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Thread: Hundred Years' War

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  1. #16

    Default Re: Hundred Years' War

    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.
    Last edited by Furious Mental; 10-21-2007 at 19:13.

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