dispersed, he was met with more demands, including redistribution of land and confiscation
of church estates. During the meeting, an altercation broke out, which degenerated into
a melee. Tyler was wounded by the Mayor of London Walworth, and he barely managed to
return to his ranks. The peasants were about to shoot their bows against the retinue, but
Richard rode up and asked them to reassemble in a nearby field. The peasants, not desiring
to disobey the king, started to do so, but before that could happen, 2000 men drawn from
Sir Richard Knolles men and members of the higher classes of London surrounded them.
The rebels agreed to disperse and returned to their homes, while the ringleaders, including
Tyler, were executed, and the English government retook control of the situation. The death
of the leaders cooled any plans of rebellion in other regions of England, except for a
few events that were suppressed with arms. While the King and his government were once
again safe, the Peasant rebellion had the effect of reducing the willingness of the
Parliament to increase taxes, reducing the king’s ability to wage war.
Flanders and Battle of Roosebeke (1382) In 1379, the region of Flanders had been hit
by a wave of discontent. The rich towns of the Low Countries had for a few decades been
estranged to the war and had returned under the rule of the Count Louis de Mâle. However,
in the 1370s the economic situation of the towns declined, which brought discontent among
the artisans and lower echelons of the urban society. In September 1379, a revolt sparked
in Gent, which soon spread to the other towns of Flanders, either by local revolts or occupation.
Only in late spring and summer of 1380 was Louis able to retake control of the county
with the help of local allies, except for the town of Ghent, which held out. After a
few years of raids and counter-raids, in 1381, a harsh blockade of the city was enacted,
which starved the city of food and resources. In the region, nobles and knights supported
the Count while many neighbouring towns supported Ghent, creating a polarisation in the Low
Countries. As the town was about to surrender in January
1382, Philip Van Artevelde of the weavers guild took power and rejected the peace terms,
killing in the process members of the craftsmen guild and grain importers who supported the
peace treaty. On the third of May 1382, Van Artevelde attempted a daring assault on Bruge,
taking advantage of a local festivity, where they defeated an inebriated Brugeois army
and Louis’ retinue, which was followed by the occupation of the city with the help of
the local weavers guild. Following Count Louis’ defeat, who barely escaped the city pursued
by his adversaries, Ypres and many of the Flemish-speaking towns revolted once again,
cutting the blockade that strangled the city of Ghent.
In October, a French army was assembled. It was initially destined to attack Gascony,
but was soon diverted north against the Flemish rebels, much to the joy of the Duke of Burgundy,
who had married Margareth of Flanders, daughter and sole heiress of Louis of Flanders. The
French army, commanded by the new Constable Oliver de Clisson and accompanied by a young
Charles VI, was composed of around 10,000 men, 2000 of them Burgundian. Around 6500
of them were men at arms, 2000 pikemen and 1200 archers and crossbowmen. Accompanying
them was also a host of Flemish nobles and others from the Low Countries under Louis
of Flanders. Opposing them were around 30 to 40.000 flemish men, the majority of them
townsfolk with little to no battle experience, safe for a few hundred English archers and
German mercenaries. They were at Oudenaarde, where they had besieged this stronghold of
Philip for four months. The French advanced from Arras on the 12th of November towards
Ypres: they were preceded by Louis’ host, who attempted to take control of one of the
few unbroken bridges over the Lys river but was brutally repelled. Only when the French
vanguard arrived did they manage to traverse the river after a strongly contested crossing.
They then moved up to Ypres, which surrendered while smaller towns were brutally sacked.
Van Artevelde marched his army west to confront the French, and on the 26th of November, he
encamped south of the village of Westrozebeke, or Roosebeke in French. Positioned on a high
ridge and flanked by woodlands, the Flemish dug a trench and positioned themselves behind
it in a compact mass. The French encampment was just 6 miles south of this position, and
on the 27th, they advanced in three divisions. Once they were at the feet of the hill, the
men at arms dismounted, and as the morning mist cleared, they charged up, where they
were met with missiles and artillery. The mass of Flemish footmen managed to keep their
discipline in front of the advancing line of iron-clad men, much better than their counterparts
had expected them to. The arrows and cannon shot forced the French centre to retreat,
but the two wings scaled the hill and outflanked the enemies, crashing into their defenceless
back. As the side of the French centre began to envelop the flanks of the townsfolk, the
Flemish began to panic and broke their lines, fleeing through the French lines, while their
adversaries began to massacre them. Mounted soldiers gave chase to the fleeing Flemings,
and the few pockets of resistance that reorganised were brutally cut down. Once the battle ended,
at least 27000 Flemish corpses were counted, Van Artevelde being one of the casualties,
nearly the majority of them being crushed by their companions as they attempted to flee,
while 3000 others that were found wounded were executed. The defeat at Roosebeke ended the rebels'
cause, as all of the towns surrendered and were punished, either sacked or forced to
pay a heavy fine, as Count Louis returned to the throne, though under heavy French influence.
Only Ghent continued to resist, which provoked an English expedition which came under the
disguise of a Crusade against the supporters of the Avignon pope in the framework of the
Western schism. The expedition arrived in Calais in the spring of 1383, and they attempted
to besiege Ypres in the summer before giving up on the arrival of a French relief force.
Ghent’s resistance would continue for two more years when they would reach an agreement
for an amnesty with the new Count of Flanders, the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold, who
succeeded his father-in-law in 1384. The effects of the Battle of Roosebeke were also felt
in France, where emboldened of this victory, the King and the princes of blood curtailed
the power of the French town, which had rebelled the previous years against war taxation, and
managed to impose heavier taxes by royal decree instead of being agreed upon with the local
councils. Change of regimes (1385-1414) After a few years of truce, in 1385, hostilities
restarted. A direct invasion of England was planned in the late spring from Scotland and
the Thames river, and it was meant to depart from Sluys. The English knew this and prepared
a preemptive strike against the harboured fleet, but this had little success. The French
army under Admiral de Vienne arrived in Scotland, where he launched a combined assault into
England. The French took the border castle of Wark by storm while the Scotsmen watched.
there were disagreements between the two factions on how to conduct the war, as the Scots were
used to quick and mobile raids in which the main prize was cattle, while the French hoped
to take towns to lock down a substantial part of English resources for the defence of the
northern frontier. The disagreement provoked the split of the army, where the French continued
down the Tweed River and raided the lands along the coast down til Morpeth, where their
allies followed their allies home at the arrival of a large English force under Richard himself,
who himself did not accomplish much. The failed invasion from Scotland brought to the French
court the knowledge that the Scottish countryside could hardly supply a Scottish army, let alone
a French invasion force, so no more attacks from Scotland would be attempted. In 1386, John of Gaunt attempted another invasion
of Castille to claim his throne with little local success, but it managed to distract
the French court from launching a direct invasion against England in 1386 and ‘87. The English
also managed to find success in raiding French trade fleets. By 1388, both sides had exhausted
their resources and peace talks began to open up as internal conflict began to brew in both
countries. The political situation had changed again
in both kingdoms by the late 1380s as both kings asserted their independent rule. In
France, Charles VI embarked on a personal rule, dismissing the Valois magnates from
his council in November of 1388 and replacing them with a group of his father’s old advisors
known as the ‘marmousets’. His rule started well and the people began to call their king
‘the Beloved’, but on the other side of the English Channel Richard II’s reign descended
into a tyranny throughout the last decade of the fourteenth-century. While the king
managed to forge a 28-year truce with the French, his internal problems began to get
worse. This all came to a climax when John of Gaunt’s son - Henry Bolingbroke, was
cast out of England for ten years as a political threat. The former didn’t react to his son’s
exile, but when Gaunt died in 1399 and Richard II both extended his banishment for life and
confiscated his vast Duchy of Lancaster, the Rubicon had been crossed. Henry Bolingbroke
returned and landed at the Humber estuary in June, and almost immediately most of Richard’s
nobles deserted him, unnerved by the king’s actions. Richard - who had travelled to Ireland
to put down a rebellion there, was deposed and died a few months later in prison, while
the House of Lancaster became the royal house of England when its usurping patriarch came
to the throne as Henry IV. The reign of Lancastrian usurper-king Henry
IV did not begin well, and almost immediately rebellions sprang up to resist his rule, first
by Owain Glyndŵr in Wales and then three years later by a disaffected member of the
Percy family known as ‘Hotspur’1. As he was closest to the rebels, the king’s sixteen-year-old
son - Henry of Monmouth - skillfully blocked Welsh and Percy forces from uniting with one
another and then played a decisive role in the royalist victory at Shrewsbury in 1403,
charging his victorious division into Hotspur’s flank and winning the battle. It was just
a taste of the military prowess the young prince would display in the future. Despite
the victory, further revolts broke out during the first decade of the fifteenth-century
and Wales remained recalcitrant. Henry IV also began to suffer from numerous illnesses
during the later part of his reign which left him more and more incapable of ruling his
realm. From around 1407 onwards, governance of England would increasingly fall to the
heir - Henry of Monmouth, who even at this early stage was noted as a diligent administrator
and capable leader. As the new royal House of Lancaster was solidifying
its hold over England, their Valois rivals in France were busy destroying any unity the
French kingdom might have had. Two and a half decades earlier, twenty-five year-old Charles
VI suffered a psychotic episode whilst riding through a forest, and from that point descended
quickly into total madness, famously believing himself to be made of glass. This deficiency
on the throne created a power vacuum which would bring disaster to France. Louis I - Duke
of Orleans took the reins of government following his elder brother’s fall to madness, continuing
the war with England whilst also increasing his own wealth and power on the side. As the
second son of Charles V, Orleans had the status of a Valois ‘prince du sang’ or ‘prince
of the blood’, and was therefore among the highest nobility in France. The main victim
of this state of affairs was the House of Valois-Burgundy, Dukes of Burgundy since the
Capetian cadet house’s extinction. Jean II granted the vacant Duchy as a fief to his
youngest son Philip the Bold in 1363, and that son had subsequently been the dominant
force in Charles VI’s minority. Upon Philip’s death in 1404 the powerful Duchy of Burgundy2,
which now included wealthy Flanders and Artois in the north, passed to John the Fearless.
Jonathan Sumption describes him as ‘a short, bull-headed man of unprepossessing appearance,
graceless, awkward and taciturn.’, but aside from his less-than-perfect personality, he
was a man of supreme talent. John’s military experience was extensive, culminating in his
leading of the French contingent in the Battle of Nicopolis, while his excellent administrative
skills often led his father to rely on John as a capable deputy during times of need.
A bitter struggle for power and control over the kingdom began between John the Fearless
and the Duke of Orleans which quickly turned violent. The two men clashed on almost every
single important policy issue. While John supported the pope in Rome and opposed continued
war with England due to the danger it caused to trade in Flanders, Orleans deferred to
the Avignon Papacy and wanted to continue the conflict. Factions began to develop around
both parties - Orleanists, later called ‘Armagnacs’ followed Louis and Burgundians rallied to
John, with street brawls even occurring between both groups of supporters in the capital city
streets. This simmering tension finally boiled over when, on November 23rd 1407, the Duke
of Orleans was dragged from his mule and brutally bludgeoned to death on a Paris street by assassins
sent by John. Louis’ young son Charles inherited the Dukedom and, advised by the late Louis’
father in law the Count of Armagnac, swore an oath of vengeance against the Duke of Burgundy.
This started a vicious civil war between the ‘Armagnac’ and ‘Burgundian’ factions
which was to last for decades. After securing power in Paris by means of a coup d'état,
John the Fearless was besieged in the city by the Armagnacs in 1411, led by the Duke
of Berry - another prince of the blood. Seeking assistance, the Duke of Burgundy sent envoys
to Henry IV in England, promising territory in Flanders and other concessions in return
for aid. A few weeks later, 3,000 English troops under the Earl of Arundel ventured
to France and managed to break the siege before returning home.
The harsh rule of John the Fearless angered Paris’ civilians, and in 1413 the Duke was
forced out of the city, isolating himself in his own vast domains while the Armagnacs
secured most of the country. Unfortunately for them, time had run out. In England, Henry
IV passed away of chronic illness in March of 1413 and was succeeded by his son, who
was coronated as Henry V on April 9th as a snowstorm raged outside of Westminster Abbey.
The new ruler consciously transformed his behavior upon coming to the throne. From an
unruly and riotous Prince of Wales fond of wine, women and quarrelling with his father,
now-King Henry V immediately began conducting himself with gravitas and level-headedness,
taking his responsibilities as a monarch seriously. He gathered worthy, incorruptible advisors
around himself, kept household costs low, engaged personally in ensuring justice in
his realm and subdued lawlessness wherever and whenever he could. Yet, he also delved
into Christianity and became a religious zealot capable of extraordinary brutality when he
thought it necessary. When Henry’s heretical old friend John Oldcastle plotted to kidnap
him, the king had him and all of his followers burned alive. Above all, however, was Henry
V’s desire to regain the rights and territories of the English royal family in France. It
was clear that the new king would not maintain the truce for long.
Start of Lancastrian Phase In late 1414, a grand embassy was sent to
Paris to discuss proposals for peace, but Henry’s demands were extremely high. The
1360 Treaty of Bretigny was to be fully re-implemented and England’s stolen territories in Aquitaine,
Poitou and Ponthieu were to be returned. More than that, any outstanding funds from Jean
II’s ransom agreement would be paid along with an additional £330,000, the annexation
of Normandy, Maine and Anjou as well as overlordship of Brittany, Flanders, Beaufort and Nogent.
Perhaps Henry V was simply attempting to regain lost English lands in France, but such untenable
terms might have been intended to be rejected. Whatever the case, the French did indeed reject
them and that made the resumption of war inevitable. With his rejection the dauphin of France - Louis
of Guyenne, sent the English king an insulting gift, arrogantly stating to the ambassadors
that he would ‘send to King Henry, because he was young, little balls to play with and
soft pillows to sleep on to help him grow to manly strength’. In response, Henry stated
to his advisors that “If perchance they thought to lie abed with soft pillows, then
I, perchance before they wish, shall arouse them from their slumbers by hammering on their
doors at dawn’. With that, orders were sent out to raise the largest English army since
Crecy. 320 captains were contracted to muster troops in various regions around the kingdom
under an indenture - a legal contract between a soldier and the man he served under. It
specified the conditions and length of service, disciplinary practices, pay grades and other
matters, and was a sign that mobilising troops in England was becoming more professionalised.
Other feudal lords raised retinues from their own fiefs and Henry himself even drew warriors
from his royal lands in Cheshire, Lancashire and South Wales. Overall, the army which gathered
in Southampton was around 12,000 strong with a large archer contingent.
After dealing with a plot to depose him and executing its ringleaders, Henry V and his
invasion force embarked from England on August 11th 1415 in around 700 ships. The king himself
and his closest advisors sailed aboard a 500 ton flagship known as Le Trinite. The armada
reached the Normandy coast three days later and disembarked near Chef du Caux at the mouth
of the Seine River. Siege of Harfleur (1415)
Rather than launching a devastating chevauchée through the area as his royal predecessors
had, Henry marched to the strategic port of Harfleur and set up his base at the priory
of Graville, from where he expected the small garrison to capitulate soon. The town had
a ring of old walls, but its defences had been reinforced in the expectation of an English
arrival with ditches and wooden barbicans, and the local commander, the Lord of Estouteville,
had further preparations made by closing off the harbour with chained ships. The river
Lézarde had its sluices opened, flooding the plain north of the town and giving time
to Raoul de Gaucourt to reinforce the defences with 300 men at arms, bolstering the defenders’
numbers up to 400 men at arms, a number of crossbowmen and the local town folks who joined
it the defence of their homes. Henry took up position to the west of the town on the
17th of August, while he sent his brother Duke of Clarence, Thomas, to the east, but
the floodplains slowed him down, and he was in position only two days later, while the
English navy prevented any supplies from entering the town by sea. Henry summoned Harfleur to
surrender, but his demand was rejected, so the siege began. The English set up their
batteries, which continuously pounded on the defences, protected by wooded shields and
trenches. The defenders doggedly held on to their outer position as long as they could
and defended tenaciously the breaches created by the artillery, and during the night, the
breaches were repaired as best as they could. They launched sorties to keep the enemy cannons
as far away from the walls as possible. English mines, deep tunnels dug underneath the defences
meant to collapse the walls, were stopped by French countermines. The defenders also
managed to increase the water level of the Lézarde, forcing some of the English to fall
back. Still, slowly on the eastern side, the attackers managed to creep up on the outer
trenches, where they placed their cannons at point-blank range. By the end of August,
they managed to divert the river's flow, lowering the water level and depriving the defenders
of fresh water. By the start of September, most of Harfleur’s outer defences were destroyed,
towers and walls were damaged and their food supplies were running out, but still the French
commanders decided to hold on and repelled English assaults on the breaches in the walls
for two more weeks. Finally, by the 15th of September, the defenders
asked for a truce and for the city to be surrendered if a French army would not arrive to relieve
them before the 23rd. As the dauphin was still assembling it and it wasn’t ready to march,
Harfleur was surrendered to the English king on the agreed date - its 260 surviving members
of the garrisons and the other combatants would be kept for ransom. Still, the unexpectedly
dogged resistance of the small garrison had held off the English king for six weeks, during
which the English army was ravaged by outbreaks of malaria and dysentery, which eventually
killed or debilitated almost a third of its troops. Battle of Agincourt (1415)
At the time he was doing so, a large French army of about 20,000 men was slowly gathering
in Rouen under the dauphin, ready to intercept the English. Henry V wasn’t the only thing
Charles had to worry about. John the Fearless declared himself eager to join the fight against
England, but his presence was judged to be detrimental, as it would only cause divisions
in the army. So the dauphin asked the Duke of Burgundy to send 800 troops instead of
coming himself, but this insulted the Duke and he instead refused to send any assistance.
Throughout the entire campaign, the nominally ‘Armagnac’ French leaders would have to
keep one eye on Burgundy - it had long been rumoured that he was collaborating with the
English. Nevertheless, the delay at Harfleur put King Henry into a predicament. It was
late in the campaigning season now, but he could not just sail back to England without
achieving anything more. Nor could he risk marching towards Bordeaux as he had intended,
or Paris itself - the army was too depleted and an attack on the capital might forcibly
reunite the French factions. Instead it was decided that the army would head immediately
for Calais, so that Henry might tread the same steps through ‘his’ lands in Normandy
and Ponthieu that his great-grandfather Edward III had.
After garrisoning the newly-captured Harfleur the English army set out on its march, intending
to remain on the coast all the way to Calais. The trek started well enough and rivers near
Dieppe and Eu were easily forded, but this all changed on the 13th. As Henry’s army
approached the old Roman ford over the Somme at Blanchetaque, where the king planned to
cross, a captured Gascon prisoner informed him that an advance guard of 6,000 French
under Constable Charles d’Albret was waiting and ready to block any attempt to cross. Realising
that he would have to cross further inland, Henry pivoted right and marched upstream,
shadowed all the way by d’Albret on the other side of the bank. After managing to
shake his pursuers off however, the English managed to cross at Nesle, but it was already
too late. In the meantime, the main French army under Bourbon5 cut across the Somme at
Amiens and proceeded to unite with d’Albret near Peronne. The tired English, wracked by
hunger, disease and now almost completely depleted of supplies continued marching north,
and on October 23rd reached Blangy. It was there, as Henry’s army crossed a tributary
of the great river, that it witnessed a terrifying sight. Drawn up on a slightly elevated ridge
about a mile in front of them was the entire French army - rank after rank of magnificent
mounted knights and men-at-arms, a sight which led the English king to draw up in battle
formation as well. After a tense, hour-long standoff, the French pulled back even further
and took up position for the night in a blocking position on the road to Calais near a small
hamlet known as Agincourt. On the night of October 24th, Henry ordered
complete silence in the English camp, while the French could be heard rejoicing and celebrating
across the rain-filled night air. The battlefield which both sides lined up on the following
morning was an area of sodden, recently ploughed field in an area between the village of Agincourt
in the west, Tramecourt in the east and Maisoncelles in the south, bounded by forested terrain
on the flanks of each army. Henry V’s depleted army was now about 8,500 strong and severely
lopsided in composition, with 7,000 archers and only 1,500 dismounted knights and men-at-arms.
Due to its limited numbers, it was arrayed in a single line of battle. In the centre
were three small divisions of melee infantry, known as ‘battles’, with units of longbowmen
between them. The left ‘battle’ was under the command of the veteran Baron of Camoys,
the right was led by Edward, Duke of York while Henry V took control of the central
division. Even more archers were equally placed on both the left and right flanks, with a
significant portion in the woods on each side of the field. The archers were under the authority
of Sir Thomas Erpingham. All of the army was protected by a defensive wall of stakes and
caltrops, designed to blunt cavalry charges. On the other side of the field, a grand French
royal army of around 20,000 was under the nominal, but insecure dual command of Constable
Charles d’Albret and Marshal Boucicaut6, professional men whose relatively low birth
meant that they were outranked by high nobles such as the Dukes of Orleans, Alencon and
Bourbon. Their army was deployed in three lines of battle - the first and second comprising
most of France’s proud dismounted knights and men-at arms for use as a sledgehammer
against the English, while a line of mainly archers and crossbowmen were kept in the rear
- it was the duty of the nobility to win the battle, not mere bow-wielding peasants. On
both flanks a heavily armoured cavalry force of around 750 knights each was in the process
of forming up8, while more units were slowly trickling into the French army as time went
by. Having learned the harsh lesson from their
defeats at Crecy and Poitiers, the French did not charge right away and instead remained
where they were. It was clear to d’Albret and Boucicaut that while their enemy’s army
would only wither away with time, their own would get even stronger. Whatever its merits,
the impetuous knights and nobles of France chafed at this ‘cowardly’ strategy of
delay. Seeing that the French weren’t going to attack him, Henry V knew he had to make
the first move before it was too late. So, after conferring with his captains the king
ordered his entire army to uproot its stakes and slowly shift forward in an orderly manner,
supposedly shouting to his troops “Felas, lets go!” After advancing into longbow range,
the army once again hammered down its stakes, after which English archers immediately began
loosing heavy volleys at the surprised knights out in front. This withering arrow fire panicked
the hastily-formed French cavalry units and they now charged full-tilt at Henry’s line9.
Erpingham had the longbowmen knock an arrow and draw their bowstrings back and then commanded
them to wait. Then, as the French mounted knights - drawn from the very best horsemen
in the army came close to the line through the soaking mud of the field, Erpinham shouted
“Now, strike!” and his archers loosed at point blank range from the front and treeline.
The sky darkened for a second before hundreds of knights and their horses were struck and
slain by the dense volley of bodkin-tipped arrows. Those who did manage to get through
were trapped on the sharp stakes or routed back to their own lines. While the massacre
of the mounted charge was going on, a group of peasants and cavalry led by a few Burgundian
nobles looted Henry’s baggage train, stealing the king’s bedding, his crates of cash and
even one of his crowns. It didn’t affect the course of the battle until later.
d’Albret’s first line of infantry was trudging with difficulty through often knee-deep
mud at the same time, made worse by the preceding cavalry charge. A combination of the bad terrain,
heavy armour and having their cohesion disrupted by their own retreating cavalry left the French
vanguard sitting ducks for lethally accurate English longbowmen, who loosed volley after
volley into the almost immobile mass and inflicted horrific losses. Despite the setbacks, the
flower of France’s military might smashed into the thin English line like a tidal wave
and immediately forced it back before the equally stubborn men-at-arms under Henry halted
the push. While a vicious melee began at the point of contact, the second line of infantry
now pushed forwards also, but they caused a crush upon nearing the vanguard which prevented
most of the army from engaging and most frontline troops from retreating. Though the French
were suffering, Henry’s melee infantry was taking a mauling. In the right division, Edward
Duke of York was cut down in some of the fiercest fighting, while Henry V himself was almost
killed and a portion of his crown cut off. When the archers on the flanks ran out of
arrows, they charged in from the wings with whatever weapons they could find to assist
their own warriors. Shortly after noon, the French attack collapsed, and the English took
many prisoners of low and high rank, including the Dukes of Bourbon, Orleans and Marshal
Boucicaut. At that moment, someone in the English formation
shouted that enemy reinforcements were incoming, perhaps having seen the looters at the camp
earlier in the battle. With the amount of captives they had taken, it was plausible
that a prisoner uprising re-armed with discarded equipment, along with fresh foes might doom
Henry’s army. The English king therefore ordered 200 archers to go to the camp and
kill almost every single soldier the army had taken captive. With thousands dead on
the field of Agincourt and even more prisoners slaughtered in the din of battle, the terrified
remainder of French forces retreated. That night, King Henry V of England made the
captured Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon wait on his feasting table, before reaching Calais
and sailing home in mid-November. As Henry V sailed from Calais in late 1415,
he left a deeply shocked France behind him. With the royal army destroyed and much of
the Armagnac faction leadership with it, the civil war appeared as though it was only going
to get worse. Back in England, the jubilant king didn’t bask in his success for long
and immediately began raising funds, mustering troops, and assembling a great navy for a
follow-up attack on France, while at the same time depriving the divided enemy kingdom of
its allies. Aiming to heal the Western Schism, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund arrived in England
in early 1416 but ended up forming an alliance with Henry at Canterbury and denouncing France
instead. At sea, the king’s commanders crushed the Franco-Genoese fleet in 14164 and 14175,
leaving the channel open for another crossing. By the middle of that year, Henry had his
army together and sailed to Normandy, this time going to conquer it entirely. On September
20th the dominos began to topple as Caen surrendered after a short siege. No relief was anywhere
close because any royal force which might have assisted was busy facing off against
the Burgundians2. Next to fall was the great Norman capital at Rouen. Henry put France’s
second city to siege at the end of July 1418 and, after a brutal siege lasting over half
a year, its garrison finally surrendered. With that, almost every other castle in the
duchy surrendered and, by the turn of the decade, Normandy was under English control
for the first time in two centuries. Treaty of Troyes (1420)
This frighteningly quick conquest horrified both the Armagnacs and Burgundians. Despite
the latter’s covert talks with Henry V, they realised such a full conquest wouldn’t
benefit them at all. Realising something had to be done, both John the Fearless and France’s
new dauphin - the future Charles VII, agreed to negotiate. However, when the Duke of Burgundy
knelt before his Valois prince, Armagnac retainers accompanying Charles suddenly came forward
and hacked John the Fearless to death - revenge for Louis of Orléans’ death over a decade
before. Whatever the motive, it was a disaster for France. As Francis I stated a century
later when shown the mutilated skull of the dead duke - “This is the hole through which
the English entered France.” Wide swathes of the kingdom burst into uproar or panic
at the Armagnacs’ brutal murder of John, but when the news reached his son and heir
Philip in Flanders, he is said to have thrown himself on his bed, teeth grinding in grief
and rage. Seething and eager for revenge, the new Duke of Burgundy formed an alliance
with Henry V. The former would recognise the English king’s claim to the throne of France,
while the latter ensured Philip’s territories were enlarged and secure. This was the last
straw. Battered by the English invasion and tired of civil war, the barely lucid Charles
VI signed the Treaty of Troyes3 on May 21st, 1420. Henry V would be heir and regent of
France, he would marry the mad king’s daughter - Catherine of Valois, and their child would
be king as well. After capturing a few more towns loyal to
the dauphin, Henry spent Christmas in Paris before going back to England and crowning
Catherine his queen. While this was happening, Thomas - Duke of Clarence was defeated and
killed at Baugé during March 1421, a defeat which convinced Brittany to defect to the
dauphin’s reduced kingdom. In October however, Henry returned to France and took a few castles
at Dreux, Vendome, and Beaugency before putting Meaux to siege. It was there that King Henry
fell ill with his army but insisted on staying with the troops, which he did until the city
fell in May 1422. Though he returned to Paris, the king fell deeper into sickness and began
to take measures for the succession - naming Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester regent in England
while his brother - the Duke of Bedford would lead in France in the name of the newborn
Henry VI. England’s great Lancastrian king, perhaps the greatest in the country’s history
died at Vincennes on August 31st, 1422 at the age of just 35. The mad king Charles VI
finally died only two months later, and his son declared himself the king. Nevertheless,
all of France north of the Loire came under Anglo-Burgundian rule, while his son only
retained the loyalty of the south with a moving court.
Battle of Verneuil (1424) In 1423, the Treaty of Amiens was signed,
bounding together the Duchy of Burgundy, the Duchy of Brittany and the Kingdom of England
and recognizing Henry VI as the King of France. It was sealed with Bedford marrying Anne,
the Duke of Burgundy's sister, but the actual allegiance of Brittany would sway with the
strongest party in the following years. In July 1423, as the English were fortifying
their positions north of the Loire river and besieging strongholds loyal to Charles, an
army loyal to the dauphine accompanied by a large contingent of Scots and smaller Italian
and Spanish units under Sir John Stewart and Louis of Vendôme marched through the territories
of the duke of Burgundy to relieve their allies and to threaten Paris. They were defeated
at Cravant near Auxerre by an English army under Salisbury with the help of Burgundian
units. However, the French found fortune in the west, where an English raiding army was
caught and destroyed at La Brossinière by local Norman garrisons loyal to Charles.
In the spring of 1424, a contingent of 6500 Scottish soldiers under the Earl of Douglas
landed in France, joining the army of the dauphin. As the campaigning season began with
the usual change of control of border forts, in August, the dauphin's army under the count
of Aumale moved towards the castle of Ivry to relieve it from a siege. As it became clear
that they were too late and that the English position was too strong for a direct attack,
the Armagnacs deviated west and took over Verneuil, where reinforcements from Italy
came. Here, the English army under Bedford joined them on the 17th of August, furious
that the French had not joined in battle at Ivre as previously agreed upon. The English
army numbered around 8000 men, with a significant number of them being Norman noblemen, while
the French numbers were between 14000 to 16000, of which 6500 were Scottish archers and axe
wielders, 2,000 were heavily armoured Lombard knights, and some other soldiers came from
Spain. On a plain a mile north of Verneuil, the English
positioned themselves with a compact contingent of men at arms on foot, flanked by longbowmen
with their sharp stakes, while around 1000 lightly armoured men were placed in the back
with the task of guarding the baggage train and the horses and stop any attack from the
back. The French also dismounted many of their men at arms, but the Lombard knights and some
of the French remained saddled. To the surprise of the English, they did not position themselves
on the wings as customary but instead formed up in front of the contingent on foot. After
a short exchange of arrow fire, the Lombard mercenaries charged against the enemy. Bedford
had some of his archers moved in front of his lines to counter it, but the missiles
could do little against the superior Italian armour, which also covered their steeds. The
knights ploughed straight through the English lines, splitting the division in two as men
were either cut down or moved away to make place for the unstoppable force. Emerging
from the other side, the Milanese continued their charge against the baggage guard and
chased them off the battlefield. Understanding that he had to achieve victory before the
Italians returned, Bedford regrouped his foot soldiers and ordered them to advance. So did
the French and Scottish contingent, but the latter proved less disciplined in their advance,
and as a fierce and confusing melee began, the English and Norman men at arms slowly
proved superior. When the lightly armoured longbowmen finally joined the fray, the French
line broke and a brutal killing field began where many French nobles and all their commanders
perished around the ditch defending the town, as did most of the Scots, for over 7000 dead.
As the Lombards returned, expecting the French to win, they were driven away, while a few
important nobles, such as the Duke of Alencon, were taken captive. The defeat at Verneuil
was disastrous for the future Charles VII, as it has been remembered as a 'second Agincourt,'
and it forced him to rethink his plans to be crowned at Reims, while Bedford's prestige
was increased and he had the momentum for the rest of the year.
Siege of Orléans (1428-1429) and Joan of Arc
Unfortunately for the English, Gloucester’s blundering6 meant that Bedford was forced
to return to England for two years to put things straight, and only sailed back to France
in March 1427. He and Salisbury now started planning a campaign
to capture Orléans - the ‘Key to the Loire’. If this great riverine lynchpin was conquered,
the English could easily launch further attacks to knock the dauphin out for good. After capturing
more than 40 towns and fortresses along the way, Salisbury approached Orléans in early
October 1428 - at the time garrisoned by 2,400 regular soldiers and a further 3,000 militia.
A contingent of the English army under Suffolk captured both Jargeau and Chateauneuf to isolate
the city, while Salisbury encamped opposite French defences on the southern end of Orléans’
350-meter-long bridge. He began an initial artillery bombardment on the 17th, and four
days later ordered his men to storm the fortified gatehouse known as Les Tourelles. This attack
was driven away by the defenders after each side took around 200 losses, with the dauphinist
French being constantly resupplied with food, drink, and arms by the city’s women. When
the direct attack failed, Salisbury abandoned this approach and instead sent sappers to
undermine the foundations. Realising this was happening, the guardians of Les Tourelles
retreated deeper into the city on the night of October 23rd, destroying a small part of
the bridge behind them. The fall of this fortification seemed like Orléans’ doom, but as the aggressive
Salisbury climbed atop Les Tourelles to decide where to attack next, a stray cannonball clattered
through the window, killed one of his companions, and flung an iron bar at the Earl, slicing
half his face off. Incapacitated and in agony, he was replaced by William - Earl of Suffolk,
before dying a week later. The more cautious Suffolk decided on a prolonged siege, and
in the next week, the English began constructing siegeworks. At about the same time, Orléans
received some additional reinforcements from the southeast - the city was too large to
be entirely cut off by such a small force. The city’s defenders started bracing for
an extended engagement as well by burning and tearing down the suburbs outside the walls,
depriving the English of cover and winter quarters by doing so. Starting on November
8th, English boats began ferrying men across the Loire and constructing siege positions
to the north and west of the city. The French responded with a few unsuccessful sorties,
and to compound these failures, by the turn of December the besiegers had been reinforced.
While the northern bank siegeworks were being constructed, the English launched a failed
probing assault across the broken Loire bridge. The defenders responded with massive 26-pound
shots from a new bombard and by completing the levelling of their suburbs. As 1429 began,
Orléans’ would-be captors shifted focus to the now-fortified north bank with a number
of easily-repelled assaults on the Porte Renard in January. The loose nature of the encirclement
also allowed a supply convoy including hundreds of sheep and pigs to reach the city. As gallant
resistance continued, 200 men of the garrison slipped out of Orléans and joined a 3,000
strong French force at Blois. Having received reports of an enemy supply caravan approaching
from Paris to resupply the besiegers, they marched to intercept near Rouvray. However,
when the French and Scots under Clermont found the 1,500 strong caravan on February 12th,
their assault over the open country was repulsed and counterattacked from behind a ring of
supply wagons. 400 of the dauphin’s troops, mainly Scots were killed, and Clermont subsequently
withdrew to Tours along with a number of other commanders, certain of defeat. At Chinon,
Charles was so demoralised by the grand city’s seemingly inevitable fall that he considered
abandoning his kingdom completely. However, events many hundreds of miles to the east
were about to thoroughly rejuvenate the French cause.
Three years before, a fifteen-year-old girl named Joan began hearing voices and by 1428
became convinced she was being granted a task from God, delivered by the Archangel Michael
in addition to Saints Margaret and Catherine. Her task? To lead an army against the English
so that Orléans might be relieved, and to have the dauphin traditionally crowned as
Charles VII in Reims Cathedral, where Louis the Pious had succeeded to the Frankish throne
six centuries earlier. Through aid from Robert de Baudricourt - a pro-Valois commander in
Vaucouleurs, Joan undertook a dangerous journey to Chinon and then to Poitiers, where her
faith was declared true and her virginity assured. To test whether this woman’s extraordinary
claims were true, she would be sent to Orléans in an attempt to break the siege. After being
granted armour, horses, a special banner and supposedly finding a legendary sword, she
went to Blois and joined a gathering relief force. Upon her arrival, the deflated mood
among French soldiers and officers immediately began changing at her holy presence. Leaders
who had withdrawn from the siege previously - such as Clermont, or who had avoided getting
involved at all now rallied to the cause, inspired by Joan’s patriotic mission. While
the dauphin’s army mustered, the lull at Orléans following Rouvray allowed English
forces, who were aware that a relief attempting was incoming, to construct a number of formidable
fortifications - the Bastille de Saint-Loup to the east, the Boulevard de la Pressoir-Ars
on April 9th, the Bastille Saint Pouair on the 15th and Bastille de Saint-Jean-le-Blance
five days later. Notably, new English commander Glasdale created an external earthen rampart
outside Les Tourelles, making it into a citadel. Joan and her relief force set out for Orléans
on the 26th and, after a miraculous crossing of the Loire at Checy and bypassing Saint-Loup
without opposition, entered the city through its Burgundian Gate three days after leaving
Blois7. After resting for the night, Joan was eager to go on the attack. Because one
wasn’t planned for that day, she walked across the Loire bridge to the Belle Croix
stronghold and asked the English to lift the siege. Glasdale shouted back that she was
a mere cowherd and they would burn her if she was captured. Nevertheless, Joan’s threat
to kill all prisoners their forces had taken if her heralds were not released worked, and
they were indeed set free. Also, on that day, a lengthy skirmish was fought when French
commander La Hire sortied out against the northern English fortification at Saint-Pouair,
but was eventually forced back inside. This inability led the overall defending leader
Jean de Dunois - the Bastard of Orléans, to slip out of the city on May 1st and return
to Blois, where he sought reinforcements. While he was gone, Joan didn’t remain inactive.
She rejuvenated the morale of Orléans’ long-besieged citizens who crowded to meet
her and give their Maid gifts, whilst also performing military reconnaissance against
Glasdale’s positions to see which were weak and which were strong. Dunois returned on
May 4th with much-needed reinforcements, and shortly after an attack began spontaneously
on England’s eastern fort at Saint-Loup by 1,500 troops. Joan was resting at the time,
but when informed either by an angel’s voice or any of the other mortal voices in the city,
rode out as swiftly and eagerly as possible to join the attack. For three grueling hours,
Joan inspired her warriors to fight. Despite fierce resistance by the English garrison,
the French soldiers managed to finally capture and raze Saint-Loup to the joy of Orléans
people. Despite her jubilation at the victory, Joan of Arc wept for the 140 slain English
soldiers, who had died without confession. Still, the officers remained cautious, but
this was shattered when news came from Paris of a large incoming Anglo-Burgundian relief
army - led by John Fastolf. It was now clear that the siege had to be broken before it
got to Orléans, or all their bravery would be for nothing. On the 5th, French forces
crossed the Loire in order to attack Saint-Jean le Blance - an earthen fortification protecting
Les Tourelles, but when the English withdrew to the gatehouse itself, the defenders managed
to occupy the outlying position. The next day, Joan crossed the Loire again, pushing
the troops forward against the Bastille des Augustins. After a ferocious clash in which
the French had to use a cannon to take down a particularly big Englishman, they overran
the fortress. Glasdale’s remaining fortresses retreated behind the boulevard protecting
Les Tourelles. With divine favour seemingly on their side and momentum at their back,
the French attacked Les Tourelles’ outer defences on the 7th by escalade, but were
repelled at first with heavy losses. During the fighting, Joan herself was even struck
between the shoulder and neck by an English arrow, but fought on nonetheless. After going
off to pray in a nearby vineyard for guidance, Joan of Arc returned with her banner in hand,
motivating the French to a final attack in which they managed to drive the besiegers
from the fortification in front of the Les Tourelles gate. The Maid of Orléans called
on Glasdale to surrender but he refused. When he subsequently attempted to lead his remaining
troops across the drawbridge and to the inner gatehouse, the timber cracked under the weight
of so many soldiers and dropped many into the Loire. Glasdale himself, clad in heavy
armour along with many of his men, drowned. Morale inside the inner fortress crumbled
after this loss and the surviving English inside quickly surrendered. On the northern
Loire bank, the remaining English troops abandoned their siege lines and formed up in two large
battle formations, challenging the French to open battle. When Joan and the other commanders
lined up in front of them and prepared for battle, however, the besiegers lost their
nerve and turned to march away. Their army split, one group moving to garrison Jargeau8,
while another went to man Meung9, all the way being harried by French troops who disobeyed
orders to ride them down. After 210 days, the Siege of Orleans was over, the dauphin’s
loyal, the capable army had held firm and Joan of Arc was enshrined forever in history
as the Maid of Orleans. Joan pushed for an immediate advance to crown Charles, but the
French commanders that with the English still holding castles on the Loire, weren't yet
in a position to do that. So, in mid-June, the army, with an enthusiastic Joan of Arc
in tow, began retaking them one by one. Jargeau fell on the 12th, Beaugency on the eve of
the 17th, and then finally Meung at dawn on the 18th.
Battle of Patay (1429) The remaining English forces under Talbot
retreated north and united with Sir Fastolf's southward marching relief army, bringing their
strength up to around 5,000. While Fastolf, commanded of the united forces, preached caution,
he was overpowered by his subordinates headed by Talbot, who wanted to help the strongholds
on the Loire. As they were about to relieve Meunge, news of the fall of Beaugency had
reached them. Worried they would be trapped between the two French forces, they began
to march north. The French, discovering the English army's movement, prepared a vanguard
of around 1500 men at arms under La Hire and Jean de Xaintrailles and sent them north.
Fastolf learned that he was hotly pursued when he was near the village of Patay on an
old Roman road: he had to set his army up to confront them, most of them being longbowmen.
The English positioned themselves in a defensive position on a ridge, with the baggage and
artillery positioned on the flank near a forest, while 500 of their best archers were sent
in an advanced position to ambush the French vanguard. Once the English ambush force was
in place, a stag ran into them, which raised an alarm among the archers, giving away their
positions to the nearby French scouts. Because of this, Talbot ordered them to move
to another place, but before the longbows could take up position with their sharpened
stakes near the hedges where the baggage train was, the French vanguard crashed upon them.
The knights cut through their lightly armoured enemies before they could fire their deadly
volleys. Remnants of the English vanguard fled back to the main contingent of Englishmen.
Still, the French men-at-arms took advantage of their confused and unprepared enemies,
and hit the main contingent on the undefended flank, destroying and slaughtering anything
that was unfortunate enough to be on their path. Many of the English captains were captured
except for Sir Fastlof, who was mounted and managed to escape with around half of his
force: the English suffered around 2500 killed or captured, while the French losses were
negligible. The French heavy cavalry had finally defeated the English longbowmen, which had
caused so many defeats such as Crecy and Agincourt, dispelling the myth of the invincibility of
England's armies in the field for good. Such a great victory in the open field finally
encouraged the dauphin to accompany Joan of Arc and his newly enlarged 12,000 strong army
in a march towards Reims. There, on July 17th, 1429, the long-beleaguered son of Charles
the Mad was crowned as Charles VII in the city’s grand cathedral as the Maid of Orleans
stood at his side, holy banner in hand. This was militarily insignificant, but a propaganda
triumph. The momentous coronation of Charles VII at
Reims in the summer of 1429 gave England’s regent in France - the popular and capable
John of Bedford, time to brace Paris itself for an assault by the new king’s inspired
forces. When it came in late August, once again with Joan of Arc leading the charge,
Bedford was prepared and, after a few skirmishes and a brief siege, the French were repelled.
The momentum of Orleans had run its course and Charles ordered his army away for winter.
By this point in the war, Joan was becoming politically troublesome for the restored Valois
monarchy despite her role in boosting French morale in the dark decade of the 1420s. After
continuing campaigns on her own for a few months, she was captured at Compiegne by the
Burgundians and then sold to the English in November. After one of the most notorious
religious trials in world history, the Maid of Orleans was burned at the stake by English
soldiers in Rouen, convicted as a heretic. At the time of her death in May 1431, Joan
of Arc was only nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to save her.
Resurgence of France (1431-1441) On the military front, Bedford managed to
stabilise the situation by reestablishing control around Paris by taking some towns
and castles, including Château Gaillard and Louviers. This gave Bedford an opportunity
to emulate Charles’ propaganda coup of two years prior. On December 16th of 1431, Henry
VI of England was also crowned Henry II of France. However, his Burgundian allies did
not manage to make any advances as Philip of Burgundy had to establish control over
his newly inherited Duchy of Brabant. As small attempts of peace talks were made, which led
to nothing, the Duke of Burgundy used his ambiguous position to play the two sides against
each other and try to obtain the most out of the situation, signing intermittent truces
with the Armagnacs. In the following years, much of the military operations were concentrated
around Paris, where sieges and raids were launched against different forts. The French
attempted to cut the communication lines between Paris and Normandy and along the Normandy-Maine
border. However, all things taken into account though,
the war was not going well for the English, who no longer had adequate finances or manpower
to defend its 350-mile long line of contact in France, fund the modern war with gunpowder
siege weapons, or maintain its many garrisons. It was only through Bedford’s capability
and love of him among the Anglo-French that the lands were maintained. Despite minor English success in retaking
some rebellious Norman castles in 1434, the revolt continued to bleed the occupiers of
much-needed resources and their situation continued to deteriorate. Even more unfortunately
for the English, their most important ally could see the way the winds were blowing.
The dual-monarchy suffered two body-blows in quick succession during 1435. On September
14th the ailing Duke of Bedford finally passed away at Rouen and was replaced by Richard
of York. Worse still was the Treaty of Arras, signed on September 20th between King Charles
VII and Philip of Burgundy. This finally reconciled the feuding French factions in a settlement
which granted the Duchy of Burgundy even more territory in return for Philip’s formal
recognition of Charles VII as the French king. This political sea change had an immediate
effect, as unrest began to occur all over the English lands in France. Moreover, the
armies of Charles VII defeated an English army at Gerberoy, which allowed them to strengthen
their control over Picardy, and managed to capture Saint-Denis in the summer 1435 and
Meulan in September. Although the burial site of the French king was briefly lost between
September and February, these two conquests encircled Paris, blocking the most critical
supply routes to the capital, which saw its food prices soar: this caused discontent among
the citizens, which ultimately led to the start of a siege on Paris, where Armagnac
and Burgundian men joined forces. The Burgundianphile-Paris returned to Charles' hands on the 13th of
April, with the remnant English garrisons leaving the city a few days later. At the
same time, the Armagnacs made headway in northern Normandy, where the two important coastal
towns of Dieppe and Harfleur were captured. They were crucial for ferrying reinforcements
and supplies across the channel, and without them, the English had hard time launching
campaigns on the continent. The Duke of Burgundy attempted to take advantage
of the situation and invested the town of Calais in 1436, but the arrival of an English
relief army under Beaufort lifted the siege, allowing the town to stay in English hands
for another century. In 1437, Talbot attempted one of the last advances along the Seine:
after having secured some parts of upper Normandy, he recaptured the important town of Pontoise,
but by this point, English military policy was to hold on to their lands in Normandy
while the French slowly took castle by castle on their border or that had remained under
England in their backs. As Henry VI came out of the minority and began to govern in his
own name in 1437, peace negotiations in 1439 failed, and over the next few years, England's
position on the continent only got worse, and their operations in Picardy and Normandy
ended in failure, safe for the reconquest of Harfleur. First Meaux in 1439 and then
Creil and Pontoise - the last English foothold in the French crownlands, where the powerful
artillery train of Jean Bureau was put into good use, fell in 1441, as did Evreux; the
year after Gascony was attacked for the first time in decades while English, where Charles
VI relieved the besiege Tartas and captured some towns. The English responses - an attempt
to besiege Dieppe and a campaign into Anjou- did not yield results.
Peace talks and reforms (1441-1445) Because a group favouring peace with France
at any cost, led by the Duke of Suffolk, had great influence with the king in England,
the latter led an embassy to Tours in early 1444 for a conference.
France’s delegates were unwilling to make any kind of compromise, the deal was in reality
a desperate one for Suffolk. In return for an extendable two-year truce, Henry VI would
be betrothed to the niece of Charles VII - Margaret of Anjou, and England would cede Maine to
France. Though the peace came as a great relief to English civilian settlers in Northern France
- who were on the receiving end of increasing French attacks, it was generally received
with fury in England3, and served as one of the factors which made the Wars of the Roses
inevitable a decade or so later. As Henry’s realms started falling apart, Charles made
good use of the truce to embark on a series of military and monetary reforms which would
forever change the feudal France which he had fought so hard to inherit. The taille
- a direct land tax which had only been occasional until this point, became permanent and funded
the king’s changes. Feudal French armies had been hired by contract for centuries and
usually went home at the end of the year. Starting in 1444 however, only the poorer
quality units were discharged, while the better contingents were retained as the core of a
new standing army. On January 5th, 1445, the French royal government
officially announced the formation of compagnies d’ordonnance - regular units of troops supplemented
by bringing the highest quality bands of routiers and écorcheurs, many of whom were dismissed
mercenaries, to the king’s service. To ensure their continued loyalty, discipline and relatively
high moral standards, these new professional soldiers were paid monthly with the new revenues.
Recruitment of former freelance soldiers cut down the amount of banditry in the kingdom
while also making use of an untapped reserve of experienced manpower. Other, less reputable
écorcheurs were viewed as an impediment to peace, little better than the outlaws which
had tormented France for decades. Another vital part of Charles’ modernisation
of the French army was his integration of ‘modern’ gunpowder artillery, which emerged
in European armies during the early fifteenth-century. Particularly revolutionary was the development
of so-called ‘crumbled’ gunpowder, which didn’t disintegrate into its separate components
when moved and was therefore far more reliable, and far more effective. Other technological
advances including multiple powder chambers on breech-loading cannons meant that newer
cannons could have a surprisingly high rate of fire. Enter the brothers Jean and Gaspard
Bureau - sons of a merchant in the service of Charles VII. After being appointed to the
task, the duo regularised the haphazard and sporadic variety of cannons currently used
by inexperienced French forces. Proper usage for each type of gun was specified and a greater
level of training and professionalism was instilled into a previously relatively neglected
arm of the military. In addition, the brothers used France’s new fiscal strength to purchase
standardised, higher-quality bronze gun barrels. Larger bombards were retained for heavier
siege duties such as battering down castle walls, while smaller caliber guns such as
the culverin would be used against infantry targets.
Recovery of Normandy (1448-1450) In Normandy and the formally relinquished
County of Maine, it was becoming clear that the Duke of York and his military forces in
France weren’t going to dance with the conciliatory tune of Henry VI’s advisors. To them, it
was inevitable that more territory would fall if the French weren’t resisted now, and
so the garrisons of Maine refused to leave their fortresses - such as the capital at
Le Mans. This provoked threats of renewed warfare with France in late 1447, but the
garrisons did hesitantly withdraw from Maine in March 1448, further diminishing the English
position in now-exposed Normandy. Soon after, York was sent to govern Ireland as a means
of getting him out of the way and was replaced in France by his great rival Edmund Beaufort
- Duke of Somerset. The tension in Normandy finally came to a climax when the captain
of Verneuil - Francois de Surienne, attacked a Breton fortress at Fougeres with Suffolk’s
backing in March 1449. The town was badly sacked and its fall prompted the then-neutral
Duke of Brittany Francois I to ask Charles VII for help. Somerset refused to apologise
for his subordinate’s act and the French retaliated by quickly seizing castles at Pont-de-l’Arche,
Gerberoy and Conches by late May. France offered to exchange Fougeres for these towns, but
was refused. This made the resumption of war inevitable and it was finally declared at
the end of July. Charles VII crossed the Loire in August and
took personal command of the southernmost of four armies which now simultaneously invaded
the weakened English lands in Normandy. It was a total walkover. On the 8th, French forces
took Pont-Audemer, and Somerset’s other castles began to fall with alarming frequency
- their garrisons having been consistently reduced over the decades. A few weeks later
on the 26th, the inhabitants of Mantes rose against the English, seized control of a gate,
and forced the garrison to surrender to Charles’ troops. In September, Breton forces completed
their conquest of the Cotentin Peninsula south of the Grand-vey and handed it over to French
royal officials, while at the same time the Duke of Alencon took back the city which bore
his name, which had been beyond the man’s control for decades. On October 16th the king’s
personal force - led by Dunois, besieged the glorious Anglo-Norman capital at Rouen. Knowing
no relief was coming, Somerset surrendered the city in less than a week and was allowed
to march with his garrison to English-held Caen. So driven were the French to complete
the reconquest that their operations continued into winter, and they eventually managed to
recapture the crucial channel ports at Harfleur and Honfleur. By the time Charles’ offensive
halted, England only retained a small area of central-western Normandy around Caen and
Bayeaux, in addition to the Cotentin Peninsula’s northern segment with Cherbourg as its most
important city. In England, two of the most powerful figures
in the kingdom - Queen Margaret and Suffolk, raised a formidable army of 4,500 men and
the ships with which to transport them to Normandy. Sir Thomas Kyriell was put in command
of the force. He was a veteran of the war in France and a Knight of the Garter who came
from a family of middle-ranking knights which, for centuries, had served the kings of England
as sheriffs and in other similar roles. However, the expedition was delayed because of a lack
of ships and the onset of winter. Worse still, when the army learned that their second installment
of pay was to be postponed, they mutinied and killed one of the king’s officials.
Suffolk was widely regarded as the cause of the unrest through maladministration, and
when he attempted to flee across the channel to escape his enemies he was assassinated
in May of 1450. Despite a false start to the campaign, Kyriell
and his soldiers sailed from Portsmouth as soon as the weather in 1450 permitted, landing
at Cherbourg on March 15th. These reinforcements instantly boosted the faltering morale of
the English in Normandy and led to Kyriell’s army receiving a further 1,800 reinforcements
from the large nearby garrisons. France’s garrison at Valognes realised that it was
in danger and requested support from the south, but Kyriell pounced too quickly, besieging
the castle for three weeks before it finally surrendered on April 10th. The squire in charge
of the fortification - Abel Rouault, was permitted to depart with his garrison, supplies, horses,
and possessions in return for the capitulation. After learning of the new English invasion,
Charles VII sent some of his best units and most capable lieutenants to inform and reinforce
his commander in the area - Jean de Clermont. Having missed the opportunity to save Valognes,
he established himself at Carentan on the main road that Kyriell would most likely use
to move south. There, Clermont sent word to the Breton Constable of France - Arthur de
Richemont, asking him to move his forces to Saint-Lo in case Kyriell marched that way.
Meanwhile, the English moved slowly south, absorbing manpower, artillery and other siege
weapons along the way. French scouts informed their commander that rather than passing by
his location, Kyriell and the English army were instead executing a potentially dangerous,
but incredibly well-executed march through the low-lying tidal marshlands near the Grand-Vey,
which they accomplished on April 14th with only minor resistance. Local farmers and other
peasants were supplemented by a company of men-at-arms, but were easily brushed aside.
Matthew Gough - one of the English captains, supposedly shouted at them “Mad dogs! We
crossed despite you!” After successfully getting past the harsh terrain, Kyriell’s
army set up camp for the night at a village known as Formigny, while Gough was sent ahead
to Bayeaux in order to get reinforcements. Clermont moved to close the distance with
the English at dawn on the 15th and sent another message to de Richemont asking to be reinforced.
After receiving the call for aid, he too set out for Formigny early on the 15th, but wouldn’t
reach the field before the fighting began. Battle of Formigny (1450)
At the English position, Kyriell’s 6,000 troops spent the morning hours constructing
a line of field entrenchments, made up of ditches, potholes, earthen palisades, and
sharpened stakes to block the main eastward road. Accompanying this was a smaller series
of fortifications to the east of Formigny, they had made the village a makeshift fortress.
As midday approached, English outriders returned from the west and informed Sir Kyriell that
a French army was approaching. In a hurry, the English knight had Gough recalled from
Bayeaux. Realising he was about to be engaged, Kyriell drew up his archer-heavy forces in
a battle array. His own 4,500 were placed on the right side of the line, anchored on
the village of Formigny, while Gough led about 1,500 troops on the left near the Val stream.
Clermont’s 3,000 strong army of men-at-arms, mounted crossbowmen and some artillerists
began to enter the area shortly after noon, led by an elite Scottish vanguard compagnie.
When his forces approached the Val, they wisely halted about 600 meters away from their enemy,
well out of longbow range. At a safe distance, the French forces formed up west of a bridge
between them and the English, and for three hours Clermont’s men remained where they
were while the general conferred with his advisors. The older captains cautioned restraint,
while their younger counterparts urged an immediate attack before the English defences
grew any stronger. Clermont - who would later be known as the ‘Scourge of the English’,
opened the battle by sending forward two light culverins protected by a few hundred crossbowmen
and men-at-arms. When the cannons opened fire, stationary English troops suffered heavy casualties
from the unexpected artillery fire. Matthew Gough reacted first, sending 500 archers
across the bridge to attack the small artillery position. They drove away the French gunners,
captured the culverins, and killed those protecting them. Panicked by the setback, Clermont ordered
a group of local peasants to scour the countryside south of the battlefield in order to find
de Richemont; he needed reinforcements as soon as possible. At the same time, the French
commander sent a larger unit of men-at-arms under Pierre de Brézé to reinforce their
beleaguered comrades and engage the enemy troops. Though this fierce melee started well
for the French under Clermont, Kyriell sent more reinforcements to bolster Gough’s soldiers
and it began to tilt in favour of the numerically superior English. Official reports to the
French king written only days after the battle later state that if Kyriell’s army had launched
a full-scale attack at this point, Clermont would have been defeated. That attack never
came. As the clash went on in the center, a small army of around 1,000 men emerged onto
the plateau south of the battlefield. The English were jubilant, celebrating that reinforcements
had arrived to finish the French off from the flank. However, as the third force got
closer, the sight of French and Breton banners made both sides realise what was happening
- Arthur de Richemont’s army had arrived and Kyriell was now the one in danger of being
hit from the rear. De Richemont rode quickly with his advance
guard to confer with Clermont while the main Breton force remained on the English side
of the Val. This was tactically problematic for Kyriell’s army, but it is likely that
his numbers still considerably outstripped those of either French commander. In response,
Sir Kyriell had Gough’s smaller contingent on the left start to redeploy, pivoting to
face de Richemont’s main army to the south. However, the elite Breton advance guard used
the opportunity to fight their way across the bridge, slaying six-scores of their English
enemy whilst doing so and disrupting Gough’s redeployment effort. With disarray now the
order of the day among his enemy’s troops, the Breton Constable returned to his main
army and advanced northeast towards the English rear, while at the same time Clermont assaulted
their front. Also, at the same time, Pierre de Brézé
had mounted a few hundred men and rode around the field, seizing control of the eastern
fortifications and preventing any substantial retreat. Kyriell did his best to rally the
now disorganised and demoralised English in the village, but Brézé charged them from
behind while both main armies attacked from different angles. To make this worse, the
town peasants rose up and joined in the developing slaughter. The main English army was totally
destroyed, only Gough and Robert Vere survived to lead their surviving soldiers back to Bayeaux
and Caen respectively. One group of 500 longbowmen withdrew to a garden next to the Val and were
on their knees begging for mercy. Nevertheless, Clermont’s troops slew them anyway. The
English commander Sir Thomas Kyriell was taken prisoner, along with about 1,200 others, while
around 3,800 of the knight’s men perished at Formigny.
This defeat finally broke the back of England’s military hopes in Normandy. Most garrisons
had contributed forces to Kyriell’s army and his defeat now denuded them of defenders.
Just over two months after the triumph of France’s armies at Formigny, it had also
seized Vire, Avranches, and Bayeaux on May 16th. In June, Caen was besieged and taken
a few weeks later. Charles VII rode north and ceremonially entered the city on June
6th. With only little resistance, the Cotentin Peninsula city of Cherbourg finally went down
on August 22nd, 1450 - all of Normandy was now under French control for the first time
in almost three decades. Recovery of Gascony (1449-1453)
The Duke of Somerset’s complete loss of northern France in such a blitzkrieg-like
manner sent yet another political shockwave throughout England and pushed the kingdom
closer to civil war. The duke was briefly imprisoned in the Tower, and this internal
strife only distracted the government from dealing with new problems on the continent.
France was able to turn its efforts fully south towards Gascony with the victory. Back
in 1449, local forces subordinate to Charles had already captured Cognac, Saint-Megrin,
and Mauléon. Meanwhile the Count of Foix - a powerful magnate in the south of France,
allied with the ascendant king in the same year and put his considerable military force
to good use, capturing Guiche and 15 other castles. Despite this preliminary success,
Gascony in its entirety would probably be far more difficult to capture and hold than
Normandy. It had been a fief of the Kings of England for over three centuries compared
to Normandy’s thirty years, and most of the area’s nobility and population still
remained loyal to their long-time rulers. There were many reasons for this, but trade
was a primary factor. Between 1445 and 1449, for example, wine exports to England reached
never before seen heights. Gascon merchants and lords were making vast profits from their
overlords and weren’t keen to see the status quo change.
Only two months after the fall of Cherbourg, in October 1450, French forces opened the
attack on Gascony by putting Jonzac under siege. The castle fell in short order and
the army marched south, clashing with a small Anglo-Gascon force outside Bordeaux and crushing
it before withdrawing to Angoulême for the winter. Campaigning began again in spring
1451 and the French army quickly captured Montguyon after a short siege. From that point,
just like in the fall of Normandy, Gascon castles fell very quickly - Blaye was captured
on May 24th, followed by Bourg, Saint-Emilion, and Castillon in the five days after that.
The speed of the conquest was made possible by strong French artillery, in addition to
well-executed diplomacy and bribery which undermined baronial resistance. A decisive
instance of the latter occurred on June 23rd when the central city of Bordeaux surrendered
without a fight, as its mayor1 received a generous pension from the French king as a
reward. Just over a month later, Bayonne too was captured, and the feuding English could
do nothing but watch in horror as their last continental possession, save for Calais, slipped
away. Unfortunately for the French, they hadn’t learned from the Black Prince’s mistake
after the Treaty of Bretigny and started levying heavy taxation on the newly acquired Gascon
territory in order to pay for its defence. Not surprisingly this, along with the rapaciousness
of French soldiers, meant that resentment immediately began to build.
At the same time, the Kingdom of England was not prepared to let Gascony go without a fight,
but military preparations were slow, impeded by a deteriorating political situation that
seemed to reach its climax in early 1452. Richard of York owned vast estates on the
Welsh borders, and it was there while he was in Ireland that the tenants rose up in revolt
against Henry VI in February. The rebels persuaded their lord to return from his quasi-exile
and put an end to the queen’s regime. An army quickly gathered around York when he
crossed back into England and he began moving towards London. The Lancastrians mustered
a force of their own and faced off against York at Dartford. Rather than attacking, the
Duke of York presented Henry with a list of grievances and demands which included the
arrest of Edmund Beaufort - the Duke of Somerset and York’s bitter rival who was accused
of badly mismanaging the defence of France in previous years. The weak monarch initially
agreed to the demand, but the power behind his throne - Margaret of Anjou, intervened
and eventually forced York to back down and reaffirm his loyalty to the crown. Somerset
was left in charge of the government. While this was going on, indentures had managed
to raise an army of some 3,000 troops under the command of a sixty-five-year-old John
Talbot - the Earl of Shrewsbury. Setting the stage for his attack was the situation in
Gascony. Unrest had turned to subterfuge and envoys reached London in 1452 inviting the
English back and offering to provide assistance if they returned.
After English ships swept their French counterparts off the seas, Talbot audaciously sailed the
long distance to Gascony and disembarked on the Medoc Peninsula on October 17th. Less
than a week later, the pre-planned anti-French uprising in Bordeaux led to the city’s capitulation.
Most other castles in western Gascony fell by the end of the year, save a few holdouts.
It was obvious that Talbot’s bold attack had taken Charles VII totally by surprise,
as his forces had been shifted to Normandy in order to counter a possible invasion there.
The English received 4,000 additional troops and supplies from home during the winter while
Charles, enraged at the Gascon treachery, hurried to send advanced forces south to reinforce
those castles still under French control, while he prepared to lead an invasion of the
recalcitrant province in person. In early June 1453, four separate, smaller armies began
to muster at different points along the frontier with Gascony, preparing to invade on multiple
fronts. Two southern armies assembled in Languedoc under the Count de Clermont and Gaston IV
- Count of Foix, who prepared his forces nearby at Béarn. In the north, a third army commanded
by Marshals de Jalonges and Loheac readied to march from around Angoulême. Charles VII
headed a strategic reserve army stationed in the Lusignan region. The king made sure
that all of the contingents were well supplied with siege engines and gunpowder artillery,
particularly the northern one at Angoulême, which was accompanied by Charles’ artillery
master Jean Bureau. Battle of Castillon (1443)
The combined French advance began almost simultaneously in early June. In the south, Foix and Clermont
marched in close cooperation from the start, moving north towards Bordeaux until the latter
received a message from Talbot offering battle. Being close enough to help, Foix reinforced
his comrade to face the challenge together, but this made the English commander withdraw
to Bordeaux. The two forces subsequently split up and remained near the city in order to
deal with any English sally. The northern army meanwhile began a methodical thrust through
the Dordogne valley, approaching the city of Castillon from the east in mid-July 1453.
When Charles heard of the army’s progress at his base at Saint-Jean-d’Angely, the
king ordered it to besiege the city, which was at the time held by about 50 men-at-arms
and 350 archers. In contrast, the assaulting army was a relatively standard one, about
8,000 men strong but with an especially formidable siege train. Castillon itself was a strongly
fortified town with the fast-flowing Dordogne River in the south - running east to west,
and extensive forests to the north. In a clearing on the edge of this woodland, surrounded on
three sides by trees was the Priory of Saint-Florent, located on elevated ground.
Rather than encircling and cutting off Castillon with fortifications as in a traditionally
conducted siege, Jean Bureau - who was put in overall command of conducting the operation,
didn’t want to be trapped in a pincer between Talbot and the garrison if English forces
moved to relieve the city. Instead, he sent a thousand crossbowmen to hold the priory
while he supervised the army’s 700 engineers in constructing a fortified artillery park
on the Plain of Colles, made up of 300 guns - both heavy and light, operated by 700 gunners.
To protect the weapons, defensive ditches were dug on three sides, backed by raised
earthen ramparts topped with formidable timber defences. To screen the open northern flank
of his enclosure, Bureau sent a thousand Bretons to hold the village of Capitourlan. In Bordeaux,
Talbot received an urgent letter from the English garrison in Castillon, which led to
immense pressure from the Gascon city leaders to go out and relieve it. Possibly before
he was ready, Talbot marched out with 6,000 English infantry, 2,000 Gascons, and 1,000
mounted archers and men-at-arms to do just that. After bypassing a few of their own towns
and marching through quiet forested paths in the Hills of Horable to maintain surprise,
the aging Talbot’s Anglo-Gascon vanguard of 1,300 mounted troops assembled near the
priory at dawn on July 17th, 1453. When formed up, they burst out from the forest and attacked
the priory from an unexpected direction, killing 120 of the French missile troops and capturing
it after a brief, but fierce fight. The remainder were harried in their retreat by the English
cavalry until some of their own horse came in support. With that, Talbot’s forces were
pushed back but managed to get valuable information about Bureau’s artillery enclosure which
was reported to the commander, whose main force had just reached the priory, its morale
high from the vanguard’s initial easy victory. Talbot initially decided not to follow up
his attack immediately, believing that his troops needed to rest after the long march
and initial skirmish. However, at the artillery park, Bureau was preparing for a fight by
dismounting all of his horsemen5 and sending the horses away with their grooms. The movement
of such a vast amount of horses kicked up a cloud of dust which was spotted by English
scouts and misinterpreted as a French retreat. When they reported back to Talbot that the
enemy army was getting away, the commander reversed his judgment and decided to resume
the assault, against the advice of a capable subordinate - Sir Thomas Evringham. It is
said that the Earl swore to his personal chaplain that he could not hear Christian mass until
he had defeated the French army. With promises of loot at the enemy camp given, Talbot led
his arrayed army along the northern bank of the Dordogne towards Bureau’s fortification,
speeding ahead with his mounted advance units while the main body of infantry followed up
in the rear. Their approach was spotted by French outriders who reported the incoming
force to Bureau, while they were also followed by some supply ships in the river. As the
English vanguard turned 90 degrees left to face the artillery park, Bureau was in the
process of concentrating his 300 small cannons - mainly culverins and ribauldequins, on the
southern rampart, facing Talbot's vanguard. The latter ordered his troops to dismount
and fight on foot, but the completely unarmoured English commander - who was so unprotected
because of his oath to never ‘bear arms’ against Charles VII ever again, remained in
the saddle. Once again Evringham advised caution against
attacking such a well-prepared position, instead suggesting that it be starved out. Talbot
refused and overruled him, fearing that any hesitation might harm his reputation. Seeing
that Bureau hadn’t yet finished moving all the cannons, Talbot ordered Evringham to lead
the first change. With a cry of ‘Saint George!’ he led the first attack, advancing across
the field and assaulting the ramparts. At such close range, the French light artillery
inflicted heavy casualties on Evringham’s men, supposedly killing six men with a single
shot. The leader himself managed to get to the top of the wall but was shot and killed
by one of the French culverins. Despite the losses, fighting on the artillery’s park’s
southern edge went on. The main body of several thousand Anglo-Gascon infantry was now coming
up whose commander - Lord Kendall, was ordered against the enclosure’s right flank. Because
the troops were coming in unit by unit, the attack commenced piecemeal, with contingents
being fed into the fight as they arrived6. Now reinforced by the infantry, Talbot’s
vanguard troops received a morale boost and attacked with renewed ferocity, inflicting
casualties of their own but suffering badly from the French culverin fire. Though Talbot’s
numbers were larger than Bureau’s, the latter’s strong fortification stalled the English attacks.
After an hour of grinding and inconclusive combat on the ramparts, however, French forces
were thinning and those who remained were tiring. But at that moment, the 1,000 Bretons
marched onto the battlefield from the northern hills, having received a message from Bureau
earlier in the day. While their footmen streamed into the fortified artillery park and reinforced
the beleaguered defenders, the Breton cavalry swept around the eastern trenches and crashed
into Talbot’s exposed right wing. Wreathed in smoke and noise given off by the French
gunpowder weapons, the English were taken totally by surprise. The aged earl turned to meet the assault but
was wounded in the arm by a projectile. That wasn’t the end of it. Seeing the English
struck in the flank, French forces inside the fortification launched a counterattack
from the front, some of them even remounting to do so. What happened next is unclear and
varies in the sources, but it seems like Talbot’s lines began to break, routing towards the
Dordogne. While this happened, the commander himself rallied a small contingent alongside
his son and acted as a rearguard so his army could get away. However, a cannon shot the
earl’s horse out from under him and trapped its rider under it. A family legend claims
that while trapped, Talbot urged his son to flee, stating “Leave me, the day belongs
to the enemy, there is no disgrace in flight, this is your first battle.” In what was
perhaps the last gasp of chivalry the medieval age had to offer, the son refused and was
killed alongside his father - who died from an ax to the skull. When the English commander’s
banner fell, the army lost heart and totally collapsed. Some soldiers drowned attempting
to cross the Dordogne at Rauzon ford, others were run down by the victorious Breton horsemen,
while about a thousand found refuge in Castillon itself. The Anglo-Gascon casualties are uncertain,
ranging from a low of 500 to a high of 4,000, while French losses were quite light in comparison.
When Jean Bureau found Talbot’s corpse on the field, he had the old soldier given a
burial with full honours. Similarly, when his banner and collar of office were given
to Charles VII, the king remarked “God have mercy on a good knight.” Talbot had never
broken his oath. Castillon was taken on July 20th and the French
king even rode with his army to quell a small internal squabble. That strife was nothing
compared to Gascony which, despite stubborn resistance, was falling one castle at a time.
Bordeaux was put under siege and ten weeks later, after being strangled and battered
from both land and sea, finally fell to Charles VII. On October 19th, 1453, French banners
were raised above the city and the English in Gascony were forced to leave. Aftermath
With the second capitulation of Bordeaux, the Hundred Years War came to an effective
end, although contemporaries were unaware of this. Of the great Angevin Empire that
had spanned from the English Channel to the Pyrenees, only Calais and a few satellite
forts remained in Plantagenet hands. England went from a state with a continental element
to a purely insular one. No treaty was signed in 1453, and the two kingdoms remained in
a state of war, as French privateers would continue to raid the English coast for prisoners
to ransom, and sizable garrisons were kept in Normandy and Gascony to prevent further
English expeditions and to quell dissent in the newly integrated provinces. Only in 1475
did this state of war actually conclude; in that year, the first English army to invade
France since Talbot's touched Calais with the stated goal to divide up the French Realm
with the Burgundians and Brettons, but as the French and English army faced off, the
Treaty of Picquigny between Edward IV of England and Louis XI of France was signed. This was
officially a seven-year truce but became the de facto peace treaty that ended the war.
In exchange for a sizeable yearly stipend and an upfront payment, the English would
leave France, and both sides would not support the other's internal rebels. The peace would
be remarkably durable and last until 1492, and no English King would seriously attempt
to reclaim the French throne, although they would still style themselves Rex Franciae
until the Napoleonic era. The Pale of Calais would instead be lost in the closing years
of the Italian Wars, when in 1558, a lighting attack by the French took most of the ring
of fortresses around Calais and forced the city to surrender in a week, kicking the English
out from the continent for good. The immediate political effects were acutely
felt in England. The Lancastrian throne had always been weak after the death of Henry
V, as the late king was the son of a usurper and left his infant son, Henry VI, as the
sole male heir. It was thanks to the regency of the Duke of Bedford and his connections
with the House of Burgundy that the English had managed to keep a hold over northern France.
When the king, a shy and weak personality, came of age, he did not give any leadership
to the country, and his rule was overshadowed by court factionalism between different family
members and his wife, Margaret of Anjou. In late 1453, Henry VI fell into a catatonic
state, completely unable to rule. This exacerbated a political struggle between Richard of York
and Edmund of Somerset, who was temporarily detained. The struggle culminated in 1455,
when it degenerated into civil war at the Battle of Saint Albans, marking the beginning
of the War of the Roses, which we have already covered in a previous video. Many of the grievances
that were the causes of the civil war can be traced back to the conduct of the Hundred
Years' War and the financial and territorial losses. Also, Edward III had created duchies
for his sons during his reign, which had given royal princes enormous wealth and following
that could threaten the position of the King, as the subsequent civil war would show.
King Charles VII of France had mostly pushed the English out of the continent, but he did
not feel secure. Local supporters had supported every English invasion, whether from Flanders,
Normandy or Brittany or during periods of internal conflict such as the civil war between
the Armagnacs and Burgundians. The different provinces that composed the kingdom and their
rulers looked much more at their own interests than those of the kingdom as a whole, and
they had the threat of opening up to an English to pursue these goals. The King was acutely
aware of this. A Gascon noble was executed in 1454 after plotting to capture Bayonne
in the name of the English, while the lands of the Dukes of Alençon and Armagnac were
confiscated in the following years, as they were conspiring with the English or were likely
to do so. Calais wasn't attacked both because of its easily defensible terrain and position
but also because of the uncertain support of the Dukes of Burgundy.
The successor of Charles VII, Louis XI, embarked on a centralization effort to further curtail
the autonomy of the appanaged nobles and intended to absorb his main rivals, the Duchies of
Brittany and Burgundy. Notably, the dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and his son Charles
were formidable adversaries to the French royal power. They spearheaded the noble uprising
of the League of the Public Weal in 1465, supported the Yorkist side in the English
Civil War against the French-backed Lancastrian one and facilitated the English landing of
1475. The Burgundian house died out in 1477, allowing the Crown to absorb much of their
French holding and would lead to a century-long conflict with the Habsburg family, while Brittany
would be integrated during the subsequent generation following the Mad War. Other princely
appanages such as Anjou and Orleans were reabsorbed into the royal domain by the end of the century.
The Treaty at Formigny had taken away the ability of the Princes to threaten the King
with an external invasion credibly, and the risks of being tried for treason and executed
showed that the nobility didn't have the same political freedom as before. Charles of Bourbon
would attempt something similar during the Italian Wars in the 1520s but failed also
because of the lack of support from other members of the nobility. Still, the French
nobility would not lose all its influence, as once the monarchy found itself without
a strong king after Henry II's death, the country fell again into civil war, this time
with religion as the fault line but with factions headed by great noble houses. The French Kings
would use their newly found stability and power to venture into foreign expeditions,
which would begin sixty years of conflict against the Spanish-Imperial Von Habsburg
dynasty for the control of Italy and the hegemony over Europe, that we have covered in our series
on the Italian Wars. The transition from a feudal system to a more
centralized one can be observed particularly in taxation and army recruitment. These developments
took place in different capacities in most of Western Europe, but the War characterised
the paths of England and France. During the 1430s, Charles VII managed to greatly increase
taxation by annually summoning the General Estates to demand taxes. In 1439, he issued
an ordonnance proclaiming that only the king was entitled to raise troops and taxes, threatening
the autonomy of the princes who rebelled in 1440 during the "Praguerie" and in 1442 at
a meeting at Nevers, where a group of princes attempted to wrangle away power from the crown
unsuccessfully, as the King had the support of the towns, of the Church and his minister
of lower birth and managed to quell them with light concessions. Crucially, Charles managed
to impose the principle of permanent taxation during his reign without the need to have
it accepted by the estates, leveraging the aides and tailles after the war's end, although
regional differences in privileges made taxation heterogeneous. Also, during the truce in the
1440s, he created the compagnies d'ordonnance, professional permanent armies fully funded
by the king's tax revenue, which would become the backbone of the army that fought against
the nobles in the 1460s and 80s and invaded Italy in 1494. England had already been quite
centralised for its time before and during the war, although the power of the Parliament
increased as the kings became more desperate for taxes, and it would maintain a constraint
on the monarchies in the following centuries. Because of this and its isolated geography,
the English monarchy would not have a standing army until Cromwell, while most states developed
them during the sixteenth century. Another critical development in warfare was the introduction
of gunpowder, with cannons becoming an evermore important element in sieges as the war progressed.
The Hundred Years War left a stronger national identity in both countries, fostered by mutual
antagonism. The war brought the state closer to the population with the high taxation and
broad recruitment of archers, so the population was more invested as a whole in the war than
what a Burgundian might have been. Within a generation, the English nobility dropped
the use of French, which had been their mother tongue, in favour of English. France had a
long history of regional identities that frustrated the ability of the French king, but a century
of war and crisis weakened these borders, allowing for more power of the central state
to spread to the peripheries. The French identity was reinforced in decades of war, plundering
and occupation of garrisons. While in the first half of the war, the population's hatred
was generally against soldiers, following the battle of Agincourt, this hatred was directed
against the "English enemy." The scars of the war would endure on the population
of France. First, as with most of Europe, the Black Death devastated both countries.
Then, after a relatively long truce following the Carolinian period, the war sparked up
again with the Lancastrian period. The regions that became the battlefield, particularly
in northern France, felt the effect for a century and would spend decades to recover
as villages were left depopulated and fields were reclaimed by forest. The regions that
recovered the fastest were those around Paris, where large churches and monastic orders had
enough capital to invest in rebuilding villages and cutting wood. Cities managed to mostly
escape the worst thanks to their walls, although they had to deal with the destruction of their
suburbs and the arrival of refugees from the countryside. When the war ended, some cities
were fast to surpass the prewar population. England was not ravaged nearly as much as
France, although many coastal raids remained in the common consciousness, and the threat
of Scottish attacks was ever-present. What changed most for the country was their cut
off from their biggest export market, wool. The wool trade had been nationalised during
the reign of Edward III, and the monarchy was able to control its export in Calais as
it was the only source of high-quality wool in northern Europe. With this control, it
became a foreign policy tool, with exports being blocked to those countries hostile to
the King, such as the Low Countries and Castille, during various periods. What had been an extremely
important revenue for the crown became less reliant as it was used as a foreign policy
tool and with the growth of the local textile industry. The loss of Gascony, which for centuries
had been part of the English Crown had been damaging in particular for individuals who
had invested in land or had been assigned titles, and the trade of Gascon wine halted
following 1453, but it would resume a few decades later.
The Hundred Years War was the longest series of Medieval conflicts and probably the period's
most famous war, with surprising reversals, fascinating figures, grandiose battles and
effects that were felt in all of Western Europe. It shaped the trajectory that both France
and England would take. France came out stronger, with a more centralised state and would be
one of the most important actors in European politics in the following centuries, while
England was relegated to its island and weakened its connection to the continent. Thanks again to War Thunder for sponsoring
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