Hundred Years' War

[Caius]

Hi all,

Im looking for some good place where I can get a lot of info of the Hundred Years' War.

Thank you.

[ajaxfetish]

The Hundred Years War in France and England, by Christopher Allmand
A Distant Mirror, by Barbara Tuchman

Primary Source: Chronicles, by Jean Froissart

Plenty of others.

Ajax

[Furious Mental]

Well I've had to study the subject before so I will just copy and paste a bibliography for you.

ALLMAND, Christopher T, The Hundred Years War: England and France at war, c 1300-1450, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

ALLMAND, Christopher T, ‘War and the Non-Combatant in the Middle Ages’, in KEEN, Maurice, Medieval warfare: a history, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 253-272.

AVESBURY, Robert of, Robert of Avesbury’s Chronicle, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911.

AYTON, Andrew, ‘English Armies in the Fourteenth Century’, in in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 21-38.

BAKER, Geoffrey, Chronicon Galfridi la Baker de Swynebroke. Edited and translated by E Maunde. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1889.

BASIN, Thomas, Histoire de Charles VII. Edited and translated by Charles S Samaran. Two volumes, Paris, Société de I'Histoire de France, 1939-1944.

BENNETT, Matthew, ‘The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 1-20.

CHARTIER, Jean, Chronique francaise du roi de France Charles VII. Edited and translated b Vallet de Viriville. Paris, Société de I'Histoire de France, 1858.

CONTAMINE, Phillippe, ‘The Soldier in Late Medieval Urban Society’, French History, vol 8(1) (March 1994), pp 1-13.

Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War. Edited by Anne Curry & Michael Hughes. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994.

CURRY, Anne E, ‘English Armies in the Fifteenth Century’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 42-70.

CURRY, Anne E, ‘The Impact of War and Occupation on Urban Life in Normandy, 1417-1450, French History, vol 1(2) (Oct 1987), pp 157-181.

English Historical Documents. Edited by David C Douglas and A R Myers. Twelve volumes, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953-1977.

FRIEL, Ian, ‘Winds of Change?’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, 183-193

FROISSART, Jean de, Chronicles. Edited and translated by Geoffrey Brereton. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1978.

FROISSART, Jean de, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries. Edited and translated by T Johnes. London, W Smith, 1839.

FROISSART, Jean de, Froissart’s Chronicles. Edited and translated by Jean Joliffe. London, Harvill, 1967.

FROISSART, Jean de, Chroniques de Froissart. Edited and translated by S Luce. Five volumes, Paris, Société de l’Histoire de France, 1869-1975.

HARDY, Robert, ‘The Longbow’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 161-181

JONES, Michael, ‘Edward III’s Captains in Brittany’, in ORMROD, W M, England in the fourteenth century: proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton symposium, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1986, pp 99-118.

JONES, Michael, ‘War and Fourteenth-Century France’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 102-119.

KEEN, Maurice, ‘The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder, and Permanent Armies’, in KEEN, Maurice, Medieval warfare: a history, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 273-291.

NICHOLSON, Helen, Medieval warfare: theory and practice of war in Europe, 300-1500, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

England in the fourteenth century: proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton symposium. Edited by W.M. Ormrod. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1986.

PRESTWICH, Michael, Armies and warfare in the Middle Ages: the English experience, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1996.

ROGERS, Clifford, ‘The Age of the Hundred Years War’, in KEEN, Maurice, Medieval warfare: a history, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp 136-162.

ROGERS, Clifford, ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War’, The Journal of Military History, Vol 57(2) (Apr 1993), pp 241-278.

Gesta Henrici Quinti. Edited and translated by John S Roskell and Frank Taylor. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975.

SHOWALTER, Dennis E, ‘Caste, Skill, and Training: The Evolution of Cohesion in European Armies from the Middle Ages to the Sixteenth Century’, The Journal of Military History, Vol 57, No 3 (Jul 1993), pp 407-430.

SOLON, Paul D, ‘Popular Response to Standing Military Forces in Fifteenth-Century France’, Studies in the Renaissance, Vol 19 (1972), pp 78-111.

SOLON, Paul D, ‘Valois Military Administration on the Norman Frontier, 1445-1461: A Study in Medieval Reform’, Speculum, Vol 51, No 1 (Jan 1976), pp 91-111.

SUMPTION, Jonathan, The Hundred Years War, six volumes, London, Faber, 1990-1999.

TUCK, Anthony, ‘Why Men Fought in the 100 Years War’, History Today, vol 33(4) (April 1983), pp 35- 40.

VALE, Malcolm, ‘The War in Aquitaine’, in CURRY, Anne, and HUGHES, Michael, Arms, armies, and fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1994, pp 69-82.

VENETTE, Jean de, The Chronicle of Jean de Venette. Edited and translated by Richard A Newhall, and Jean Birdhall. New York, Columbia University Press, 1953.

WRIGHT, Nicholas, Knights and peasants: the Hundred Years War in the French countryside, Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1998.

WRIGHT, Nicholas, ‘’Pillagers’ and ‘Brigands’ in the Hundred Years War’, Journal of Medieval History, vol 9 (1983), pp 15-24.

WRIGHT, Nicholas, ‘Ransoms of non-combatants during the Hundred Years War’, Journal of Medieval History, vol 17 (1991), pp 323-332.

My advice is that if you want to get a feel for what the Hundred Years War was really like, ignore sources focused entirely on big battles like Crecy, Poitiers, Najera, Agincourt, etc, and read the stuff by Nicholas Wright, especially Knights and Peasants, and the books by Jonathon Sumption. The vast majority of actual warfare consisted of pillaging, raid and counter-raid, minor siege, escalade, ambush etc in the French countryside. Sumption gives an excellent account of the everything in the war, including the usual stuff like major expeditions and diplomatic manouevring, but because he is writing such gargantuan books he has the space to go into incredible detail about the activities and movements of garrisons and mercenaries. If you have the time to read it you will get a much better understanding of the HYW in the 14th century because frankly if you know about the regional, local and foreign politics and the depridations wrought by free companies, the geopolitics will make far, far more sense. Wright's book is not chronological but covers the whole war and has loads of contemporary accounts, in particular cases from the French courts of Chancery, of individual stories. Also, go to Chronicles by Froissart (the one edited by Geoffrey Brereton) and read the life story of the Bascot de Mauleon, a Gascon routier. Finally, the edited collection by Curry and Hughes is an excellent source on a variety of subjects.

[Brenus]

Have a look at xenophongroup.com/montjoie/hyw_fp.htm, it is quite complete…

[Watchman]

As stuff readily accessible online goes, here (http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/hyw.htm) is a somewhat eclectic but interesting collection.

[Brenus]

:beam: Interesting link. Nothing about the last (and lost by the English) battles Patay, Formigny and Castellion.

[King Jan III Sobieski]

Fascinating...

I, too, can benefit from this thread...I'll be taking an independent studies course next semester in which I chose to study the Hundred Years' War. :yes:

[Furious Mental]

"Nothing about the last (and lost by the English) battles Patay, Formigny and Castellion."

Because they weren't decisive. Once Henry VI took to the throne the English position in France was doomed because he simply couldn't control the factional conflicts within the English nobility. The English lost the Hundred Years War in Yorkshire, not France.

[Brenus]

“The English lost the Hundred Years War in Yorkshire, not France.”
:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

“The final phase of the Hundred Years' War encompassed the obviously dramatic, first effective employment of gunpowder weapons (aside from the Hussite Wars of 1413-36) in Western Europe. What was special to the French artillery was not a secret technology. The improved gunpowder and gun manufacturing techniques were widely known throughout Europe. It was the organization and direction of the artillery arm by Jean and Gaspard Bureau, that enable the French army to prevail in rapid siege operations as well as in pitched battles.

The final phase of the Hundred Years' War contained two battles that ran contrary to the some of the touted themes of medieval warfare espoused by many military theorists.
English longbowmen were defeated in an open battle. Forced to dislodge from their traditional defensive positions by a few guns and then overridden by a French heavy cavalry charge at Formigny (1450). This battle led to the recovery of Normandy by the French crown.
At Castillon (1453) the French destroyed the last English army with cannon, handguns, and heavy cavalry. This battle led to the recovery of Guyenne and was the last major battle of the long war. “

“they weren't decisive”:beam: :beam: :beam:
The English were kicked out of their possessions in France and it is NOT decisif...:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

[Furious Mental]

I said the battles themselves were not decisive, and they weren't. Charles VII had about 8,000 semi-professional militiamen in the Compagnies des Francs Archers, and 12,000 excellent rgular soldiers in the Compagnies d'Ordonnance alone. Confronted with this powerful new French army Henry VI managed to raise two expeditionary forces numbering less than 10,000 soldiers between them, for the simple reason that the English nobility did not care about the Hundred years War anymore. If the English had made a determined effort to hold on to Normandy and Bordeaux and had confronted the French with equal or better forces, and the French had still won at Formigny and Castillion it could properly be said that the battles had been decisive because until the end of the battles the English would still have had a chance to hold on to their conquests. But that wasn't what happened; the fate of English Normandy and Bordeaux was sealed long beforehand by political mayhem in England itself which crippled the English war effort. Even though they saw the debut of new tactis and institutions, the final battles of the Hundred Years War were little more than footnotes; doomed attempts to forestall the inevitable.

[Brenus]

So, Crécy and Azincourt were not decisive: If the French would have forgotten their civil war, the English would have even more troops in front of them. If confronted to a united French Army (and without rain, in case of Agincourt), the English could claim the victory...
If the German in 1940 would have waited that the French army to be equiped with the new and moderm weapons and material (and the General en Chef to retire) and still would have been able to defeat the French and English etc…:beam:

Whatever the political circumstances, a defeat is decisive when you lost what you had. That is what did happen to the English. Even before the formation of the Franc-Archers (1448) the French army captured Creil and Conflans. French besieged Pontoise in June, and took the town (25 October 1441) after a long campaign and an artillery siege directed by Jean Bureau.
In 1442 Charles VII launched a major campaign into Guyenne and captured St.-Sever, Dax, and La Réole.

The defeat (in the final period) for the English at Montargis followed by Patay and then Lagny-sur-Marne is a clear signal that the English started to loose for good this time. Which battle was the decisive one? Yes the English did succeed to hold and even to re-conquered some towns, however the Truce of Tours suspended hostilities between England and France (lasted until 1449). As part of a two-year truce, English surrendered Maine. After the English broke the truth, they went from defeat to defeat, losing town after town.
Formigny (15 April 1450) followed by Castillon (17 July 1453) were just the last battles which finished of the Hundred Years War. They are decisive because the last.

Patay in 1428 (18th of June, quite a lot of battles the 18th of June) was decisive. It save Rouen from the English and is not often mentioned…

[Furious Mental]

"So, Crécy and Azincourt were not decisive"

Rofl, of course Crecy and Agincourt were decisive in the context of the HYW. Crecy pretty much destroyed the French royal host and also gave the English the template for all their future expeditions and battles. Agincourt was decisive because if it hadn't been won Henry V's army would have been destroyed, he would have been killed, captured or at any rate discredited, and in all probability the war would have ended much sooner than 1453.

Formigny and Castillion were not decisive. Your argument on this point is a colossal contradiction- first you point out (accurately) that the English had already lost vast areas and been defeated over and over again, and then you claim (erroneously) that battles which did not and could not have reversed this disaster for the English were "decisive". That is illogical; a battle cannot be decisive if the outcome of the war has already been decided by other events; by definition the battle decides absolutely nothing and that was essentially the case with Castillion and Formigny. You may as well claim that the Battle of Berlin was decisive "because it was the last" on the Eastern Front of WWII, even though by that time Nazi Germany was utterly doomed.

[Brenus]

Formigny and Castillion did kill any hope for the English to come back on French soil. If the English would have preserved these territories, perhaps e King woud have been able to come back.
“In 1513, Henry VIII invaded France, and won the Battle of Guinegate ('second battle of the spurs' ), 17 August 1513 . The English king captured a few small towns and attempted to arranged with the Austrian Emperor a futile scheme to obtain the French crown. In 1558, the French captured Calais, England's last foothold in France”.
Imagine the same attempt with what was lost at Formigny and Castillion. So what do you need for a battle to be decisive if it doesn’t settle a problem? The English were never able to set a durable foot on the continent. If that is not a durable –and probably permanent- solution to a conflict, what is?

"Your argument on this point is a colossal contradiction- first you point out (accurately) that the English had already lost vast areas and been defeated over and over again" That was not the first time. Azincourt was a campaign to regain what was lost before… But because the English still had a foothole in France, they were able to come back.

[Furious Mental]

"Formigny and Castillion did kill any hope for the English to come back on French soil."

No, what killed English hopes of reconquest was the same thing as what killed English hopes of hanging on to Normandy and Bordeaux in the first place- factional conflict within the nobility which soon exploded into the Wars of the Roses and occupied English affairs for the better part of the next forty years. Neither Formigny nor Castillion crippled England militarily; in both cases it lost only a few thousand soldiers, and within a few years English nobles were raising armies numbering in the tens of thousands. But they weren't raising them to fight in France, they were raising them to fight each other. Had they wished they probably could have reopened the war in France, in fact that possibility was a consistent theme of Yorkist propaganda.

"So what do you need for a battle to be decisive if it doesn’t settle a problem?"

A battle which settles nothing in the long term is not decisive. When Formigny and Castillion were fought the outcome of the war was effectively predetermined, which is why the battles weren't decisive.

[Brenus]

“A battle which settles nothing in the long term is not decisive. When Formigny and Castillion were fought the outcome of the war was effectively predetermined, which is why the battles weren't decisive.” Ok, England lost no decisive battles, just left France because the French won small limited engagements where the English lost nothing except some towns and incomes which would have been very useful in their internal fights…

Now, we have experts saying that Germany lost the WWII because they didn’t have appropriate material (long range bombers, for ex…). So no battles were decisive because, according to your theory, the outcome of the war was predetermined by the Industrial and Military capacity…
:beam:

[Furious Mental]

First of all, please do not conflate what I have said about the HYW with something someone else has said about a completely different conflict. That is just a straw man argument. Now, to address so much of what you said as is relevant:

"Ok, England lost no decisive battles, just left France because the French won small limited engagements where the English lost nothing except some towns"

Essentially. English armies were still highly professional and tactically effective, and they also had the benefit of John Talbot's leadership, who won almost all the battles and skirmishes he fought. The French made a conscious effort to avoid confronting him and concentrated on siege warfare and seizing opportunities to strike where the English were weak (which because the English nobility was so occupied with its internal struggles was pretty much everywhere). There is nothing remarkable about this. In the late 14th century du Guesclin and his successors used essentially the same strategem, and without winning any big, decisive victories over the English the French still managed to deprive them of all the land they'd won since the war started. Similarly, even though Henry V won a major battle at Agincourt most of the territory he gained was taken in the same way as it was subsequently lost; repeated sieges.

"incomes which would have been very useful in their internal fights…"

No. Territory in France was a liability to English nobles. Normandy was of dubious loyalty and had to be garrisoned by English troops even away from the frontier. In the 14th century garrisons were effectively free because they were permitted to support themselves by extorting the locals, but this policy was found to be counterproductive and thus in the 15th century Henry V and Henry VI had to pay them at considerable cost. Gascony was reliably pro-English but also economically worthless; it was precisely because of this that throughout the middle ages large numbers of Gascon men left the place to become mercenaries. As with Normandy, the cost of defending it against the French king was not justified to an English nobility more suspicious of each other. This would have been true in any case but it was especially so because the part of England whose nobles could raise the largest armies- the northern shires- was also farthest from and least concerned with continental politics, and also the place where factional conflict was sharpest. The facts speak for themselves; few English nobles even wanted any of the land which Henry V conquered, those that did have it granted to them were all absentee landlords who ignored royal requests to defend it, and all of the English nobility concentrated its efforts on building up military strength to defend their patrimonies in England. The exception to this was Calais, whose asylum and garrison were decisive for Edward IV, but this is because he was supported by the Duke of Burgundy. Any faction in the Wars of the Roses which had tried to defend all of Gascony and Normandy against the French while simultaneously waging war in England would have lost both, simple as that.

[Brenus]

“which because the English nobility was so occupied with its internal struggles” and the French were so united…

Brittany's war of succession (1341-64)
Burgundian - Orleanist/Armanac civil war

Urban and rural uprisings in France:
Parisian bourgeois revolt led by Étienne Marcel (May-June 1358).
The Jacquerie (1356-58), French rural uprising against the nobility.
Béziers' uprising (September 1381).
Agitation of the 'Tuchins' in Languedoc (1381-84).
Uprising at Rouen (Feb 1382), of the maillotins in Paris (Mar 1382).
Supression of the marchands in Paris (1383).
Cabochienne uprising (1413) in Paris: first (April), second (May).

For the English who have
English Peasants Revolt (1381).

English civil wars:
Henry Bolingbroke overthrew Richard II and established himself as Henry IV (1399), the first Lancasterian. Henry IV and his son, Prince Henry [later the V]
The Wars of the Roses (1455-85) may have been induced considerably by the English reverses at the end of the HYW.
Some will read that it was not the War of the Roses which prevent the success of the English in France, but the defeat of the English in France which lead to the War of the Roses.

“English armies were still highly professional and tactically effective” Definitively true. They knew their job, had a better habit to work together (unlike the French nobility slaughtering its own arbalesters and infantry, or disobeying orders).
What Agincourt changed was they were dead and an effective more professional (even if less glamorous) army took shape under Jean Bureau and his King Charles VII.

[Furious Mental]

Yes the French were highly disunited at times. That is essentially why the war dragged on for 115 years. Once the tables turned and the French were united while the English were divided, the war turned irreversibly in France's favour.

"Some will read that it was not the War of the Roses which prevent the success of the English in France, but the defeat of the English in France which lead to the War of the Roses."

Yes the final defeat of the English in France was one of the short term causes of the Wars of the Roses because it totally discredited Henry VI, especially among London burghers. But the long term causes of the Wars of the Roses went back decades. The disputed claim of the Lancastrian kings to the throne was the major factional dispute and this swept up and polarised the English nobility as individual nobles manouevred to use the Lancaster-York dispute to further their own particular interests and the kingmakers sought allies; often established families were trying to protect their powerbase against newly enobled men. Henry VI was too weak and unpopular to control these factional disputes and the growth of noble affinities into private armies numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands. Even though the war with France had been popular among the nobility they were simply afraid and hateful of each other to participate in it after Henry V died.