100 Years War

The Hundred Years War lasted from 1337 until 1453, and was a defining time for the history of both England and France. The war started in May 1337 when King Philip VI of France attempted to confiscate the English territories in the duchy of Aquitaine (located Southwestern France). It ended in July 1453 when the French finally expelled the English from the continent (except for Calais) by force. The Hundred Years War was in reality a series of raids, sieges, and naval battles interspersed with truces and uneasy peace.

One of the main causes of the Hundred Years War centered on the relationship between the Kings of France and England regarding the duchy of Aquitaine located in Southwestern France. In 1259, the Treaty of Paris designated that Henry III of England (1216 - 1270) held the duchy of Aquitaine as a fief of the French King. Henry was a vassal of the King of France and, therefore, was required to pay liege homage to the king. (This meant that whenever the kingship of either England or France changed hands, the King of England was required to do homage – show that he was a vassal.) However, Henry was also the King of England; how could a king be a vassal?

Even without paying homage, the Kings of England laid claim to lands in France, and the French Kings resisted these claims. When Charles IV, the last Capetian King of France, died in 1328 without a male heir, Edward III, the King of England, held claim to the throne via his mother who was Charles' sister. However, the head of the Valois house (Philip VI) gained the throne and confiscated the English land claims in order to consolidate his power. Edward led a raid into French territory in 1338 to defend his claim and two years later declared himself the true king of France.

From the beginning of the war (1337) until the battle of Orleans (1428-29), the English won many victories including the decisive battles of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. The English used a new method of warfare by combining forces of longbow-men with dismounted men-at-arms with much success.

In 1429, at the siege of Orleans the French finally gained the upperhand. Joan of Arc led a relief force, which successfully defeated the English. For the next 25 years, the French defeated the English at many engagements and the English retreated from France except for the port city of Calais.

The major occupation of nobles during the Middle Ages had been warfare. Among these nobles were the knights, who earned theirknighthood through long and hard training on horseback from early childhood. The knights were vassals of some higher lord, or perhaps a king, whoever supplied him with the land that he was free to use - called a fief - in exchange for duty as a warrior. But on the field of battle knights on horseback were becoming an anachronism. Feudalism was in decline, with kings gaining over nobles and acquiring a monopoly on war-making and violence.

England's King Edward III, in the place of knights, hired mercenaries to fight in his wars. The English benefited from an army armed with the longbow, with arrows that hit effectively at a range of 250 to 300 yards and ten arrows shot per minute. There was also gunpowder and firearms, with less range and accuracy than the longbow, but greater range than the knights' weapons - the sword and lance.

England controlled the English Channel and the North Sea, and in 1346 the Hundred Years' War began in earnest. At the Battle of Crécy (pronounced cressy), Edward’s army of 12,000 faced a French army of 36,000 across a battle line 2,000 yards wide. Edward’s army had 7,000 archers, and they devastated the assaults attempted by France’s armored knights on horseback and foot soldiers with crossbows.

Ten years later, at Poitiers, the British defeated the French again, French knights and their horses falling in heaps. The English captured and held for ransom the French king, the successor of Philippe VI, John II (r. 1350-1364) and many French nobles - captivity and ransom a major goal and source of wealth for combatants.

Nobles in Gascony (south of Bordeaux) complained to the French king, Charles V (r.1364-80), about oppressive taxation by Edward III of England. Charles confiscated English holdings and Edward III reasserted his claim to the French throne. Warfare began again. Rather than confront the English in head-on battles, the French employed hit and run raids, wearing down the English. Stalemate, exhaustion and a slowing of warfare followed.

England's king, Henry V (r. 1413-22) resumed the war, partly as a distraction from social tensions in England. In 1415 the French blocked him as he led his force on the road from Flanders to the port city of Calais. The French challenged him and the Battle of Agincourt followed. French knights charged against the British, and England's archers dropped the leading wave and fallen horses prevented other knights from advancing. In a half hour of battle thousands of French knights were taken prisoner. The fear of a second attack prompted the English to kill them on the spot, and the French nobility was horribly decimated in a single day. For France the use of knights in warfare was at an end. The French king from 1422, Charles VII, would create France's first standing, professional, rather than feudal, army. No longer needed in battle, the knights would take refuge in the tournaments that were merely staged pageantry.

Joan of Arc

After Agincourt, French morale was low, with some believing that only a miracle could save them from the English. Among the French appeared the illiterate daughter of a modest but locally prominent farming family - devout Catholics. Joan heard voices, and in 1428, at the age of sixteen, a voice told her that the English had to be expelled from France. Society was not as densely populated as it would be in the 21st century, and Joan was noticed. Many leaders of the French army accepted her story. The following year, 1429, Joan persuaded Charles VII to support her effort at relieving the city of Orléans, then being besieged by the English. She knew little of warfare, but she believed that if the French soldiers with her would not swear or visit prostitutes they would win.

The English had been weakened by disease and their supplies were low. They pulled back from Orléans, and the French defeated them in a number of battles. The English were allied with the Burgundy (it being common to have as an ally a power that was a neighbor of one's enemy), and in 1430 Joan and four or five hundred men attacked the Burgundians at Campiègne. Joan and her army were driven back. Most escaped, but Joan was captured, and the Burgundians turned Joan over to the English. The English, suffering from attacks by forces under Joan's command had come to see her truly as a witch and as an agent of the devil - a common view of adversity in this age. Wishing to have her discredited before she was executed, the English turned her over to ecclesiastic (church) authorities - the Inquisition - at the French town of Rouen, then under English rule.

The Inquisition pondered the question whether Joan's visions were genuine or delusions of the devil. The British wanted her executed and were displeased when it appeared that she would be allowed to recant. In her cell Joan was given a dress as a part of her recantation. But Joan was found back in her usual men's garb. Her recantation a failure, Joan was charged with sorcery (witchcraft) and burned to death in the marketplace at Rouen.

End of the Hundred Years' War

After Joan's death, the war continued in desultory fashion as before. The English had been superior on the battlefield, their longbow archers having a greater range than the French crossbow and faster rate of shooting. Cannon and handguns were used with more regularity, although the handguns were less accurate and had less range than archery and often as threatening to its user as to the target. The war had also stimulated changes in military organization. National armies were replacing armies of individual noblemen. Infantry had been growing and cavalry diminishing. For awhile the French had been hurting because of their slowness in making these changes. But France was a larger and more prosperous nation and eventually developed superiority in weaponry, especially in mobile field artillery. The English longbow could not match France's new artillery - which had a devastating effect on the ranks of an advancing English army.

England lost its alliance with Burgundy, both countries were exhausted by the war, and the insistence on total victory had dissipated. Both countries welcomed peace. The claim of the English kings had come to nothing.

Except for the Calais, on the channel coast, the English withdrew from the continent, the end of the Hundred Years' War marking the end of England's attempts to hold territory on the continent. And with the end of the Hundred Years' War came a revival of trade and an end to economic depression.

Questions

  1. What was the cause of the Hundred Years War? Why did feudalistic obligations have a part in this? How did the new power of kings effect the way this war was fought?
  2. Make a timeline below of these battles fought in the Hundred Years War. Who won each battle?
  3. How did armies and the way battles were fought change during this war? What was the effect of the Longbow in these battles?
  4. What effects would you see in society as these changes were made?
  5. Why was Joan d’Arc important to the French?
  6. Would you say that the French or the English won the war? Why?

Black Death/ Bubonic Plague

The increase in world trade within the last century or two had exposed more people to disease, and the increase in movement of people that came with war, exposed more people to disease. In December 1347 the disease was in the Crimea and Constantinople. That same month it spread to Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Marseille. By June, 1348,it was in Spain, Italy and as far north as Paris. By June 1349 it had advanced through London and central Europe. From there in the year and a half that followed it swung as if on a hinge in central Europe, through Ireland and through Scandinavia. It reached people weakened by decades of hard times and malnutrition.

The bubonic form of the disease was a bacterium (Yersinia pestis) spread by fleas from rats. The airborne form of the disease spread from one person to other people. This was made worse by crowding in the cities. Some cities lost from half to two-thirds of their population. Some small cities became ghost towns. Common folks were dying as well as the most pious. Perhaps a third of the Catholic clergy died, with priests who attended the afflicted being hit the hardest. The poor were hit harder than aristocrats because they were generally in poorer health and less able to resist the disease and because they were more crowded together. Wolves fared better and appeared in some capital cities.

People did not understand the source of the plague, and panic spread faster than the disease. The belief in witchcraft was revitalized, but the Church consistently condemned these movements. The wandering mobs focused their wrath upon clergy who opposed them, and they targeted Jews, whom they blamed for inciting God's wrath. In Germany rumors arose that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning the water. Pogroms followed. Jews were arrested. Their fortunes were seized by the lords under whose jurisdictions they lived, and Jews were put to death by burning. The attacks on Jews were condemned by Clement VI, and he threatened excommunication for those Christians who harmed Jews.

The success of this greatest of plagues was limited and destined to diminish. The body that the bacterium entered was its environment and source of life. It used up its environment and faded away but not completely.

It has been roughly estimated that a third of England died from the Black Death of 1348-49, and perhaps this figure is not far from the losses suffered in other areas of Europe through which the plague passed. Much farmland went into disuse, reducing the output of food. Farm animals died, further diminishing the food supply. With all the deaths, farms went into disuse. With all the deaths and drop in demand for food, the price of food dropped. In Western Europe the demand for labor rose, and, with fewer people around willing to work for less, wages rose. And in Western Europe the shortage of labor brought on by the plague increased the demand for slaves, cutting into the demand for free labor. Wealthy merchants vied for servants to staff their households. Craftsmen and shopkeepers felt that they had to keep slaves. Cobblers, carpenters, weavers and woolworkers bought men and women from the slave dealers to help in their industries. And more slaves were put on the market as hungry parents sold their children, preferring their children's enslavement to watching them starve to death.

Questions

  1. What are some of the factors that caused the Bubonic Plague?
  2. Using the map above, which major European cities were hit by the Bubonic Plague between 1346 and 1348?
  3. Why were the poor harder hit than the wealthy by the Black Death?
  4. Why did the power of the Church decline somewhat due to the Bubonic Plague?
  5. What are some estimations of the number of people who died during the Bubonic Plague?
  6. What changes in labor occurred in Europe due to the Black Death?