Preface

In 1435 a French official in English service, Jean de Rinel, explained that it was universally acknowledged that ‘for one hundred years, by battles and other deeds, evils and irreparable damages have continually multiplied both by sea and on land’. This war was ‘over the right and title to the crown of France’.¹ However, the term Hundred Years War did not come into use until the nineteenth century. It was employed initially in France, as a chapter-heading in a history textbook published in 1820.² English historians then adopted it in the second half of the nineteenth century. Modern historians have very understandable doubts about the term. The war comprised a number of distinct conflicts, extending north to Scotland and south to Spain, which were punctuated by periods of truce. The start and finish dates of 1337 and 1453 can be questioned; there is a good case for seeing the Anglo-French war of the 1290s as marking the start of hostilities. It was not until 1558 that the last English possession in France, Calais, was lost. Nor was it until the start of the nineteenth century that British monarchs ceased calling themselves kings of France. However, for all the undoubted complexities, the term Hundred Years War provides a convenient and unavoidable description of a lengthy period dominated by war. For the purposes of this book, I have taken a traditional view, that the core of the war was the conflict between England and France which lasted, with intermissions, from 1337 to 1453.

The Hundred Years War has been subjected to many different interpretations, and there have been significant recent developments in the historiography of so wide-ranging a subject. My debt to the historians who have worked on this period is immense. However, rather than identifying the contributions of individual scholars at this stage (with two notable exceptions), these will, I hope, become clear in the suggestions for further reading. The endnotes have largely been used to identify the sources of quotations, rather than to credit the work of historians.

Questions of military strategy and tactics have always been central to study of the war. For long, there was a consensus among historians that commanders had more sense than to fight battles, unless this was absolutely unavoidable; the French in the later fourteenth century achieved considerable success without taking such risks. However, this orthodoxy has been powerfully challenged, with arguments suggesting that the English, particularly under Edward III and Henry V, deliberately sought battle. The longbow has been at the centre of much of the debate about what can be seen as a tactical revolution in the fourteenth century, when forces fighting on foot gained mastery over cavalry. Discussion of the way in which archers were deployed on the battlefield have proved somewhat sterile; more interesting is the question of ‘technological determinism’, which asks how far the outcomes of the war can be explained in terms of military technology, with the development of both bow and bombard.

The history of war is much more than a study of strategy and battles, as the seminal work of the French historian Philippe Contamine demonstrated. The administrative efforts that went into campaigning created a huge volume of records, which provide detail about recruitment, supply and finance. The English archives are particularly full, but the evidence for both English and French forces has given historians a far deeper understanding than the chronicles can supply. Analysis of muster rolls, horse valuation lists and other records, assisted by the use of relational databases, has provided a new understanding of the composition of armies and the nature of military careers.

The war was brutal. Towns were sacked, villages were burned, crops were destroyed. Political life was punctuated by assassinations. Yet there was a different side to it, which exalted honour and noble deeds. This was the age of orders of knighthood, of grand tournaments and magnificent display. Chivalry was an aristocratic ethos, which with its emphasis on honour and its glorification of individual deeds of arms had significant implications for the conduct of war. Yet war was far more than a matter of knights on gaily caparisoned horses, inspired by their lady-loves to perform honourable deeds. For many, it was a business, with the potential of making huge profits from ransoming prisoners. Recent work has brought this aspect of the conflict into sharper focus.

The need to finance the war, and to provide the necessary manpower, had its economic impact. So too did the destructive strategy of English raiding, and the vicious activities of mercenary bands. People invested in building defences, rather than in profitable enterprises. At the same time, there were some who profited from the war, building up huge fortunes. Yet it remains hard to determine how far change was due to the war, and how far to other factors, such as the advent of bubonic plague in the mid-fourteenth century.

The range of work in recent years has meant that it has become possible to bring these various themes, and others, together in a considered, extensive narrative of the war as a whole. For much of the twentieth century, this type of history was out of fashion among academic historians, but this is no longer the case, as Jonathan Sumption has magnificently demonstrated with his volumes on The Hundred Years War, which provide both a broad sweep and unparalleled detail.

NOTE ON MONEY

The basic system of account was that a pound was made up of 20 shillings, with 12 pence to each shilling (in France, the terms were livre, sous and denier). An alternative method in England used the mark. This was two-thirds the value of a pound, and so consisted of 13 shillings and 4 pence. Coins might be silver or gold; in France gold coins were in use throughout the period of the Hundred Years War, while in England a gold coinage was first minted in 1344. Different currencies had different values, primarily as a result of the varying amounts of silver or gold in the coins. It is not possible to give meaningful equivalents in modern currency, but it may be helpful to note that a knight’s wage normally amounted to £3 a month, and that he could buy an adequate horse for about £20. A mounted archer’s pay for a month came to 15 shillings.

NOTE ON TITLES

I have chosen not to refer to English knights as ‘Sir’. This is not because of any egalitarian objections I might have to such honorifics, but because it is not normal practice to acknowledge French knights as ‘Sire’, and it seems right to treat English and French equally.