Late Middle Ages

What caused the Hundred Years’ War?

The Hundred Years’ War, fought between England and France between 1337 and 1453, was the longest conflict of the Middle Ages. It was not, however, the product of any single cause. The war emerged from a long-simmering crisis between two great medieval kingdoms, and the immediate disputes that triggered it in 1337 were simply the final sparks in a tinderbox that had been building for more than a century. The causes of the war are best treated under four heads: the dynastic dispute over the French succession; the territorial conflicts in Aquitaine and Flanders; the commercial rivalry between the two kingdoms; and the personal ambitions of Edward III and his successors.

The Angevin wound

The deepest cause of the war was the medieval inheritance of the English kings. William the Conqueror, who took the English throne in 1066, was already the duke of Normandy, and the English kings had, since 1066, been great landholders on the French mainland. The Angevin kings — Henry II (1154–1189), Richard I (1189–1199), John (1199–1216) — had held a vast continental inheritance: Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Aquitaine, Poitou, the Limousin. The English crown was, in this period, a continental power, and the French monarchy of the Île-de-France was a much smaller neighbour.

The situation changed dramatically in 1204, when King Philip II of France confiscated the duchy of Normandy and much of the Angevin inheritance. The English king, John, lost all his continental possessions except the duchy of Aquitaine and a few small fiefs. The loss of the duchy of Normandy was a catastrophe: it removed the keystone of the Angevin empire and exposed the remaining possessions to French pressure. The English kings spent the next century trying to recover what they had lost. The campaign of 1214, in which John of England and his allies were defeated at Bouvines; the Barons’ War of 1215–1217, in which the English magnates revolted; the long reign of Henry III (1216–1272), in which the English crown gradually came to terms with the loss of Normandy; the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), in which the English crown turned to the conquest of Wales and Scotland — these were the working out of the Angevin wound.

The English kings of the fourteenth century were not just trying to assert a claim to the French throne; they were also trying to recover the lost Angevin inheritance. The duchy of Aquitaine, which was still held by the English crown, was a remnant of the Angevin empire, and it was a continuing source of friction. The duchy of Brittany, the duchy of Burgundy, the counties of Flanders, Ponthieu, and Artois, were all territories that had been part of the Angevin inheritance or that had been close to it. The English kings of the fourteenth century, in their ambitions and in their propaganda, were always reaching for the lost Angevin world.

The succession crisis of 1328

The death of the last of the direct Capetian kings of France, in 1328, was the immediate trigger of the war. King Charles IV died on 1 February 1328, leaving only a daughter and an unborn child, which proved to be a daughter. The French crown, by male-preference primogeniture, ought to have passed to the nearest male relative of the dead king. The nearest male relative was Edward III of England, the son of Isabella of France and the grandson of Philip IV. Edward was, however, a child, and his claim was disputed. The French solution, as we have seen, was the Salic Law. The French crown passed to a cousin, Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI.

The succession crisis of 1328 is examined in detail in The English claim to the French throne. For the wider causes of the war, the important point is that the succession dispute was not just a question of legal right. It was a question of political order. The French nobility, gathered in Paris in February 1328, chose Philip of Valois for two reasons. First, he was the nearest male relative of the dead king; second, he was an adult, with a household, a council, and a war-record, and he was acceptable to the great peers of the realm. Edward of England was a child, and his kingdom was, in the view of the French nobility, a provincial cousin. The legal question, in short, was decided by politics, and politics, in this case, were decided by the assembly at Paris in 1328.

The succession crisis was, in itself, a cause of the war. It gave the English crown a permanent grievance, and it gave the French monarchy a permanent insecurity. The English kings, for the rest of the fourteenth century, were always reaching for the French crown; the French kings, for the same period, were always on their guard.

Aquitaine, the homage, and the case of Robert d’Artois

The territorial disputes that produced the war were concentrated in two regions: the duchy of Aquitaine, the great wine-producing region of south-western France, and the county of Flanders, the centre of the cloth industry of the Low Countries. The two regions were the economic pillars of the English monarchy in France. Aquitaine produced the wine and the salt that were the staple of the English trade; Flanders imported the wool that was the staple of the English export trade. The English crown, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the pivot of a great commercial system, and the duchy and the county were its two ends.

The dispute over Aquitaine was, in form, a dispute about the homage. The duchy of Aquitaine was a fief of the French crown; the duke of Aquitaine — who was, after 1154, the king of England — was required to perform homage to the king of France for his duchy. The ceremony of homage was a feudal ceremony: the duke knelt, the king received him, and the duke swore an oath of fidelity. The ceremony was also, in the politics of the late Middle Ages, a ceremony of submission. The English kings, in the thirteenth century, performed the homage grudgingly; in the fourteenth, they began to refuse it.

The case of Robert d’Artois, decided by the Parlement of Paris in 1331, was the immediate cause of the breach. Robert d’Artois was a French nobleman, the brother-in-law of Philip VI, who had been deprived of his inheritance by the French courts in favour of his aunt Mahaut, the countess of Artois. Robert had appealed to the king, to the pope, to the emperor; the appeal had been refused. In 1330, in despair, Robert fled to England, to the court of Edward III. The French court demanded his extradition. Edward refused, and the French council, in May 1337, declared the duchy of Aquitaine forfeit. The war had begun.

Flanders and the cloth economy

The dispute over Flanders was, in part, a dispute over the wool trade. The Flemish cities — Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille, Douai — were the great customers of the English wool trade, and the English crown, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the chief supplier of raw wool. The cloth made in the Flemish cities was the most valuable industrial product of medieval Europe, and the weavers of Ghent were the most powerful industrial class in northern Europe. The count of Flanders, the nominal lord of the Flemish cities, was a vassal of the French crown. The Flemish cities, however, were politically independent, and they had been in conflict with the count for a century.

The economic dimension of the war has often been overlooked, but it was essential to the conflict. The duchy of Aquitaine was one of the most important sources of revenue for the English crown, and the English kings could not afford to lose it. The wines of Bordeaux, the salt of the Atlantic coast, and the cloth of the southwest were major exports that generated significant customs duties. The Flemish cities, on the other hand, were major importers of English wool, and the English kings could not afford to lose access to them. The commercial rivalry between the two kingdoms was a cause of the war that operated at every level, from the customs house of Bordeaux to the great wool staple of Calais.

The personalities: Edward III, Philip VI, and the courtly culture of war

The personal factor also played a role. Edward III, who took the royal authority into his own hands in 1330, was a young, ambitious, and talented king. He was also, in the politics of the late-medieval court, a man of the world: he was interested in tournaments, in chivalric display, in the literature of arms. The opportunity to assert his claim to the French throne, to recover the lost Angevin inheritance, and to win glory in battle was irresistible. The young king, who had been preparing for war since 1330, was ready for a war of honour and of inheritance.

Philip VI of France, who was crowned at Reims in May 1328, was a man of a different stamp. He was, in 1328, forty-four, the son of Charles of Valois and a descendant of the Capetian kings in the male line. He had been a soldier, a courtier, a councillor; he had served as regent of France during the absence of Charles IV, and he had the reputation of a sober and prudent man. The succession of 1328 had not been his own work; it was the work of the assembly. The new king, however, was caught up in the politics of the Valois court, and the Valois court was a court of expansion. The war of 1337 was, in part, a war of the Valois dynasty.

The courtly culture of the late Middle Ages, the tournament, the chanson, the romance, was a culture of war. The French court, under Philip VI, was the centre of the fleur de lis, the chanson royale, the elaborate heraldic display of the Valois kings. The English court, under Edward III, was the centre of the new chivalric Order of the Garter (founded 1348), the elaborate heraldic display of the Plantagenets. The two courts, in the 1330s, were rival centres of a courtly culture that was, in part, a culture of war. The personal factor, in short, was not just a personal factor; it was a cultural factor, and the war of 1337 was, in part, a war of the courts.

The Hundred Years’ War was caused by a complex set of factors. The medieval inheritance of the English kings, the failure of the Capetian dynasty, the territorial disputes in Aquitaine and Flanders, the commercial rivalry between the two kingdoms, and the personal ambitions of Edward III and his successors: these were the working causes of the war. The war was not inevitable, and there were many opportunities for peace along the way, but the two kingdoms were unable to resolve their differences short of war. The war would dominate the politics of both kingdoms for the next century and more.

References and further reading

  • Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years’ War, vol. I: Trial by Battle (London: Faber & Faber, 1990).
  • Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 1982).
  • Michael Prestwich, Edward I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
  • Philippe Contamine, La Guerre de Cent Ans, 9th ed. (Paris: PUF, 2017).
  • John Bell Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), and his essays in the Cambridge Historical Review.