Overview

The Hundred Years’ War was neither a single war nor did it last exactly one hundred years; rather, it was a succession of campaigns, truces and plague-induced lulls that stretched from 1337 to 1453. What began as a feudal quarrel over the status of England’s vast duchy of Aquitaine mutated into a dynastic struggle when Edward III of England claimed the French throne, challenging the legitimacy of the new Valois dynasty. Over eleven decades the conflict drew in Scotland, Castile, Flanders, Brittany, Navarre, the Papacy, mercenary companies and, eventually, the whole population of France, who were forced to choose between “English” and “French” allegiance. The war accelerated the transition from feudal levies to professional armies, witnessed the apogee and eclipse of the armoured knight, and saw the first sustained use of gunpowder artillery in Europe. By its end, the Plantagenets had lost every inch of territory except Calais, while the Valois had forged a centralised French monarchy and a powerful sense of national identity.

Background

Feudal custom lay at the root of the quarrel. Since the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II in 1152, English kings had held vast southern French lands as vassals of the French crown. Capetian monarchs, eager to erode these semi-independent principalities, repeatedly cited technical breaches of feudal obligation to confiscate territory. A century of legal attrition—most notably Philip II’s seizure of Normandy (1204) and Louis VIII’s campaigns in Poitou—left the English with only Gascony by the 1330s. When Charles IV of France died without male heirs in 1328, Edward III, nephew of the dead king, advanced a claim through his mother Isabella. The French nobility, invoking the newly minted Salic Law, chose Philip VI of Valois. Tensions exploded in 1337 when Philip declared Aquitaine forfeit, prompting Edward to reassert his claim to the entire kingdom. Economic rivalry sharpened the dispute: England’s wool trade depended on Flemish looms, while Flanders’ urban elites coveted English raw wool and resented French interference. Thus dynastic legitimacy, feudal precedent and commercial survival fused into a war that neither monarchy could easily abandon.

Key Facts

- 24 May 1337 – Philip VI confiscates Aquitaine; Edward III formally claims the crown, opening the war. - 1340 – English victory at Sluys secures control of the Channel; Edward assumes the title “King of France.” - 26 Aug 1346 – Battle of Crécy: long-bowmen decimate feudal cavalry; Black Death follows (1347-51), pausing hostilities. - 19 Sept 1356 – Battle of Poitiers: Edward the Black Prince captures King John II; Treaty of Brétigny (1360) grants England one-third of France. - 1369 – War resumes when Charles V exploits French guerrilla tactics; by 1380 English holdings shrink to coastal enclaves. - 1415 – Henry V’s stunning victory at Agincourt (25 Oct) revives English fortunes; 1420 Treaty of Troyes recognises Henry as heir to Charles VI. - 1429 – Siege of Orléans lifted by Joan of Arc (8 May), turning the war; Charles VII crowned at Reims (17 July). - 1450 – French artillery breaches English lines at Formigny; Caen falls. - 19 Oct 1453 – Bordeaux surrenders, leaving Calais as England’s sole continental possession; the war effectively ends, though no treaty is ever signed.

Impact

Militarily, the war buried the feudal knight and elevated the long-bow, pike and gunpowder artillery as dominant tools of war. The French standing army, created by Charles VII’s Ordinance of 1439, became the model for early-modern Europe. Politically, the Valois monarchy emerged with direct taxation, permanent troops and a bureaucracy that reduced the great princes to courtiers; conversely, England’s failure forced the Crown to rely on Parliament for war subsidies, entrenching a constitutional balance that would later produce the Wars of the Roses. Culturally, the conflict forged competing national myths—Saint Joan for France, Agincourt for England—while ravaged French peasants nursed a hatred of “foreign” occupation that fed into revolutionary patriotism centuries later. Finally, the war’s legal legacy—French insistence on an unbroken male line—shaped succession crises up to the Bourbons, while England turned maritime, laying the groundwork for its future Atlantic empire.