France, very far from being a united country when Edward III stated his claim in 1337, was almost so by the end of the war. In the face of constant invasion from across the Channel, the occupants of Artois, Burgundy, the Île de France and even, albeit reluctantly, Brittany began to think of themselves as Frenchmen first, with provincial loyalties being replaced by a wider affinity, and there can be little doubt that the war accelerated nation-building there. It also created a reservoir of hatred of the ‘goddams’, the English who ravaged their lands. There cannot have been a town of any size in northern France that was not plundered, burned, attacked and despoiled by English soldiers, many of them over and over again, and, when the soldiers were not fighting over their fields and in their streets, the routiers were extracting loot and the English garrisons protection money.
In subsequent years, fighting the French seemed the natural occupation of English and then British armies. Elizabeth I sent troops to France to help the persecuted Huguenots. And, while for much of the Thirty Years War (1618–48) England was mainly concerned with her own internal troubles leading up to the English Civil War, she was always ready to prick the French when an opportunity arose, and one of the causes of the civil war was a perceived French influence over Charles I through his French wife Henrietta. Among the reasons for the Glorious Revolution of 1688, followed almost immediately by English participation in the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–97), was the pro-French foreign policy of James II. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) saw British troops under the great John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, inflict massive defeats on the French and their allies. An uncharacteristic alliance with France during the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–20) only came about because Spain was seen as the greater threat, but the War of the Austrian Succession (1741–8) saw a reversion to the usual line-up. The Seven Years War (1756–63) brought vast British overseas territorial gains at the expense of France, although French support for the rebellious American colonists from 1775 to 1783 was a major factor in the establishment of the United States.
Then, in 1793, began the longest period of sustained warfare in modern British history. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars lasted until 1815 with only two short breaks in 1802/3, when the English claim to the French throne was dropped, and from April 1814 until March 1815, culminating in the Battle of Waterloo in June of that year. That war was always referred to as the ‘Great War’ until supplanted by an even greater slaughter from 1914 to 1918. Even as recently as the twentieth century we have fought each other. The Royal Navy crippled the French Mediterranean Fleet at Mers el Kebir in July 1940 (after which the French attempted unsuccessfully to bomb Gibraltar) and then went on to attack the French port of Dakar in September of the same year. In June and July 1941, British and Indian troops fought a vicious campaign against Vichy French soldiers in Syria, and again in Madagascar from May to November 1942, while the Anglo-American Operation Torch landings in 1942 in French North Africa were stoutly resisted until the defenders realized the hopelessness of their situation.
Despite warm personal relations that exist between many Britons and French men and women, France as a nation has never liked us, and does not now. The feeling is mutual, and one suspects that the widespread British antipathy to the European Union might be a lot less intense were France not a major player in it. Some years ago, this author, having commanded the British contingent at a French Armistice Day parade in Limoges, was invited to lunch with the French general who had taken the salute, a delightful and cultured man who employed a superb cook and kept a very fine wine-cellar. After the consumption of much excellent claret and a considerable quantity of fine cognac, the general put his arm around me, looked me straight in the eye, and said: ‘N’oubliez jamais: vous êtes l’ennemi héreditaire.’
Could things have been different? Perhaps, if Henry V had not died when he did, he might have been accepted by the French as king, with his French wife; or if England had not tried to achieve quite so much and had contented herself with recovering Aquitaine, unquestionably English by legal and moral right, and fought to have it in full sovereignty, then we might perhaps still have a foothold in Europe today. Certainly, there was no excuse for the Tudor laxness that lost us Calais in 1558. It is much more likely, however, that at some stage the sovereignty of English France would have been given to a younger son and that the crowns would have once more diverged. As it was, an English child king and internal strife at home after the death of Henry V left little appetite for further European adventures until it was far too late, and, despite her going to war with France many times in the succeeding centuries, England’s future lay in the seas and in empire, whereas that of France was as a land power. For all that, the Hundred Years War was a great adventure, and a great and righteous cause.
NOTES
1 All verses from R. T. Davies (ed.), Medieval English Lyrics, Faber & Faber, London, 1963.
2 Seward, Desmond, The Hundred Years War, Constable, London, 1978.
3 Maxwell, Sir Herbert (tr. and ed.), The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, J. MacLehose, Glasgow, 1913.
4 Thompson, E. M. (tr.), Chronicon Galfridi Le Baker de Swynbroke (facsimile reprint), General Books, Milton Keynes, 2010.
5 Sumption, Jonathan, Trial by Battle, The Hundred Years War I, Faber & Faber, London, 1990.
6 Brie, Friedrich (ed.), The Brut; or the Chronicles of England, K. Paul, London, 1880.
7 Bartlett, Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075–1225, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000.
8 Soar, Hugh D. H., The Crooked Stick: A history of the longbow, Westholme, Yardley, Penn., 2009.
9 Hewitt, H. J., The Organisation of War under Edward III, Manchester UP, Manchester, 1966.
10 Ibid.
11 Powicke, Michael, Military Obligation in Medieval England, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1962.
12 For the detailed organization of indentured retinues, see N. B. Lewis, The Organisation of Indentured Retinues in Fourteenth Century England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 27, issue 1, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 2009.
13 Ayton, Andrew and Preston, Philip, The Battle of Crécy, 1346, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2005.
14 Hewitt, op. cit.
15 For a detailed account of the Battle of Morlaix, see Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Fourteenth Century, Boydell, Woodbridge, 1996.
16 I have found the most convincing assessment of the size and composition of the 1346 army to be that of Andrew Ayton, ‘The English army at Crécy’, in Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston (eds.), The Battle of Crécy, 1346, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2005.
17 Sumption, Jonathan, Trial by Battle, The Hundred Years War I, Faber & Faber, London, 1990.
18 For an account of how ransom worked, see Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages, Yale UP, New Haven, 1996 and Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 1988.
19 Wrottesley, George, Crecy and Calais, Harrison & Sons, London, 1898.
20 Sumption, op. cit.
21 The arguments for and against the ‘traditional’ site are well and meticulously examined by Sir Philip Preston in ‘The traditional battlefield of Crécy’, in Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston (eds.), The Battle of Crécy, 1346, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2005.
22 Maxwell, Sir Herbert (tr. and ed.), The Chronicle of Lanercost, 1272–1346, J. MacLehose, Glasgow, 1913.
23 McKisack, May, The Fourteenth Century, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1959.
24 Geoffrey le Baker, Chronicle, quoted in A. R. Myers (ed.), English Historical Documents, vol. 4, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1969.
25 James, G. P. R., A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince (2 vols.), Orne, Green & Longmans, London, 1839.
26 Barber, Richard, Life and Campaigns of The Black Prince, Boydell, Woodbridge, 1979.
27 Martin, G. H. (tr. and ed.), Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1995.
28 Geoffrey le Baker, Chronicle, quoted in A. R. Myers (ed.), English Historical Documents,
vol. 4, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1969.
29 De Smet J. J. (tr.), Corpus Chronicorum Flandrensium, Brussels, 1856, quoted in Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), Essays on Medieval Military History, Ashgate, Farnham, 2010.
30 Martin, G. H. (tr. and ed.), Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1995.
31 Ibid.
32 Sumption, Jonathan, Trial by Fire, The Hundred Years War II, Faber & Faber, London, 1999.
33 Prestwich, Michael, The Three Edwards: War and state in England 1272–1377, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1980.
34 Brereton, Geoffrey (tr. and ed.), Froissart: Chronicles, Penguin, London, 1978.
35 Preest, David and Clark, James G. (tr. and ed.), The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422), Boydell, Woodbridge, 2005.
36 Preest, David and Clark, James G. (tr. and ed.), The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422), Boydell, Woodbridge, 2005.
37 See Boardman, A. W., Hotspur: Henry Percy, Medieval Rebel, Sutton, Stroud, 2003.
38 Bradmore described the process in a Latin treatise Philomena, which survives (British Library, Sloane Manuscript 2272). He died in London in 1412.
39 Details of retinues from Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt, Sources and Interpretations, Boydell, Woodbridge, 2000.
40 Taylor, Frank and Roskell, John S. (tr.), Gesta Henrici Quinti, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1975.
41 Ibid.
42 War Office, Animal Management, HMSO, London, 1933.
43 Mortimer, Ian, 1415: Henry V’s year of glory, Bodley Head, London, 2009.
44 Lancaster, H. O., Expectations of Life: A study in the demography, statistics and history of world mortality, Springer Verlag, New York, 1990.
45 Quoted in Seward, Desmond, The Hundred Years War, Constable, London, 1978.
46 Pernoud, Régine and Clin, Marie-Véronique (tr. Adams, J. duQuesnay), Joan of Arc: Her story, Phoenix, London, 2000.
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