The Hundred Years War

Timothy Venning

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783468928
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

Continuing his exploration of the alternative paths that British history might so easily have taken, Timothy Venning turns his attention to the Hundred Years War between England and France. Could the English have won in the long term, or, conversely, have been decisively defeated sooner? Among the many scenarios discussed are what would have happened if the Black Prince had not died prematurely of the Black Death, leaving the 10-year-old Richard to inherit Edward IIIs crown. What would have been the consequences if France's Scottish allies had been victorious at Neville's Cross in 1346, while most English forces were occupied in France? What if Henry V had recovered from the dysentery that killed him at 35, giving time for his son Henry VI to inherit the combined crowns of France and England as a mature (and half-French) man rather than an infant controlled by others? And what if Joan of Arc had not emerged to galvanize French resistance at Orleans? While necessarily speculative, all the scenarios are discussed within the framework of a deep understanding of the major driving forces, tensions and trends that shaped British history and help to shed light upon them. In so doing they help the reader to understand why things panned out as they did, as well as what might have been in this fascinating period that still arouses such strong passions on both sides of the Channel.

Chapter One

Edward III–and Edward ‘IV’, the ‘Black Prince’

Luck or shrewd judgement? Edward III, the ‘Black Prince’, and the comparative English triumphs of 1338–60. What was ‘inevitable’ and what was down to chance?

The claim to France: could it have been made in 1328 not 1338? And was the outbreak of conflict Edward’s fault or Philip’s?

Despite the English victory at Crécy in August 1346 and conquest of Calais in 1347, the practical achievements of the English expeditionary forces by 1355 were limited. Edward III had secured a stunning and unexpected victory against a confident and numerically superior force from the largest state in western Europe in 1346, showing that a new military power had arrived on the scene. The dominance of French knightly chivalry on the battlefield and of the (comparatively) centralized French state in providing finance, men and supplies for war had been ‘givens’ of the early fourteenth century international power-system, particularly since the reign of the ruthless Philip IV (1285–1314). France, the largest and most efficient state in western Europe and ruled by a line of competent adult male rulers except in 1316, had even secured a compliant papacy based near its territory at Avignon, with a succession of French or French-allied popes from 1309. (King John I had acceded at birth in 1316 and died within days.) England seemed to be a marginal, minor ‘power’ with the defeat of the unimpressive, luckless Edward II by the Scots in 1314 and his overthrow (by his French wife, Isabella) in 1326–7 adding to its poor reputation.

Despite Edward III’s impressive military debut in the 1330s against Scotland, his claim to the throne of France was not expected to succeed against the incumbent Philip VI (1328–50). Not least was the reason that France was over twice the size of England and as of 1328 the English kings only held the central core of Aquitaine, the province of Guienne surrounding Bordeaux–as a French royal vassal–plus minor and indefensible Ponthieu in Artois. The population of the French king’s dominions was around twenty million and of Edward III’s around five million, and if fully used the French king’s potential army could be up to 60,000 men strong. (The ‘general call-up’ in France, the ‘arrière-ban’, was, however, not applicable to all provinces and some important ones were exempt; in practice its alternative of paying a fine rather than fighting was often resorted to and the money used to hire mercenaries.) Nor were the French nobility or populace likely to look with favour on a foreign contender for their throne, as we can already discern a degree of basic ‘national’ rivalry between the English and the French in this period even though the English elite was French in its culture as it had been since 1066. Edward III spoke French as his primary language, as had his royal ancestors, although he seems to have been able to speak English too; French was the international language of ‘high culture’ and chivalry. (The first primarily English-speaking king of England was either Edward or his grandson, Richard II–ironically born in France.)

The choice of Count Philip of Valois, the late King Charles IV’s cousin and nearest male heir, as the new king of France after Charles died on 1 February 1328 was not universally accepted. (The decision had to wait until it was clear that Charles’ pregnant widow would not give birth to a son.) There were nearer heirs in the female line, from Charles’ sister and his brother Louis X’s daughter, and it was arguable if the legal/customary ban on female inheritance, the so-called ‘Salic Law’, applied to transmitting a claim via a woman to a male. If it did not, either Charles’ sister Isabella’s son Edward III of England or his late brother Louis X’s daughter Jeanne, Queen of Navarre’s heirs were eligible. Edward was closest to Charles IV by blood, but Jeanne’s family–from 1332 her son Charles ‘the Bad’–were genealogically senior; Jeanne’s line had been passed over when Louis X and his infant son John I died in 1316. Edward duly made a claim on France, though not at the time of the succession-dispute in 1328 as then he was only fifteen and the insecure regency government of his mother and her paramour Roger Mortimer had other priorities. In that context, the ‘Hundred Years’ War’ could have broken out in 1328 not 1338 if it had not been for the English rebellion in 1326 when Edward and his mother, Isabella, invaded to depose his father, Edward II; due to this England was not in a state to pursue the claim to France in 1328.

The dynamic and warlike Isabella, the so-called ‘She-Wolf of France’, has received a very bad press from her own time to the present, partly through conventional observers’ indignation that a queen could flout normal ‘mores’ by flagrantly invading England with her lover to depose her husband (and led troops in person) and partly from the belief that she was behind her husband’s subsequent murder. (One theory, championed recently by Ian Mortimer, claims that Edward II was not murdered but was allowed to flee to the Continent in disguise.¹) Whether she was a murderess or not, the point is that Isabella was quite capable of organizing and even leading an army to secure her son’s claim to France in 1328 if she had not been otherwise preoccupied, heading a shaky regency with her unpopular and ruthless paramour, Roger Mortimer. If her marriage had not broken down (due to her husband’s involvement with the Despenser family and possibly his homosexuality) England might have attacked France in the late 1320s, provided that the exhausting and humiliating loss of the Scottish ‘War of Independence’ was successfully negotiated first. The power-crazed and acquisitive Despensers were unlikely to have encouraged a war had they still been in power in the late 1320s as Edward II’s chief advisers, given that if either Isabella or a royal kinsman (Earl Henry of Lancaster? Earl Edmund of Kent?) led an English army to success they could then turn it on the Despenser regime. Similarly, Edward II was not enthusiastic about waging war in person, and had had a humiliating experience at Bannockburn in 1314 –although he was prepared to fight hard ‘in extremis’ for his own preservation, as he did in confronting Earl Thomas of Lancaster in 1322. But an English government that had avoided the polarization of high politics in 1322–6 might have risked a French venture, at least if there was a threat to their possession of Guienne, which was possible from an over-confident new French king hostile to Isabella such as Philip VI. The centralizing French Crown had tried to confiscate Guienne before (1294) and the fact that as of 1259 the English King was the former’s vassal was a problem easy to exploit.

Edward III’s formal claim (in 1338) only occurred once Philip VI had repeatedly shown his ill-will towards his rival, who he seems to have consistently under-valued. The young and highly energetic English King was the type of ruler to seek to revive his grandfather Edward I’s successes against France as a ‘morale-booster’ for the monarchy’s reputation after the loss of Scotland, but as of 1333–8 he was already engaged in war in the latter country so he was not free to look for a target. The death of the ailing Robert Bruce in 1329 left his 5-year-old son David II as king and left the Scots without an adult ruler, and so Edward sought to restore the enforced vassalage of Scotland, which he had had to abandon in the Anglo-Scottish treaty of 1328, by installing a vassal-king to replace David.

The physical reconquest of Scotland as an integral part of England was impossible so that part of Edward I’s international strategy had to be abandoned; instead Edward III reverted to his grandfather’s strategic plan of 1292–6 by restoring the Balliol dynasty, under Edward Balliol, as his vassals. The King did not, however, act rashly; a private expedition by a party of pro-Balliol barons expelled from Scotland by the Bruces, the ‘Disinherited’, to restore Edward Balliol and regain their ‘just rights’ in 1332–3 saw surprising success with a victory over the Bruces’ army at Dupplin Moor and the capture of Perth. This initial success showed that the Scots army was less dangerous than it had been under Robert Bruce–his nephew the Earl of Moray and his lieutenant, Sir James Douglas, had both died recently–and so Edward could intervene himself safely in 1333 to aid the ‘Disinherited’ against a Bruce fight-back. This led to a major victory at Halidon Hill near Berwick, the conquest of most of the Lowlands, and the flight of David II to France, but the Balliol regime soon met serious resistance and throughout the mid-1330s Edward III was undertaking regular expeditions to Scotland to back them up. It was then that Philip VI of France not only gave David sanctuary but sent troops to aid him (1335) and allowed damaging raids by French warships on southern English ports, principally Portsmouth (the usual embarkation-point for English expeditions to France).

Even if assisting David II was in the French strategic tradition of trying to weaken England by propping up its northern enemy, the so-called ‘Auld Alliance’, Philip had less excuse for claiming that Edward’s ceremony of homage to him for Guienne in 1331 had been defective and was thus legally invalid.² The implication of that was that he could confiscate the duchy whenever he wished. Philip also required Edward to surrender the refugee French dissident noble Robert d’Artois, and specifically declared in 1336 that any peace was impossible so long as he was in England³–the sort of minor issue that could be overlooked with goodwill. Thus, although David II’s refusal to abdicate his claim to Scotland for Edward Bruce’s lifetime then succeed him stymied the 1335–6 papal attempts to solve the Scots crisis,⁴ Philip, not Edward, was the main obstacle to a settlement. The papacy, keen for Edward and Philip to use their armies for a crusade in Asia Minor instead to back up the 1334 naval attack on Smyrna, was endeavouring to sort out the Anglo-French tension throughout this period and had he been willing Philip (a man with pretensions as an international crusading leader and with dynastic interests in the Byzantine Empire) could have diverted his energies to the Crusade as a devoted son of the Church. There was no ‘foolhardy’ and ‘unrealistic’ attempt by a young and inexperienced English king to conquer a kingdom with vastly superior resources; rather, Edward was driven to respond to repeated French provocations in 1331–7.

This culminated with Philip’s announcement of the confiscation of Guienne and the title of Duke of Aquitaine in May 1337.⁵ Did the insecure new ruler, Philip, feel he ought to emulate his renowned great-uncle Philip IV’s confiscation of 1294 and miscalculate the reaction? Notably Edward and his senior noble commanders gained useful military experience in Scotland –giving him confidence to tackle Philip?–and he pursued similar tactics there to his later ones in France, leaving time-consuming sieges alone for ‘razzia’ marches.

Personalizing the issue of Anglo-French conflict, contemporary literature claimed that Count Robert of Artois (who had opposed Philip’s claim in 1328) provoked Edward to swear to invade France and seize his ‘rights’ at a banquet (the ‘Vow of the Heron’) by taunting him over his cowardice.⁶ This is far too simplistic, though it probably suited Edward for it to be thought that he was a chivalrous hero-king like King Arthur who undertook solemn vows at ceremonial occasions and was too honourable to back down. The formal English claim was as much a diplomatic weapon as an idealistic, non-negotiable decision to claim Edward’s legal inheritance. By making himself the rightful king of France he enabled potential French or French-allied defectors, such as the leadership of Flanders and Brabant, to ‘save face’ by transferring their allegiance from one (‘usurper’) king of France to his rival rather than breaching their oaths of loyalty. At the time of his claim, he was doing his best–in person–to rally the rulers of the Low Countries and northern Germany to his cause, aided by the fact that his wife, Philippa, was sister of local Count William of Hainault (who inopportunately died). Given the size and resources of France compared with England, Edward–like all predecessors waging war on France from the time of Richard I–needed a coalition of European allies to even the odds, provide men and money, and attack France on a second front. This was bound to rely on Flanders, an autonomist county restive under French control since the crushing of past revolts, and the ‘Holy Roman’ emperor of the German kingdoms and principalities. Given the pro-French stance of Count Louis of Flanders (to be killed at Crécy in 1346), any English attempt to secure money and troops from the region was likely to be resisted by him and to draw in King Philip too. In financial terms, important Flemish towns such as Ghent, Antwerp, and Bruges were vital sources of loans for the impecunious Edward who visited them in person with his entourage. In military terms, the Flemish ports were also a potential source of invasion-threat to England–a major factor as late as 1940. Hence Edward’s initial concentration on securing reliable allies in Flanders and his expedition there in 1339–40, leading to his first crushing victory over the French (at sea, the battle of Sluys). In Germany, Edward made a prestigious and munificent pilgrimage to the shrine of the ‘Three Kings’ (the ‘Magi’) at Cologne and secured a grant of the title of ‘Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire’ from the Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria;⁷ this obliged Lewis’ vassals to support him in war as their sovereign’s trusted lieutenant.

The most that can be said about Edward’s ‘aggression’ in claiming France in 1337–8 is that he ‘jumped the gun’ by naming himself king of France in documents while papal mediators were still trying to arrange peace;⁸ but chances of the latter were minimal given Philip’s equally provocative confiscation of Aquitaine.

Under the show of being an honourable paragon of chivalry keen on his just rights, Edward was to be prepared to abandon his claim if the alternative offers were substantial enough. Indeed, when he first made the claim verbally in 1337 he postponed making a public statement of it by issuing letters patent or a heraldic coat of arms containing the title–allegedly to satisfy appeals by the alarmed Pope. The formal claim, in writing and a heraldic ‘device’, was only made in 1340–from Flanders on French territory, and thus probably at the request of the local lords to secure their support for him as their rightful king. It was to be retracted in 1360, and modern historians are more convinced than earlier interpreters that for all Edward’s bold claims about it being a matter of ‘honour’ to pursue it to victory he was quite prepared to reconsider it as practical politics and was less naïve than appears. By making such a show of his devotion to the claim he put up the price for surrendering. Arguably, practical politics rather than points of law or honour were also involved in the French courts’ rejection of Edward’s claims–the ‘Salic Law’ ban was not cited by them in 1328 and they could hardly deny powerful local candidate Philip’s claims on behalf of a foreigner. Did Edward in reality understand this, but use it as a weapon after Philip aided Scotland?⁹

The first war: from 1338 to 1350

Conquering France–or even recovering the English kings’ ancestral domains of Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Aquitaine–would not be easy or a short process, not least due to the number of walled towns to take and the limited effectiveness of (primitive) artillery. Maine and Anjou, moreover, were the personal fiefs of the House of Valois, which now held the French throne so giving them up would seem a mark of ignominy for Philip VI. There was also the minor but psychologically important problem of which kingdom was to be named first in documents–as king of both England and France, Edward would insult his English countrymen if he named France first but it was the larger and more prestigious of the two kingdoms. In the end he named England first on documents intended for an English administrative use and audience, and France first on those to be sent to the Continent. (He could not dodge the issue this way in his official heraldic arms and thus put the French royal arms in the more important, upper left-hand ‘quarter’ of the ‘device’.¹⁰) The size of France and easy defensibility of walled towns presented a more serious problem.

Current ‘bombards’–primitive cannons–could fire stones at city walls at a slow rate and produce breaches for attackers to use, but were not yet decisive and were cumbersome to cart around; their first decisive role in a siege was over a century ahead (arguably at Constantinople in 1453). The English king could not afford to take a great number of them with his army anyway, and most sieges had to rely on starving out the defenders or disaffection within the walls. Concentrated work on undermining the walls by sappers and mounting a quick attack was, however, possible, but only on special occasions when a major force was present and speed was the priority. It was also difficult if a town was surrounded by marshes; mining was impossible, and siege-towers would sink in the mud–as at Calais in 1346–7. The English tactic of avoiding slow, piecemeal sieges but staging impressive marches across large areas of country had already been seen in Scotland, where Edward had marched right up the north-east coast in 1336 rather than concentrating on securing all the castles to his rear first.¹¹ As later in France, this and calculated devastation was intended to terrify local nobles into submission but at most secured ephemeral success in terms of areas controlled.

Arguably, Edward was more of a gambler than Edward I in avoiding long sieges–though he also kept his nerve during setbacks. The financial ‘crash’ of the Florentine banking-houses of Bardi and Peruzzi, who were funding his war with huge loans, in 1343 failed to curtail his expensive invasion-plans –though it now appears that he did not owe nearly as much as the Italian chronicler Villani alleged (£13,000 not £225,000?) nor bring the banks down by refusing to pay his debts.

There is also the question of the 1341–5 civil war over the Breton succession to consider. This led to a ‘proxy war’ between France and England on behalf of their rival claimants, the late Duke John’s niece Jeanne (and her husband Charles of Blois, Philip’s nephew) and his half-brother John of Montfort. Ironically, in declaring a female able to inherit Brittany the Paris ‘parlem...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One - Edward III–and Edward ‘IV’, the ‘Black Prince’
• Chapter Two - Richard II
• Chapter Three - Henry IV
• Chapter Four - Henry V
• Chapter Five - Henry VI
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index