The Hundred Years' War — Joan of Arc, Agincourt & the Birth of Nations

Outcome: French victory; England loses all continental possessions except Calais

The Hundred Years' War was not one war but a series of conflicts, truces, and resumptions that stretched across five generations. It devastated France, killed perhaps a third of the population (together with plague and famine), destroyed the flower of French chivalry, and came within a hair's breadth of ending France as an independent kingdom. Yet from this catastrophe emerged something new: a French national consciousness, embodied in the extraordinary figure of a teenage peasant girl from Lorraine.

Origins — Why Did England and France Fight?

The roots of the war lay in the tangled feudal relationship between the English and French crowns. Since the Norman Conquest of 1066, English kings had held vast territories in France — most importantly the Duchy of Aquitaine, covering much of south-western France. The English king was simultaneously a sovereign monarch and a feudal vassal of the French king for his French lands. This inherently unstable arrangement produced constant friction.

The crisis came in 1328, when the last Capetian king, Charles IV, died without a male heir. Edward III of England, whose mother was Charles's sister, claimed the French throne. The French nobility rejected the claim, citing — the supposed ancient Frankish law barring inheritance through the female line — and crowned Philip VI of Valois instead. Edward initially accepted this decision but, in 1337, changed his mind and declared himself King of France.

The Edwardian Phase (1337–1360)

Crécy — 1346

The first major battle of the war was a disaster for France. At Crécy in Picardy, Edward III's army — outnumbered but disciplined, with devastating English and Welsh longbowmen — annihilated the cream of French chivalry. Philip VI's army attacked piecemeal, mounted knights charging uphill into a storm of arrows. The blind King John of Bohemia, fighting on the French side, insisted on riding into battle and died. The French lost perhaps 4,000 men-at-arms; the English, fewer than 300.

Crécy shattered the myth of French military superiority and demonstrated that armoured cavalry could be destroyed by well-positioned infantry — a revolution in warfare.

The Black Death

In 1348, the Black Death arrived in France through Marseille and killed an estimated one-third to one-half of the population within three years. The war paused, but the plague transformed France's social and economic landscape. Labour shortages empowered peasants, emptied villages, and weakened the feudal order that underpinned the war effort.

Poitiers — 1356

Ten years after Crécy, the English struck again. At the Battle of Poitiers, Edward III's son — the Black Prince — captured King John II of France himself. The French king was taken to England and held for an enormous ransom. The humiliation was total: France's king was a prisoner, the kingdom was leaderless, and in Paris, a merchant named Étienne Marcel led a popular uprising that briefly threatened the monarchy itself.

The Treaty of Brétigny (1360)

France bought peace by ceding vast territories and paying an astronomical ransom. Edward III received full sovereignty over Aquitaine, Calais, and other regions — roughly a third of France. In return, he (temporarily) dropped his claim to the French throne.

The Caroline Phase (1369–1389)

Under the shrewd King Charles V (the Wise) and his brilliant general Bertrand du Guesclin, France clawed back almost everything. Du Guesclin avoided pitched battles, instead using guerrilla tactics, sieges, and strategic patience to recapture territory piece by piece. By Charles V's death in 1380, the English held only Calais and a strip of Gascony.

But Charles V's son, Charles VI, went mad. From the 1390s, France was torn by civil war between two factions: the Armagnacs (supporters of the royal family) and the Burgundians (followers of the Duke of Burgundy). This civil war was as devastating as the English threat — and the English were about to exploit it.

Agincourt and the English Triumph (1415–1429)

Agincourt — 1415

In 1415, the young English king Henry V invaded Normandy. On 25 October, at , his exhausted, dysentery-ridden army of about 6,000 men faced a French force perhaps three times larger.

The result was the most devastating English victory of the entire war. The French knights, funnelled into a narrow field between two woods, were cut down by longbow fire and then slaughtered in the mud. Thousands of French nobles were killed or captured. The disaster was compounded by Henry's controversial decision to execute many of his prisoners when he feared a renewed attack.

The Treaty of Troyes (1420)

With France's king insane and the Burgundians now allied with England, Henry V imposed the Treaty of Troyes — the most humiliating agreement in French history. Charles VI disinherited his own son (the Dauphin Charles) and named Henry V as his heir. Henry married Charles VI's daughter Catherine and became regent of France.

When both Henry V and Charles VI died in 1422, their infant son Henry VI was proclaimed King of England and France. The Dauphin, now calling himself Charles VII, held only a rump kingdom south of the Loire. France appeared finished.

Joan of Arc — The Miracle

Into this despair walked the most extraordinary figure in French history.

In early 1429, a seventeen-year-old peasant girl from in Lorraine presented herself to Charles VII's court at Chinon. She claimed that the voices of Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret had commanded her to drive the English from France and see Charles crowned at Reims. She was illiterate, had no military training, and came from nowhere.

The Relief of Orléans

Against all reason, Charles gave Joan armour, a banner, and command of a relief force. In May 1429, she led the French to a stunning victory at the Siege of Orléans, breaking the English blockade in just nine days. The city had been besieged for seven months; Joan's intervention felt miraculous.

The Coronation at Reims

Joan then led Charles VII on an audacious march through English-held territory to , where he was crowned king on 17 July 1429, with Joan standing beside him holding her banner. The coronation was essential: it gave Charles sacred legitimacy, linking him to the tradition of Clovis's baptism in the same cathedral.

Capture, Trial, and Martyrdom

In May 1430, Joan was captured by Burgundian troops at Compiègne and sold to the English. She was tried for heresy by a pro-English ecclesiastical court at Rouen, led by Bishop Pierre Cauchon. The trial was a political show trial — Joan was convicted of witchcraft and heresy. On 30 May 1431, at the age of nineteen, she was burned at the stake in the in Rouen.

Her rehabilitation came in 1456. Her canonisation came in 1920. She remains the patron saint of France and the most iconic woman in French history.

The French Victory (1435–1453)

Joan's sacrifice transformed the war. French morale soared. In 1435, the Treaty of Arras detached Burgundy from the English alliance. Charles VII reformed his army, creating France's first standing professional army — the — and its first permanent tax, the .

From 1449, the French launched a devastating final offensive. Battle after battle — Formigny (1450), Castillon (1453) — ended in English defeat. The French had adopted artillery, and English longbowmen proved helpless against cannon. The last English army in France was destroyed at Castillon on 17 July 1453.

When the dust settled, England had lost everything in France except Calais (which fell in 1558). The Hundred Years' War was over.

The Legacy

The war destroyed the old feudal France and created something modern:

National identity: For the first time, people across France began to think of themselves as French rather than Gascon, Norman, or Burgundian. Joan of Arc was the catalyst.
Professional army: France abandoned the feudal levy in favour of a paid, standing army — the model for all European nations
Royal authority: The crown emerged stronger than ever, with permanent taxation and a centralised state
Cultural memory: The war produced France's foundational myths — the holy maiden, the treacherous English, the sacred coronation at Reims