Hundred Years' War - Full Story, Every Battle - Animated Medieval History

Welcome back hi

story

enthusiasts to another exciting journey through the annals of time! Today we delve into the epic and tumultuous saga known as the Hundred Years War. This century-long conflict between the kingdoms of England and France was a clash filled with daring knights, cunning tactics, and epic

battle

s that would shape the course of European hi

story

. The Hundred Years' War can be divided into three distinct phases, each with its own unique character. The first phase, called Edwardian, included the

battle

s of Crécy and Poitiers, in which English archers rose to prominence and wreaked havoc on the French forces with their deadly arrows while the legends of Edward III and the Black Prince emerged.

The second, Carolinian, phase began with a balance between two sides and soon spread to Spain and beyond, immortalizing John of Gaunt and Bertran du Guesclin, as well as the English chevauchée and French professional troops, with the battles of Cocherel. and Pontvallain. The third phase, that of Lancaster, began with a devastating English victory at Agincourt by King Henry V. A civil war began within France between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, but the country was saved by the famous heroine Joan of Arc, who turned the tide in Orleans, allowing Prince Charles to regain the throne and then win the war with the battles of Patay, Formigny and Castillon, marking the end of this epic conflict and the recovery of French territories.

We are going to talk about all this in this video, so buckle up for an exciting ride through

history

, as we explore the Hundred Years War, its main battles and the incredible stories of several characters that make it one of the more Epic chapters of the war chronicle. Let's embark on this journey together and relive the battles and legends of the past! It is a mission that is also taken up when it comes to conflicts closer to the day, with the epic battles presented by our sponsor War Thunder. Advance and use military vehicles of the modern era, from the 1920s to the present, in intense PvP combat.

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It comes with an exclusive 3D decorator for your vehicles, but it's only available for a limited time. Click the link in the description. How the Hundred Years' War Began When William, Duke of Normandy, conquered England in 1066, his status as a vassal to the Capetian kings of France gave rise to a paradoxical situation in Western Europe. The monarchs of England now held ancestral territories on the continent as vassals of the French kings and at the same time were rulers of a strong kingdom. They sometimes controlled territories in France even larger than their overlords, a trend that reached its zenith between 1154 and 1204, when the Angevins ruled more than half of the country.

This did not last long, however, as a succession of strong French kings, beginning with Philip II Augustus, gradually conquered more territory and, by 1224, all the English possessions on the continent except Gascony in the southwest. This narrow strip of maritime territory had grown prosperous under English rule and became an important source of royal income through the wine trade, often generating more annual income than England itself. The people of Gascony valued the connection they had with the island monarchy and were not "French" as we know the French in our time. The language of the duchy in the Middle Ages was a separate Gascon language, and its people had few or no links with the people of northern France or its Capetian monarchy.

The contemporary author Jean Froissart even goes so far as to call its inhabitants "the English." In 1259, King Henry III was forced to sign the Treaty of Paris, in which he renounced his claims to most of the continental lands but confirmed his status as supreme lord of Gascony, but only as a vassal of the kings. Frenchmen, to whom he was obliged to pay homage. It is widely believed that this was one of the factors that made the Hundred Years War inevitable. Despite the peace, a series of dynastic and territorial wars over the next half century further increased tension between England and France, giving both sides experience in raising armies and waging war.

This situation would probably have continued for a long time, but on 31 January 1328 Charles IV, last king of the main branch of the Capetian dynasty, died without a male heir and left his kingdom in a dynastic crisis. Although the English king Edward III Plantagenet was the nephew of the dead king, the French lords decided that his cousin Philip of Valois, who was the cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, would inherit the throne. To justify this, they cited the ancient Salic Law that prevented women from inheriting land, a rule that affected Edward because he was related to Charles IV through his mother Isabella.

Edward was young at the time and England was under the control of Elizabeth and her lover Roger Mortimer, so in 1329 she paid homage to Philip VI. A year later, Edward, now of age, and his followers killed the despised Roger Mortimer and exiled Elizabeth to Norfolk, allowing him to assume control of her kingdom. The newly appointed English king marched north in 1333 and crushed France's Scottish allies at Halidon Hill, prompting David II to seek refuge in Paris at the invitation of his ally, who then announced that any future talks must take into account Scotland's interests count. Edward was not amused, and from then on he considered the French king, his nominal overlord, an adversary of his.

This was probably what led the King of England to grant refuge in 1336 to the fugitive French count Robert of Artois. He had been convicted of poisoning his aunt in a dispute over the inheritance of the eponymous county of Artois, sentenced to death, and then expelled from France. Robert arrived in London and was warmly received by Edward III, who granted him an earldom, some castles and stipends even though Philip VI had declared himself an enemy of anyone harboring the criminal. When Philip sent a demand to Edward through the seneschal of Aquitaine ordering his vassal to surrender Artois, the demand was rejected and both sides began preparations for war.

Since Robert was actually in England, where Philip VI technically had no jurisdiction over Edward, and not on French territory, the order was deemed to have no legal legitimacy, further showing the king-vassal paradox created by the Norman Conquest. from England. All of these tensions came to a head on May 24, 1337. On that day, Philip declared that Aquitaine no longer belonged to Edward "due to the many excesses, acts of rebellion and disobedience committed by the King of England and against Us and Ours." Royal Majesty." ', citing in particular his granting of refuge to Robert Artois. The king then called on his feudal lords to call for war: the so-called arriere ban and this is widely considered to be the beginning of the Hundred Years' War, despite the lack of a royal declaration.

Rather, it was the culmination of many growing tensions, such as the gradual centralization of government, the unviable nature of the Plantagenet vassal status, and other factors. Beginning of the Edwardian phase The conflict began on two fronts almost immediately when the French began attacking a lightly garrisoned Gascony. While that was happening in the south, cash-strapped Edward III crossed the Channel to Flanders, England's closest trading partner through the lucrative wool trade, and bought the allegiance of Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV, but he did not get much benefit from the expense. Even after being forced to sell the royal crown of England in exchange for funds, Edward launched a campaign into France with around 12,000 soldiers and eventually confronted Philip and his army, who outnumbered him 2:1, at Flamengerie in October.

After a tense confrontation, Edward retreated into friendly territory and Philip did not pursue him. Although brief, the campaign of 1339 was a nightmare for local populations after Edward. Medieval military strategy was to inflict as much carnage as possible against hostile cities and agriculture, which would weaken the enemy government and economy and ultimately limit their ability to wage war. The English king had seen the effectiveness of such tactics, especially in rich and densely populated lands like those of northern France, and thus the famous chevauchée was born. While not yet

full

y developed, these chevauchées were low-cost raids, using limited resources with the deliberate goal of systematically devastating and reducing the productivity of the territories through which the invaders marched, while simultaneously enriching the invader. and weakened loyalty between the conquered and the invaders. his King.

As the Hundred Years War progressed, the usefulness of this strategy proved to be unavailable. However, as 1340 began, Edward's campaign had left the king even more monetarily destitute than ever, but this did not prevent him from formally proclaiming himself King of England and France at Ghent during January of that year. The situation at the canal was not going in Edward's favor. Since 1336, English coastal towns3 had continually been victims of maritime raids by French attacks. While the Plantagenet king's own captains often managed to retaliate with equal rapacity, Philip VI had the largest navy and there was a real possibility of England being invaded.

Edward III therefore returned to England two months after his coronation in Flanders. The fact that he owed money to prominent creditors in the area also provided a suitable reason for leaving the mainland. Battle of Sluys (1340) and Battle of Saint Omer (1340) After making landfall, the king raised a new tax and immediately began gathering new forces for war. At Orwell, Suffolk, reinforcements and ships, mainly converted merchant ships known as "cogs", were gathered ready for attack. The French fleet, which had wreaked havoc on the English coasts with Castilian and Genoese support, had suffered heavy losses in a surprise attack and could no longer organize raids on the English coasts, so it was limited to defending its coasts.

To assist in this effort, Philip ordered the creation of a navy and sent it to Sluys, the most important port in Flanders, to isolate Edward from his continental allies. When his fleet was ready, the English king announced, against the advice of many of his closest officials, that he was going to attack the 200-ship French armada, which was anchored in present-day Belgium, and destroy it. . Defying members of his entourage who denounced the apparently reckless naval assault, Edward III proclaimed: "I will cross the sea, and those who are afraid may stay at home!" He set sail on June 22, 1340, and arrived outside the Zwin River estuary in the afternoon of the next day.

The French fleet anchored off Sluys was composed of 6 Genoese galleys, 22 rowing barges, 7 royal sailing ships, 167 merchant ships and 11 Spanish and Flemish allies, for a total of 212 vessels manned by 19,000 sailors, 500 crossbowmen and 150 men at arms. . It was commanded by two gentlemen, Nicholas Béhuchet and Hugh Quiéret, both without any naval experience. The English fleet was made up of three warships and between 120 and 160 Cogs, but had more men trained in the art of war: the exact number is unknown, but it is high. Estimates put the combatants at 4,000 men-at-arms and 12,000 archers. The French fleet was arranged in three lines along the mouth of the Zwin, with the largest ships in the first line, although their tight formation came at a cost in maneuverability.

Edward's spies had informed him of the French formation, describing it as "like a great forest." The King decided to attack early in the afternoon of the next day, the 24th. With the tide and winds in their favor and the sun at their back, the English fleet advanced in three lines with the largest ships in front, with one ship

full

of men-at-arms for

every

two archers they housed. The French ships, already in a difficult situation, while at anchor, had moved eastwards, taking away even more room to maneuver, so they could not make use of their second lines.

When the two front linescollided with each other at 3 p.m., English archers launched arrows from a distance at their adversaries from wooden towers and crow's nests purpose-built in the trading gears. Standing on a lower level, with the sun in their eyes and armed with slower shots and less accurate crossbows, the French riflemen could do nothing and were riddled with arrows or jumped overboard to escape the chaos. Once a French ship weakened, it became entangled in hooks and surrounded by English soldiers, quickly eliminating the defenders and capturing the ship, which included the Christopher and the Edward, two English royal ships recently captured by the French.

The Genoese galleys, which had protested the approach of battle, quickly fled when the situation turned bitter for the French. After four hours of fighting, the French front line had been sunk or captured and the English advanced on the smaller ships of the second line, gaining an even greater advantage. At the same time, many Flemish ships sailed from local ports and attacked the French lines from behind: it was a complete disaster for the Valois fleet. As night fell, the battle ended: the French had lost 190 ships to the English or at sea, and only 23 managed to escape during the night.

No quarter was given to the captives and many Frenchmen were drowned or murdered by locals on the shore: the loss of life was between 16,000 and 18,000 men, and it is said that only Philip VI's jester dared to inform him of the disaster. The English lost only a few ships, but the loss of men was quite substantial. The English victory was crushing for French morale. The French army had campaigned in the Schlecht Valley in early 1340 against the Count of Hainaut and the Flemish rebels and now had to move to Arras to cover the entrances to the French kingdom.

Edward decided to attack northern France in a double attack with his Flemish and imperial allies: the king himself would lead the largest contingent to Tournai and besiege it, while a second army placed under the command of Robert d'Artois would be sent to Saint -Omer, as it was believed that he still had many allies in the region. D'Artois arrived in the vicinity of Saint-Omer on July 16, but the day before he had been preceded by Eudes, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Arras. The duke reinforced the city and would be followed a few days later by the count of Armagnac, raising the number of defenders to 3,000 men-at-arms and a few thousand militia.

Robert d'Artois was accompanied by 1,000 archers, 10 to 15,000 poorly disciplined Flemings and a few

hundred

men-at-arms, who razed the city of Arques and camped there. On the 26th, Robert knew that the main French army was approaching, so he offered battle to the garrison, hoping to drive them out. He was placed on the right wing with the archers behind him, while the center and left flank were occupied by Flemish soldiers from minor towns in southern Flanders, with a reserve contingent. In front of them, he ordered to build camouflaged obstacles against cavalry charges. The Duke of Burgundy had ordered to remain behind the walls, knowing that the king would arrive soon, but after a few hours, a contingent of eager knights with part of the garrison came out and attacked the Flemish left flank.

The French were quickly driven back, in part thanks to the defensive positions, but once the Flemings began to pursue them, they regrouped and charged again, beginning a fierce hand-to-hand combat that lasted all afternoon. Seeing this, the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Armagnac decided to join the fray and left through the gates. The Count and his entourage of 300 heavily armored knights crashed into the Flemish left side, decisively cutting them into pieces. The second line began to flee back to the camp and was pursued and annihilated, with around 8,000 people dying. Meanwhile, the Duke of Burgundy headed towards the right flank where the English were positioned.

Seeing them approaching, Rober d'Artois ordered to charge against the Burgundians who were surprised. After initial contact, the French men-at-arms were forced to retreat to the safety of their walls, where the garrison could support them, but the duke suffered heavy losses. Returning to camp at dusk after their victory, the English passed the jubilant French who had just plundered the enemy camp. It was dark and both sides were too tired to continue fighting, so they simply passed each other, where a surprised Robert d'Artois was able to attest to the massacre and the loss of the camp. The next day, he had to follow his fleeing allies and returned safely to Edward.

Following the Battle of Saint-Omer, the French army slowly approached Tournai and camped at Beauvines in early September. Edward and his allies had besieged the city of Tournai since 23 July, attacking the walls with siege equipment, storming the walls and attacking the countryside, but the city held firm. With his enemies nearby but no money, Eduardo wanted to confront his enemy, but his allies were less interested in doing so. After a few weeks of negotiations, on the 24th the siege was lifted and the Truce of Esplechin was signed. Returning to England, Edward confronted his numerous creditors and lashed out at his tax collectors and ministers.

Breton Civil War (1341-1343) At this point, the Hundred Years' War transformed into a proxy war when Duke John III of Brittany died in April 1341. The previous year, the childless old duke had promised the dukedom to his two half-brother Juan de Monfort and the French nobleman Carlos de Blois, married to his niece Juana de Penthièvre. Thus, when he died, both Charles and John claimed the throne and this made the civil war that followed inevitable. The one who took the first step was Monfort when he entered the capital of Nantes in May 1341 and took possession of the ducal treasury.

He then took control of the eastern part of the duchy, while the central and northern regions were ruled by large feudal nobles and were beyond his reach. In general, the duchy's merchants and its peasantry largely supported John, while the high nobility sided with Chalres. The garrisons of the Breton towns were confused by the situation and did not know what to do, some opened their doors while others resisted. By the end of summer, Monfort controlled much of the duchy. At first, the French king was unsure of what to do, more concerned with preparing for the imminent end of the truce with the English, which would be extended for another year.

Still, rumors that John de Montfort would pay homage to the English king pushed him to have the Parisian parliament declare the dukedom in favor of Charles of Blois and he prepared for an invasion of Brittany, thus pushing Montfort further into English hands. , although without help. materialized that year. In the autumn of 1341, a strong French army gathered in the Loire Valley and advanced towards the town of Champtoceaux, laying siege to it. Montfort left with his entourage to help the city, but after two days of bloodshed, the Breton nobleman had to retreat. After capturing Champtoceaux, the French army advanced down the valley until reaching the Breton capital of Nantes, where a brief siege took place, but once the citizens themselves threatened to rebel, Monfort had to surrender to his adversaries, who after failed negotiations. they threw out in prison.

Charles de Blois could then occupy most of the eastern half of the duchy, and many of Montfort's former supporters would flock to him. Joan of Flanders, Montfort's wife, took control of her husband's party and treasury and retired to Finestère, where she awaited English reinforcements in the spring of 1342. For Edward this was a great opportunity: in addition to opening another front against Philip VI, Edward's geopolitical interests benefited from involvement. The English routes of trade, reinforcement and communication by sea to Aquitaine surrounded the coast of Brittany, and a hostile ruler in the duchy could sever those vital connections.

However, Edward had encountered difficulties in raising the fleet necessary to transport his troops, so royal aid did not materialize until August 1342. By this time Charles of Blois had besieged the towns on the southern coast of Brittany and was surrounding Brest, but the arrival from England of the Earl of Northampton and Robert of Artois broke the siege. Northampton then advanced out of Brest and besieged Morlaix, where a relief force under Blois arrived. On September 30, outside Morlaix, French cavalry twice charged English positions covered by forests, pike traps and ditches, causing heavy casualties. While Blois's attempt was unsuccessful, the siege was stopped.

In November, King Edward himself arrived in Brittany and unsuccessfully laid siege to Vannes, while many raids were launched into other areas of Brittany, causing devastation and ruining French morale. In December, a French royal army counterattacked and caught up with the English army camped at Ploermel. Here, papal envoys negotiated a three-year truce and the English king returned to his kingdom in January 1343. Pope Clement VI attempted to end hostilities by mediating a peace conference in Avignon the following year, but neither parties accepted the proposed terms. on the other and the war continued unabated. In fact, the war in Brittany continued while Charles of Blois considered the civil war over the duchy as a personal war between himself and Monfort and not as a matter between England and France.

At the end of 1343, English partisans took control of Vannes and Redon, but the following year Blois swept through southern Brittany and captured the important city of Quimper. This conquest, the numerous Montfortist casualties, and the total inaction of John de Montfort, who hoped to return to the favor of the French king, collapsed the pro-English party, and many fled to the court of Blois. Edward's men were only able to hold Vannes, Brest and Hennebont. Battle of Crécy (1346) In 1345 the first major English military raid on Gascony occurred, with several thousand men under the Earl of Derby retaking Bergerac and then defeating a French counterattack in October.

This action gave Edward time to plan and build up his forces in England. He sailed from Porchester in July 1346 and landed in the Norman town of La Hogue with a large army, much to the surprise of the local population. This new theater of war in Normandy was virgin land hitherto untouched by conflict, and so the devastation of it would greatly affect any taxes the Valois king hoped to extract from it. Furthermore, the destruction would diminish Philip's prestige and hopefully incite him into reckless battle. However, it is a matter of debate whether Edward actually planned to campaign in Normandy, and some historians even claim that the plan was to campaign in Gascony, but was thwarted by unfavorable winds.

Whatever the case, the English army rested overnight and then set out at dawn, launching a frantic chevauchée across the Cotentin peninsula. The rich countryside of Normandy was intentionally ruined, mills, barns and orchards were burned while barrels of wine were broken or stolen: nothing was to be left to the French. Edward III arrived at Caen on July 26, but despite accepting the surrender of the garrison, his army raped, looted, burned and killed without mercy. When the three-day looting was completed, 3,000 townspeople had died and the king began sending barges full of looted riches back to his kingdom. As a wave of terrified refugees fled before him, the English king marched inland toward Paris.

At the same time, Philip VI had received news of the landing and was gathering a large army near Saint-Denis. However, he was not yet ready for battle and was therefore unable to intervene when Edward reached Poissy, from where he sent raiding parties to burn Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain, within sight of the same walls. from Paris. The English had shown Philip's subjects that he could not protect them and began marching north again, but now the French army began to pursue them and narrowly missed the opportunity to pin Edward on the south bank of the Somme. After he managed to cross, the army of England, now hardened by the campaign, encamped in the Forest of Crécy on August 26, 1346.

Although Edward had managed to evade Philip's largest army yet, the vanguard of the Valois monarch was getting ominously close, so his Plantagenet enemy prepared to turn and fight. After a brief reconnaissance, a plan was devised. As the hosts of Philip, the flower of

medieval

Europe, slowly approached, Edward rallied his now-reduced forces on a high ridge between Crécy and Wadicourt that looked south into a valley, daring the French to attempt to overthrow him. . It is impossible to calculate exact figures for the size of the army, but Edward's probably numbered just over 14,000, consisting of 2,500 men-at-arms clad in chain mail and dismounted knights, 2,500 lancers and3,250 light horsemen known as hobelars.

Another 7,000 were England's lethal archery corps, armed with longbows and pointed piercing arrows. Since the reign of Edward I, each English town had been tasked with contributing men to the national reserve of archers for precisely this type of battle, and they were legally required to train in the use of the longbow each week. This force was divided into three groups. Two were in front left and right: the first was commanded by the Earls Arundel and Northampton as they followed Edward III's son, the sixteen-year-old Black Prince, into battle. The king's division remained in the rear as a strategic reserve.

All three had infantry in the center and archers on the flanks, while facing a series of ditches, trenches and stakes that were worth defending. Edward went among his men, inspiring and encouraging men prone to cowardice to become brave, while also warning them not to plunder until he gave them permission, as doing so would endanger the army. Once morale and discipline had been taken care of, the king allowed his troops to break ranks so they could sit, eat, drink and regain strength before starting the battle. The king himself took command of the field at an elevated windmill near his reserve division.

Philip's deployed French army began its advance in the late afternoon, composed of just over 30,000 soldiers: 12,000 horse knights, 12,000 infantry, and 6,000 crossbowmen. As the sun was about to set and the army was exhausted from days of marching, the Valois king of France intended to follow the advice of his escorts to camp for the night and attack at dawn, when the soldiers would be better off. rested and prepared. However, a combination of chivalric pride and Philip's lack of control created a situation in which he had to attack. It was around 6 pm when the Valois contingents began their assault. The first to advance along the ridge were the Genoese and French crossbowmen, who lacked their protective shields.

As they advanced, a short but incredibly intense storm drenched the battlefield, slowing them down. The English archers had the greatest range and as soon as the crossbowmen were within it, they stepped forward and unleashed a storm of arrows, killing a large number of their French counterparts and sending the rest to flight. Witnessing what they saw as detestable cowardice on the part of his fleeing skirmishers, the Count of Alençon7 shouted "Finish out this rabble blocking our advance!", at which point the first contingent of knights charged forward and cut without contemplations to his own.infantry. This futile effort slowed the knights' advance and left them fighting at the base of the ridge.

At this distance, the archers fired with deadly accuracy, killing the French and terrifying their horses, the latter aided by three organ cannons that emitted a clamor. Although some of the heavily armed warriors managed to reach the English line, they were cut to pieces by Edward's dismounted knights. The first load had been a complete disaster, but the day wasn't over yet. Undeterred by their initial failure, the mounted knights of France continued to mount charges on the English line, putting particular pressure on the English right flank, where the young Black Prince was nearly killed. Almost surrounded by the numerical superiority of his enemy, the Black Prince asked his father for help, who refused and declared: "Let the boy gain his spurs, because I want him, by God's favor, to have all the glory." !".

However, after a time, the king sent twenty carefully selected knights to assist his son, who discovered that the Black Prince's contingent had already managed to repel the charge and was now recovering before the enemy returned. In a subsequent attack, the blind king of Bohemia, John, ordered his knights to tie their horses to his and lead his lord into battle. This charge started well, managing to get past the archers, but then they were all shot down by the English infantry. The French unsuccessfully charged fifteen times in total, each becoming more disorganized and desperate than the last. As the battle progressed, even Philip VI himself joined the fighting.

He was wounded by an arrow and more than one horse was killed before the battle finally calmed down. Witnessing the unfolding disaster, one of the Valois king's vassals persuaded him to retreat. He did so reluctantly, fleeing with what remained of his army to a nearby royal castle and then to Amiens. In the darkness, the English slept on the crest of it, unaware of the terrible toll they had inflicted on the French. They had lost less than a

hundred

men, while Philip had lost more than 10,000, including 1,500 lords and knights. Siege of Calais (1346-1347) and the Black Death Although Edward III's tired troops were in no condition to pursue Philip, he had won a great victory and wanted to exploit it.

After having buried the French princes who had fallen in battle, the English army marched north, plundering the countryside and unwalled cities, until reaching the town of Calais. Close to allied Flanders, easy to resupply and reinforce from England and with a port, Calais was seen as the best gateway to France in future initiatives: Edward began the siege of the city on September 4, 1346, which was defended. by Jean du Fosseux and Jean de Vienne. A large camp was built nearby and trenches and fortifications were built around the main roads to defend against French relief forces and starve the city, while reinforcements and supplies arrived from England and Flanders with a huge food transport operation. and clothes.

Small raids were also launched into the interior. Meanwhile, taking advantage of French attention to the north, the Earl of Derby, now Earl of Lancaster, expanded English control in Gascony. He then launched a three-pronged attack in the heart of France in September: two to expand the Gascon border and another to sow confusion in Paris. Lancaster led a chevauchée north that sacked the opulent city of Poitiers and other nearby towns, before returning to his base in Gascony. Further good news for the English was that a Scottish invasion, driven by France, had been crushed at Neville's Cross, near Durham, in October, and the Scottish king and many of his nobles had been captured.

The two-pronged attack completely paralyzed the French state, unable to decide which front to concentrate on. Successes in disrupting British supplies were minimal and any serious military action was postponed. The siege of Calais dragged on through the winter and neither side was able to gain the advantage. The French managed to resupply the besieged men by sea, while Edward launched numerous unsuccessful assaults on the city walls supported by cannons and stone throwers. Desertions and disease reduced the number of besiegers. Philip raised his banner in the spring, but it was not until June before he gathered enough men to advance.

Meanwhile, Edward had managed to cut off the supply routes to Calais, depriving the city of resources. The French wanted to attack through Flanders and encircle the English from the north, but two vanguards had little success in this effort and, when the situation at Calais became desperate, Philip advanced there. After reaching the outskirts of the siege, the French army discovered that its adversaries were too entrenched to relieve the city: Philip had to abandon Calais. He fell on August 3, 1347; it would remain in English hands until 1558. More small chevauchees were launched in September, but by this time both sides were exhausted.

Following Edward III's glorious victory at Crécy and his capture of Calais a year later, the English, who had once been "the most timid of all rude races," were now regarded by Petrarch as the most revered warriors in Europe. . However, such glory did not pay Edward's bills, and the enormous cost of the war convinced the king to withdraw from the continent and return to England after the Truce of Calais was agreed on 27 September 1347. Returning as a victorious conqueror, celebrated the Crecy. campaign with a tournament that includes all of the monarch's notable prisoners, shown to all of Edward's subjects as a sign of prestige.

Across the channel in France, the mood of Philip VI and his subjects was completely different. In December, the Valois king was punished by the Estates General in Paris for his humiliating defeat and was not allowed to raise taxes. However, the shock of defeat and the prospect of capitulation to the English forced the proud French aristocracy to come to an agreement: together they would finance a major invasion of England to end the war forever. Orders were immediately issued and preparations began. By early 1348 a new fleet was being built and local officials had begun assessing towns and villages for the next uprising;

It seemed that full-scale war was about to resume. However, an apocalyptic twist of fate was about to ensure this would never happen: the Black Death. The deadly Yersinia pestis, which previously decimated the Byzantine Empire between the 6th and 8th centuries, originated in Central Asia in the early 14th century and proliferated from east to west along the

medieval

Silk Road until reaching the Golden Horde. Khan, Janibeg, besieged the city of Caffa on the Black Sea in 1346, but the plague began to wipe out his army and he ordered sick corpses to be catapulted into the city. When besieged Italian citizens began fleeing westward toward Europe by sea, most of them were infected or dying.

The Black Death, which first appeared in Italy in late 1347, entered France through its prosperous Mediterranean ports2 and then spread northward like wildfire, reaching England in mid-1348. It was the largest demographic crisis in European

history

. Untold thousands of people perished, from the highest nobles to the humblest peasants, the agrarian economy collapsed and the tax base collapsed. In total, it is estimated that between a third and half of Europe could have died from this first wave of plague. Many on the continent believed that the world itself was ending. In 1350, a shortage of men and money resulting from the first wave of plague paralyzed the war for the foreseeable future as both kingdoms attempted to recover from the disaster.

At the end of August of that year, King Philip VI died, leaving the kingdom devastated and plagued by plague to his son, the Duke of Normandy, who ascended the throne as John II. As if that were not bad enough, a fleet of Castilian mercenaries allied with France, who had been threatening Edward's trade with Flanders and his link with Gascony, were defeated by the English at Winchelsea. With England and France exhausted, back-and-forth diplomacy was the order of the day, while at the same time Edward's compatriots continued to intervene in the ongoing small-scale action of the War of the Breton Succession.

Breton Civil War (1347-1353) In fact, in Brittany the situation had changed in favor of the English, since Charles of Blois had been captured and his forces annihilated by the English and Montfortist forces in 1347, but the lack of soldiers and The subsequent plague stopped most campaigns in the duchy. What followed was a series of minor conflicts between Blois's supporters and the Monforts. On March 26, 1351, a duel was agreed between the Blois commander Jean de Beaumanoir and the English commander Robert de Bamborough. The Battle of the Thirty, as we remember, took place between the castles of Josselin and Ploermel, in which two teams of thirty knights and men-at-arms faced each other.

After a melee that lasted all day, the English had lost eight men and were forced to surrender, while the French had at most six. The reasons for the start and outcome of the duel escape us, and the duel had little influence on the outcome of the war, but the event was the subject of a long and famous Breton ballad and is one of the best-known episodes of chivalric duels in war. In 1352, a French army under de Nesle entered Brittany and confronted the English lieutenant Sir Walter Bentley. The two armies met near the village of Mauron on August 14, 1352: the English, less than a thousand men, were situated on the top of a small hill with a hedge behind, archers on the flanks and dismounted men-at-arms on the center: They refused to surrender when called.

De Nesle, whose army outnumbered his adversaries, sent his cavalry against the English right flank while his men-at-arms attacked the other two units. The cavalry charge was successful, piercing the fleeing archers and opening Bentley's center to a two-sided attack. While the men-at-arms desperately clung to the bushes behind them, the archers on the left repelled their assailants who fled down the hill,creating a space for his teammates. The English center counterattacked on the French right flank and forced the enemies to retreat, who were eliminated by the English archers. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but especially catastrophic for the French, who lost their commander and a large number of Breton knights loyal to the French cause.

Upon hearing of the defeat, Charles of Blois struck a deal with King Edward: in exchange for being recognized as Duke of Brittany, Charles would pay a huge ransom for his release and declare Brittany neutral in the war. Although the agreement was not exactly fulfilled, this put Brittany under English influence for the next few

years

, but the attrition between the two rival suitors persisted. The first chevauchées In 1353, the English king announced that he was willing to abandon his claim to the French throne in exchange for all of Aquitaine "as his ancestors had ruled it", Normandy, and sovereignty over Flanders.

Jean II accepted the terms at first, but resigned soon after, possibly because he had been playing for time. War finally broke out again when England began corresponding with the maverick king of Navarre, Charles II "The Bad", who, as the snubbed grandson of Louis X, had an even greater claim to the French throne than Edward. Emboldened by his new English ally, Carlos felt confident enough to act against a hated enemy: the Franco-Castilian constable of France, Don Carlos de la Cerda. King John II had given him the great county of Angoulême as a fief, lands that Charles considered his personal property.

Hungry for revenge, Carlos had the constable lured to one of his properties in Normandy, where the unfortunate victim was hacked to death. The king of Navarre then proudly proclaimed: “Know that it was I who, with the help of God, killed Charles of Spain!” John II was furious that his favorite had been murdered, but that was overcome by his fear of being surrounded by Edward III and a disgruntled ruler of Navarre with good claims to the throne of France. In order to resolve the dispute, the French and Navarrese kings signed a provisional peace in 1355, but it was clear that Charles was not satisfied.

Seeking to take advantage of the situation, Edward III decided to resume military operations now that the worst effects of the plague had subsided. Also early in the same year, prominent members of the Gascon nobility4 sailed north to attend the birth of Thomas, their king's son. They brought bad news and asked for help. Since 1352, Edward's hereditary lands in Gascony had been under continuous attack by the French king's lieutenant in the southwest, the Count of Armagnac John I. The raids had progressed so much that, in May 1354, the Armagnac forces were camping for only a few days. He 'marches from the capital of the region, Bordeaux.

The weakened Gascons needed help, so the English king ordered his son Edward of Woodstock to gather an army and sail to southern France. The Black Prince and his 2,700 professional English troops arrived in Bordeaux in September 1355 and absorbed another 4,000 Gascon reinforcements there. Almost at the same time, the French king ordered a general mobilization of forces. He did not arrive in time to save the southern kingdom from him. Around October 5, the Black Prince's army set out from Bordeaux in what would become known as one of the largest chevauchées ever launched. Marching in three parallel columns to maximize destruction, the assault force advanced 100 miles south before turning east, crossing the Gers River and entering Armagnac territory.

There, Edward's army began to mercilessly massacre

every

living thing he encountered, burning everything that would burn and crushing everything that wouldn't, to ensure that this land would not help the French war effort for

years

to come. His enemy, the outnumbered Count of Armagnac, remained in fortified Toulouse as his enemy passed, watching as they forded two nearby rivers and reached Carcassonne on November 2. That city attempted to bribe the Black Prince with 250,000 gold coins, but he responded by devastating its suburbs before moving on, reaching Narbonne, on the Mediterranean coast, on the 8th. After desolating its entire outer city and agricultural interior, the army of the Prince of Wales retreated towards Gascogne, followed by but not challenged by two smaller French armies5.

Although he suffered only minor casualties, this major raid destroyed more than 500 settlements, drastically reduced John II's tax revenue, and doomed his military reputation. With his soldiers quartered along the northern marches of Gascony,6 the Black Prince devoted the winter to administrative and governmental matters in the duchy, dealing with feudal friends and internal disputes within the Gascon lands. While he did this, both sides embarked on small-scale military expeditions, taking and retaking castles; The French are said to have retaken 30 fortifications during this time. The level of success enjoyed by the first chevauchée and the new reinforcements from England7 and new allies in northern Gascony made it clear that a second assault on French lands would be undertaken.

The prince set out with his army northeast of Bergerac on August 4, 1356, arriving first at Perigueux and then at Ramefort, Brantome, Quisser, Nontron, Rochechouart and Lesterps, all within ten days of his departure. Despite once again leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, when the Black Prince's army arrived at Bellec on August 16 he was ordered not to cause any harm, as he belonged to the nobleman related to the English royal family. After abandoning Bellec, the English began to encounter more French resistance, as the population began to fight back. However, on the 24th Edward arrived at Issoudun but failed to take the fortified city and moved on after razing its suburbs.

Four days later, as the army approached Vierzon, a flying column of 200 raiders engaged a French reconnaissance party and took some prisoners. From them they learned that, to the north, John II was gathering a massive army and was about to march against the Black Prince. To see why Jean had been so late, we will have to go back in time a little, to early 1356, when events in northern France were significantly impacting the situation. Since his fragile peace with the French king, Charles the Bad had managed to extract even more concessions from the monarch by intentionally spreading rumors that he was going to flee with Edward III, thus increasing Jean's desperation to keep him in line.

However, this time the Navarrese king took his luck too far, as his kindness to the French 'Dauphin' Charles made King John paranoid that they were plotting to overthrow him. Thus, in April 1356, the French king stormed Rouen with his men, beheaded four alleged conspirators and imprisoned Charles. This led to an alliance between the latter's brother, Philip, and the king of England, which in turn gave John the excuse he needed to confiscate Navarrese properties in northern France. Battle of Poitiers (1356) On 12 July he began an attempt to take them by besieging the town of Breteuil, a move that locked the king in place as greater threats were materializing to the north and south, while the Black Prince prepared another destructive chevauchée . , while Normandy itself was invaded by Henry, Duke of Lancaster.

This was designed to divide French attention more than anything else, and after resupplying some of Philip's besieged castles, Lancaster went to Penthievre to continue diversionary tactics from him. It must be recognized that at this critical juncture, King John II acted decisively. After a month-long futile siege of Breteuil, he realized that events in the south desperately required his immediate attention and concluded the siege by paying the Navarrese to surrender. Once this was done, the Valois king marched to Chartres and called his nobles into his service. The Prince of Wales learned of this during the three days that his army remained in sacked Vierzon and realized that he was about to be pursued.

Knowing that he had to return to friendly territory as soon as possible, Edward immediately began to withdraw westwards along the River Cher, but was delayed for five days in a siege at Romorantin and another four days waiting for the Duke of Lancaster's failed attempt to go back. bond with him. All this gave Jean's army the time he needed to catch up with Black Price's loot-laden forces, and when the latter reached La Haye, his enemy was only a day's march behind. Instead of following the English, Jean, taking advantage of his better knowledge of the area, decided to remain east of the Vienne River and then cross at Chauvigny with a part of his army with many cavalry.

When the Prince learned that he had been overtaken on the 16th, he attempted to drive off the road to evade Jean, but a meeting the next day between escorts at La Chabotrie made it clear that there was no real possibility of escape. The battle was inevitable. Edward's army camped for the night in a nearby forest. They set out the next day and took up a position on the top of a hill about a mile ahead of the French, who had spent the night camped in battle formation. Compared to the large medieval hosts that had fought at Crécy a decade earlier, the armies that clashed near Poitiers in late September 1356 were small, perhaps due to the effects of the plague and the exhaustion of the war.

Edward of Woodstock's previously retreating Chevauchee army consisted of just over 6,000 soldiers: 1,000 Gascon infantry primarily armed with lances, 3,000 English men-at-arms, including mounted knights and their squires, and just over 2,000 Anglian archers. -Welsh wielding their infamous ranged weapons. . These troops were divided into three mixed divisions of 1,500 soldiers each on the left, right and center8, while around a thousand remained in the rear reserve. In front of him, the French king's magnificent army had 3,000 infantry and 8,000 mounted knights, but most were ordered to dismount due to Jean's fear of a second Crécy. Only an elite contingent of several hundred remained on his steeds.

French cavalry and crossbowmen were on the right commanded by Marshal Arnoul d'Audrehem, while on the left were some Franco-German cavalry and more missile units commanded by Marshal Jean de Clermont. Most of the dismounted knights and peasant infantry were arranged in three central battle lines, one in front of the other. They were headed, from front to back, by Charles - Dauphin of France, Philip - Duke of Orleans and King John II himself respectively. As the two armies clashed, a French cardinal approached the Black Prince and begged him to listen, only to receive the icy response: "Then say it quickly, this is no time for a sermon." The prelate pleaded for peace for the good of all Christian lives, which would be wasted if battle broke out.

Despite his hostility, the prince was still eager to fight a pitched battle and was willing to make important concessions. Unfortunately, John II demanded unconditional surrender, so battle became the only way out. As French commanders Audrehem and Clermont inspected the English position, they saw an unusual amount of movement and believed the enemy was retreating; in fact, it was probably an intentional ruse. Unwilling to let the enemy escape, Audrehem charged his cavalry towards Warwick's left, while Clermont reluctantly took the same action, heading towards Salisbury's right. The former's well-armed knights and horses initially resisted English arrow fire and crashed into the English infantry, inflicting significant damage on the front line.

However, when the archers advanced along the river bank anchoring their left wing and began launching volley after volley into Audrehem's flank, the attack turned into a massacre. The French knights were felled by arrows, crushed by their own steeds, or defeated, while the marshal himself was taken prisoner. Across the field, Clermont's horsemen charged over the ridge toward Salisbury's division, but were funneled into a narrow open section in the hedge protecting the English line. There the massed cavalry suffered terrible losses before breaking through, and when they did so they engaged Salisbury's dismounted knights. After a fierce confrontation, the French were driven back.

The French infantry vanguard under the Dauphin followed in good order along the entire front. However, they too were forced to pass through the gaps in the hedge and many were killed by devastating arrow fire as they did so. Those who managed to break through faced the Anglo-Gascon men-at-arms in a fierce hand-to-hand combat that lasted two hours, but were finally defeated.rejected with heavy losses and nothing to show for it. As the Dauphin's forces had been defeated, King John II ordered his son to be escorted off the field in case of disaster, but this proved to be a disastrous measure.

The Dauphin's retreat convinced the Duke of Orleans, who was leading the second line of infantry, to leave the battlefield with the troops in that formation as well. Advancing with battle ax in hand, John II led the largest and final division—crossbowmen in front and infantry behind—up the hill toward the English. When the Black Prince's archers ran out of arrows, the French king's contingent approached the English almost unscathed, his elite knights and new third division outnumbering the prince's nonetheless stubborn and morally high army. When the archers ran out of arrows, they abandoned their positions and took up swords, knives and axes, joining their comrades in hand-to-hand combat.

At the fiercest moment of the fighting, Buch's captain gathered 200 reserve cavalry and led them in a wide revolving arc toward the French rear. He raised the flag of St. George and then charged into Jean's rear ranks. Seeing this, the Black Prince pulled some of his dismounted knights out of line, mounted them, and had an impetuous knight named Sir James Audley lead them into crashing into the other French flank. The rest of Jean's army scattered in all directions, a significant part of them towards a swamp called Champ d'Alexandre, where English archers killed many of them. In the midst of the chaos, the king of France was surrounded by enemy soldiers who demanded his surrender.

He refused to surrender to the common soldiers, but then the Earl of Warwick arrived and formally took Jean prisoner. In total, while the English suffered minimal losses (probably around a hundred or two, the French had lost at least 2,500 dead), including Clermont and many other nobles. Around 3,000 people were also taken prisoner, including the French king himself, who was brought before the Black Prince with all medieval honors. Treaty of Brétigny (1360) and end of the Edwardian phase When the Black Prince took his royal Valois prisoner out of France, he also removed the anchor that kept the ship of state afloat.

As military historian John Corrigan stated in his book "A Great and Glorious Adventure": "France was effectively in a state of civil war." The three years after Poitiers were some of the worst in French history. Raging discontent with the government spread like a plague among the nobility and the Third Estate of Paris even asserted its authority under the provost of Paris merchants Étienne Marcel. This was not the end. Demobilized soldiers, deserters, and common bandits from England, Gascony, France, and even further afield became renegades and formed the so-called routiers, or “free companies.” These bands of armed men roamed and rampaged through the lawless countryside almost at will, serving anyone who would pay them and sometimes even setting themselves up as robber barons in their own right.

They would remain a problem for decades to come. Even in lands where feudal control was maintained, it did France no good. The exorbitant ransom payments paid to the English for the swath of high-born prisoners captured at Poitiers led to a ruthless increase in taxes, and this eventually inflamed the peasants and led them to revolt. A horrific bloodshed known as Jacquerie began in the Oise Valley, with peasants lynching and murdering any nobles they could get access to. The uprising lasted weeks before Charles of Navarre brutally put it down. Threatened by another major assault by Edward III, the besieged Dauphin signed the Treaty of Brétigny in October 1360, giving the Plantagenets all of Aquitaine, Ponthieu and Calais in exchange for the English king's renunciation of his own claim to the French throne, as well as a ransom of £600,000 for Jean's return.

When two-thirds of the ransom was paid, John II was allowed to return to France. However, one of his imprisoned sons escaped against the agreement, prompting the French king to voluntarily return to Edward's captivity in exchange for the young Valois. He finally died there in 1364 and was succeeded as king by Charles V. Bertrand du Guesclin and Battle of Cocherel (1364) The young king's coronation was preceded by an important success. Following the death of the last Capetian duke of Burgundy in 1361, the duchy had returned to the crown and John II had given the title to his son Philip the Bold.

Another claimant to the duchy was the Navarrese king Charles, whose claim was ignored. Insulted by this slight and harboring a grudge against the French crown for his previous years of failed intrigues, he decided to prepare an army under the command of Captain de Buch. The army left the landlocked nation of Navarre in the spring of 1364 for Normandy, passing through the lands of the Black Prince. From there the objective was to threaten Paris and have the title assigned to him. Unfortunately for the Navarrese, the young king had an army to confront the Rutiators in Normandy, under the command of the son of a minor Breton nobleman, Bertrand du Guesclin.

The man had risen to prominence as a formidable guerrilla commander in Brittany the previous year, fighting in the numerous small raids that had taken place there over the previous decade. The French launched a preemptive attack against many of the Navarrese positions in Normandy, where Charles was Count of Evreux. When Captain de Buch arrived at Evreux, he hastily called in local forces loyal to him and the English routiers, gathering an army of around 2000 cavalry. They left Evreux for the town of Vernon, where they found Du Guesclin with 1,200 men on foot in front of a bridge near the village of Cocherel.

Both armies camped and waited two days for either side to make a move. On May 16, the French began to withdraw across the bridge, probably because they had exhausted their supplies. Seeing this and not wanting to let his enemies get away from him, Captain de Buch sent a small contingent to block the bridge while the rest of his Navarrese and Gascon knights charged the main body of the royal army. With a numerical advantage, De Buch's men had the advantage over the French supported by Gascon and Breton routers. Suddenly, a Breton reserve that had not initially joined the fray crashed into the Navarrese side, scattering their lines and forcing them to retreat, leaving their commander on the battlefield to be captured.

The victory came three days before the coronation of Charles V and was crucial in limiting the power of Charles the Bad, who after the defeat at Cocherel lost his ability to seriously threaten the French crown. Most of his possessions in Normandy were occupied and peace was reached in 1365 after a small-scale counterattack failed. Breton Civil War (1356-1365) and Battle of Auray (1364) Meanwhile, in Brittany, the conflict was coming to an end. The agreement between Edward and Charles of Blois had been faltering. Charles was not released from captivity in England until 1356, but that same year, after the Battle of Poitiers, much of his domain had been occupied by the Duke of Lancaster, who attempted to capture Rennes but his attack was thwarted by a young man. .

Bertrand du Guesclin. The English were followed by the young John de Montfort, son of the previous claimant, John, who had died in 1345. In 1362, John came of age and swore allegiance to Edward in exchange for the dukedom, to which he returned. This again broke out into civil war in 1362, where Charles of Blois besieged the town of Bécherel, followed by a brief truce in 1363 in which no agreement could be reached. Finally, in 1364, Juan de Monfort besieged the coastal city of Auray. As he was losing support both in Brittany and at the French court, Charles of Blois desperately attempted to relieve the city.

John de Monfort sent around 2,000 men, many of them from the English garrisons in Brittany and Navarrese men who had come to recover their possessions in Normandy. Charles of Blois's army numbered between three and four thousand men, and had been aided by Bertrand du Guesclin and his Breton companies. On September 29, Blois arrived at Auray and both armies formed up for battle. The English took up positions on a hill behind the river, north of the city, dividing into three divisions with Sir Chandos in command. Similarly, Blois deployed his army into three battle divisions with one reserve. Before the battle, diplomatic talks were held to resolve the conflict.

It seems that Monfort was willing to make great concessions to his adversaries, which delighted the Bretons on both sides, but the English and du Guesclin insisted on fighting. Just before the battle began, a large contingent of Bretons from Guesclin's contingent deserted. The English-Breton left wing clashed with the French right, capturing its commander Jean de Chalon, causing his side to collapse and crash into the center, where de Guesclin was still attempting to reorganize his division. Seeing this, the Bretons with Charles decided to follow their compatriots and left the suitor isolated, an opportunity that Monfort and Chandos took advantage of.

In the melee, Charles of Blois was murdered along with his companions, leading to the final route of the rest of his army pursued by the English reserve. The defeat was complete for the Blois faction, with around 1,500 men captured, including de Guesclin, who was ransomed with 100,000 francs. All of Blois's partisans soon after submitted to the young Monfort. In 1365 the Treaty of Guérande was ratified, ending the Breton Civil War. John de Montfort offered her homage to Charles V for the duchy, while Blois's widow, Joan of Penthièvre, was allowed to keep her lands in the duchy for herself and his heirs.

While the conflict was over for the English-supported faction, the lack of a threat meant that the Monforts no longer needed the support of their former guardians, and after 1365 English influence on the peninsula slowly declined. Castilian Civil War (1350-1373) and Battle of Nájera (1367) After the end of the two civil wars, Charles had to face the aggressors while the Treaty of Brétigny was in force. To do this and secure the kingdom of Castile as an ally, Charles decided to intervene in the Iberian Peninsula just as the Black Prince did. To understand the situation in the region we must go back to the year 1350, when the King of Castile Alfonso XI died.

He was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son Pedro, who was under the strong influence of his mother Mary of Portugal and the Portuguese nobleman Alburquerque in the early years of his reign. María had been ignored by Alfonso for her favorite Leonora de Guzmán, who gave him ten illegitimate children, so when Pedro ascended the throne Leonora was executed in 1351, with a series of nobles hostile to the Crown. Alfonso's illegitimate children, the eldest being Enrique, Count of Trastámara, soon rebelled several times against Pedro but were forgiven. In 1354 another rebellion broke out, now led by Alburquerque and Enrique de Trastámara, which almost succeeded and captured the king, but internal disagreements among the nobles proved detrimental to their efforts, as Pedro escaped captivity and regained control of his kingdom. .

In 1356, war broke out between the Kingdoms of Aragon, ruled by King Pere IV, and Castile, known as the War of the Two Peters, officially over Aragonese piracy in Castilian ports, but in reality it was a conflict fomented by the Aragonese. He saw a moment of weakness in his rival and wanted to conquer the disputed region of Murcia. After a failed attack against Ibiza, in 1357 Pedro moved to Aragon with ardent chevauchees or cavalgadas and occupied the city of Tarazona. After rapid action at the beginning of the war, the conflict soon slowed, where Pedro often broke some brief truces in low-intensity operations and sieges along the border, where captured Aragonese cities had their population expelled and repopulated. with Castilian settlers. , while the Aragonese counterattacks were mostly organized by Pedro's exiled brother, Enrique de Trastámara.

In 1359 the Castilians were defeated in the Battle of Araviana, but at that time Castilian soldiers occupied large areas of Aragonese land and a Castilian fleet, with Portuguese and Granadan contingents, came to threaten Barcelona. In 1361, after a coup in Granada overthrew Peter's ally Muhammad V, the Castilian king was forced to seek a truce in which he renounced his conquests in Aragon. Pedro then moved to Granada, where he restored his ally to the throne, and in 1362 he broke the truce by capturing the city of Calatayud by surprise, and once again Castile occupied much of western Aragon and Pedro's troops came to threaten Valencia in 1364.

Meanwhile, relations between the French and French courts were bad: Pedro had married Blanca de Borbón, cousin of Juan II, in 1353, but three days after the marriage he had abandoned her for another woman and He had been imprisoned in a castle where he would die in 1361 under mysterious circumstances.Also in 1362 Peter and the Black Prince had signed a formal alliance. Thus, in 1364, the French and Aragonese prepared a plan to remove the numerous routers from southern France and create problems for the pro-English Castilian kingdom. Enrique de Trastámara would lead an expedition to Iberia as a front man, with the Breton Bertrand de Guesclin who was effectively in command of the routiers that made up the expedition.

The expedition would have papal support under the pretext of a crusade against the Islamic remnant of Granada as the final objective. In the autumn of 1365, the mass of men, composed of routers of all ethnicities and French nobles, crossed France and entered the Kingdom of Aragon at the end of the year. They followed the course of the Ebro River, destroying the countryside in the process. In February 1366, the vanguard commanded by the Englishman Hugh Calveley retook the cities of Magallón, Borja and Tarazona occupied by the Castilians, and in March the entire army crossed the southern tip of the Kingdom of Navarre and entered the Castilian city of Calahorra, where Enrique was.

Proclaimed king on March 16. Pedro, who expected Navarra to close its borders and had placed his army in the vicinity of Soria, saw his cause fail and fled south, to Seville and from there to Galicia. Shortly after, Henry entered Burgos and from there crossed the Kingdom arriving at Seville, where the royal treasury had been captured and used to bribe the numerous rouiers in their ranks, who were dismissed except for a select few, such as de Guesclin and Calveley. . The attack on the Black Prince's ally had taken the Gascon court by surprise and no relief army had been formed in time.

In August Pedro met with Prince Edward and Charles of Navarre where an agreement was reached: Gascony would organize an army to retake the Castilian throne and Navara would allow free passage. In exchange, Pedro would reimburse the cost of the entire expedition and cede the Basque provinces to his allies. In January 1367, a motley army of between 10,000 and 8,000 men, composed of many of the same men who had participated in Guesclin's expedition the previous year, crossed the Pyrenees and entered Castile. Henry's position was extremely precarious, as was that of his rival just 12 months earlier: he had dismissed most of the troops that had accompanied him and his treasury was depleted.

Many cities and nobles flocked to Peter's side when news of his arrival filtered from Gascony. The invader's plan was to flank north around the main access to Burgos, the ancient capital of Castile, to surprise the enemies, but the land was arid and difficult to search for food, so once they reached Vitoria they found their road blocked by the Trasmara army. . After a stalemate, at the end of March, the Black Prince moved south and camped in the city of Logroño, while Enrique followed them to the city of Nájera. Against his military advisors, Enrique decided that he needed a victory to save face and stop the hemorrhage of support in his lines: on April 1 he advanced on his enemies and abandoned his entrenched position behind the Najerilla River to take a new one behind from the smaller Yalde stream.

The next day, Pedro and the Black Prince left Logroño and camped at Navarrette. The invading army had about 8,000 archers and men-at-arms, formed as follows: the vanguard was commanded by a young John of Gaunt and Sir Chandos, where there were 3,000 English and Gascon routers and most of the archers. Both wings, of approximately 2,000 men each, were composed on the left by the men of the count of Foix, who was also in command with captain de Buch, while on the right it was led by the count of Armagnac and lord of d 'Albret as the leader of his entourage.

Finally, the main body under the command of the Black Prince himself numbered 3,000 and was composed of Gascon and English knights, other routers and companies of Navarrese and Majorcans, loyal to Peter, Castilian deserters and Aragonese outcasts. The Castilian army only had about 4,500 men, of which 1,000 were French and Breton men-at-arms under the command of De Guesclin and other French routiers. Like his opponent, Trastamaran's army had a vanguard of French men-at-arms accompanied by the best Castilian knights who fought dismounted and a handful of missile troops and recruited conscripts. Just behind was the main body under Henry's command, composed of around 1,500 Iberian men of arms and infantry.

A group of 1,000 light horsemen was placed on the left flank, while the right wing was made up of another 1,000 men from Aragon under the command of the Count of Dénia, cousin of King Pere. On April 3, at dawn, the Black Prince marched his army out of Navarette. Instead of taking the main road as his opponents expected, Edward headed north around a steep hill and fell upon his unsuspecting enemies from a position that took them by surprise. The first to react to this was Guesclin, who in good condition managed to reposition his men to face the enemies.

While his contingent carried out the maneuver with ease, most of the Castilian infantry and part of the light cavalry began to flee. Seeing this, the Breton commander ordered them to charge out of their position and engaged the English vanguard, where the fresher defenders found initial success, but soon their adversaries found their footing and the battle became a fierce hand-to-hand combat. body. The Castilian left under the command of Don Tello, Enrique's brother, tried to come to the aid of their companions but were received by arrows from the enemy's right flank: the unarmed horses were felled by the rain of missiles and the attack first became a retreat. and then a complete defeat.

Henry attempted the same with the remaining cavalry, first three times against the English left and then against the main body where his horses fell. At the same time, the wings of Edward's army fell on the Trastamaran vanguard. Isolated, the various parts of the army were crushed, while the main Castilian body that did not participate in the battle was attacked, defeated and massacred when it tried to flee. Henry's defeat was total and around half of his army was killed, while the English suffered only light casualties. Most of the Franco-Castilian command was taken captive, who were almost hunted for ransom, but not Henry himself, who managed to flee to France.

Following the victory, Peter quickly reoccupied the Kingdom of Castile, but continually delayed the cession of the Basque provinces and was unable to reimburse the Duke of Gascony, paralyzing Gascon finances for decades, as much of the sums for the invasion had been anticipated. by Edward himself: he could do little more than return home at the end of the summer. The French court soon resupplied Henry with weapons and in September 1367 he crossed the Pyrenees with 500 men in arms and on the 26th he re-entered the Kingdom, where numerous nobles came to him, whether they were former supporters or new enemies. . of Peter who had suffered his vengeful wrath.

He reoccupied Castile and León and, at the end of April 1368, besieged the capital, Toledo. Pedro retreats with his army to the Guadalquivir valley, near his allies in Granada and Portugal, where he unsuccessfully besieges the town of Córdoba, a supporter of the Trastámara cause. In the winter of 1369, de Guesclin once again joined Henry in Toledo, while Peter was forced to relieve the besieged capital: he moved north to join his loyalists in León and then east. He was surprised by Henry and Geusclin's forces near Montiel Castle on March 14, 1369, where his forces were defeated and he barricaded himself in the castle with few followers.

Here he attempted to bribe de Guesclin to change sides and join him, but instead the Breton led the king out of the castle and into his camp, where he was escorted to a tent and came face to face with his half-brother. The two suitors began to fight with their knives and it ended when Henry killed his brother. Henry could be crowned king of Casile. In exchange for the help received, he would support the French fleet in the Atlantic with his own and would remain loyal to the French in their cause. While the Civil War between the two half-brothers ended, Henry still had to subdue internal rebels, especially in Galicia, and had to defend his position against various pretenders, such as the Portuguese king Ferdinand I, who attacked with Aragon in 1369. 70 and in 1372-73, and John of Gaunt, brother of the Black Prince, who married Peter's eldest daughter, Costanza, to claim the throne of Castile in 1371, but this had the effect of strengthening the alliance between France and the Trastámara.

The conflict continued between Castile against Portugal and Navarre until 1373, while in 1375 the Peace of Almazán was signed, ending the conflict with Aragon. Beginning of the Carolina Phase When Edward returned to Bordeaux in the late 1360s, he was falling ill with an illness contracted in Spain, and his direct rule in Aquitaine was creating discontent among long-standing English subjects, not only in the won lands. in Bretigny. To pay for his military campaigns and the court of Bordeaux, the overlord of Aquitaine had been imposing harsh taxes for years, but when he declared another fouage (or "household tax") in 1368, some of the kingdom's highest feudal lords They rebelled, requesting Charles V for help: it was the opportunity they had been waiting for.

Technically, Charles no longer had sovereignty over Aquitaine, but he used a loophole in the Treaty of Bretigny as an excuse to welcome disaffected nobles and again formally confiscate English possessions in France in late 1369. Despite Charles's peace attempts Edward III, Charles V was eager for revenge and war broke out again. The French attacked immediately, seizing the thinly defended counties of Ponthieu and Rouergue with new tactics: smaller, more mobile contingents of soldiers replaced the large, massive armies that had been defeated at Crécy and Poitiers. Charles V also ordered his generals to reject battle with the English, fearful of again suffering the bitter defeats of the 1340s and 1350s.

Battle of Pontvallain (1370) and Siege of Limoges (1370) While Aquitaine's difficult new borders were under attack, Edward III's son, John of Gaunt, launched a limited chevauchée into Normandy before retreating to Calais shortly afterwards. The following year, 1370, a famous captain named Sir Robert Knolles was hired to lead 4,000 troops to do the same. The English columns, made up of different companies of English routiers, undertook a devastating raid from Calais in August and, from there, devastated northern France before approaching Paris from the southeast. Once again, Charles V prevented his knights from engaging the English in open battle and realized that he needed a military leader with whom he agreed.

The Valois king of France appointed the pragmatic Breton captain Bertrand de Guesclin as the new constable of France. The English then split into two columns: one began to plunder Lower Normandy while the others remained south of Paris until they met again around Vendôme and Tour, where they stood idly, trying to coordinate with other English routiers. . Bertrand de Guesclin quickly established a base at Caen and raised a force to confront Knolles' 4,000, while another army was formed at Vendôme under Marshal Sancerre. Disputes among English officers over where to spend the winter broke up the army, when Knolles, the largest contingent headed for Brittany, while the rest divided into three smaller parts.

But it was too late: unbeknownst to the English, on December 1, Guesclin had left Caen and quickly reached Le Mans on the third, while simultaneously the Vendôme army approached from the east. Upon learning of the English positions, the Breton ordered a night march even though his men were exhausted, and in the early hours of December 4, the French army, 4,000 strong, arrived at the town of Pontvallain. Here they ambushed one of the English contingents under the command of Sir Grandison, completely unaware of the enemy's position. Grandison and some of his men attempted to form a line and advance north to a more defensive position, but were captured and overwhelmed by 300 dismounted French men-at-arms after bloody hand-to-hand combat.

Most of Grandison's contingent, between 600 and 1,200, were killed or captured. A second English contingent under Sir Fitzwalter headed south towards the fortified Vaas Abbey. Beneath its walls, Fitzwalter was assaulted by Sancerre's army from the east, soon joined by Guescelin's vanguard. After a day of fighting, the French defeated their enemies and stormed the abbey, massacring its defenders. Knolles and the fourth English contingent managed to enter Brittany unharmed with their loot, but when they triedReturning to England in the spring, they were harassed by French cavalrymen, while survivors of the battles of Pontvallain and Vaas were pursued into English-held territories.

Aquitaine. The victory at Pontvallain gave a great morale boost to the French, who had finally defeated the English in a pitched battle. In the south, French forces under Charles V's brother, the Duke of Anjou, continued the English disaster by capturing Agenais, Limousin and Buzac, and many local lords deserted their Plantagenet lords and defected to the Valois. The now ailing Black Prince was furious at the betrayal of his lords and reacted violently when the bishop of Limoges, the godfather of his own son, betrayed the city to the French. Three weeks after the French army abandoned Limoges, he marched there and began a five-day siege commanded by his brother John of Gaunt.

It was noted that part of the wall was built on softer limestone, so mines were dug underground to reach the wall. The defenders tried to dig their own countermines and managed to penetrate the enemy mines, but here they were repulsed in hand-to-hand combat. On September 19, 1370, the wood that supported the English mine caught fire, causing the mine to collapse and, with it, the wall that supported it. The attacker took advantage of the opportunity and the city was brutally assaulted and looted, causing significant damage to the town. Ill and demoralized by the death of his eldest son, the Black Prince returned to England in 1371 a weary man, leaving John of Gaunt in charge of Aquitaine.

Meanwhile, Du Guescelin and other French commanders spent 1371 securing the numerous castles that were occupied by English garrisons following the chevauchées of the previous years and continued the campaign against English positions in the southwest, while John of Gaunt recaptured some towns in Perigord. . England's position in France was plagued by disastrous finances and the loss of some of its best commanders, such as the Earl of Warwick and Sir Chandos, who died, and Captain de Buch, who was captured the following year. At the end of 1371, Limoges submitted to Charles V, although the province remained under the control of the English routiers, while in 1372, Bertrand de Guesclin and the Duke of Berry began the reconquest of Poitou.

Battle of La Rochelle (1372) Edward III realized that more help was needed, so he sent the Earl of Pembroke3 to Aquitaine with 160 soldiers in 20 ships, 3 of which were larger, battle-worthy vessels with archery towers. However, as Pembroke approached the port of La Rochelle, at the head of a coastal inlet, he confronted a smaller fleet of Castilian battle galleys awaiting his arrival. The Castilian ships launched their attack first and closed in on the outnumbered but disadvantaged English, inflicting some losses among the non-combat ships. However, Pembroke's meager number of archers managed to do their job incredibly well, unleashing an accurate hail of arrows on the Iberian ships.

At the same time, his men-at-arms with spears managed to bravely resist the enemy's boarding attempts until nightfall, when the fleets separated. Pembroke sailed slightly out to sea and dropped anchor while the Castilians waited off La Rochelle until dawn the next day. The English were nervous: they could not escape because the enemy galleys were faster than their own ships, nor could they negotiate the treacherous shallow waters of La Rochelle at low tide. However, some Poitevin knights and their retinues rowed to join the English during the night. Pembroke kept his ships anchored, not expecting an enemy attack until high tide.

However, the Castilian ships took advantage of their shallower draft and approached the English while they were still motionless, dousing their decks and rigging with oil before igniting the fuel with flaming arrows. This was the end of the battle with a complete victory for France's Iberian ally: many English were burned alive, most of their ships were destroyed, and Pembroke himself was taken prisoner. The English naval superiority established at Sluys in 1340 came to an end at La Rochelle, and an expedition planned by Edward III himself was cancelled. Following the disaster at La Rochelle, English defenses began to crumble: Poitiers capitulated in the summer, as did many castles in southern Aquitaine, such as Aiguillon and Port-Saint-Marie, while La Rochelle surrendered in September.

Shortly after, Thouars, Saintogne and Angoumois fell into French hands. In 1373, the remaining English forces around Niort were defeated by the Constable at the Battle of Chizé, leading to the surrender of the last pockets of resistance in Poitou. In Brittany, the nobles led by Olivier de Clisson had made John de Montfort ally again with the English, but when the French army arrived under the walls of Rennes in 1372, he reneged on the treaty; However, the English had managed to create a foothold in the west around Brest, and John did little to dislodge them. Losing patience, the duchy was occupied by French officials in 1373, and Monfort left for England, leaving only Brest, Derval and Auray in English hands.

In August 1373, John of Gaunt led some 10,000 men from Calais in the so-called "Grand Chevauchée", laying waste a huge swath of Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy. From there he entered Bourbonnais and Auvergne, where harsh winter conditions killed many Englishmen, and finally entered Bordeaux in December. However, the French did not engage the English in a pitched battle, but instead harassed John's vulnerable supply lines and eliminated stragglers or assault columns that strayed too far: only half of John's men arrived. to Gascogne. This effectively limited the damage and, although the Chevauchée removed Valois soldiers from Aquitaine, by the end of 1373 almost the entire province was under French control.

In the summer of 1374, a truce was discussed through the mediation of the Pope, leading to peace talks that took place in the spring of 1375 in Bruges, led by Philip of Burgundy and John of Gaunt. While these conversations were taking place, the war continued both in Aquitaine, where De Geusclin was razing different English fortresses, including Cognac, and the base of the English routiers at Saint Sauveur was taken after a year-long siege, in the first siege where cannons were a decisive factor. An English army of 4,000 men led by Juan de Monfort landed in Brittany and, after three months of slow progress, managed to surround the Breton nobility who opposed them in Quimperlé, but when they were about to surrender, news arrived from Bruges.

A two-year truce would be established and all hostilities would be suspended, while current positions would be maintained. Montfort could do nothing but let his enemies go and abandon the duchy. After six years of war, English territory in France had once again been reduced to its pre-war levels. Between 1376 and 1377, the truce was maintained mainly between the two sides, although skirmishes in Gascony almost broke up peace talks in Bruges. In England the Parliament of 1376 was convened, where many of the grievances that had accumulated in the previous years of the war came to light, and a commission was created to amend and create reforms.

However, the Parliament's demands were overruled by John of Gaunt in the following year's Parliament, becoming increasingly unpopular with the population. When the truce between the two countries was about to expire, disaster struck the English crown. Death of the Black Prince and Edward III In June 1376 and 1377, England suffered a great loss. The bedridden Black Prince, formerly the great paragon of medieval chivalry, succumbed first, followed the following year by his legendary father, Edward III, who died after a half-century reign widely regarded as a golden age for the Kingdom of England. The successor was Richard II, the second son of the Black Prince.

However, as he was still a minor, a regency council would exercise true authority until the king came of age. Just days after Richard II's coronation, the boy king's kingdom was beset by a series of hit-and-run attacks from ships in Channel ports. From Rye in the east to Plymouth in the west, French pirates, led by a talented knight and admiral named Jean de Vienne, used their mastery of the sea to viciously plunder and plunder. At the same time, the Duke of Burgundy launched an unsuccessful attack against the heavily fortified city of Calais, where, after taking some castles, he was forced to retreat due to the inhospitable conditions of the marshy terrain.

In Gascony, the Duke of Anjou advanced into Périgord, retook Bergerac, and successfully conquered the towns up to Saint-Macaire before the onset of winter. The English responded by expanding their control in Brittany and occupying Cherbourg, in order to maintain a series of strongpoints on the northern French coast from which to launch maritime raids and other chevauchees very similar to those that had been used in Calais in the previous decades. In the same year 1378 the Western Schism occurred, which divided the union of Catholic Europe. At the end of 1378, the Breton duchy was officially confiscated by Charles V, who accused John de Montfort of treason.

The duchy was already, for the most part, controlled by French officials following their invasion in the previous years, but this political action provoked the revolt of the great Breton nobles who had supported the French up to that point, including the Blois. They called John IV de Montfort of England, who, in the summer of 1379, regained control of almost the entire duchy from him without a fight. As an agreement could not be reached between the French and the Bretons, the latter formulated an alliance with the English, giving them free passage through their territory to relieve Gascogne. In 1380, Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham and fifth son of Edward III, was placed in command of an army of around 6,000 men intended to reinforce the Gascon possessions.

He set out from Calais and followed the same route John of Gaunt and Robert Knolles had taken the previous decade. After a month they arrived at the great city of Troyes, in Champagne. Here 4,000 French defenders had gathered under the command of the Duke of Burgundy, who was prepared to give battle, but after inspecting the battlefield, he decided against it and led his men behind the walls. Woodstock moved west, followed by the Duke, but news in Paris shook the campaign. On September 16, Charles V suffered a stroke and died, following the great Breton commander De Geusclin, who had died in July.

The French army was disbanded when the fight for succession began in Paris, while the English reached Brittany unhindered, where they besieged the French-controlled city of Nantes from November to January 1381 without any success. John IV de Montfort was destined to help the English, but after the death of Charles V he reached an agreement with the Parisian throne, being reconfirmed as Duke of Brittany with the same freedoms he had before the confiscation in exchange for a reward. sum of money and the breaking of all ties with the English. The lack of resources on both sides stopped war operations.

End of the Carolina phase Thus, the political situation in France changed when, in mid-September 1380, Charles V "the Wise", the Valois monarch of France who had held his kingdom together in its darkest hour and stubbornly led the reconquest of Aquitaine, died of illness. . He left the crown to eleven-year-old Charles VI, who was also a minority. This situation gave the king's four uncles, the so-called "blood princes", the opportunity to also form a regency council: the dukes of Anjou, Berry, Bourbon and Burgundy. The Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, was the youngest son who was captured with John II at Poitiers in 1356, and his dynasty would bring Burgundy to power in the 15th century.

Unfortunately for France, the regency also gave the dukes the opportunity to exploit their positions to gain more power, and squandered Charles V's carefully maintained treasury. Wat Tyler Rebellion England, too, was shaken by rebellions caused by high taxes and the war exhaustion. In 1377 and 1379, two “poll taxes” were raised on the population, a fixed-sum tax on each person in the kingdom. In 1381, a third was erected, and when officials began to enforce it, peasant rebellions broke out in Essex and Kent, which were led by Wat Tyler, a tiler, and John Ball, a priest. After destroying documents and killing people accused of collaborating with the king's ministers and John of Gaunt, considered guilty of the bad government of recent years, the rebels broke into London on June 11, where the lower London classes were joined them.

The king and his closest collaborators barricaded themselves in the fortified Tower of London. The king attempted to negotiate terms with the rebels two days later at Greenwich,sailing there by boat, but the rebels did not speak unless he landed. The rebels had broken into most of London's prisons and destroyed the property of those they considered their enemies, including John of Gaunt's palace. On the 14th, the king rode to Mile End to meet the leader of the rebellion. Here their demands were known, which consisted of the abolition of serfdom, the elimination of most laws and taxes, the execution of the officials responsible for the latest tax increases and the abolition of noble privileges, to create a society of All the men. equal under the King.

Richard was forced to accept these demands at least nominally, hoping to disperse some of the peasants. While Richard was away, 400 men stormed the Tower, whose drawbridge had been lowered, awaiting the king's return. Treasurer Hales and the Archbishop of Canterbury were executed, as were many other officials, judges and foreigners. Since the appeasement strategy had not worked, a plan was prepared to kill the ringleaders. The next day, the king, with a retinue of 200 men who had hidden weapons, met them at Smithfield, where the mob of peasants had gathered in military ranks. When the king asked Wat Tyler why his men had not dispersed, he was met with more demands, including the redistribution of land and the confiscation of church property.

During the meeting an altercation broke out that degenerated into a riot. Tyler was wounded by the mayor of London, Walworth, and barely managed to return to his ranks. The peasants were about to shoot their bows at the entourage, but Richard approached on horseback and asked them to assemble in a nearby field. The peasants, not wanting to disobey the king, began to do so, but before that could happen, 2,000 men selected from Sir Richard Knolle's men and members of London's upper classes surrounded them. The rebels agreed to disperse and returned to their homes, while the ringleaders, including Tyler, were executed and the English government regained control of the situation.

The death of the leaders cooled any plans for rebellion in other regions of England, except for some events that were repressed with weapons. While the king and his government were safe again, the peasant rebellion had the effect of reducing Parliament's willingness to increase taxes, reducing the king's ability to wage war. Flanders and the Battle of Roosebeke (1382) In 1379, the region of Flanders was hit by a wave of discontent. The wealthy cities of the Netherlands had been away from the war for some decades and had returned under the rule of Count Louis de Mâle. However, in the 1370s the economic situation of the cities declined, causing discontent among artisans and the lower levels of urban society.

In September 1379, a revolt broke out in Ghent, which soon spread to other cities in Flanders, either through local revolts or occupation. Only in the late spring and summer of 1380 was Louis able to regain control of the county with the help of local allies, except for the city of Ghent, which resisted. After a few years of raids and counter-raids, a harsh blockade of the city was enacted in 1381, depriving the city of food and resources. In the region, nobles and knights supported the Count, while many neighboring cities supported Ghent, creating polarization in the Netherlands. When the city was about to surrender in January 1382, Philip Van Artevelde of the weavers' guild seized power and rejected the peace terms, killing in the process members of the artisans' guild and grain importers who supported the treaty. of peace.

On May 3, 1382, Van Artevelde attempted a daring assault on Bruges, taking advantage of a local festival, where they defeated a drunken Bruges army and Louis' entourage, followed by the occupation of the city with the help of the locals. weavers guild. Following the defeat of Count Louis, who narrowly escaped the city being pursued by his adversaries, Ypres and many of the Flemish-speaking cities rebelled once again, cutting the blockade that was strangling the city of Ghent. In October a French army was assembled. It was initially intended to attack Gascogne, but was soon diverted north against the Flemish rebels, to the delight of the Duke of Burgundy, who had married Margaret of Flanders, daughter and sole heiress of Louis of Flanders.

The French army, commanded by the new constable Oliver de Clisson and accompanied by a young Charles VI, was composed of about 10,000 men, 2,000 of them Burgundians. About 6,500 of them were men-at-arms, 2,000 pikemen and 1,200 archers and crossbowmen. They were also accompanied by a host of Flemish nobles and others from the Netherlands under the command of Louis of Flanders. In front of them were between 30 and 40,000 Flemish men, most of them city dwellers with little or no experience in battle, save for a few hundred English archers and German mercenaries. They were at Oudenaarde, where they had besieged this fortress of Philip for four months.

The French advanced from Arras on November 12 towards Ypres: they were preceded by Louis's hosts, who attempted to take control of one of the few intact bridges over the River Lys but were brutally repelled. Only when the French vanguard arrived did they manage to cross the river after a hotly contested crossing. They then moved to Ypres, which surrendered while the smaller towns were brutally sacked. Van Artevelde marched his army west to confront the French and, on November 26, camped south of the village of Westrozebeke, or Roosebeke in French. Located on a high hill and flanked by forests, the flamingos dug a trench and positioned themselves behind it, forming a compact mass.

The French camp was only 6 miles south of this position, and on the 27th they advanced in three divisions. Once they were at the foot of the hill, the men-at-arms dismounted and, as the morning fog cleared, charged, where they were greeted with missiles and artillery. The mass of Flemish lackeys managed to maintain their discipline against the advancing line of armored men, much better than their counterparts expected. Arrows and cannon fire forced the French center to retreat, but the two wings scaled the hill and outflanked the enemies, crashing into their defenseless backs. As the French center's side began to envelop the flanks of the townspeople, the Flemings began to panic and broke through their lines, fleeing through the French lines, as their adversaries began to massacre them.

The mounted soldiers pursued the fleeing Flemings and the few pockets of resistance that reorganized were brutally eliminated. Once the battle was over, at least 27,000 Flemish corpses were counted, Van Artevelde being one of the casualties, almost the majority being crushed by their companions when they tried to flee, while another 3,000 who were found wounded were executed. The defeat at Roosebeke ended the rebels' cause, as all towns surrendered and were punished, either sacked or forced to pay a heavy fine, when Count Louis returned to the throne, albeit under strong French influence. Only Ghent continued to resist, which provoked an English expedition disguised as a crusade against the supporters of the Pope of Avignon within the framework of the Western Schism.

The expedition reached Calais in the spring of 1383 and attempted to besiege Ypres in the summer before giving up on the arrival of a French relief force. Ghent's resistance would continue for two more years when they would reach an amnesty agreement with the new Earl of Flanders, the Duke of Burgundy Philip the Bold, who succeeded his father-in-law in 1384. The effects of the Battle of Roosebeke were also felt in France, where, emboldened by this victory, the king and the princes of the blood reduced the power of the French city, which had rebelled in previous years against war taxes, and managed to impose higher taxes by royal decree instead of being agreed. with the town councils.

Change of regimes (1385-1414) After a few years of truce, in 1385 hostilities resumed. A direct invasion of England from Scotland and the River Thames was planned in late spring, and was supposed to depart from Sluys. The English knew this and prepared a preemptive attack against the harbored fleet, but it had little success. The French army under Admiral de Vienne arrived in Scotland, where they launched a combined assault against England. The French stormed the border castle of Wark while the Scots watched. There were disagreements between the two factions over how to conduct the war, as the Scots were accustomed to quick, mobile raids in which the main prize was livestock, while the French hoped to take cities to seize a substantial part of English resources. for the war. defense of the northern border.

The disagreement led to the division of the army, where the French continued down the River Tweed and attacked the lands along the coast as far as Morpeth, where their allies followed their allies home upon the arrival of a large English force under from Ricardo himself, who he himself did not achieve much. The failed invasion from Scotland brought to the French court the knowledge that the Scottish countryside could hardly supply a Scottish army, much less a French invasion force, so no further attacks from Scotland would be attempted. In 1386, John of Gaunt attempted another invasion of Castile to reclaim his throne with little local success, but he managed to distract the French court from launching a direct invasion against England in 1386 and 1387.

The English also managed to succeed in attacks on the fleets. French commercials. By 1388, both sides had exhausted their resources and peace talks began to begin as internal conflict began to brew in both countries. The political situation had changed again in both kingdoms by the late 1380s, when both kings asserted their independent rule. In France, Charles VI embarked on personal rule, dismissing the Valois magnates from his council in November 1388 and replacing them with a group of his father's former advisors known as the "marmousets". His rule began well and the people began to call their king "the Beloved", but across the English Channel, Richard II's reign became a tyranny during the last decade of the 14th century.

Although the king managed to forge a 28-year truce with the French, his internal problems began to worsen. All of this came to a climax when John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, was expelled from England for ten years because he was considered a political threat. The former did not react to the exile of his son, but when Gaunt died in 1399 and Richard II extended his banishment for life and confiscated his vast duchy of Lancaster, the Rubicon had been crossed. Henry Bolingbroke returned and landed in the Humber Firth in June, and almost immediately most of Richard's nobles abandoned him, bewildered by the king's actions.

Richard, who had traveled to Ireland to quell a rebellion there, was deposed and died a few months later in prison, while the House of Lancaster became the royal house of England when its usurping patriarch came to the throne as Henry IV. The reign of the usurping Lancastrian king, Henry IV, did not begin well and almost immediately rebellions arose to resist his rule, first by Owain Glyndŵr in Wales and then, three years later, by a disgruntled member of the Percy family known as 'Hotspur'1. As he was closest to the rebels, the king's sixteen-year-old son, Henry of Monmouth, skillfully prevented the Welsh and Percy forces from uniting with each other and later played a decisive role in the Royalist victory at Shrewsbury in 1403, charging against his victorious division on Hotspur's flank and winning the battle.

It was just a taste of the military prowess that the young prince would display in the future. Despite the victory, further revolts broke out during the first decade of the 15th century and Wales remained recalcitrant. Henry IV also began to suffer from numerous illnesses during the latter part of his reign which left him increasingly unable to govern his kingdom. From about 1407, the rule of England would increasingly fall to the heir: Henry of Monmouth, who even at this early stage distinguished himself as a diligent administrator and capable leader. While the new royal House of Lancaster consolidated its rule over England, its Valois rivals in France were busy destroying any unity the French kingdom may have had.

Two and a half decades earlier, twenty-five-year-old Charles VI suffered a psychotic episode while riding through a forest, and from that moment on he rapidly descended into total madness, believing himself to be famous for glass. This deficiency on the throne created a power vacuum that would bring disaster to France. Louis I, Duke of Orleans, took the reins of government after his elder brother fell into madness, continuing the war with England and at the same time increasing his own wealth and power. As the second son of Charles V, Orleans had the status of "prince del sang" or "prince of the blood" of theValois and was therefore among the highest nobility of France.

The main victim of this situation was the House of Valois-Burgundy, dukes of Burgundy since the extinction of the Capetian cadet house. John II granted the vacant duchy as a fief to his youngest son, Philip the Bold, in 1363, and that son had subsequently been the dominant force in Charles VI's minority. Following Philip's death in 1404, the powerful Duchy of Burgundy,2 which now included wealthy Flanders and Artois in the north, passed into the hands of John the Bold. Jonathan Sumption describes him as "a short, stubborn, unattractive-looking, ungracious, clumsy and taciturn man", but aside from his not-so-perfect personality, he was a man of supreme talent.

John's military experience was extensive, culminating in his leadership of the French contingent at the Battle of Nicopolis, while his excellent administrative skills often led his father to rely on John as a capable deputy in times of need. A bitter struggle for power and control over the kingdom began between John the Bold and the Duke of Orleans, which quickly turned violent. The two men clashed on almost every major political issue. While John supported the Pope in Rome and opposed the continuation of the war with England due to the danger it caused to trade in Flanders, Orléans gave in to the Avignon papacy and wanted to continue the conflict.

Factions began to develop around both parties: the Orleanists, later called "Armagnacs", followed Louis and the Burgundians joined John, and street fights even broke out between both groups of supporters on the streets of the capital. This simmering tension finally erupted when, on November 23, 1407, the Duke of Orleans was pulled from his mule and brutally beaten to death on a Paris street by assassins sent by John. Charles, Louis's young son, inherited the dukedom and, advised by the late Louis's father-in-law, the Count of Armagnac, swore an oath of vengeance against the Duke of Burgundy. This started a cruel civil war between the "Armagnac" and "Burgundy" factions that would last for decades.

After seizing power in Paris through a coup d'état, John the Bold was besieged in the city by the Armagnacs in 1411, led by the Duke of Berry, another prince of the blood. Seeking help, the Duke of Burgundy sent envoys to Henry IV in England, promising him territory in Flanders and other concessions in exchange for help. A few weeks later, 3,000 English soldiers under the Earl of Arundel ventured to France and managed to break the siege before returning home. The harsh rule of John the Bold angered the civilians of Paris, and in 1413 the duke was forced to abandon the city, isolating himself in his vast domain while the Armagnacs secured most of the country.

Unfortunately for them, time was up. In England, Henry IV died of chronic illness in March 1413 and was succeeded by his son, who was crowned Henry V on April 9 while a blizzard raged outside Westminster Abbey. The new ruler consciously transformed his behavior upon ascending the throne. From a rebellious and unrestrained Prince of Wales, fond of wine, women and fighting with his father, the now King Henry V immediately began to behave seriously and sensibly, taking his responsibilities as monarch seriously. He gathered around him worthy and incorruptible advisors, kept household expenses low, pledged himself personally to ensure justice in his kingdom, and subdued anarchy wherever and whenever he could.

However, he also delved deeper into Christianity and became a religious fanatic capable of committing extraordinary brutality when he deemed it necessary. When Henry's old heretical friend, John Oldcastle, plotted to kidnap him, the king had him and all of his followers burned alive. Above all, however, was Henry V's desire to regain the rights and territories of the English royal family in France. It was clear that the new king would not maintain the truce for long. Beginning of the Lancastrian phase At the end of 1414, a large embassy was sent to Paris to discuss peace proposals, but Henry's demands were extremely high.

The Treaty of Brétigny of 1360 would be fully re-implemented and the territories stolen from England in Aquitaine, Poitou and Ponthieu were to be returned. More than that, any outstanding funds from John II's rescue agreement would be paid along with an additional £330,000, the annexation of Normandy, Maine and Anjou, as well as the overlordship of Brittany, Flanders, Beaufort and Nogent. Perhaps Henry V was simply trying to recover lost English lands in France, but it is possible that he intended to reject such untenable terms. Whatever the case, the French effectively rejected them and that made the resumption of the war inevitable.

With their refusal, the Dauphin of France, Louis of Guyenne, sent the English king an insulting gift, arrogantly stating to the ambassadors that he would "send King Henry, because he was young, small balls to play with and soft pillows to sleep on." to help him grow into manly strength." In response, Henry declared to his advisors that "if you happen to be thinking of going to bed with soft pillows, then I, perhaps before you wish, will awaken you from your slumber by knocking on your doors. dawn.” With that, orders were sent to form the largest English army from Crécy. 320 captains were hired to gather troops in various regions of the kingdom under a contract, a legal contract between a soldier and the man under whom he served.

It specified conditions and length of service, disciplinary practices, pay levels and other matters, and was a sign that troop mobilization in England was becoming more professionalised. Other feudal lords formed retinues from their own fiefdoms and Henry himself. He even recruited warriors from his royal lands in Cheshire, Lancashire and South Wales. In total, the army that assembled at Southampton was around 12,000 strong and a large contingent of archers. After dealing with a plot to depose him and execute his ringleaders, Henry V and his invading force embarked from England on August 11, 1415 in around 700 ships. The king himself and his closest advisors sailed aboard a 500-ton flagship known as Le Trinité.

The armada reached the coast of Normandy three days later and landed near Chef du Caux, at the mouth of the Seine River. Siege of Harfleur (1415) Rather than launch a devastating chevauchée across the area as his royal predecessors had done, Henry marched towards the strategic port of Harfleur and established his base at the priory of Graville, from where he hoped the small garrison would capitulate soon. . The city had a circle of ancient walls, but its defenses had been reinforced in anticipation of the arrival of the English with ditches and wooden barbicans, and the local commander, the lord of Estouteville, made further preparations by closing the port with chained ships. . .

The Lézarde River opened its locks, flooding the plain north of the city and giving Raoul de Gaucourt time to reinforce the defenses with 300 men-at-arms, increasing the number of defenders up to 400 men-at-arms, several crossbowmen and the townspeople. who joined her in defending their homes. Henry took up position west of the city on 17 August, while sending his brother, the Duke of Clarence, Thomas, east, but the floodplains delayed him and he was in position only two days later, while the English navy prevented supplies from entering the city by sea. Henry summoned Harfleur to surrender, but his demand was rejected, so the siege began.

The English installed their batteries, which continually attacked the defenses, protected by wooden shields and trenches. The defenders tenaciously held their outer position as much as they could and tenaciously defended the gaps created by the artillery, and during the night, the gaps were repaired as best they could. They launched raids to keep enemy cannons as far away from the walls as possible. The English mines, deep tunnels dug beneath the defenses intended to bring down the walls, were stopped by French countermines. The defenders also managed to raise the water level of the Lézarde, forcing some English to retreat.

Still, slowly on the eastern side, the attackers managed to crawl to the outer trenches, where they placed their cannons at point-blank range. At the end of August they managed to divert the flow of the river, lowering the water level and depriving the defenders of fresh water. By early September, most of Harfleur's outer defenses were destroyed, towers and walls were damaged and its food supplies were running out, but still the French commanders decided to resist and repelled the English attacks on the gaps in the walls for two more weeks. . Finally, on September 15, the defenders called for a truce and the surrender of the city if a French army did not arrive to relieve them by the 23rd.

As the Dauphin was still mustering and not ready to march, Harfleur was handed over to the English king in the agreed date: its 260 surviving members of the garrisons and the other combatants would be held for ransom. Still, the small garrison's unexpectedly tenacious resistance had kept the English king at bay for six weeks, during which the English army was devastated by outbreaks of malaria and dysentery, which ultimately killed or weakened nearly a third of its troops. Battle of Agincourt (1415) At the time he did so, a large French army of some 20,000 men was slowly gathering at Rouen under the command of the Dauphin, ready to intercept the English.

Henry V was not the only thing Charles had to worry about. John the Bold declared himself eager to join the fight against England, but it was felt that his presence would be detrimental, as it would only cause divisions in the army. The dauphin then asked the Duke of Burgundy to send 800 soldiers instead of coming himself, but this insulted the Duke and he refused to send help. Throughout the campaign, the nominally "Armagnac" French leaders would have to keep an eye on Burgundy; It had long been rumored that he was collaborating with the English. However, the delay at Harfleur put King Henry in a difficult situation.

It was late in the campaign season, but he couldn't just return to England without accomplishing anything else. He, too, could not risk marching towards Bordeaux as he had intended, or towards Paris itself: the army was too exhausted and an attack on the capital could forcibly reunite the French factions. Instead, it was decided that the army should proceed immediately to Calais, so that Henry could follow the same steps through "his" lands in Normandy and Ponthieu that his great-grandfather Edward III had. After garrisoning the recently captured Harfleur, the English army set out on its march, intending to remain on the coast until Calais.

The walk started well enough and the rivers near Dieppe and Eu were easily forded, but this all changed on the 13th. As Henry's army approached the old Roman ford over the Somme at Blanchetaque, where the king planned to cross, a prisoner The captured Gascon informed him that a vanguard of 6,000 French under Constable Charles d'Albret was waiting and ready to block any attempt to cross. . Realizing that he would have to cross further inland, Henry turned right and marched upstream, followed all the way by d'Albret on the other side of the bank. However, after managing to get rid of their pursuers, the English managed to cross at Nesle, but it was too late.

Meanwhile, the main French army under Bourbon5 crossed the Somme at Amiens and proceeded to join d'Albret near Péronne. The weary English, racked by hunger, disease and now almost completely exhausted of supplies, continued to march north and on October 23 reached Blangy. It was there, when Henry's army crossed a tributary of the great river, that he witnessed a terrifying sight. Halted on a slightly elevated hill about a mile in front of them was the entire French army: row upon row of magnificent mounted knights and men-at-arms, a sight that led the English king to form battle formation as well.

After a tense standoff lasting an hour, the French withdrew further and took up positions for the night in a blocking position on the road to Calais, near a small village known as Agincourt. On the night of October 24, Henry ordered complete silence in the English camp, while the French could be heard rejoicing and celebrating through the rain-filled night air. The battlefield that both sides faced the next morning was an area of ​​sodden, recently plowed countryside in an area between the village of Agincourt to the west, Tramecourt to the east and Maisoncelles to the south, bounded by wooded terrain on the flanks of each. army.

Henry V's depleted army now numbered around 8,500 troops and was very unbalanced in composition, with 7,000 archers and only 1,500 knights and dismounted men-at-arms. Due to their numberlimited, it was arranged in a single line of battle. In the center were three small melee infantry divisions, known as "battle divisions," with archer units between them. The left "battle" was under the command of the veteran Baron de Camoys, the right was led by Edward, Duke of York, while Henry V took control of the central division. Even more archers were positioned equally on the left and right flanks, with a significant portion in the woods on either side of the field.

The archers were under the authority of Sir Thomas Erpingham. The entire army was protected by a defensive wall of stakes and caltrops, designed to cushion cavalry charges. Across the field, a large French royal army of around 20,000 was under the nominal but insecure dual command of Constable Charles d'Albret and Marshal Boucicaut,6 professional men whose relatively low birth meant they were outranked by high nobles such as the dukes of Orleans, Alençon and Bourbon. His army was deployed in three battle lines (the first and second comprising most of France's proud knights and dismounted men-at-arms) to use as a mace against the English, while a line composed mainly of archers and crossbowmen was deployed. kept in the rear.

It was the duty of the nobility to win the battle, not of simple peasants with bows. On both flanks a heavily armored cavalry force of around 750 knights each was in the process of forming8, while more units slowly entered the French army as time passed. Having learned the hard lesson from their defeats at Crécy and Poitiers, the French did not attack immediately and remained where they were. It was clear to d'Albret and Boucicaut that, while their enemy's army would only weaken over time, theirs would grow even stronger. Whatever its merits, the impetuous knights and nobles of France chafed at this “cowardly” strategy of delay.

Seeing that the French were not going to attack him, Henry V knew that he had to take the first step before it was too late. Then, after consulting with his captains, the king ordered his entire army to pull out the stakes and advance slowly in an orderly manner, supposedly shouting to his troops "Felas, let's go!" After advancing within longbow range, the army again drove in their stakes, whereupon the English archers immediately began to launch heavy volleys at the surprised knights in front. This withering arrow fire terrified the hastily formed French cavalry units and they now charged at full speed into Henry's line9.

Erpingham had the archers hit an arrow and draw the bowstrings taut and then ordered them to wait. Then, as the mounted French knights, selected from the best horsemen in the army, approached the line through the soggy mud of the field, Erpinham shouted "Now, attack!" and his archers fired at point-blank range from the front and the tree line. The sky darkened for a second before hundreds of knights and their horses were hit and killed by the dense barrage of spike-tipped arrows. Those who managed to get through were either trapped in the sharp stakes or sent back to their own lines.

While the massacre of the mounted charge was taking place, a group of peasants and cavalry led by a few Burgundian nobles looted Henry's baggage train, stealing the king's bedding, his boxes of cash, and even one of their crowns. It did not affect the course of the battle until later. d'Albret's first line of infantry trudged through mud, often knee-deep at the same time, made worse by the earlier cavalry charge. A combination of bad terrain, heavy armor and the disruption of their cohesion by their own retreating cavalry left the French vanguard an easy target for the lethally accurate English archers, who unleashed volley after volley into the nearly motionless mass and inflicted horrific losses.

Despite the setbacks, the flower of French military power crashed into the thin English line like a tidal wave and immediately forced it back before the equally stubborn men-at-arms under Henry stopped the advance. While fierce hand-to-hand combat began at the point of contact, the second line of infantry now also advanced, but they caused a crush as they approached the vanguard, preventing most of the army from engaging and most of The front line troops will withdraw. Although the French were suffering, Henry's melee infantry was suffering a severe blow. On the right division, Edward Duke of York was killed in some of the fiercest fighting, while Henry V himself was almost killed and part of his crown was cut off.

When the flank archers ran out of arrows, they charged from the wings with all the weapons they could find to aid their own warriors. Shortly after noon, the French attack failed and the English took many high- and low-ranking prisoners, including the dukes of Bourbon, Orleans, and Marshal Boucicaut. At this moment, someone in the English formation shouted that enemy reinforcements were arriving, perhaps having seen the raiders in the camp earlier in the battle. With the number of captives they had taken, it was plausible that an uprising of prisoners rearmed with discarded equipment, along with new enemies, could doom Henry's army.

Therefore, the English king ordered 200 archers to go to the camp and kill almost all the soldiers that the army had taken captive. With thousands dead on the field of Agincourt and even more prisoners massacred in the heat of battle, the terrified remainder of the French forces retreated. That night, King Henry V of England kept the captured Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon waiting at his banquet table, before arriving in Calais and sailing back in mid-November. When Henry V sailed from Calais at the end of 1415, he left behind a deeply shaken France. With the royal army destroyed and much of the Armagnac faction's leadership with it, it seemed like the civil war was only going to get worse.

Back in England, the jubilant king did not enjoy his success for long and immediately began raising funds, gathering troops, and forming a large navy for a subsequent attack on France, while at the same time depriving the divided enemy kingdom of its allies. Seeking to heal the Western schism, Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund arrived in England in early 1416, but ended up forming an alliance with Henry at Canterbury and denouncing France. At sea, the king's commanders crushed the Franco-Genoese fleet in 14164 and 14175, leaving the channel open for another crossing. In the middle of that year, Henry gathered his army and sailed towards Normandy, this time to conquer it completely.

On September 20, the dominoes began to fall as Caen surrendered after a brief siege. There was no relief nearby because any royal force that could have helped was busy engaging the Burgundians2. Next to fall was the great Norman capital of Rouen. Henry laid siege to France's second city in late July 1418, and after a brutal siege that lasted more than half a year, his garrison finally surrendered. With that, almost all the other castles in the duchy surrendered, and by the turn of the decade, Normandy was under English control for the first time in two centuries. Treaty of Troyes (1420) This terrifyingly rapid conquest horrified both the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.

Despite the latter's covert conversations with Henry V, they realized that such a complete conquest would not benefit them at all. Realizing that something had to be done, both John the Bold and the new Dauphin of France, the future Charles VII, agreed to negotiate. However, when the Duke of Burgundy knelt before his Valois prince, the Armagnac servants accompanying Charles suddenly stepped forward and hacked John the Bold to death, in revenge for the death of Louis of Orleans more than a decade earlier. . Whatever the reason, it was a disaster for France. As Francis I stated a century later, when shown the dead duke's mutilated skull: "This is the hole through which the English entered France." Wide areas of the kingdom erupted in uproar or panic at the brutal murder of John by the Armagnacs, but when the news reached his son and heir Philip in Flanders, he is said to have thrown himself on his bed, gnashing his teeth in pain and Rage.

Furious and eager for revenge, the new Duke of Burgundy formed an alliance with Henry V. The former would recognize the English king's claim to the throne of France, while the latter would ensure that Philip's territories were expanded and secured. This was the last straw. Battered by the English invasion and tired of the civil war, the barely lucid Charles VI signed the Treaty of Troyes3 on May 21, 1420. Henry V would be heir and regent of France, he would marry the mad king's daughter, Catherine of Valois. , and his son would also be king. After capturing some cities more loyal to the Dauphin, Henry spent Christmas in Paris before returning to England and crowning Catherine his queen.

While this was happening, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was defeated and killed at Baugé in March 1421, a defeat that convinced Brittany to defect to the reduced Dauphin kingdom. However, in October, Henry returned to France and took some castles at Dreux, Vendome and Beaugency before laying siege to Meaux. It was there that King Henry fell ill with his army, but insisted on staying with the troops, which he did until the city fell in May 1422. Although he returned to Paris, the king fell even sicker and began taking measures for the succession. -appointing Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, regent in England, while his brother, the Duke of Bedford, would lead in France on behalf of the newborn Henry VI.

The great Lancastrian king of England, perhaps the greatest in the country's history, died at Vincennes on August 31, 1422, aged just 35. The mad king Charles VI finally died just two months later, and his son declared himself king. However, all of France north of the Loire came under Anglo-Burgundian rule, while his son only retained southern loyalty with a court on the move. Battle of Verneuil (1424) In 1423 the Treaty of Amiens was signed, which united the Duchy of Burgundy, the Duchy of Brittany and the Kingdom of England and recognized Henry VI as King of France. It was sealed when Bedford married Anne, the sister of the Duke of Burgundy, but Brittany's royal loyalties would swing towards the stronger party in the years to come.

In July 1423, as the English fortified their positions north of the Loire River and besieged the fortresses loyal to Charles, an army loyal to Dauphine accompanied by a large contingent of Scots and smaller Italian and Spanish units under Sir John Stewart and Louis of Vendôme. He marched through the territories of the Duke of Burgundy to relieve his allies and threaten Paris. They were defeated at Cravant, near Auxerre, by an English army under Salisbury with the help of Burgundian units. However, the French found fortune in the west, where an English raiding army was captured and destroyed at La Brossinière by local Norman garrisons loyal to Charles.

In the spring of 1424, a contingent of 6,500 Scottish soldiers under the Earl of Douglas landed in France and joined the Dauphin's army. When the campaign season began with the usual change of control of the border forts, in August, the Dauphin's army under the Count of Aumale headed towards Ivry Castle to relieve it from a siege. When it became clear that it was too late and that the English position was too strong for a direct attack, the Armagnacs diverted westwards and took Verneuil, whence reinforcements arrived from Italy. Here the English army under Bedford joined them on 17 August, furious that the French had not joined the battle at Ivre as previously agreed.

The English army numbered around 8,000 men, a significant number of them were Norman nobles, while the French number ranged between 14,000 and 16,000, of which 6,500 were Scottish archers and axe-bearers, 2,000 were heavily armed Lombard knights and some other soldiers came. from Spain. On a plain a mile north of Verneuil, the English positioned themselves with a compact contingent of armed men on foot, flanked by archers with their sharp stakes, while around 1,000 lightly armored men were placed in the rear with the task of to protect the baggage train and horses and stop any attack from behind. The French also dismounted many of their men-at-arms, but the Lombard knights and some Frenchmen remained saddled.

To the surprise of the English, they did not position themselves on the wings as usual, but instead formed up in front of the foot contingent. After a brief exchange of arrows, the Lombard mercenaries charged the enemy. Bedford made some of his archersThey moved ahead of their lines to counter it, but the missiles could do little against the superior Italian armor, which also covered their steeds. The knights broke through the English lines, splitting the division in two as men were eliminated or driven away to make room for the unstoppable force. The Milanese emerged from the other side and continued their charge against the baggage guard and drove them from the battlefield.

Realizing that he had to achieve victory before the Italians returned, Bedford regrouped his infantrymen and ordered them to advance. So did the French and Scottish contingent, but the latter proved less disciplined in their advance, and when fierce and confusing hand-to-hand combat began, the English and Norman men-at-arms gradually proved superior. When the lightly armored archers finally joined the fray, the French line was broken and a brutal extermination camp began where many French nobles and all their commanders perished around the ditch defending the city, as did most of the Scots, with a death toll of more than 7,000. When the Lombards returned, expecting the French to win, they were expelled, while some important nobles, such as the Duke of Alençon, were taken captive.

Verneuil's defeat was disastrous for the future Charles VII, who has been remembered as a 'second Agincourt', and forced him to rethink his plans to be crowned at Reims, while Bedford's prestige increased and he had the impetus for the The rest of the year. Siege of Orleans (1428-1429) and Joan of Arc Unfortunately for the English, Gloucester's mistake6 meant that Bedford was forced to return to England for two years to put things right, and he did not return to France until March 1427. Now He and Salisbury began planning a campaign to capture Orleans, the "key to the Loire". If this great riverine axis was conquered, the English could easily launch new attacks to knock out the dolphin for good.

After capturing more than 40 towns and forts along the way, Salisbury approached Orleans in early October 1428, at that time garrisoned by 2,400 regular soldiers and 3,000 other militia. A contingent of the English army under Suffolk captured Jargeau and Chateauneuf to isolate the town, while Salisbury camped in front of the French defenses at the southern end of the 350-metre-long Orleans Bridge. He began an initial artillery bombardment on the 17th and four days later ordered his men to assault the fortified gatehouse known as Les Tourelles. This attack was repulsed by the defenders after each side suffered around 200 losses, and the women of the city constantly resupplied the French Dauphinists with food, drink and weapons.

When the direct attack failed, Salisbury abandoned this approach and instead sent sappers to undermine the foundations. Realizing this, the guardians of Les Tourelles retreated deeper into the city on the night of October 23, destroying a small part of the bridge behind them. The fall of this fortification seemed to be the undoing of Orleans, but when the aggressive Salisbury climbed Les Tourelles to decide where to attack next, a stray cannonball came crashing through the window, killing one of his companions and hurling a bar of iron to the count. cutting off half of his face. Incapacitated and in agony, he was replaced by William, Earl of Suffolk, before dying a week later.

The more cautious Suffolk decided on a prolonged siege, and the following week the English began constructing siege works. Around the same time, Orleans received some additional reinforcements from the southeast: the city was too large to be completely isolated by such a small force. The city's defenders also began preparing for a prolonged engagement by burning and bulldozing the suburbs outside the walls, depriving the English of cover and winter quarters as they did so. Beginning on November 8, English ships began ferrying men across the Loire and building siege positions north and west of the city. The French responded with some fruitless raids and, to compound these failures, by the end of December the besiegers had been reinforced.

While the siege works on the north bank were being built, the English launched an unsuccessful exploratory assault across the broken Loire Bridge. The defenders responded with massive 26-pounder shots from a new bombardment and completing the leveling of their suburbs. As 1429 began, Orleans's would-be captors turned their attention to the now fortified north bank with a series of easily repelled attacks on the Porte Renard in January. The relaxed nature of the encirclement also allowed a supply convoy including hundreds of sheep and pigs to reach the town. As brave resistance continued, 200 men from the garrison left Orleans and joined a 3,000-strong French force at Blois.

Having received reports that an enemy supply caravan was approaching from Paris to resupply the besiegers, they marched to intercept near Rouvray. However, when the French and Scots under Clermont encountered the 1,500-strong caravan on 12 February, their open field assault was repulsed and counterattacked from behind a ring of supply wagons. 400 of the Dauphin's troops, mainly Scots, were killed, and Clermont subsequently retreated to Tours along with other commanders, certain of defeat. At Chinon, Charles was so demoralized by the seemingly inevitable fall of the great city that he considered abandoning his kingdom entirely. However, events many hundreds of miles to the east were about to completely rejuvenate the French cause.

Three years earlier, a fifteen-year-old girl named Joan began hearing voices and in 1428 she became convinced that God was granting her a task, given by the archangel Michael, in addition to Saints Margaret and Catherine. Your homework from her? Leading an army against the English to relieve Orleans and having the Dauphin traditionally crowned as Charles VII in Reims Cathedral, where Louis the Pious had succeeded to the Frankish throne six centuries earlier. With the help of Robert de Baudricourt, a pro-Valois commander in Vaucouleurs, Joan undertook a dangerous journey to Chinon and then to Poitiers, where her faith was declared true and her virginity secured from her.

To test whether this woman's extraordinary claims were true, she would be sent to Orleans in an attempt to break the siege. After receiving armor, horses, a special banner, and supposedly finding a legendary sword, she went to Blois and joined a relief force that was being assembled. Upon her arrival, the deflated spirits among the French soldiers and officers immediately began to change at her holy presence. Leaders who had previously withdrawn from the siege, such as Clermont, or who had avoided involvement at all, now joined the cause, inspired by Joan's patriotic mission. While the Dauphin's army was gathering, the lull at Orleans after Rouvray allowed the English forces, who knew a relief attempt was approaching, to build a series of formidable fortifications: the Bastille of Saint-Loup to the east, the Boulevard de the Pressoir-Ars on April 9, the Bastille Saint Pouair on the 15th and the Bastille of Saint-Jean-le-Blance five days later.

In particular, the new English commander Glasdale created an external earthen wall on the outskirts of Les Tourelles, turning it into a citadel. Joan and her relief force set out for Orleans on the 26th and, after miraculously crossing the Loire at Checy and bypassing Saint-Loup unopposed, entered the city through its Burgundian gate three days after leaving Blois. . After resting all night, Joan was eager to go on the attack. As there were none planned for that day, she crossed the Loire Bridge to the fortress of Belle Croix and asked the English to lift the siege. Glasdale shouted at her that she was a simple cowherd and that she would be burned if she was captured.

However, Juana's threat to kill all the prisoners her forces had taken if her heralds were not freed worked and, in fact, they were freed. Furthermore, on that day, a long skirmish was fought when the French commander La Hire moved against the northern English fortification at Saint-Pouair, but was eventually forced to return to the interior. This inability led the leading defending general Jean de Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, to escape from the city on May 1 and return to Blois, where he sought reinforcements. While he was away, Joan did not remain idle. She rejuvenated the morale of the long-beleaguered citizens of Orleans, who flocked to greet her and give gifts to her maids, while conducting military reconnaissance against Glasdale's positions to see which were weak and which were strong.

Dunois returned on 4 May with much-needed reinforcements and soon afterward spontaneously began an attack by 1,500 soldiers against England's eastern fort at Saint-Loup. Joan was resting at the time, but when the voice of an angel or any of the other mortal voices in the city informed her, she rode as quickly and eagerly as possible to join the attack. For three grueling hours, Joan inspired her warriors to fight. Despite the fierce resistance of the English garrison, the French soldiers finally managed to capture and raze Saint-Loup to the joy of the inhabitants of Orléans. Despite her joy at her victory, Joan of Arc wept for the 140 murdered English soldiers, who had died without confession.

Still, the officers remained cautious, but this was shattered when news arrived from Paris of the arrival of a large Anglo-Burgundian relief army, led by John Fastolf. It was now clear that the siege had to be broken before reaching Orleans, or all his bravery would be in vain. On the 5th, French forces crossed the Loire to attack Saint-Jean le Blance, an earthen fortification protecting Les Tourelles, but when the English retreated to the gateway, the defenders managed to occupy the outlying position. The next day, Joan crossed the Loire again, pushing the troops towards the Augustinian Bastille. After a fierce confrontation in which the French had to use a cannon to shoot down a particularly large Englishman, they invaded the fortress.

The remaining Glasdale forts withdrew behind the boulevard protecting Les Tourelles. With divine favor apparently on their side and momentum behind them, the French attacked the outer defenses of Les Tourelles on the 7th by escalating, but were initially repulsed with heavy losses. During the fight, Joan herself was even hit between the shoulder and neck by an English arrow, but she continued fighting anyway. After going to pray in a nearby vineyard for guidance, Joan of Arc returned with her banner in hand, motivating the French to a final attack in which they managed to expel the besiegers from the fortification in front of the Les Tourelles gate.

The Maid of Orleans asked Glasdale to surrender, but he refused. When he subsequently attempted to lead the remaining troops across the drawbridge and toward the inner gate, the wood cracked under the weight of so many soldiers and threw many into the Loire. Glasdale himself, dressed in heavy armor along with many of his men, drowned. Morale within the inner fortress collapsed after this loss and the surviving English inside quickly surrendered. On the north bank of the Loire, the remaining English troops abandoned their siege lines and formed two large battle formations, challenging the French to open battle. However, when Juana and the other commanders lined up in front of them and prepared for battle, the besiegers lost their nerve and turned to walk away.

His army was divided, one group moved to the Jargeau garrison8, while another headed to Meung9, being harassed all the way by French troops who disobeyed orders to defeat them. After 210 days, the siege of Orleans was over, the dauphin's capable and loyal army had held firm, and Joan of Arc was forever enshrined in history as the Maid of Orleans. Joan pressed for an immediate advance to crown Charles, but the French commanders, who like the English still had castles on the Loire, were not yet in a position to do so. Then, in mid-June, the army, followed by an enthusiastic Joan of Arc, began to retake them one by one.

Jargeau fell on the 12th, Beaugency on the eve of the 17th, and finally Meung at dawn on the 18th. Battle of Patay (1429) The remaining English forces under Talbot withdrew north and joined the relief army marching south. from Sir Fastolf, raising his force to around 5,000. While Fastolf, commanding the united forces, preached caution, he was overpowered by his subordinates led by Talbot, who wanted to help the Loire fortresses. When they were about to relieve Meunge, news reached them of the fall of Beaugency. Worried about being trapped between the two French forces, they began marching north. The French, discovering the movement of the English army,They prepared a vanguard of around 1,500 men-at-arms under La Hire and Jean de Xaintrailles and sent them north.

Fastolf learned that they were intensely pursuing him when he was near the town of Patay on an old Roman road: he had to deploy his army to confront them, most of them were archers. The English took up a defensive position on a ridge, with baggage and artillery placed on the flank near a forest, while 500 of their best archers were sent into an advanced position to ambush the French vanguard. Once the English ambush force was in place, a stag ran towards them, sounding the alarm among the archers, giving away their positions to nearby French scouts. Because of this, Talbot ordered them to move to another location, but before the bows could take position with their sharp stakes near the hedges where the baggage train was, the French vanguard crashed into them.

The knights cut through their lightly armored enemies before they could fire their deadly volleys. The remains of the English vanguard fled towards the main English contingent. Still, the French men-at-arms took advantage of their confused and unprepared enemies, and attacked the main contingent on the undefended flank, destroying and massacring anything unlucky enough to find themselves in their path. Many of the English captains were captured, except Sir Fastlof, who was mounted and managed to escape with about half his force: the English suffered around 2,500 killed or captured, while French losses were negligible. The French heavy cavalry had finally defeated the English archers, who had caused so many defeats, such as those at Crécy and Agincourt, forever dispelling the myth of the invincibility of the English armies in the field.

Such a great victory in the open field finally encouraged the Dauphin to accompany Joan of Arc and her newly expanded army of 12,000 men on a march towards Reims. There, on July 17, 1429, the beleaguered son of Charles the Mad was crowned Charles VII in the city's great cathedral while the Maid of Orleans stood at his side, sacred banner in hand. This was militarily insignificant, but it was a propaganda triumph. The momentous coronation of Charles VII at Reims in the summer of 1429 gave England's regent in France, the popular and capable John of Bedford, time to prepare Paris for an assault by the new king's inspired forces.

When he arrived at the end of August, once again with Joan of Arc at his head, Bedford was prepared and, after some skirmishes and a brief siege, the French were repelled. The Orleans momentum had taken its course and Charles ordered his army to leave for the winter. At this point in the war, Joan was becoming politically problematic for the restored Valois monarchy despite her role in raising French morale in the dark decade of the 1420s. After continuing to campaign alone for a few months, she was found by the Burgundians. They captured it at Compiègne and then sold it to the English in November.

After one of the most notorious religious trials in world history, the Maid of Orleans was burned at the stake by English soldiers in Rouen, condemned as a heretic. At the time of her death in May 1431, Joan of Arc was only nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to save her. Resurgence of France (1431-1441) On the military front, Bedford managed to stabilize the situation by reestablishing control around Paris by taking some towns and castles, including Château Gaillard and Louviers. This gave Bedford the opportunity to emulate Charles's propaganda coup of two years earlier. On December 16, 1431, Henry VI of England was also crowned Henry II of France.

However, his Burgundian allies failed to make any headway as Philip of Burgundy had to establish control over his newly inherited Duchy of Brabant. As small attempts at peace talks were made, which led to nothing, the Duke of Burgundy took advantage of his ambiguous position to confront the two sides and try to make the most of the situation, signing intermittent truces with the Armagnacs. In the following years, much of the military operations were concentrated around Paris, where sieges and raids were launched against different forts. The French attempted to cut the lines of communication between Paris and Normandy and along the border between Normandy and Maine.

However, all things considered, the war was not going well for the English, who no longer had adequate finances or manpower to defend their 350-mile-long line of contact in France, finance modern warfare with weapons of gunpowder siege or maintain its numerous garrisons. It was only thanks to Bedford's ability and the love felt for him among the Anglo-French that the lands were held. Despite minor English success in retaking some rebellious Norman castles in 1434, the revolt continued to bleed the occupiers of much-needed resources and their situation continued to deteriorate. Unfortunately even more so for the English, his most important ally could see the way the winds were blowing.

The dual monarchy suffered two blows in quick succession during 1435. On September 14, the ailing Duke of Bedford finally died at Rouen and was replaced by Richard of York. Even worse was the Treaty of Arras, signed on September 20 between King Charles VII and Philip of Burgundy. This finally reconciled the warring French factions in an agreement that granted the Duchy of Burgundy even more territory in exchange for Philip's formal recognition of Charles VII as King of France. This radical political change had an immediate effect, as riots began to occur throughout the English lands in France. Furthermore, Charles VII's armies defeated an English army at Gerberoy, allowing them to strengthen their control over Picardy, and they managed to capture Saint-Denis in the summer of 1435 and Meulan in September.

Although the French king's burial site was briefly lost between September and February, these two conquests surrounded Paris, blocking the most critical supply routes to the capital, which saw food prices soar: this sparked discontent among the French. citizens, which eventually led to the start of a siege of Paris, where men from Armagnac and Burgundy joined forces. Burgundian Paris returned to Charles on April 13, and the remaining English garrisons abandoned the city a few days later. At the same time, the Armagnacs advanced into northern Normandy, where the two important coastal cities of Dieppe and Harfleur were captured. They were crucial in transporting reinforcements and supplies across the Channel, and without them the English found it difficult to launch campaigns on the continent.

The Duke of Burgundy attempted to take advantage of the situation and invaded the city of Calais in 1436, but the arrival of an English relief army under Beaufort lifted the siege, allowing the city to remain in English hands for another century. In 1437, Talbot attempted one of the last advances along the Seine: after having secured some parts of Upper Normandy, he recovered the important city of Pontoise, but at that time English military policy was to retain their lands in Normandy while the The French gradually took castle by castle on their border or those that had remained under England behind them.

When Henry VI emerged from the minority and began ruling in his own name in 1437, peace negotiations in 1439 failed, and over the next few years England's position on the continent only worsened, and its operations in Picardy and Normandy ended in failure, certain for the reconquest of Harfleur. First Meaux in 1439 and then Creil and Pontoise, the last English foothold in the lands of the French crown, where Jean Bureau's powerful artillery train was taken advantage of, fell in 1441, as did Evreux; The following year Gascony was attacked for the first time in decades by the Spanish, where Charles VI relieved the siege of Tartas and captured some towns.

The English responses (an attempt to siege Dieppe and a campaign in Anjou) were of no avail. Peace talks and reforms (1441-1445) Because a group in favor of peace with France at any price, led by the Duke of Suffolk, had great influence over the king in England, the latter led an embassy to Tours early of 1444 for a conference. The French delegates were not willing to make any kind of compromise; In reality, the deal was desperate for Suffolk. In exchange for an extendable two-year truce, Henry VI would be betrothed to Charles VII's niece, Margaret of Anjou, and England would cede Maine to France.

Although the peace came as a great relief to English civilian settlers in northern France (who were increasingly coming under French attack), it was generally met with fury in England3 and served as one of the factors that led to the War Wars. Roses inevitable about a decade later. As Henry's kingdoms began to crumble, Charles took advantage of the truce to embark on a series of military and monetary reforms that would forever change the feudal France he had fought so hard to inherit. The taille, a direct land tax that until then had only been occasional, became permanent and financed the king's changes.

French feudal armies had been indentured for centuries and typically returned home at the end of the year. However, from 1444 onwards, only the poorest units were discharged, while the best contingents were retained as the core of a new standing army. On January 5, 1445, the French royal government officially announced the formation of companies of ordinance: regular units of troops supplemented by the addition of bands of routiers and écorcheurs of the highest quality, many of whom were dismissed mercenaries, into service. King. To ensure their continued loyalty, discipline, and relatively high moral standards, these new professional soldiers received monthly payments from the new income.

The recruitment of former independent soldiers reduced the amount of banditry in the kingdom and at the same time made use of an untapped reserve of experienced manpower. Other less reputable écorcheurs were seen as an impediment to peace, little better than the outlaws who had tormented France for decades. Another vital part of Charles's modernization of the French army was the integration of "modern" gunpowder artillery, which emerged in European armies in the early 15th century. Particularly revolutionary was the development of so-called "crumb" gunpowder, which did not disintegrate into its separate components when moved and was therefore much more reliable and much more effective.

Other technological advances, including multiple powder chambers in breech-loading cannons, meant that newer cannons could have a surprisingly high rate of fire. Enter the brothers Jean and Gaspard Bureau, sons of a merchant in the service of Charles VII. After being appointed to the task, the duo regularized the haphazard and sporadic variety of cannons currently used by inexperienced French forces. The proper use of each type of weapon was specified and a higher level of training and professionalism was instilled in a previously relatively neglected arm of the military. Additionally, the brothers took advantage of France's new fiscal strength to purchase higher quality, standardized bronze cannons.

Larger bombards were retained for more intense siege tasks, such as knocking down castle walls, while smaller caliber cannons, such as the culverin, would be used against infantry targets. Recovery of Normandy (1448-1450) In Normandy and the formally abandoned county of Maine, it was becoming clear that the Duke of York and his military forces in France were not going to dance to the conciliatory tune of Henry VI's advisors. . For them, it was inevitable that more territory would fall if the French were not resisted now, so the Maine garrisons refused to abandon their strongholds, such as the capital of Le Mans.

This sparked threats of a new war with France in late 1447, but the garrisons hesitantly withdrew from Maine in March 1448, further diminishing the English position in now exposed Normandy. Shortly afterwards, York was sent to govern Ireland as a way to get him out of the way and was replaced in France by his great rival Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The tension in Normandy finally came to a climax when Verneuil's captain, Francois de Surienne, attacked a Breton fortress at Fougeres with Suffolk backing in March 1449. The town was severely sacked and its fall caused the then-neutral Duke of Brittany Francis I ask Charles VII for help.

Somerset refused to apologize for his subordinate's act and the French retaliated by quickly seizing the castles of Pont-de-l'Arche, Gerberoy and Conches in late May. France offered to exchange Fougeres for these cities, but was rejected. This made the resumption of war inevitable and it was finally declared at the end of July. Charles VII crossed theLoire in August and took personal command of the southernmost of the four armies now simultaneously invading the weakened English lands of Normandy. It was a total ride. On the 8th, French forces took Pont-Audemer and the other Somerset castles began to fall with alarming frequency: their garrisons had been steadily reduced over the decades.

A few weeks later, on the 26th, the inhabitants of Mantes rose up against the English, took control of a gate and forced the garrison to surrender to Charles's troops. In September, Breton forces completed the conquest of the Cotentin peninsula south of Grand-vey and handed it over to French royal officials, while at the same time the Duke of Alençon recovered the town that bore his name, which had been more beyond the control of man for decades. On October 16, the king's personal forces, led by Dunois, laid siege to the glorious Anglo-Norman capital of Rouen. Knowing that no relief would come, Somerset surrendered the city in less than a week and was allowed to march with his garrison towards English-held Caen.

The French were so motivated to complete the reconquest that their operations continued into the winter, eventually managing to recapture the crucial channel ports at Harfleur and Honfleur. When Charles's offensive was stopped, England only retained a small area of ​​west-central Normandy around Caen and Bayeaux, plus the northern segment of the Cotentin peninsula, with Cherbourg as its most important city. In England, two of the kingdom's most powerful figures, Queen Margaret and Suffolk, assembled a formidable army of 4,500 men and the ships with which to transport them to Normandy. Sir Thomas Kyriell was left in command of the force. He was a veteran of the war in France and a Knight of the Garter who came from a family of middle-ranking knights who, for centuries, had served the kings of England as sheriffs and in other similar capacities.

However, the expedition was delayed due to lack of ships and the arrival of winter. Worse still, when the army learned that their second payment was going to be postponed, they mutinied and killed one of the king's officials. Suffolk was widely regarded as the cause of the Troubles due to poor administration, and when he attempted to flee across the Channel to escape his enemies, he was killed in May 1450. Despite a false start to the campaign, Kyriell and His soldiers sailed from Portsmouth as soon as the weather in 1450 permitted and he landed at Cherbourg on 15 March. These reinforcements instantly boosted the faltering morale of the English in Normandy and led to Kyriell's army receiving 1,800 more reinforcements from the large garrisons nearby.

The French garrison at Valognes realized it was in danger and requested support from the south, but Kyriell moved in too quickly and besieged the castle for three weeks before it finally surrendered on 10 April. The squire in charge of the fortification, Abel Rouault, was allowed to leave with his garrison, supplies, horses, and possessions in exchange for capitulation. Upon learning of the new English invasion, Charles VII sent some of his best units and most capable lieutenants to inform and reinforce his commander in the area, Jean de Clermont. Having missed the opportunity to save Valognes, he settled in Carentan, on the main road that Kyriell would likely use to travel south.

There, Clermont sent a message to France's Breton policeman, Arthur de Richemont, asking him to move his forces to Saint-Lo in case Kyriell marched in that direction. Meanwhile, the English slowly advanced south, absorbing manpower, artillery, and other siege weapons along the way. The French scouts reported to their commander that, rather than passing by their location, Kyriell and the English army were executing a potentially dangerous, but incredibly well-executed, march through the low-lying marshes near Grand-Vey, which they accomplished. April 14th. with only a little resistance. Local farmers and other peasants were supported by a company of men-at-arms, but were easily sidelined.

Matthew Gough, one of the English captains, allegedly shouted at them “Mad dogs! We crossed despite you! After successfully overcoming the harsh terrain, Kyriell's army set up camp for the night in a village known as Formigny, while Gough was sent to Bayeaux to obtain reinforcements. Clermont moved to close the distance with the English in the early hours of the 15th and sent another message to De Richemont asking for reinforcements. After receiving the call for help, he too set out for Formigny early on the 15th, but did not reach the field before the fighting began. Battle of Formigny (1450) In the English position, Kyriell's 6,000 soldiers spent the morning hours building a line of field trenches, made up of ditches, potholes, earthen palisades and sharpened stakes to block the main road to the east .

Accompanying this was a smaller series of fortifications to the east of Formigny, they had turned the town into a makeshift fortress. As noon approached, the English horsemen returned from the west and reported to Sir Kyriell that a French army was approaching. In haste, the English knight sent for Gough de Bayeaux. Realizing that he was about to engage, Kyriell formed his forces of heavy archers into battle order. His own 4,500 were placed on the right side of the line, anchored at the village of Formigny, while Gough led around 1,500 soldiers to the left, near the Val stream. Clermont's 3,000-strong army of men-at-arms, mounted crossbowmen and some artillerymen began to enter the area shortly after noon, led by an elite Scottish vanguard company.

As his forces approached the Val, they wisely stopped about 600 meters from their enemy, out of bow range. At a safe distance, the French forces formed up west of a bridge between them and the English, and for three hours Clermont's men remained where they were while the general conferred with his advisors. The older captains warned for restraint, while their younger counterparts urged an immediate attack before the English defenses strengthened. Clermont, who would later be known as the "Scourge of the English", opened the battle by sending two light culverins protected by a few hundred crossbowmen and men-at-arms. When the guns opened fire, the stationary English troops suffered heavy casualties from the unexpected artillery fire.

Matthew Gough reacted first and sent 500 archers across the bridge to attack the small artillery position. They drove away the French gunners, captured the culverins and killed those who protected them. Panicked by the setback, Clermont ordered a group of local peasants to search the countryside south of the battlefield to find de Richemont; He needed reinforcements as soon as possible. At the same time, the French commander sent a larger unit of men-at-arms under Pierre de Brézé to reinforce his beleaguered comrades and engage the enemy troops. Although this fierce fighting began well for the French under Clermont, Kyriell sent more reinforcements to reinforce Gough's soldiers and began to tilt in favor of the numerically superior English.

Official reports sent to the French king, written only a few days after the battle, state that if Kyriell's army had launched a full-scale attack at this point, Clermont would have been defeated. That attack never came. As the fighting continued in the center, a small army of about 1,000 men emerged on the plateau south of the battlefield. The English were jubilant, celebrating that reinforcements had arrived to finish off the French in the flank. However, as the third force approached, the sight of the French and Breton banners made both sides realize what was happening: Arthur de Richemont's army had arrived and Kyriell was now the one in danger. from being attacked from the rear.

De Richemont rode quickly with his vanguard to confer with Clermont while the main Breton force remained on the English side of the Val. This was tactically problematic for Kyriell's army, but it is likely that his numbers still greatly exceeded those of any of the French commanders. In response, Sir Kyriell had Gough's smaller contingent on the left begin to redeploy, turning to face Richemont's main army to the south. However, the elite Breton vanguard took the opportunity to fight their way across the bridge, killing six dozen enemy Englishmen as they did so and disrupting Gough's redeployment effort. With disorder now the order of the day among the enemy troops, the Breton constable returned to his main army and advanced northeast towards the English rear, while at the same time Clermont assaulted his front.

Furthermore, at the same time, Pierre de Brézé had mounted a few hundred men and rode around the field, taking control of the eastern fortifications and preventing any substantial retreat. Kyriell did his best to rally the now disorganized and demoralized English into the village, but Brézé charged them from behind as both main armies attacked from different angles. To make matters worse, the city's peasants rose up and joined the unfolding massacre. The main English army was completely destroyed, only Gough and Robert Vere survived to lead their surviving soldiers back to Bayeaux and Caen respectively. A group of 500 archers retreated to a garden next to the Val and knelt begging for mercy.

However, Clermont's troops killed them anyway. The English commander Sir Thomas Kyriell was taken prisoner, along with 1,200 others, while around 3,800 of the knight's men were killed at Formigny. This defeat finally ended England's military hopes in Normandy. Most of the garrisons had contributed strength to Kyriell's army and his defeat now stripped them of defenders. Just over two months after the triumph of the French armies at Formigny, France had also seized Vire, Avranches and Bayeaux on May 16. In June, Caen was besieged and taken a few weeks later. Charles VII rode north and ceremonially entered the city on June 6. With little resistance, the town of Cherbourg, on the Cotentin Peninsula, finally fell on August 22, 1450: all of Normandy was now under French control for the first time in almost three decades.

Recovery of Gascogne (1449-1453) The Duke of Somerset's complete loss of northern France in a blitzkrieg-like manner caused another political shockwave throughout England and pushed the kingdom closer to civil war. The duke was briefly imprisoned in the Tower, and this infighting only distracted the government from addressing new problems on the continent. With the victory, France was able to direct its efforts completely south towards Gascony. By 1449, local forces subordinate to Charles had already captured Cognac, Saint-Megrin and Mauléon. Meanwhile, the Count of Foix, a powerful magnate from southern France, allied himself with the rising king that same year and took advantage of his considerable military strength, capturing Guiche and 15 other castles.

Despite this preliminary success, Gascony as a whole would probably be much more difficult to capture and hold than Normandy. It had been a fiefdom of the kings of England for over three centuries compared to Normandy's thirty years, and most of the area's nobility and population still remained loyal to their long-time rulers. There were many reasons for this, but trade was a primary factor. Between 1445 and 1449, for example, wine exports to England reached levels never before seen. Gascon merchants and lords made enormous profits from their overlords and were not interested in the status quo changing. Only two months after the fall of Cherbourg, in October 1450, French forces opened the attack on Gascogne, besieging Jonzac.

The castle fell before long and the army marched south, clashing with a small Anglo-Gascon force outside Bordeaux and crushing it before retreating to Angoulême for the winter. The campaign began again in the spring of 1451 and the French army quickly captured Montguyon after a brief siege. Thereafter, as during the fall of Normandy, the Gascon castles fell very quickly: Blaye was captured on May 24, followed by Bourg, Saint-Emilion and Castillon in the following five days. The speed of the conquest was made possible by strong French artillery, as well as well-executed diplomacy and bribery that undermined the barons' resistance.

A decisive example of the latter occurred on June 23, when the central city of Bordeaux surrendered without a fight, its mayor1 receiving a generous pension from the French king. A little over a month later, Bayona was alsocaptured, and the feuding English could do nothing but watch in horror as their last continental possession, save Calais, slipped away. Unfortunately for the French, they did not learn from the Black Prince's mistake after the Treaty of Bretigny and began heavily taxing the newly acquired Gascon territory to pay for its defense. Not surprisingly, this, coupled with the rapacity of the French soldiers, meant that resentment immediately began to grow.

At the same time, the Kingdom of England was unwilling to let Gascony go without a fight, but military preparations were slow, hampered by a deteriorating political situation that seemed to reach a climax in early 1452. Richard of York owned vast estates in the coast. He bordered Wales, and it was there, while he was in Ireland, that the tenants rebelled against Henry VI in February. The rebels persuaded his lord to return from her quasi-exile and end the queen's rule. An army quickly gathered around York when he returned to England and began to advance towards London. The Lancastrians gathered a force of their own and confronted York at Dartford.

Instead of attacking, the Duke of York presented Henry with a list of complaints and demands that included the arrest of Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset and York's bitter rival, accused of having mismanaged the defense of France in previous years. The weak monarch initially agreed to the demand, but the power behind his throne, Margaret of Anjou, intervened and eventually forced York to back down and reaffirm his loyalty to the crown. Somerset was left in charge of the government. While this was happening, the contracts had managed to raise an army of about 3,000 soldiers under the command of sixty-five-year-old John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury.

The situation in Gascony set the stage for his attack. The riots had turned into subterfuge and envoys arrived in London in 1452 inviting the English to return and offering to give them aid if they returned. After the English ships swept their French counterparts from the seas, Talbot boldly sailed the long distance to Gascogne and landed on the Médoc Peninsula on 17 October. Less than a week later, the pre-planned anti-French uprising in Bordeaux led to the city's capitulation. Most of the other castles in western Gascogne fell by the end of the year, except for a few that resisted.

It was obvious that Talbot's bold attack had taken Charles VII completely by surprise, as his forces had been moved to Normandy to counter a possible invasion there. The English received 4,000 additional troops and supplies from home during the winter, while Charles, enraged by the Gascon betrayal, rushed to send advanced forces south to reinforce the castles still under French control, while preparing to personally lead an invasion. of the recalcitrant province. . In early June 1453, four smaller, separate armies began to gather at different points along the border with Gascony, preparing to invade on multiple fronts. Two southern armies met in Languedoc under the command of the Count of Clermont and Gaston IV, Count of Foix, who prepared his forces near Bearn.

In the north, a third army commanded by the marshals of Jalonges and Loheac prepared to march from the area around Angoulême. Charles VII led a strategic reserve army stationed in the Lusignan region. The king ensured that all contingents were well supplied with siege engines and gunpowder artillery, particularly the northern one at Angoulême, which was accompanied by Charles' artillery master, Jean Bureau. Battle of Castillon (1443) The combined French advance began almost simultaneously in early June. In the south, Foix and Clermont marched in close cooperation from the beginning, advancing north towards Bordeaux until the latter received a message from Talbot offering battle.

Being close enough to help, Foix reinforced his companion to face the challenge together, but this caused the English commander to retreat to Bordeaux. The two forces subsequently split and remained close to the city to counter any English departure. Meanwhile, the northern army began a methodical traversal of the Dordogne Valley, approaching the town of Castillon from the east in mid-July 1453. When Charles learned of the army's advance on his base at Saint-Jean-d'Angely , the king ordered him to besiege the city, which was at that time in the hands of about 50 men-at-arms and 350 archers. In contrast, the assault army was relatively normal, with about 8,000 men but with an especially formidable siege train.

Castillon itself was a heavily fortified city with the fast-moving Dordogne River to the south, running east to west, and extensive forests to the north. In a clearing at the edge of this forest, surrounded by trees on three sides, was the Priory of Saint-Florent, situated on high ground. Rather than surrounding and isolating Castillon with fortifications as in a traditional siege, Jean Bureau, who was placed in overall command of the operation, did not want to be caught in a pincer between Talbot and the garrison if the English forces moved towards relieving the town. Instead, he sent a thousand crossbowmen to defend the priory while supervising the army's 700 engineers in the construction of a fortified artillery park on the Colles plain, composed of 300 cannons, both heavy and light, operated by 700 artillerymen.

To protect the weapons, defensive ditches were dug on three sides, backed by raised earthen walls topped with formidable wooden defences. To protect the open northern flank of his enclosure, Bureau sent a thousand Bretons to hold the town of Capitourlan. In Bordeaux, Talbot received an urgent letter from the English garrison at Castillon, prompting immense pressure from the Gascon city's leaders to go out and relieve it. Possibly before he was ready, Talbot marched with 6,000 English infantry, 2,000 Gascons, and 1,000 archers and mounted men-at-arms to do just that. After bypassing some of their own towns and marching through quiet wooded trails in the Horable Hills to maintain surprise, elder Talbot's advanced Anglo-Gascon vanguard of 1,300 mounted troops gathered near the priory in the early hours of the morning. 17 July 1453.

When formed, they emerged from the forest and attacked the priory from an unexpected direction, killing 120 of the French missile troops and capturing it after a brief but fierce fight. The rest were harassed in their retreat by the English cavalry until some of their own horses arrived in support. With that, Talbot's forces were repulsed, but they managed to obtain valuable information about the Bureau's artillery compound which was reported to the commander, whose main force had just arrived at the priory, with morale high from the vanguard's initial easy victory. . Initially, Talbot decided not to continue his attack immediately, believing that his troops needed to rest after the long march and initial skirmish.

However, in the artillery park, Bureau was preparing for a fight by dismounting all of his 5 riders and dismissing the horses with their grooms. The movement of such a large number of horses raised a cloud of dust that was detected by English scouts and misinterpreted as a French retreat. When Talbot was informed that the enemy army was escaping, the commander changed his mind and decided to resume the assault, against the advice of a capable subordinate: Sir Thomas Evringham. The count is said to have sworn to his personal chaplain that he could not hear Christian mass until he had defeated the French army.

With promises of loot in the enemy camp, Talbot led his arrayed army along the north bank of the Dordogne towards the fortification of Bureau, advancing at full speed with his mounted advance units while the main body of infantry remained in the line. rear. His approach was detected by French escorts who informed the Bureau of the incoming force, while they were also followed by some supply ships on the river. When the English vanguard turned 90 degrees to the left to face the artillery park, Bureau was in the process of concentrating its 300 small guns, mainly culverins and ribauldequins, on the southern wall, facing Talbot's vanguard.

The latter ordered his troops to dismount and fight on foot, but the English commander, completely unarmed and so unprotected due to his oath never again to “bear arms” against Charles VII, remained in the saddle. Once again, Evringham advised caution when attacking such a well-prepared position, suggesting instead that he knock it out. Talbot refused and overruled it, fearing that any hesitation might damage his reputation. Seeing that Bureau had not yet finished moving all the guns, Talbot ordered Evringham to lead the first change. With the cry of “Saint George!” He led the first attack, advancing across the countryside and storming the walls.

At such close range, the French light artillery inflicted heavy casualties on Evringham's men, reportedly killing six men with a single shot. The leader himself managed to reach the top of the wall, but was shot dead by one of the French culverins. Despite the losses, fighting continued at the southern end of the artillery park. The main body of several thousand Anglo-Gascon infantry was now approaching, whose commander, Lord Kendall, had orders to attack the right flank of the enclosure. Because the troops advanced unit by unit, the attack began slowly, and contingents joined the fight as they arrived6. Now reinforced by infantry, Talbot's vanguard troops received a morale boost and attacked with renewed ferocity, inflicting their own casualties but suffering severely from French culverin fire.

Although Talbot's number was greater than Bureau's, the latter's strong fortification stopped English attacks. However, after an hour of grueling and inconclusive fighting on the walls, the French forces were dwindling and those who remained were tired. But at this time, the 1,000 Britons marched onto the battlefield from the northern hills, having received a message from the Bureau earlier that day. While his lackeys entered the fortified artillery park and reinforced the beleaguered defenders, the Breton cavalry surrounded the eastern trenches and crashed into Talbot's exposed right wing. Enveloped in the smoke and noise of French gunpowder, the English were taken completely by surprise.

The old count turned to face the assault, but was wounded in the arm by a projectile. That wasn't the end. Seeing the English attacked on the flank, the French forces inside the fortification launched a counterattack from the front, some of them even remounting to do so. What happened next is unclear and varies according to sources, but it appears that Talbot's lines began to break, heading towards the Dordogne. While this was happening, the commander himself gathered a small contingent with his son and acted as a rearguard so that his army could escape. However, a cannon shot at the earl's horse and trapped his rider beneath it.

A family legend claims that while trapped, Talbot urged his son to flee, saying: "Leave me, the day belongs to the enemy, there is no dishonor in flight, this is your first battle." In what was perhaps the last gasp of chivalry that the medieval era had to offer, the son refused and was murdered along with his father, who was killed by an ax to the skull. When the English commander's banner fell, the army became discouraged and completely collapsed. Some soldiers drowned trying to cross the Dordogne at the ford of Rauzon, others were run down by the victorious Breton horsemen, while around a thousand found refuge in Castillon itself.

Anglo-Gascon casualties are uncertain, ranging between a low of 500 and a high of 4,000, while French losses were quite light in comparison. When Jean Bureau found Talbot's body in the field, he had the old soldier buried with full honors. Similarly, when her standard and his collar were presented to Charles VII, the king remarked: "God have mercy on a good knight." Talbot had never broken his oath. Castillon was taken on July 20 and the French king even rode with his army to quell a minor internal dispute. That conflict was nothing compared to Gascogne, which, despite stubborn resistance, was falling castle by castle.

Bordeaux was besieged and ten weeks later, having been strangled and abused both by land and sea, it finally fell into the hands of Charles VII. On October 19, 1453, French flags were raised over the city and the English in Gascony were forced to leave. Consequences With the second capitulation of Bordeaux, the Hundred Years' War came to an end, although contemporaries did not know it. Of the great Angevin Empire that had extended from the English Channel to the Pyrenees, only Calais and a few strong satellites remained in Plantagenet hands. England went from being aState with a continental element to a purely insular one.

No treaty was signed in 1453 and the two kingdoms remained in a state of war, as French privateers would continue to raid the English coast for prisoners to rescue, and considerable garrisons were maintained in Normandy and Gascony to prevent further expeditions. English and suffocate. dissidence in the newly integrated provinces. Only in 1475 did this state of war really end; In that year, the first English army to invade France from Talbot touched Calais with the stated aim of dividing the French kingdom with the Burgundians and Bretons, but when the French and English armies clashed, the Treaty of Picquigny between Edward IV of England. and it was signed by Louis XI of France.

This was officially a seven-year truce, but it became the de facto peace treaty that ended the war. In exchange for a large annual stipend and an advance payment, the English would abandon France and both sides would not support the other's internal rebels. The peace would be remarkably durable, lasting until 1492, and no English king would seriously attempt to claim the French throne, although they would still style themselves Rex Franciae until the Napoleonic era. Instead, the Calais Zone would be lost in the final years of the Italian Wars, when in 1558, a lightning attack by the French took most of the ring of fortresses around Calais and forced the city to surrender within a week, expelling the English. of the continent forever.

The immediate political effects were felt acutely in England. The Lancastrian throne had always been weak after the death of Henry V, as the late king was the son of a usurper and left his youngest son, Henry VI, as the only male heir. It was thanks to the regency of the Duke of Bedford and his connections with the House of Burgundy that the English managed to maintain their control over northern France. When the king, with a timid and weak personality, came of age, he did not give any leadership to the country, and his rule was overshadowed by court factionalism between different members of the family and his wife, Margaret of Anjou.

At the end of 1453, Henry VI fell into a catatonic state, completely unable to govern. This exacerbated the political struggle between Richard of York and Edmund of Somerset, who was temporarily detained. The fight culminated in 1455, when it degenerated into civil war in the Battle of Saint Albans, marking the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, which we have already discussed in a previous video. Many of the grievances that were the causes of the civil war can be traced back to the conduct of the Hundred Years' War and the financial and territorial losses. Furthermore, Edward III had created dukedoms for his sons during his reign, which had provided the royal princes with enormous wealth and followers who could threaten the king's position, as the subsequent civil war would demonstrate.

King Charles VII of France had largely expelled the English from the continent, but he did not feel safe. Local partisans had supported all English invasions, whether from Flanders, Normandy or Brittany or during periods of internal conflict such as the civil war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. The different provinces that made up the kingdom and its rulers looked much more to their own interests than to those of the kingdom as a whole, and had the threat of opening up to an Englishman to pursue these objectives. The king was well aware of this. A Gascon nobleman was executed in 1454 after plotting to capture Bayonne on behalf of the English, while the lands of the dukes of Alençon and Armagnac were confiscated in the following years as they were conspiring or likely to do so with the English.

Calais was attacked not so much because of its easily defendable terrain and position as because of the uncertain support of the dukes of Burgundy. Charles VII's successor, Louis In particular, the dukes of Burgundy, Philip the Good and his son Charles were formidable adversaries of French royal power. They led the noble uprising of the League of the Public Good in 1465, supported the Yorkist side in the English Civil War against the French-backed Lancastrian, and facilitated the English landing of 1475. The House of Burgundy became extinct in 1477, allowing the Crown absorbing much of its French property would lead to a century-long conflict with the Habsburg family, while Brittany would be integrated during the generation following the Mad War.

Other princely apparatuses such as Anjou and Orleans were reabsorbed by the royal domain at the end of the century. The Treaty of Formigny had taken away the Princes' ability to credibly threaten the King with external invasion, and the risks of being tried for treason and executed demonstrated that the nobility did not have the same political freedom as before. Charles of Bourbon would attempt something similar during the Italian wars in the 1520s, but he also failed due to a lack of support from other members of the nobility. Still, the French nobility would not lose all of its influence, as once the monarchy found itself without a strong king after the death of Henry II, the country once again fell into civil war, this time with religion as the line. divisive but with factions headed by great nobles. houses.

The French kings would use their newfound stability and power to venture on overseas expeditions, beginning sixty years of conflict against the imperial Spanish Habsburg dynasty for control of Italy and hegemony over Europe, which we have covered in our series about the Italian Wars. The transition from a feudal system to a more centralized one can be seen particularly in taxation and military recruitment. These events took place in different capacities throughout most of Western Europe, but the war characterized the paths of England and France. During the 1430s, Charles VII managed to considerably increase taxes by annually summoning the States General to demand taxes.

In 1439, he issued an ordinance proclaiming that only the king had the right to collect troops and taxes, threatening the autonomy of the princes who rebelled in 1440 during the "Praguerie" and in 1442 at a meeting in Nevers, where a group of princes He tried to seize power from the crown without success, since the King had the support of the people, the Church and his lower-born minister and he managed to suffocate them with slight concessions. Crucially, Charles managed to impose the principle of permanent taxation during his reign without the need for the estates to accept it, taking advantage of aides and tailles after the end of the war, although regional differences in privileges made taxation heterogeneous. .

Furthermore, during the truce of the 1440s, he created the Ordinance Companies, professional standing armies financed entirely by the king's tax revenues, which would become the backbone of the army that fought against the nobles in the 1460s and 1480s. and invaded Italy in 1494. England had already been fairly centralized for its time before and during the war, although the power of Parliament increased as kings became more desperate for taxes, and would maintain a restraint on monarchies in the following centuries. . Because of this and its isolated geography, the English monarchy would not have a standing army until Cromwell, while most states developed one during the 16th century.

Another critical advance in warfare was the introduction of gunpowder, and cannons became an increasingly important element in sieges as the war progressed. The Hundred Years' War left a stronger national identity in both countries, fostered by mutual antagonism. The war brought the state closer to the population with high taxes and extensive recruitment of archers, so the population as a whole was more involved in the war than a Burgundian might have been. Within a generation, the English nobility abandoned the use of French, which had been their mother tongue, in favor of English. France had a long history of regional identities that frustrated the capabilities of the French king, but a century of war and crisis weakened these borders, allowing more central state power to spread to the peripheries.

French identity was reinforced through decades of war, looting and garrison occupation. While in the first half of the war the hatred of the population was generally directed against the soldiers, after the battle of Agincourt this hatred was directed against the "English enemy". The scars of war would linger on the population of France. First, as with most of Europe, the Black Death devastated both countries. Then, after a relatively long lull following the Caroline period, war broke out again with the Lancastrian period. The regions that became the battlefield, particularly in northern France, felt the effect for a century and would take decades to recover as villages became depopulated and fields were reclaimed by forests.

The regions that recovered most quickly were those near Paris, where the great churches and monastic orders had enough capital to invest in rebuilding towns and felling timber. The cities managed to escape the worst thanks to their walls, although they had to deal with the destruction of their suburbs and the arrival of refugees from the countryside. When the war ended, some cities quickly surpassed their pre-war population. England was not as devastated as France, although many coastal raids remained in common consciousness and the threat of Scottish attacks was ever present. What changed most for the country was its exclusion from its largest export market, wool.

The wool trade had been nationalized during the reign of Edward III and the monarchy was able to control its export at Calais as it was the only source of high quality wool in northern Europe. With this control, it became a foreign policy tool, blocking exports to those countries hostile to the King, such as the Netherlands and Castile, for several periods. What had been an extremely important income for the crown became less dependent as it was used as a tool of foreign policy and with the growth of the local textile industry. The loss of Gascony, which for centuries had been part of the English Crown, had been particularly detrimental to people who had invested in land or been assigned titles, and the Gascon wine trade stopped after 1453, but would resume a few decades. later.

The Hundred Years' War was the longest series of medieval conflicts and probably the most famous war of the period, with surprising reverses, fascinating figures, grandiose battles and effects felt throughout Western Europe. It shaped the trajectory that both France and England would follow. France emerged stronger, with a more centralized State, and would be one of the most important actors in European politics in the following centuries, while England was relegated to its island and weakened its connection with the continent. Thanks again to War Thunder for sponsoring this video. Get into PvP for all skill levels in this huge vehicle combat game for PC or consoles, and be sure to get our huge free bonus pack with premium features.

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