THE HUNDRED YEARS‘ WAR. ONE of the signs that the Middle Ages were coming to an end was the long war between France and England. It lasted altogether from 1337 to 1453, and is called the Hundred Years‘ War. When William the Conqueror became King of England, he did not cease to be Duke of Normandy.
The name the Hundred Years’ War has been used by historians since the beginning of the nineteenth century to describe the long conflict that pitted the kings and kingdoms of France and England against each other from 1337 to 1453. Two factors lay at the origin of the conflict: first, the status of the duchy of Guyenne (or Aquitaine)-though it belonged to the kings of England, it remained a fief of the French crown, and the kings of England wanted independent possession; second, as the closest relatives of the last direct Capetian king (Charles IV, who had died in 1328), the kings of England from 1337 claimed the crown of France.
France, in order to save his title, was forced to accept the Treaty of Calais, which granted complete independence to the duchy of Guyenne, now considerably enlarged to include almost a third of France. However, his son Charles V, with the help of his commander in chief Bertrand du Guesclin, by 1380 had succeeded in reconquering almost all the ceded territory, notably by a series of sieges.
After a hiatus, Henry V of England renewed the war and proved victorious at Agincourt (1415), conquered Normandy (1417-1418), and then attempted to have himself crowned as the future king of France by the Treaty of Troyes (1420). But his military successes were not matched by political successes: although allied with the dukes of Burgundy, the majority of the French refused English domination.Thanks to Joan of Arc, the siege of Orleans was lifted (1429). Then Paris and the lle-de-France were liberated (1436-1441), and after the French army had been reorganized and reformed (1445-1448), Charles VII recaptured the duchy of Normandy (the Battle of Formigny, 1450), and then seized Guyenne (the Battle of Castillon, 1453). The end of the conflict was never marked by a peace treaty but died out because the English recognized that the French troops were too strong to be directly confronted.
English territory in France, which had been extensive since 1066 (see Hastings, Battle of) now remained confined to the Channel port of Calais (lost in 1558). France, at last free of the English invaders, resumed its place as the dominant state of western Europe.
The Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts from 1337 to 1453 between England and France over territorial rights and the issue of succession to the French throne.
In the course of the war, weapons, tactics, army structure and the social meaning of war of both sides have changed significantly.
The war has aggravated the domestic social contradictions inside England and France, which led to the breaking out of large-scale uprisings of the peasantry. The uprisings hit the feudal class hard, and cause the decline of serfdom, which created conditions for the new capitalism.
Although primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave the French and English the sense of nationalism. For the French, the feudal separatist was blow heavily. Civil wars, deadly epidemics, and famines reduced the population drastically, and the continuing and large-scale war forced the ruling class to centralize their power. The war has accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a centralized state. After the war, the Italian Renaissance was imported to France by King Francis I.
In England, English political forces came to oppose the cost of the continuing war. The nobles lost their continental landholdings, which was the main factor that led to the internal dynastic wars known as the Wars of the Roses for the throne of England, giving rise to its country the tyranny by the monarch in the 16th century. Huge expenses driven by warfare, and massive loss in population has propelled the centralization of national power and property.
These political, cultural and technological developments transformed European society, and thus concluded the Late Middle Ages.
OMAHUNG WORLD 