Sunday, August 18, 2019
The Hundred years war Essay -- essays research papers fc
THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR                     1337-1453     The Hundred Years War was the last great medieval war. It was a war not just between Kings, but lesser nobles were also able to pursue their own personal agendas while participating in the larger conflict. Future wars saw far less factionalism, at least on the scale found in medieval conflicts. The Hundred Years War was actually dozens of little wars and hundreds of battles and sieges that went on for over a century until both sides were exhausted. While neither side won in any real sense, the end result was that while there were two kingdoms at the beginning of the war, there were two nations at the end of it.      In 1337, most of the English nobility spoke French, although most knew enough English to deal with their subjects. When Duke William of Normandy conquered England in 1066, he did so as a French noble. But since Duke William had conquered a kingdom, he had become king of England while remaining duke of Normandy. Duke William also replaced nearly all the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy with French nobles. During the next two centuries, the French speaking English kings acquired even more property in France. Finally, in the 13th century, a particularly able French king took most of this land away from the English king. But by the early 14th century, two French provinces, Gascony and Guyenne, were still ruled by the English king, and in 1337 the French king Philip the 6th demanded that these provinces be returned to French control. The English king, Edward the 3rd , did not want to violate the feudal bonds that united all of Europe by defying Philip, his feudal overlord for t hose provinces. So Edward challenged Philip’s claim to the French throne, asserting that his own claim (which did in fact exist) was superior. Thus the war began, with Philip the 6th claiming the right to appoint French nobles as rulers of Gascony and Guyenne, and Edward the 3rd claiming that he was the rightful king of France and England.      There were other issues involved. England had major financial interests in the wool industry in Flanders (then a part of France) and France supported the Scots in their wars against England. Moreover, England had b... ...les' daughter. The son of this marriage (Henry the 6th) would be the king of France and England. It looked as though England had finally won. But the disinherited Dauphin continued to resist. Henry the 5th unexpectedly died in August 1422, followed in October by Charles the 6th , with the nine month old Henry the 6th not yet ready to receive the two crowns.      Despite the efforts of Henry the 5th's able brothers to hold things together. Joan of Arc came and went. The Burgundians turned on their English allies, and by 1453, the French, aided by these developments and the increasing professionalism of their army had driven the English from the Continent. This gave the English a few years to get ready for the War of the Roses, while the French took care of some internal problems and got ready for the first of many invasions of Italy.                                    Bibliography - Contamine, Philippe, War in the Middle Ages (1984) - WWW. TheHundredYearsWarHistoryHomePage.Com
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