The Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts in Western Europe from 1337 to 1453. It was waged between the House of Plantagenet and its cadet House of Lancaster over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. The root causes of the conflict can be traced to the crisis of 14th-century Europe.
About Hundred Years’ War in brief
The Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts in Western Europe from 1337 to 1453. It was waged between the House of Plantagenet and its cadet House of Lancaster over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. It is common to divide the war into three phases, separated by truces: the Edwardian War, the Caroline War, and the Lancastrian War. The root causes of the conflict can be traced to the crisis of 14th-century Europe. In the early years of the war, the English, led by their king and his son Edward, the Black Prince, saw resounding successes. But by 1378, the French under King Charles the Wise and the leadership of Bertrand du Guesclin had reconquered most of the lands ceded to King Edward in the Treaty of Brétigny. The newly crowned Henry V of England seized the opportunity presented by the mental illness of Charles VI of France and the French civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians to revive the conflict. Overwhelming victories at Agincourt in 1415 and Verneuu in 1424 persuaded the English to continue the war of ultimate triumph. Even with the eventual capture of Joan of Arc in 1429, the war concluded in 1453 in favour of the Valois dynasty, marking the end of the civil war in France, and the beginning of the English hopes of conquest of the French throne. But a variety of factors, such as the deaths of both Henry and Charles in 1422, boosted the French morale and the loss of Burgundy as an ally.
The Siege of Orléans in 1428 announced the end for English hopes, with Joan’s capture and execution by the eventual Capture of Burgundian and her execution in 1431, marked the eventual triumph of French victory over the English. The war marked both the height of chivalry and its subsequent decline. It also marked the development of stronger national identities in both countries. The English and French monarchies remained separate. English monarchs had historically held titles and lands within France, which made them vassals to the kings of France, but by 1337, only Gascony was English. French monarchs systematically sought to check the growth of English power, stripping away lands as the opportunity arose, particularly whenever England was at war with Scotland, an ally of France in 1337. The outbreak of war was motivated by a gradual rise in tension between the kings involving Gas Cony, Flanders and Scotland. In 1328, Charles IV of France died without sons or brothers and a new principle disallowed female succession. Charles’s closest male relative was his nephew Edward III of England, whose mother, Isabella of France was Charles’s sister. Isabella claimed the throne of France for her son, but the French nobility rejected it, maintaining that Isabella could not transmit a right she did not possess. So the throne passed instead to Charles’s patrilineal cousin, Philip, Count of Valois.
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This page is based on the article Hundred Years’ War published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
