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HUNDRED YEARS WAR

Death toll: 3.5 million

Rank: 28

Type: dynastic dispute

Broad dividing line: France vs. England

Time frame: 1337–1453

Location: France

Who usually gets the most blame: Nowadays the Hundred Years War is usually treated as an act of nature (that is, just one of those things), inevitable and not really anyone’s fault.

Trick question: How long did it last?

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all “We died at such a place;” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

—William Shakespeare, Henry V

Edwardian War (1337–60)

Ever since the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, England had been ruled by—and let’s not mince words here—Frenchmen. Historians call them English, but most of the English nobility spoke French as their primary language. The laws of England were written in French. The English nobility had major fiefs and summer homes in France, and the king of England often owned as much of France as did the French king. They were French in everything but geography.

When the king of France died childless in 1328, his first cousin, King Edward III of England, put in a claim to be his replacement. Instead, the French nobility picked a weakling they could dominate, rather than a powerful king, such as Edward would be. Of course this infuriated Edward.

Because local wars and intrigues kept him busy, Edward didn’t launch his war to assert his claim for ten years. By that time, he had an exciting new weapon in his arsenal. He had first encountered the longbow while fighting peasants in the wild borderlands alongside Wales. Made from the yew tree and tall as a man, the longbow required enormous strength to pull, but with it, a trained archer could put an arrow through an inch of solid oak at two hundred yards and plate armor at one hundred yards. Impressed at how easily the longbow killed his best knights and disrupted his attacks, Edward made these archers an integral part of his own army.

Since medieval warfare was rarely secret, the French, aware of the impending war, had assembled a fleet and were getting ready to attack first, but the English fleet cornered the French ships at Sluys, the port of Bruges, in 1340. Archers crammed aboard the English fleet swept the crews off the French ships and left the English in control of the channel. “The fish drank so much French blood, it was said afterward, that if God had given them the power of speech they would have spoken in French.”¹

After the English landed in France in 1346, the two armies maneuvered around each other in the north of France for several months, trying to corner the other in the most advantageous battlefield. King Edward realized that the best tactical use of his strengths was to set up dismounted knights, foot soldiers, and archers in a defensive hedgehog bristling with spears, swords, and battle-axes, and then to get the French to attack. Finally, at Crecy, the English took a strong position atop a hill and waited for the French to come. As the battle was joined, the French knights were so eager to get at the English that they rode over their own retreating crossbowmen to get to the front lines. In the first round, their big heavy warhorses were ideal targets for the English arrows. Then the dismounted and heavily armored French knights slogged, slipped, and struggled up the muddy slopes, all the while being cut down by English archers. When it was all over the French losses were staggering, leaving their nobility badly depleted.

To solidify their control over northern France, the English brought the English Channel port of Calais under a long and frustrating siege. Finally, the leading citizens of the starving town offered to surrender. The English were planning the customary massacre of the defenders as the penalty for causing them so much trouble, but the town’s leaders willingly offered themselves up to be killed if only the people would be spared. Their courage moved the heart of the English queen, who obviously did not know the first thing about the proper way of waging war. She pestered her husband to show mercy. Edward relented—probably with a weary sigh—so the leaders and people of Calais were expelled instead of killed. Then the city was thoroughly Anglicized.

With the north secure, the war moved south. In 1356, King Edward’s son, Edward the Black Prince, marauded inward from English-controlled Aquitaine on the western coast of France, leading his army 260 miles across the center of France, burning towns and castles in order to provoke the French king into coming to stop him. When the English arrived at the Loire River, however, they discovered that the French had destroyed the bridges, stranding the English 160 miles from the safety of the English Channel. They turned around to go home, but the French army caught up at Poitiers in September. The 7,000 Englishmen were outnumbered by as many as five to one.

Because horses were large, vulnerable targets for the English archers, the French chose to advance on foot. Their first wave arrived exhausted and was cut to pieces. While trying to retreat, they blundered into the second wave, which was thrown into chaos as well. Finally King John I of France regrouped and led the third and largest wave toward the English position, just as the English charged out to press their advantage. The English overwhelmed the French nobility and drove them into headlong retreat toward the safety of the town of Poitiers, but when the fleeing French arrived, they found the gates shut. The English cavalry caught up and easily massacred the tired survivors of the battle. France was running out of knights and options.²

Among the captives from the Battle of Poitiers were King John of France and his son, who were taken to England, where the Black Prince gave them a royal tour and they were cheered by the populace. (Just because they were at war, that was no reason to be uncivil to a guest.) Negotiations for his release never quite worked out, and the French king died still captive in London in 1364.

After a truce was negotiated in 1360, the English army was supposed to pack up and go home, but huge numbers of suddenly unemployed mercenaries didn’t have nice homes to return to. They had enjoyed living off the conquered French and refused to give it up. Instead, they stayed behind and roamed the countryside in predatory armies, looting, raping, and extorting.

Caroline War (1369–89)

As King Edward of England grew old and feeble, he began to neglect the English position on the continent. After a nine-year truce, the new French king, Charles V, decided to resume the war and see if history had shifted in France’s favor.

The pendulum of chance was definitely swinging back toward the French. England’s Black Prince came down with a wasting disease and died in 1376. When his father the king followed one year later, the English throne went to Richard, the ten-year-old son of the Black Prince, rather than to a battle-tested warrior. The French pressed their growing advantage, and except for a few coastal enclaves, they cleared the English off the continent. By the 1380s, the French had fixed their English problem and were raiding ports along the English coast.

Interlude of Insanity and Peace (1389–1415)

After the death of Charles V in 1380, the French throne went to his twelve-year-old son, Charles the Mad. He didn’t start with that nickname, but in 1392 a mysterious illness made his hair and nails fall out. While still feverish and slightly delirious, Charles VI went riding with his entourage. A sudden noise startled him into drawing his sword and hacking through everyone he saw. He slew four attendants before he could be stopped.

His bouts of odd behavior came and went, but they became progressively longer and worse as he got older. He alternated between a listless stupor and frantic gaiety. Once he accidentally set fire to himself and several friends while playing a shaggy wild man at a masked ball, and his life was saved by a quick-thinking duchess who smothered him under her skirts. On his bad days, he urinated in his clothes, smashed furniture, and allowed his children to go ragged with neglect. For a while he believed he was made out of glass and would break if jostled.³

Charles was too crazy to lead France at war, so peace broke out. Instead, the French royal family spent the next few decades killing each other in court intrigues as various relatives of the king fought over who was really in charge. Although Isabella, the German-born French queen, had been passionately in love with Charles at first, and continued trying to make an heir with him despite his dangerous behavior, she eventually started an affair with the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans. It continued until agents of the king’s uncle, Philip the Proud, duke of Burgundy, cut the king’s brother down in the streets of Paris.

Hank Cinq

After almost a full generation of peace, the new king of England, Henry V, decided to press the issue yet again. Hoping to take advantage of the chaos at the French court, Henry invaded France in 1415. After taking the port of Harfleur in a bloody assault (Shakespeare: “Once more into the breach . . .”), he hunted the French army on a long march through mud, rain, and clammy autumn weather. Disease and malnutrition slowed and weakened his army, and then the French army stood in his way, ready to fight, at Agincourt.

Although outnumbered two to one (at least), the English took up a strong defensive position on a narrow field, with both flanks anchored in the woods. There they waited and tormented the French with clouds of arrows from English longbows. Angered beyond reason, the main line of dismounted French knights attacked while still under a deadly hail of arrows. When the two opposing lines of heavy infantry finally closed, the French were already tired, frustrated, and fewer. They were slaughtered.

Meanwhile, behind the English line, a mob of French peasants raided Henry’s camp to loot and steal. With chaos unfolding behind him, Henry worried that the French prisoners of war under loose guard in his camp might rearm and attack his rear, so he ordered them killed. The English nobility refused to commit such a dastardly deed, so Henry told his archers—who were peasants and less squeamish about violating the rules of chivalry—to kill the prisoners. About the same time, the French army fled the field from Henry’s front and gave the English their victory.⁴

With yet another slaughter of the French nobility complete, Henry was able to dictate the terms of peace. King Charles VI (the Mad) of France agreed that Henry should get the throne next, and to seal the deal, Henry married Charles’s daughter, Catherine.

Here ends Shakespeare’s patriotic drama of Henry V’s glorious crusade—on a high note with England triumphant. Unfortunately, King Henry died before King Charles did, which left his baby son as the new king, Henry VI, of England. The treaty’s status was uncertain.

Burgundy Breaks with France

John the Fearless, the latest duke of Burgundy, had stayed out of the Agincourt campaign because his house was still feuding with the rest of the French royal family over who should get France after Charles the Mad died. In 1418, Burgundian forces seized Paris from King Charles’s garrison to show he was serious.

The next year, the king’s teenage son, the dauphin (crown prince), met John the Fearless on the bridge at Montereau to negotiate a settlement, but the prince sprung a trap and killed him instead. Annoyed by the betrayal, the next duke of Burgundy switched to the English side of the war, bringing Paris with him. The dauphin fled to the countryside, so when Charles the Mad died in 1422, the dauphin was not able to upgrade his title to king. The English held Paris for their claimant to the French throne, the baby King Henry.

Joan of Arc

About this time (1429), a teenage peasant girl heard the disembodied voices of saints commanding her to arm herself, saddle up, and save France. This being the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc was not sedated and wheeled into a hospital room by worried relatives. Instead, she obeyed the voices and sought out the fugitive French court. After convincing the dauphin that she really did have saints whispering in her ear, Joan led an army against the English forces besieging Orleans, a vital crossing of the Loire River that (you will recall) had stopped Attila the Hun’s rampage a thousand years earlier (see “Fall of the Western Roman Empire”).

Actually, the French situation at Orleans was not all that bad, nor did the English have an overwhelming advantage. The siege probably could have been broken if anyone had bothered to try; however, the French had all but given up. Morale was shot, and they had passively accepted that the city would fall. Joan’s arrival revived the French spirits. The French attacked and drove away the English.

After the war moved into open country, Joan hounded the English army, waiting for a weakness to appear. Finally, at Patay, she caught the English before they had completely staked out their defensive line. The French attack slaughtered the English and captured most of their leaders. This opened the path to the city of Rheims, where new kings were traditionally crowned, so the dauphin became King Charles VII of France.^a

In 1430, the Burgundians captured Joan and sold her to the English, who then rounded up compliant churchmen from Paris to put her on trial. Joan was found guilty of wearing men’s clothes and burned alive as a witch.

Joan’s major contribution to the war had been to figure out that the French knights could beat the English hedgehog formation if they would stop being such idiots. The French code of chivalry demanded that they not back down from a fight, no matter how unfavorable their situation. The common theme running through the French defeats at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt was a French charge against a strong English defensive position. It never occurred to the French to wait until they caught the English at a disadvantage. Joan had the moral authority to convince the knights to modify their rigid rules and to put more thought into their attacks. With divinely inspired encouragement, the French began to apply actual tactics to their war effort.⁵

Endgame

In 1435, Burgundy dropped its alliance with England. The war continued for almost twenty more years, but as the English territory on the continent eroded, the battleground shrunk as well. These smaller English holdings resulted in lower tax payments, which supported smaller armies that avoided taking any risks. When taxes were raised in England, the peasants rose up in anger. When taxes were lowered, the foreign mercenaries in the English army went home.

Battles became fewer until the last battle was fought at Castillon in 1451, which also made history as the first battle in western Europe where guns made a difference. French cannon and muskets outfired the English longbows, opening a new era of warfare. Meanwhile, England got distracted by its own dynastic dispute (War of the Roses, 1455–85; death toll, 100,000), which kept the English too busy to invade France anymore.

Legacy

The Hundred Years War split France and England into two distinct countries, something that wasn’t always apparent before. On a map, the big change was that there were no longer huge bits of England in France.

The main cultural legacy was that the English people started to abandon the Frenchness that had been hanging around since the Norman Conquest. As the wars dragged on, the English kings learned to stir up the bloodlust of their people by appealing to their patriotism and exhalting English culture over French. In 1362, Parliament was opened in English for the first time. Court proceedings were conducted in English after this as well. In 1404, out of a growing sense of nationalism, England decreed that negotiations with the French would be in neutral Latin instead of the enemy’s French.

On the French side, the main result was political. The war had bled the French nobility white, and few were left alive to contest the power of the king. The final phase of the war had concentrated power in the Crown and made France about as close to a centralized monarchy as you would find anywhere in Europe at the time. France became the most powerful nation in Europe, and would remain so for the next four hundred years.

Death Toll

In 1937, the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin added and multiplied several variables to estimate that the English and French armies lost a combined total of 185,250 men on the battlefields of the Hundred Years War.⁶ Others have estimated that 40 percent of the French nobility died in each of the battles of Agincourt and Crecy.⁷ That’s only a small part of the suffering.

Wars of that era were not all chivalry and jousting tournaments. Rather than getting tied down besieging impregnable castles, medieval armies would often launch a chevauchée, a relentless and devastating raid through enemy territory that left a path of bodies and desolation in its wake. Enough such raids would break morale, spread chaos, and deny resources to the enemy. An effective chevauchée might even provoke the defenders of the castle into coming out and fighting like men.

France began the war with a population of around 20 million and ended up with only half of that a hundred years later.⁸ This was also the era of the Black Death, so there’s no easy way to determine how many of the 10 million or so missing people died from the war and not the plague; most authorities who mention this population collapse also acknowledge that chronic warfare was a contributing factor. As Robert S. Lopez put it, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, “In France war was perhaps an even worse calamity than the Black Death.”⁹ Translating this into mathematics implies that war may have caused more than half of the population decline:

war loss > ½ (minimum population loss: 7 million) = at least 3.5 million