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THE CAUSES OF THE WAR

A small band of determined men made their way through the tunnels beneath the rock on which Nottingham Castle stands. It was October 1330, and among the group was the young king, Edward III. With his companions, he burst into the chamber occupied by his mother, Queen Isabella. The room had probably been designed by her late husband Edward II. Since his deposition in 1327, England had been ruled by the queen and her lover Roger Mortimer. Now, Mortimer and two of his advisors were seized. The personal rule of Edward III began. The coup revealed him as bold and determined, a man ready to take a dramatic gamble. He had much to do to restore the power and prestige of the monarchy after his father’s disastrous rule.

Two years before the Nottingham coup, Philip VI of Valois became king of France. The previous king, Charles IV, was the last of the Capetian line that had ruled since 987. The dynasty had been astonishingly successful in producing male heirs in a direct line of descent until the death of Louis X in 1316. He was succeeded by his brother, Philip V, who was followed by his younger brother Charles IV in 1322. He died in 1328. Philip of Valois, grandson of Philip IV, was the closest heir in the male line; there was little argument over his succession to the throne. However, for the chronicler Froissart, it was Philip’s accession that led to ‘great war and great devastation.’¹ War did not come immediately; it was in 1337 that Philip ordered the confiscation of Edward III’s duchy of Gascony.

GASCONY, SCOTLAND AND THE LOW COUNTRIES

There were long-standing issues regarding the duchy of Gascony, which had been acquired by the English through Henry II’s marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. In the Treaty of Paris of 1259 the English acknowledged that their king owed homage to the French ruler for the duchy. Although the treaty was followed by over 30 years of peace between England and France, a situation in which one king was obliged to do homage to another for some of his lands was a recipe for trouble. In 1294 war broke out when the French parlement condemned Edward I to lose Gascony; this lasted until a truce was agreed in 1297. There was a brief war again in 1324. The French monarchy was eager to extend its rights of jurisdiction, and encouraged appeals by Gascons to the parlement of Paris. There were arguments over the foundation of new bastides, small defended towns. Ambitious Gascon nobles, anxious to build up their own power, played off the English against the French. There were also important disputes over the Agenais, to the east of Gascony. Seemingly endless diplomatic sessions failed to resolve the many issues. One of the accusations in Edward II’s deposition articles was that the king had lost lands and lordships in Gascony. For Edward III, their recovery was an important task.

Even though no English king after Edward I visited the duchy, the question of Gascony and its status continued to be crucial throughout the Hundred Years War. To hold Gascony freely, without any form of French suzerainty, was a key English aim. The duchy was not, however, closely integrated with England. Gascon nobles did not hold lands in England, nor was the reverse the case. Gascon merchants did not always have an easy time in England, for royal favours to them provoked hostility, in particular from Londoners. However, the wine trade provided a strong economic link. In the early fourteenth century up to a quarter of Gascon wine exports, amounting to over 20,000 tuns a year, were sent to England in fleets of up to 200 ships.

Scotland was another point of friction. War between England and Scotland had broken out in 1296, dominating Edward I’s later years. A Scottish alliance with France, though it achieved little, presaged the country’s later alignment. Edward II’s reign saw the disastrous English defeat by Robert Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, and the ignominy of the king’s near capture by the Scots in Yorkshire in 1322. The situation changed dramatically in 1332 when a small English army defeated the Scots at Dupplin Moor. Edward III was not openly involved; this was a victory for Edward Balliol, son of John Balliol, briefly king of Scots in the 1290s, and rival to the Bruces. In 1333 Edward III entered the war in support of Balliol, and was victorious at the Battle of Halidon Hill. This led to a protracted series of expensive campaigns against the Scots. The French gave refuge in 1334 to the young king David II, son of Robert Bruce. In 1336 an intelligence report provided the English with information about French plans to support the Scots, and to attack Portsmouth. In the event, French assistance to the Scots did not extend beyond diplomacy, but it was clear that If Edward were to succeed in Scotland, French support for the Bruce monarchy would have to be neutralized.

There were significant rivalries between France and England in the Low Countries. Edward III was married to Philippa, daughter of the count of Hainault. Commercial interests were important; the wealthy towns of the region depended on imports of English wool. While some of the territories, such as Brabant, Hainault and Jülich, were part of the Empire, the counts of Flanders and Artois owed homage to the French. In 1302 Flemish townspeople, many of them armed with little more than primitive clubs, had defeated the French at the Battle of Courtrai, but In 1328 Philip VI took revenge at the Battle of Cassel. An increase in French authority and influence in the Low Countries followed. Yet the towns, notably Ghent and Bruges, and some of the princes looked to Edward III as an ally.

THE CLAIM TO THE FRENCH THRONE

Issues over Gascony and Scotland, together with rivalries in the Low Countries, had all been elements in the Anglo-French war which began in 1294. The new factor under Edward III was the English claim to the French throne. Through his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV, Edward was senior to the Valois line. His case was a good one in law. In 1328 English envoys had given notice of Edward’s rights, though hardly surprisingly the French did not take this seriously. The next year saw Edward perform homage to Philip at Amiens, so effectively acknowledging the latter’s right to the throne. He went again to France in 1331, keeping the mission secret. Edward privately acknowledged that he owed liege homage to the French king. Nor was his claim to the throne significant when war broke out in 1337. Edward III used the title only once in that year, and referred to Philip VI as king of France in a manifesto. Yet when Edward sent a justification of the war to the papacy in 1339, he provided a lengthy explanation of his claim to the French throne. Because ‘the realm should not be governed by female fragility, and because of this a female person was excluded, this did not exclude a male person descended from the excluded female’.² In January 1340 a formal proclamation announced that Edward was king of France. He took the title in a ceremony in Ghent. Its immediate purpose was to bolster Edward’s alliances; those of his allies who owed homage to the king of France would no longer be considered rebels if Edward held the title. The claim to the French throne continued to be an element in English ambitions throughout the war. At some points it was little more than a bargaining counter; at others a realistic war aim.

IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE WAR

Gascony, Scotland, the Low Countries and the English claim to the French throne provided long-term issues in the war. There were more immediate causes for the conflict in the 1330s.

It was the presence of Robert of Artois in Edward III’s court that led Philip VI in 1337 to declare Gascony confiscate. Robert was Philip VI’s brother-in-law, a close associate of the king, who was disgraced when it was discovered that he had documents forged in support of his claim to the county of Artois, which his aunt had inherited. He fled to England, and his was one of the voices encouraging Edward to go to war. Edward must have realized that the favours he accorded to Robert would infuriate and provoke Philip VI.

The breakdown of plans for a joint crusade, led by Philip VI and Edward III, was significant. Philip was not prepared to meet Edward’s conditions, and did not take full account of the complexities of funding and organizing an expedition to the East. Distrust mounted, and the Pope cancelled the crusade in 1336. The fleet that had been assembled at Marseilles sailed, threateningly, for the Channel ports.

There was little military action in 1337, and many chroniclers did not see the date as particularly significant. Some, however, did; the Tournai chronicle by Giles le Muisit has a heading about the start of the war in that year. In his view it was begun ‘without justice and contrary to reason’ by Edward III.³ The breach between France and England in 1337 was much more than another hiccup in the diplomatic process. The measures taken by Edward III in that year show that he was planning war on a large scale. In parliament in March, Edward III made his eldest son duke of Cornwall, and elevated six men to earldoms, five of whom would have commands in the war. A propaganda exercise took place in the summer, when the reasons for the coming war were expounded in English in county courts and meetings of the clergy. Measures were taken to finance the conflict: in September the commons agreed an unprecedented grant of taxation for three years, and the clergy soon followed. It is very clear that war on a large scale, at great cost, was being planned.

BROADER ISSUES

The problems presented by Gascony, Scotland and the Low Countries, together with the English claim to the French throne, continued to be important in different ways and degrees, but cannot alone explain the Hundred Years War, for this was made up of many different conflicts. Alongside the specific reasons for these, such as succession disputes in Brittany, there is also the question of whether there were elements and ideas in late medieval society which led to war with such frequency and on such a scale.

When Edward III made a speech before the Battle of Sluys, he is said to have referred to the justice of his war, divine support, and profit: ‘He who for me today gives battle will be fighting in pursuit of a just cause, and will have the blessing of God Almighty, and each shall keep whatever he may gain.’⁴ War was seen as a proper means of resolving disputes. By the end of the thirteenth century, theorists, particularly canon lawyers, had developed a clearly articulated doctrine of the just war. The cause of war should be legitimate, and other methods of resolving a dispute exhausted. Kings therefore had the right to declare a just war, and could appeal to necessity in the defence of their realms, and in the common good. In such circumstances, subjects were obliged to provide their consent to demands for the men and money needed to fight.

Many wars have been fought over issues of faith, in the Middle Ages notably with the Crusades. Differences over faith, however, had little part in the Hundred Years War. Yet religion had an important part to play. All sides claimed that God supported them, and saw prayer as one of the weapons with which war might be won. There was an understanding that battle was a form of trial, with the outcome determined by divine intervention rather than by the force of arms. Writing to his council in 1346, Edward III asked ‘that you thank God devoutly for the success he has given us up to now, and pray assiduously that he will give us a good continuance’.⁵ Challenges to meet the French king in single combat were made ‘so that the will of Jesus Christ should be shown between us’. In the battle plan they drew up before Agincourt, the French appealed to ‘God, Our Lady, and Monsire St George’, the same trio that Henry V trusted would assist him.⁶ Such sentiments, echoed throughout the wars, should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric. Nor at a personal level was piety incompatible with fighting. One of the great English commanders, Henry of Grosmont, earl of Lancaster, wrote a sophisticated devotional treatise, the Livre de Seynts Medicines.

Though the war was not explicitly fought to win profits, or to gain control of economic resources, it provided a means of acquiring wealth and power in a period when other opportunities were constrained. The war took place during a period of economic difficulty and uncertainty. A climatic downturn began around 1300. Winters were often cold, and grain yields poor. Incessant rain meant that 1315 and 1316 were particularly disastrous years. There was considerable variation, but some decades, such as the 1430s, were particularly difficult. The advent of bubonic plague, the Black Death, in 1348 had far-reaching consequences, as labour became more expensive and prices lower. Even though societies proved astonishingly resilient, long-established social and economic relationships were challenged by changed circumstances. While war added to the economic difficulties, for some, it offered a way out of them.

There were other elements that paved the road to war. ‘Chivalry’ is a term which sums up the aristocratic culture of the later Middle Ages. It was not new in this period; the origins of chivalric culture go back at least as far as the eleventh century. It was, however, in the period of the Hundred Years War that the defining treatises and chronicles were produced. Much has been written about a concept which is hard to define. To be considered chivalrous, men were expected to display skill in arms, and to demonstrate loyalty, courage and generosity. Honour was vitally important. With its emphasis on deeds of arms, chivalry exalted violence, albeit violence in a just cause. Ideally, that violence should have been directed to the Crusade, but it was just as acceptable in the service of a ruler fighting for his rights.

The capacity of states to fight wars on a large scale was important. There were no standing armies, but contracts with nobles and with military entrepreneurs provided a highly effective method of recruiting troops, though broader concepts of military obligation were not abandoned. Financing war was never easy, but rulers had a wide armoury of weapons. Direct taxation was one means; indirect taxes such as the English export duties on wool and French sales taxes provided another. For the French, currency manipulation proved a useful source of funds. Credit was available from Italian bankers and from other traders. For the English in particular, it was important to have a ready supply of shipping, and although there was no substantial royal navy, it was possible to call on large numbers of merchant vessels to transport expeditions to France.

While France and England shared a common culture, with their respective aristocracies speaking the same language (though with different accents), there was a clear awareness of nationality. Some English propaganda portrayed the war as being fought in defence of national identity. In 1295, Edward I had suggested that the French wished to extirpate the English tongue from the land. This was picked up by Edward III, and in 1343 parliament was informed that Philip VI ‘firmly intends, as our lord the king and his council fully comprehend, to destroy the English language and to occupy the land of England, which God forbid’. In 1346 a captured French invasion plan was read out in parliament, as evidence of the enemy’s intention ‘to destroy and ruin the whole English nation and language’. However, Edward’s war was also ‘to recover his rights overseas’.⁷ English nationality had no more than very limited relevance to the defence of Gascony and the claim to the French throne. Yet perceived national differences were an element in, and a reflection of, the tensions and distrust between the nations. A fifteenth-century Spanish commentator considered that the English were a warlike people, who ‘have no wish to live at peace with any other nation, for peace suits them not’. If foreigners came to England, ‘the English try to seek some way of dishonouring them, or of offering them an affront. Accordingly, as I have said, they are very different from all other nations.’ In contrast, the French were ‘wise, understanding and delicate in all matters that pertain to good breeding, courtesy and nobility’, and ‘they glorify themselves for being gay and amorous’.⁸

The reasons for the outbreak of war in 1337 are clear, but it is not so easy to explain the way in which the war was continued and renewed for so many years. Individual circumstances, often dynastic, underlay particular elements of the conflict, but there were broader reasons in the nature of late medieval society. Peace had its protagonists, but the will to go to war was all too often overriding.