Chapter 1: The Crown of Thorns: A Tangled Web of Claims

The fire that would consume France and England for over a century was not lit by a single spark, but by the slow burn of dynastic ambition, feudal obligation, and economic rivalry. At its heart lay a deceptively simple question: who had the right to wear the crown of France?

When King Charles IV of France died in 1328 without a male heir, he left a power vacuum. The French nobility, invoking Salic Law which barred succession through a female line, chose Philip of Valois to become King Philip VI. This decision sidestepped a powerful and dangerous claimant: King Edward III of England. Edward’s mother was Isabella, Charles IV’s sister, making him the deceased king’s closest male relative. Though he initially paid homage to Philip for his French duchy of Gascony, Edward never truly relinquished what he considered his birthright.

This dynastic knot was tightened by a complex web of feudal ties. The English kings, as Dukes of Gascony, were technically vassals to the French crown, a humiliating position for a proud monarch. Furthermore, the rich county of Flanders, a crucial market for English wool, was a fief of France, creating a constant source of economic friction. These simmering tensions—a claim to the throne, feudal resentments, and economic competition—created a political tinderbox. In 1337, it finally exploded. Philip VI confiscated Gascony, and Edward III responded by formally reasserting his claim to the French throne. The longest and arguably most transformative war in European history had begun.

Conceptual Drawing: The Dynastic Dispute

(Capetian Dynasty - France)
Philip III
|
+-- Philip IV
|   |
|   +-- Louis X (d. 1316)
|   +-- Philip V (d. 1322)
|   +-- Charles IV (d. 1328) --> (No Male Heir)
|   +-- Isabella
|       |
|       +-- (married to Edward II of England)
|           |
|           +-- Edward III of England --> (Claims French Throne)
|
+-- Charles of Valois
    |
    +-- Philip VI of France (Chosen by French Nobles) --> (House of Valois)

Chapter 2: The Sinews of War: An Economic Battlefield

Before the first arrow flew, the Hundred Years’ War was a conflict fought on ledgers and trade routes. Dynastic claims provided the pretext, but the “sinews of war,” as the saying goes, are infinite money. The economic structures of England and France were fundamentally different, creating both the rivalry and the resources for a century of bloodshed.

A Tale of Two Coffers: England, though smaller and less populous, possessed a remarkably efficient and centralized system of taxation. The Crown’s wealth was built on wool. This “white gold” was the oil of the 14th century, and England was its primary producer. The wool was shipped to the great weaving cities of Flanders, and the taxes on these exports gave the English monarchy a steady, reliable stream of cash—perfect for funding professional armies.

France, by contrast, was an agrarian giant. It was larger, more populous, and in theory, far richer than England. However, its wealth was decentralized. Powerful dukes—like those of Burgundy, Brittany, and Flanders—controlled vast territories and were often richer than the king himself. The French crown’s ability to levy national taxes was weak and constantly challenged by regional nobles, making it difficult to raise the vast sums needed to wage a sustained war.

Comparative Economic Structure (c. 1337)

             ENGLAND                               FRANCE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary     | Centralized Wool Trade              | Decentralized Agriculture
Wealth      | (High Royal Tax Revenue)            | (Wealth held by Dukes/Nobles)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taxation    | Relatively Efficient & National     | Inefficient & Highly Regionalized
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strength    | Ability to raise cash quickly       | Huge potential manpower/resources
Weakness    | Smaller population/resource base    | Difficulty funding national efforts

The Price of Victory and Defeat: The early English victories at Crécy and Poitiers came at a staggering cost. To fund his invasion, Edward III borrowed colossal sums from Italian bankers (and eventually defaulted, bankrupting them). At home, he introduced deeply unpopular taxes, such as the poll tax, which treated rich and poor alike and would later spark the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. While nobles and soldiers grew rich from plunder and ransoms, the English state itself teetered on the edge of financial collapse.

For France, the economic consequences were cataclysmic. The English strategy of chevauchée was economic warfare in its purest form, systematically burning crops, destroying villages, and slaughtering livestock to cripple the French agricultural base. The capture of King John II at Poitiers resulted in a ransom of three million gold crowns—an impossible sum, equal to more than twice the kingdom’s annual revenue. To pay it, the French monarchy resorted to currency debasement and crushing taxes like the gabelle (on salt) and the taille (a land tax), which fell heaviest on the peasantry. This immense pressure culminated in the violent peasant uprising known as the Jacquerie in 1358. In the first decades, the war had bled both kingdoms white, but France, ravaged and leaderless, was hemorrhaging far more.

Chapter 3: The Longbow’s Shadow: The Crécy Shock

The initial phase of the war, known as the Edwardian War (1337-1360), was a brutal awakening for the French. The French army was the epitome of medieval chivalry: heavily armored nobles on horseback, confident in the power of the cavalry charge. The English, under Edward III and his brilliant son, Edward the Black Prince, brought a tactical revolution: the longbow.

At the Battle of Crécy (1346), a vastly outnumbered English army faced the flower of French chivalry. The English positioned their longbowmen on high ground, and as the French knights charged, they were met with a storm of arrows that pierced their armor and brought down their horses. The result was a slaughter. The age of the knight’s dominance was shattered in a single afternoon.

Ten years later, at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), history repeated itself. The Black Prince, employing similar tactics, not only crushed the French army but captured their king, John II. France was plunged into chaos. By 1360, the Treaty of Brétigny granted England full sovereignty over a vast portion of France, and a staggering ransom was set for the captured French king. The shadow of the longbow fell long and dark over a broken kingdom.

Chapter 4: While Kings Fought, The Plague Reigned

As armies marched and castles fell, a far more terrifying conqueror swept across Europe. The Black Death, which arrived in 1347, was an indiscriminate killer. It cared not for crowns or banners, reaping a harvest of death that dwarfed the casualties of any battle.

The plague tore through the densely populated, unhygienic towns and villages of both England and France, killing an estimated 30-50% of the population. The demographic collapse was catastrophic. Entire villages were wiped out. Fields were left fallow as there was no one to plow them. The labor shortage led to a dramatic rise in wages for the survivors, empowering the peasantry and shaking the foundations of the feudal system.

For the war effort, the plague created a severe manpower shortage. Armies became smaller and harder to recruit. The economic base needed to fund the war—taxes from land and trade—shrank drastically. The psychological impact was profound, with many seeing the pestilence as a divine punishment for the sins of their kings. The war paused, not out of a desire for peace, but because both kingdoms were consumed by a struggle for mere survival against an invisible, unbeatable foe.

Graph: Estimated Population Decline (1340-1400)

        |
15M     |    *********** (France)
        |   * *
12M     |  * *
        | * *
 9M     |* *
        |* *
 6M     |* **
        | ** ** (France post-plague)
 5M     |   ----- (England)
 4M     |  -   -
 3M     |-     -
 2M     |-      -- (England post-plague)
 1M     |
        +-------------------------------------> Year
          1340   1350   1360   1370   1380

Chapter 5: The Mad King and the Agincourt Gamble

France, though weakened, began a slow recovery under the capable Charles V. However, his death was followed by the disastrous reign of his son, Charles VI, who suffered from bouts of severe mental illness. His madness created a power vacuum at the heart of the French court, leading to a bitter civil war between two factions of the royal family: the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.

Across the channel, England was dealing with its own turmoil, but the ambitious Henry V of the House of Lancaster saw the French chaos as a golden opportunity. In 1415, he renewed the English claim and invaded France. At the Battle of Agincourt, he repeated the miracle of Crécy. A small, exhausted English army, cornered by a massive French force, used the longbow and a muddy battlefield to inflict another catastrophic defeat on the French nobility.

In the aftermath, Henry V, allied with the powerful Burgundians, conquered much of northern France. The resulting Treaty of Troyes (1420) was the ultimate humiliation for France: it disinherited Charles VI’s son (the Dauphin Charles) and named Henry V and his future heirs as the successors to the French throne. Henry married Charles’s daughter, sealing the union of the two crowns. It seemed as if England had finally won the century-long struggle.

Chapter 6: The Maid’s Miracle: A Peasant Girl Saves a Kingdom

With both Henry V and Charles VI dead by 1422, the throne of France legally belonged to an infant, Henry VI of England. English forces, allied with the Burgundians, controlled Paris and the entire northern half of the country. The disinherited Dauphin Charles was a king in exile, his cause seeming utterly hopeless. France was on the verge of ceasing to exist as an independent kingdom.

Then, a miracle appeared. A teenage peasant girl from a remote village, Joan of Arc, came forth claiming to hear the voices of saints commanding her to drive the English out and see the Dauphin crowned. In a desperate hour, the French court took a gamble on her.

What followed was one of history’s most astonishing reversals of fortune. Clad in white armor, Joan inspired the demoralized French soldiers with her piety and courage. In 1429, she led an army to relieve the besieged city of Orléans, a pivotal strategic point. Her victory was a massive shock to the English and a huge boost to French morale. She then led the Dauphin deep into enemy territory to be crowned King Charles VII at Reims, the traditional site of coronations, legitimizing his reign.

Though she was captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, and burned at the stake as a heretic in 1431, her impact was irreversible. Joan had transformed a dynastic squabble into a war for national identity. She gave the French a cause, a symbol, and the belief that God was on their side. The tide had turned for good.

Chapter 7: A Century of Scars: The Bitter Harvest

The final two decades of the war saw a methodical French reconquest. Equipped with a professional, standing army and superior artillery, Charles VII pushed the English back. The final major engagement, the Battle of Castillon in 1453, saw French cannons decimate the English forces, symbolically ending the era of the longbow’s dominance just as Crécy had ended the era of the knight. By the war’s end, England had lost all of its French possessions except for the port of Calais.

The cost of this century of conflict was immense for all involved.

Human and Population Losses: France bore the brunt of the devastation. Generations of its male nobility were killed in battle. The civilian population suffered terribly from the constant warfare, the chevauchées, widespread famine, and recurrent outbreaks of plague. Some historians estimate that the population of France was halved between 1337 and 1453. England’s losses were less severe, as the fighting was not on its soil, but the cost in manpower for its armies was still a significant drain.

Graph: Comparative Losses

                     France                     England
Population Loss: |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■| (Est. 40-50%)    |■■■■■■■| (Est. 20-25%)
Economic Impact: |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■| (Devastation)    |■■■■■■■■■■| (Massive Debt)
Territory Lost:  |■■| (Briefly)              |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■| (Nearly all)

Economic Devastation: The war was ruinously expensive. Both crowns resorted to heavy taxation, currency debasement, and massive borrowing, which often led to social unrest, like the Peasants’ Revolt in England (1381) and the Jacquerie in France (1358). The French countryside was a wasteland, its agriculture ruined and its trade routes shattered. England, while spared direct destruction, was left on the brink of bankruptcy, a factor that contributed directly to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses.

Conclusion: Forged in Fire, a New World Emerges

The Hundred Years’ War was more than just a struggle over a crown. It was the violent, fiery crucible in which medieval Europe was melted down and reforged. The war shattered the old feudal order; the mounted knight was rendered obsolete by the longbowman and later by the cannon crew.

Most importantly, the war created England and France. Before the conflict, Edward III was as much French as English, and loyalties were feudal, not national. By 1453, to be English was to be defined against the French, and vice versa. Joan of Arc did not fight for a duke or a lord; she fought for France. This new-found sense of national identity was the war’s most enduring legacy. Out of a century of death, plague, and devastation, two of Europe’s great nations were born.