The Hundred Years war

The Hundred Years war was a conflict that took place between England and France from 1337 to 1453. The causes of the conflict were the English claims over the French throne and the dispute over the succession of the English crown. The origin of the conflict was the duchy of Guyenne which originally belonged to the English kings but remained a fief of the French crown and the closest relatives of the Capetian king Charles IV who belonged to the English crown and hence the kings of England claimed the kingdom of France.

In the first half of the 14^th century England and France were the most powerful monarchies in Western Europe and France was the largest and richest country in Western Europe. England was also organized and it rivaled France. Technically the English kings were the vassals of the kings of France and the English kings which were Normans and the Angevin was also French. Thus, the French monarchs wanted to keep a check on the growth of English power. England too possessed holdings in France but by 1337 only the province of Gascony was in English hands. In 1328 Charles IV of France died without an heir to the throne and hence the crown passed directly to his closest relative his nephew Edward III of England. But the French rejected Edward III claims to the French throne and instead wanted a Frenchman for the crown of France. Thus, the French Crown went to Charles IV’s cousin Philip VI.

Thus, eventually, war broke out between England and France in which the English led by their king Edward III and his son defeated the French. However, by 1378 the French under King Charles the wise had taken back the lands ceded to King Edward in the treaty of Bretigny signed in 1360. The dispute over Guyenne and Gascony which belonged to England was also the high point of the conflict. Joan of Arc provided a decisive moment in the war and considerably boosted the French morale. The major battles of the war were fought at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt, and the siege of Orleans in 1429. The emergence of Joan of Arc in the siege of Orleans turned the tide of war against the English. However, she was eventually executed by the English. At the Battle of Castillon fought on 17 July 1453 the English were decisively defeated by the French. Finally, in the treaty of Picquigny signed in 1475 the war came to an end with Edward III renouncing his claim to the French throne.

The victory of France in the Hundred Years War brought to an end the English dreams of a joint monarchy and the rise of national feeling in England and France. The war led to the transformation of France from a feudal monarchy to a centralized state. With the war’s end, England lost all its continental possessions leaving it with only the province of Calais