The Age of Chivalry (28 page)

French ambitions on the eve of the conflict centered on Gascony, still held by the English as a fief of the French Crown rather than as their own territorial possession. Edward had been allowed to keep it, but an agreement made in 1331 meant that in return he had to give up his claim to the French Crown. This was an uneasy compromise, and in 1336 Philip made plans to take over Gascony while
Edward was preoccupied with making war against the Scots—by now a well-established French ally. In 1337 Philip claimed the whole of Gascony as his own fiefdom, and Edward in return asserted his claim to be the rightful king of France.

The initial stages of the war went badly for the English, who had allied themselves with Flanders and also with various individual nobles elsewhere in the Low Countries. Paying subsidies to these allies and meeting the costs of maintaining armies on foreign soil placed huge strains on English finances, and by 1340 these alliances were abandoned. The French naval offensive deployed ships and crew supplied by the republic of Genoa, and the disruption to England's trading patterns was considerable—especially the export of raw wool to Flanders and the import of wine and salt from Gascony. At the Battle of Sluys in 1340, however, the English were able to assert their naval supremacy and for the rest of the war the English Channel was effectively defended from any threat of French invasion. The focus of conflict thereafter shifted to Gascony and to Brittany where the two powers supported rival claimants to the duchy, but in both areas the fighting of the early 1340s was inconclusive.

A
BOVE
An anonymous portait of Edward III, who reigned as King of England between 1327 and 1377
.

However, in July 1346 in a major military offensive, Edward led an expedition to France which landed on the Cotentin Peninsula on the Normandy coast. Caen was captured swiftly and Edward then advanced northwards toward the Low Countries, pillaging as he went. At Crécy the two armies confronted each other in battle and the result, greatly influenced by the English and Welsh archers with their longbows, was a decisive defeat for the French. Edward was now able to proceed northwards unopposed, and following a siege he captured the city of Calais in 1347. This was a major coup for the English army, which could once again maintain its troops in a fortified settlement on French soil. Developments in Scotland were also favoring England by this time, and David II was captured following his defeat in the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346.

VALOIS KINGS
1328–1461

PHILIP VI
(1293–1350)

r. 1328–50

JOHN II

(1319–64)

r. 1350–64

CHARLES V

(1338–80)

r. 1364–80

CHARLES VI

[“the Mad”]

(1368–1422)

r. 1380–1422

CHARLES VII

(1403–61)

r. 1422–61

The next stage of the war saw the rise to prominence of Edward III's son and namesake, the prince of Wales, also known as the Black Prince. In 1356 the prince landed his troops in Gascony and advanced toward Poitiers, where a major victory was gained in battle over the French. This success was once again attributable to the English and Welsh archers. France's new king John II (
Jean le Bon
), a patron of the arts and an indifferent soldier, was captured and taken to England where he was held in captivity for four years while the ransom to release him was being raised in an economically weakened France.

R
IGHT
An illustration depicting the murder of Etienne Marcel, 1358. Marcel was about to open the gates of Paris to the king of Navarre's armed bands, but Jean Maillart prevented him, and killed him before the Porte Saint-Antoine (from
The Chronicles of Jean Froissart).

By now much of the French countryside was collapsing into a state of anarchy, with professional soldiers turning to brigandage and pillaging the land. In 1358 there was a major peasant rebellion (the
Jacquerie
) and deep divisions were also emerging among the French élite. Charles the dauphin was trying to rule as regent in his father's absence, and in October 1356 he summoned the Estates-General, a representative body consisting of the three orders of clergy, nobility and townspeople. Étienne Marcel, leader of the Paris merchants, enjoyed the support of many nobles in his refusal to grant money to Charles and in his attempt to impose substantial restrictions on royal power. Charles's resistance led Marcel to support the king of Navarre, whom he hoped to place on the French throne and whose armed bands were on the outskirts of Paris by the beginning of 1358.

English forces were keen to capitalize on this domestic French crisis, and in 1358 Edward III once again launched an invasion force but was unable to capture either Paris or Rheims. Charles was able to call on support from the provinces in reasserting control over Paris and its urban mob, whose violence had alienated previously sympathetic members of the nobility. By the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) a third of western France—Aquitaine, Gascony, western Brittany and the countship of Calais—was ceded to England, whose Crown held these territories without having to pay homage. A ransom of three million crowns was fixed as the price to be paid in installments for the king's release. Although England gave up Normandy and, at least in theory, the claim to the French Crown, the treaty marked the high point of English fortunes in the Hundred Years' War, and it now ruled a much-expanded Aquitaine. The enormous sums paid in ransom by the French boosted their enemy's treasury for the rest of the century and consequently increased the English capacity to wage war. As a guarantee of the future payment, and after paying one million crowns, John II had to give up two of his sons as hostages to the English. When his son Louis escaped from England in 1362 King John II decided to give himself up. An amiable captivity in England seemed preferable to the burdens of exercising kingship in France, and on his death in 1364 John was succeeded by his son who reigned as Charles V.

During the first period of peace (1360–69) Charles contemplated two issues: how best to regain the French lands lost to the English and how to rid the countryside of those mercenary soldiers who had been disbanded and were now causing social chaos. He found a solution in Bertrand du Guesclin, a minor noble from Brittany who had learned advanced guerrilla techniques while engaged in the duchy's internal conflicts. Du Guesclin had crushed the forces of Charles II of Navarre in Normandy in 1364, and Charles V now placed him in command of the mercenary bands whose energies could be used to further the cause of the French Crown.

Castile in the 1360s was consumed by a civil war, with the English supporting the cause of Pedro the Cruel while his opponent and brother Don Enrique enjoyed French support. Du Guesclin's men forced Don Pedro out of Castile in 1365, at which point he attracted the support of the Black Prince, who was then ruling in Aquitaine as his father's viceroy. At the Battle of Najera in April 1367 the Anglo-Gascon force inflicted a heavy defeat on du Guesclin's men. It was the Black Prince's last major victory, and he subsequently developed the dropsy which would later claim his life. His rule in Gascony-Aquitaine became increasingly autocratic, and when Pedro defaulted on his debts the prince resorted
to extraordinary taxation measures. Gascon nobles at that point petitioned the French Crown to come to their aid, and Charles V summoned the prince to Paris to answer charges. When he refused to do so the king charged him with disloyalty and deemed that the English had broken the terms of the peace treaty. In May 1369 Charles declared war and hostilities resumed.

The second major phase of the Hundred Years' War saw a steady improvement in French fortunes. Charles opted for a policy of attrition that was calculated to engage English forces across a broad front while seeking to avoid a major battle. In pursuing this policy the French relied on the effective strategies of du Guesclin, who was appointed constable of France in 1370. He drove back the major English offensive in northern France using both hit and run raids and the persuasion of bribery. The French could also rely on the navy of Castile, since du Guesclin had captured Pedro the Cruel and the region's throne
was occupied from 1370 onward by France's ally, Enrique. England now suffered from a dearth of effective commanders. The Black Prince's illness meant that he was deprived of his command in 1371, and his father, the king, was too old to take to the field of battle. The loss of John Chandos who, as
seneschal
, was the administrator of Poitou, and the capture of their Gascon vassal Jean III de Grailly, deprived the English of two of their greatest military leaders. In 1372 du Guesclin avenged an historic French defeat by retaking Poitiers, and five years later his forces captured Bergerac. Charles's policy of negotiating with cities and regions the French had lost was also highly effective, and by 1374 he had regained all the lands ceded under the peace treaty with the exception of Calais and Aquitaine. The death of the Black Prince in 1376 and of Edward III in 1377 meant that the prince's son Richard of Bordeaux succeeded to the throne during his minority. Du Guesclin's death in 1380 and the resumption of a major Scottish military offensive in the 1380s, including the Battle of Otterburn (1388), meant that it suited both sides to engage in peace negotiations. These were eventually concluded in 1389.

The period of the second peace (1389–1415) was one in which both countries saw a resumption of domestic challenges to the authority of the Crown. Charles V's brothers, who dominated the regency council that ruled in the name of his infant son, quarreled among themselves and the authority of the Crown diminished accordingly. When Charles VI started to govern in his own name he proved to be a trivial figure, and his descent into madness in 1392 put his uncles back in power. An open contest for power developed between two factions. The Orléanist group—subsequently known as the Armagnac—supported the king's brother, Louis of Valois, duke of Orléans. Those who championed the cause of the king's cousin, John II, duke of Burgundy, were known as the Burgundians. The Burgundian group were responsible for the assassination of Louis, duke of Orléans, in 1407, and thereafter leadership of those opposed to John of Burgundy passed to Bernard VII, count of Armagnac. By 1410 both these factions were seeking English assistance in a period that was effectively one of French civil war.

The English Crown was also embroiled in domestic conflict. Richard II failed to quell the Irish uprising that preoccupied him for most of his reign, and his cousin Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne in 1399. From 1400 onward Henry IV was challenged by a major Welsh rebellion under the leadership of Owain Glyndwr, and until 1410 much of Wales was lost to the English. In the north the English regime change led to a series of renewed Scottish attacks along the border. These were countered by an English invasion in 1402 and the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Homildon Hill. However, that battle sowed the seeds of another conflict, since Henry and the earl of Northumberland quarreled over the fruits of their victory. A long and bloody struggle ensued between the two for control of the northern English region, and this was only finally resolved
in 1408 when the Percy family had to concede defeat. These troubles, along with the resumption of major French and Scandinavian raids on English shipping, meant that England was in no state to renew the French campaign until 1415.