Chronicles

The term “Hundred Years War” is something of a misnomer. Rather than a continuous conflict, it was a series of wars between England and France from 1337 to 1453. The immediate reason for the war started with the death of King Charles IV of France in 1328 without a son or brother to succeed him. By then, the French laws of succession followed what was known as the “Salic Law,” which barred any woman from inheriting the crown of France no matter her relationship to the previous king. However, the question of whether a claim to the French throne could be passed down to the male descendants of a female member of the royal family was unsettled. On this basis, when Charles IV was succeeded by his cousin, who became King Philip VI, King Edward III of England claimed he was the rightful king of France because his mother Isabelle was Charles IV’s sister.

However, there were also two wider motives for the war. The first was the desire to recover lost territories in France that once belonged to the kings of England. As a result of various inheritances over the centuries, the kings of England once held the territories of Normandy in northern France and Aquitaine, Gascony, Anjou, and other lands in southern and western France, a collection of lands historians label the Angevin Empire. During the early 13th century, England lost most of the Angevin Empire to the king of France. This was a huge blow to national pride that was not at all forgotten by Edward III’s time.

A second motive involved the Netherlands. Froissart himself hints that England had economic and political interests in the region (57). Along with northern Italy, the Netherlands was home to the most profitable cloth manufacturers in Europe. The English economy depended on exporting wool across the English Channel to these manufacturers. Since France’s sphere of influence often intruded over the Netherlands, specifically the territories of Flanders and Hainault, this allowed France to pose a stark economic threat to England if they ever chose to prevent English wool from being imported. Establishing a strong presence in France, if not conquering France altogether, would eliminate that threat and secure English trade.

Although Froissart’s Chronicles concludes in 1400, when there was a long-lasting lull in the wars, the Hundred Years War resumed by 1415 under King Henry V of England. Henry V’s campaigns would end with the English occupying most of France, including Paris, and forcing King Charles VI of France to acknowledge Henry V as his heir to the French crown. Things fell apart when Henry V suddenly died from dysentery in 1422 and the new king was his infant son, Henry VI. The struggle for France finally ended with the Battle of Castillon on July 17, 1453. The aftermath saw all English territory in France reduced to just the port city of Calais in northern France. Still, the monarchs of England would continue to use the title “king/queen of France” until 1800.

The Hundred Years War saw the end of chivalry. The brutal fighting, dependence on mercenaries, and the change in tactics from knightly calvary combat and formal battles to a reliance on archery and guerilla warfare caused a shift from older, “chivalrous” ideas about war to something more resembling warfare as we think of it today. This is something Froissart himself illustrates when he describes the debate that took place between Charles V’s advisors on whether it was honorable to avoid direct combat with the English (189-190).