The Causes of the War
In 1337 Edward formally renewed his claim to the throne of France. The rejection of that claim was only the first pretext and cause of the war. After the Norman conquest of England, Normandy had belonged to the English kings for 138 years, until Philip II reconquered it and returned it to France in 1204. Many English nobles were descendants of the Normans, and they saw the coming war as an effort to retake their ancestral homeland.
Guienne, Scotland, the Sea, and Wool
- Philip IV and Charles IV had taken part of Guienne. The air of Guienne was perfumed with the scent of vineyards, and the Bordeaux wine trade was so valuable to England that it could not be given up merely to postpone for a few years the death of ten thousand English soldiers.
- Scotland was England's neighboring enemy, and in the wars between the Scots and the English the French had often taken the Scottish side.
- The North Sea was full of fish. The English navy claimed dominion over those waters, over the Channel, and over the Bay of Biscay, and it seized French ships that did not respect this claim.
- Flanders was a vital market for English wool. The English nobles who got wool from their sheep and the English merchants who exported it to Flanders were not pleased by the independence that the French kings, in good faith, wanted to give to their most important market.
Flanders and Jacob van Artevelde
In 1336 the Count of Flanders, apparently on the advice of Philip VI, who feared English plots, ordered all Britons there to be thrown into prison. Edward III retaliated by ordering the arrest of all Flemings living in England and banning the export of wool to Flanders. Within a week the weaving factories of Flanders had stopped for lack of raw material, and the workers poured into the streets of the cities demanding work.
In Ghent the craftsmen and the factory owners united and withdrew their obedience from the count. They chose a brewer named Jacob van Artevelde to govern the city and supported his policy of winning the friendship of England and bringing English wool back (1337). Edward broke the embargo on wool exports, the count of Flanders fled to Paris, and all Flanders submitted to the dictatorship of Artevelde and agreed to fight France side by side with England.
The Declaration of War
On 1 November 1337 Edward III, following the custom of the old knights, formally sent a declaration of war to Philip VI and pointed out that England would begin its attack on France after three days.
The Battle of Sluys and the First Truce
The first great clash of the Hundred Years' War was a naval battle off the coast of Flanders at Sluys in 1340. In it the English fleet destroyed 142 of the 172 ships of the French fleet. After this battle, in the same year, Jeanne de Valois, the sister of Philip and the mother-in-law of Edward, left the convent of Fontenelle and persuaded the French king to send her on a peace mission to the English camp. After passing through many dangers she was received in the tent of the English commanders and persuaded them to agree to negotiations. Her brave mediation led the kings of the two countries to a truce of nine months. Through the efforts of Pope Clement VI, the peace lasted until 1346.
Class War in Flanders
During this temporary calm, the fire of class war flared up. The organized weavers were regarded by the nobles as lowly commoners. They declared that Artevelde was a tyrannical ruler who wasted the public treasury and was a tool of the English and the bourgeoisie. Artevelde had proposed that Flanders accept the Prince of Wales as its ruler, and Edward III came to Sluys to confirm this.
When Artevelde returned from Sluys to Ghent, an angry crowd besieged his house. To save his life he argued that he was a true Flemish patriot, but the people would not listen. They dragged him into the street and killed him under blows of fists and kicks (1345). The weavers of Ghent proclaimed a proletarian dictatorship and sent delegates to other Flemish towns to rouse the workers to revolt. But the fullers of Ghent turned against the weavers, removed them from work, and killed many of them. The people grew tired of the new government, and Louis de Male, who was now count of Flanders, brought all the cities under his rule.
The Battle of Crécy
When the truce expired, Edward III marched into Normandy and plundered it. On 26 August 1346 the French and English armies met at Crécy and prepared for a decisive battle. The commanders and soldiers of both armies listened to prayers and Mass, ate and drank the bread and wine that were the flesh and blood of Christ, and asked for the destruction of the enemy. Then they fought with ferocity and courage and gave quarter to no one. Edward, the Black Prince, won his father's admiration that day. Philip VI held out until only six of his soldiers remained on the field. By Froissart's estimate, which seems unreliable and exaggerated, thirty thousand people were killed in this one battle.
The End of Feudal Warfare
Feudalism also died in this war. The French knights, who had attacked bravely with their short lances, were stopped in their tracks by a wall of English spearmen with their points aimed at the chests of the horses, while English archers rained arrows on the knights from the flanks. The star of the cavalry, which had begun to shine 968 years earlier at Adrianople, began to decline from this time on. The infantry grew stronger, and the military supremacy of the aristocracy went into decline. At Crécy artillery was used to some extent, but it was hard to load and move, and it caused more trouble than benefit. Villani therefore limited its usefulness to its terrifying noise.
The Siege of Calais
After the victory at Crécy, Edward led his force to besiege Calais and bombarded the walls of the city with cannon (1347). The townspeople resisted for a year, but when they feared for their lives from hunger they accepted Edward's condition for sparing the rest of the inhabitants. The condition was that six leading men of the city come to him with ropes around their necks and the key of the city in their hands.
The Six Burghers
Six men volunteered, and when they stood before the king, he ordered them to be beheaded. The queen of England interceded and asked the king to forgive them. The king gave them to her, and she sent them safely back to their homes. In the arena of history, the author remarks, women appear more eminent than kings, and bravely rise in a desperate struggle to civilize men.
Calais Under English Rule and the Gift to Ribemont
From this time until 1558 Calais was considered part of England and served as its military and commercial base on the rest of the European continent. In 1348 its people rose in revolt. Edward besieged it again and, in disguise, took part in the plunder and massacre of the inhabitants. A French knight named Eustace de Ribemont knocked him to the ground twice in single combat, but Edward overcame him and took him prisoner.
When the city was again in English hands, Edward invited the captive nobles of the city to a banquet. The English lords and the Prince of Wales served the guests. At this banquet Edward addressed Ribemont and said that he was the bravest knight in Christendom that he had seen in battle against an enemy, and that he placed him above all the knights of his court in courage and valor. With these words the king of England took off his precious crown and set it on the head of the French knight, and asked him to wear it for his sake until the end of the year. He said he knew Ribemont was a lively knight and a lover who liked the company of ladies and girls, so wherever he went he should say that Edward had given it to him. He also granted him his freedom and relieved him of paying ransom, so that he could go wherever he liked. Throughout Froissart's book, in the midst of greed and bloodshed, ancient chivalry comes to life, and history comes close to the legends of King Arthur.
The Black Death
Suddenly, with no mercy, the great plague fell on England, which was prospering from the plunder of France, and on France, which was in disarray after its successive defeats. In medieval history plague and cholera are ordinary events. This scourge devastated Europe for thirty-two years of the fourteenth century, forty-one of the fifteenth, and thirty of the sixteenth. In this way nature and human ignorance, the two constant Malthusian factors, joined hands with war and famine to hold back the excessive increase of the human population. The Black Death was worse than these plagues and probably the most disastrous natural event of historical times.
Spread and Death Toll
The disease spread from Italy to Provence and France, and perhaps more directly by Eastern rats that came ashore at the port of Marseille, from the Near East to Europe. According to a doubtful account, 30,000 people died of it at Narbonne, 50,000 in Paris, and 25,000,000 in Europe, perhaps altogether a quarter of the population of the civilized world.
Medicine and the Death of Clergy
Medicine could do nothing, because it did not know the cause. The plague bacillus was discovered by Kitasato and Yersin in 1894. What the medicine of the day recommended was bloodletting, purgatives, tonics and stimulants, hygiene of the house and body, and disinfection with vinegar fumes. A few doctors and priests, fearing contagion, refused to treat the sick, but the vast majority courageously exposed themselves to the trial, and thousands of physicians and clergy died in this cause. Of the 24 cardinals alive in 1348, nine died the next year. In the same way, 25 of 64 archbishops and 207 of 375 bishops died.
Social and Economic Effects
The spread of the disease affected every part of life. Since the poor died in greater numbers than the rich, a shortage of labor appeared. Thousands of acres were left uncultivated, and millions of fish died of natural causes. For a time labor had many buyers.
- Workers raised their wages and evaded the remaining feudal obligations.
- They began a revolt that for half a century wore out the nobles and the wealthy.
- Even priests went on strike for higher pay.
- Serfs left the fields and rushed into the towns, industry expanded, and the merchant and tradesman class gained more dominance over the landowning aristocracy.
- Public feeling was stirred up in favor of moderate reforms.
Fear, Flagellants, and Persecution
The severity of the suffering and the greatness of the catastrophe wore down many minds and caused mental disorders, as if all the people together were heading for madness. In 1349, like the flagellants of the thirteenth century, people appeared almost naked in the streets and, as penance, whipped themselves, speaking of the coming Last Judgment, utopias, and general atonement. People listened with excessive eagerness to the nonsense of mind readers, dream interpreters, fortune-tellers, quack doctors, and other charlatans. True faith weakened and superstition became common.
Strange causes were assigned to the plague. Some considered it the result of an ill-timed conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, and others thought that lepers and Jews had poisoned the wells. In fifty cities, from Brussels to Breslau, Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. The fabric of social order fell apart with the death of thousands of police, judges, government officials, bishops, and priests.
The War Pauses
Even war was subject to decline and a temporary halt. From the siege of Calais to the battle of Poitiers in 1356, the Hundred Years' War was postponed by a reluctant truce. Meanwhile the ranks of the infantry were filled with men who, from the extremity of poverty, valued life little more than death.
John the Good and the Battle of Poitiers
At the age of fifty-six Philip VI eased the disaster of the plague and the pain of defeat by marrying Blanche of Navarre, an eighteen-year-old he had intended for his son, and seven months later he died. His son John II, called "John the Good," was truly good to the nobles. He exempted them from taxes, helped them defend their lands against the English, and preserved the customs of chivalry. To pay the cost of the war he debased the currency, repeatedly taxed the lower and middle classes, and with great pomp marched to Poitiers to fight the English.
Defeat and Captivity
There the Black Prince, with his 7,000 soldiers, scattered and destroyed John's army of 15,000 men made up of knights, Scots, and servants. In this battle John himself, who fought out of pride and foolishly led his men, was taken prisoner together with his son Philip, seventeen earls, and countless barons, knights, and squires. Many of the prisoners of war were released on the spot by paying ransom, and many others were freed on their promise to bring their ransom to Bordeaux by Christmas. The Black Prince treated the French king royally and took him to England.
France in Crisis: The Estates-General and Étienne Marcel
After the catastrophe of Poitiers, all of France fell into chaos. The dishonesty and incompetence of the government, the fall in the value of money, the enormous ransoms of kings and knights, the devastation from war and plague, and the crushing taxes laid on agriculture, industry, and trade drove the French nation from despair to revolution.
The Dauphin and the Estates
Charles de Valois, the nineteen-year-old dauphin, summoned an Estates-General of the northern provinces to Paris to levy new taxes and to take on the task of forming a parliamentary government in France. Paris and the other cities had long had assemblies, but these were small elected bodies, usually made up of lawyers, whose work was to guide local rulers or the king in legal matters and to register their decrees as part of French law.
This Estates-General, given its shape by a short-lived coalition of the clergy and the bourgeoisie, addressed the royal council and asked why, with all the money spent on the war, nothing had resulted but military indiscipline and shameful defeats. By order of the council, twenty-two government officials were arrested, and the treasury officials were ordered to return the sums they were accused of embezzling from the public treasury.
Limits on the Crown
The Estates placed limits on special royal rights and even decided to depose John the Good, exclude his sons from the succession, and give the throne of France to Charles II, called "Charles the Bad," king of Navarre, a descendant of Hugh Capet. The prudent humility of the dauphin calmed the Estates.
- They confirmed him as regent and gave him the credit to raise an armed army of thirty thousand men.
- At the same time they asked him to dismiss corrupt or ignorant officials.
- They warned him against interfering in the minting of coins.
- They appointed a committee of thirty-six to supervise the work and expenditure of the government.
- They accused the judges of keeping too many servants and too much equipment, of laziness in handling business, and of a backlog of cases, and ordered that court sessions be held at dawn, the time when honest citizens go to their shops or fields.
The Great Ordinance of 1357 also forbade nobles to leave France and engage in private wars, and ordered local officials to arrest any noble who violated the decree. As a result the aristocracy was brought to obey the provincial councils, the nobles to obey the merchant class, and the king, the prince, and the nobles to obey the representatives of the people. Four centuries before the Great Revolution, France wanted to have a constitutional government.
The dauphin signed the ordinance in March but in April began to evade carrying it out and ignored it.
Marcel's Coup in Paris
The English demanded a crushing ransom for his father's release and threatened to advance on Paris. The people were slow in paying taxes, and their new pretext was that only the Estates-General could levy taxes. Charles, who was in desperate need of cash, invited the Estates to meet again on 1 February 1358, and in the meantime added to his revenue by further debasing the currency.
On 2 February Étienne Marcel, a rich merchant who was the head of the merchants' guild, one of the influential figures in drafting the Great Ordinance, and who had ruled Paris for a year, entered the royal palace with a group of armed men wearing hoods in the colors of the city's official banner, blue and red. He rebuked Charles for violating the decrees of the Estates, and when the prince refused to obey, Marcel ordered his companions to kill the two royal marshals who were guarding the dauphin, so that their blood spurted over the prince's clothes.
The Estates Go Further and Paris Is Fortified
The new Estates-General was frightened by this bold violence. Nevertheless it fanned the fire of revolution by issuing a decree in May 1358 that only the Estates-General had the right to make the laws of France and that the king must act on its advice in important matters. Many nobles and clergy fled from Paris, and many administrative officials left their offices out of fear for their lives. Marcel appointed townsmen in their place, and for a time the merchants of Paris held the government of France in their hands.
The dauphin, together with the nobles, took refuge in Picardy, raised an army, and demanded that the people of Paris hand over the leaders of the revolution to him. Marcel prepared the capital for defense, built new walls around it, and occupied the Louvre, which in that period was the seat and symbol of the monarchy.
The Jacquerie
While Paris was in the grip of revolution, the peasants found the time right to take revenge on their lords in the villages. They were still serfs, victims of the heavy taxes to pay for the lives of their masters and their ransoms, plundered by soldiers and bandits, tortured to reveal the hiding places of their painfully earned savings, struck by the plague, and trampled by the war. With boundless rage they rose, attacked the castles and fortified houses of the wealthy, and cut the throat of every nobleman who fell into their hands. Their thirst and hunger were quenched with the wine in the cellars and the food in the storerooms of the barons.
By tradition the nobles had given the good-natured and simple-hearted peasants the name "Jacques Bonhomme." Now thousands of these Jacques, whose patience had run out, went to extremes of savagery in the Jacquerie. They killed their lords, raped their ladies, destroyed their heirs, and dressed their own wives in the glittering clothes and jewels of the dead.
Meaux and the Reprisal
Marcel, hoping that the peasants' revolt would prevent the dauphin from attacking Paris, sent eight hundred of his men to help the peasants. Strengthened in this way, the peasants attacked Meaux. The duchesses of Orléans and Normandy and many other high-born women who had taken refuge there saw the huge army of serfs and tenants pouring into the city like a flood and believed that their lives and honor were lost.
But suddenly, like something from the romances of King Arthur, a miraculous event took place. A group of knights returning from the crusades attacked Meaux and fell upon the peasants. They killed thousands of them and threw them in droves into the nearby rivers. The nobles came out of their hiding places and, as punishment, demanded a heavy indemnity from the villages, and they killed 20,000 peasants outside the town, guilty and innocent alike (June 1358).
The Death of Marcel and the Restoration of Royal Power
The dauphin's forces approached Paris and cut off the supply of food to the city. Marcel, who had no hope of achieving a favorable resistance by other means, offered the crown to Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, and decided to admit his troops into the city. Jean Maillard, Marcel's friend and assistant, considered this plan treason and secretly reconciled with the dauphin. On 31 July he and others killed Marcel with an axe.
The dauphin entered the city at the head of an army of armed nobles. He acted with moderation and caution and devoted himself to raising the ransom for his father and to strengthening the morale and economy of France. Those who had worked to create a monarchy based on parliament now ceased their efforts and fell into silence and obscurity. The nobles and notables gathered around the throne, and the Estates-General became the tool of a strong king.
The Treaty of Brétigny
In November 1359 Edward III landed at Calais with a new army. Because of the new walls built around Paris he did not attack it, but he stripped the villages and countryside around it, from Reims to Chartres, of food and grain, so that Paris again suffered hunger. Charles asked for peace on shameful terms.
- France handed over Gascony and Guienne to England, free of any tie or dependence on the king of France.
- It also ceded Poitou, Périgord, Crécy, Saintonge, Rouergue, Calais, Ponthieu, Aunis, Angoumois, Agenais, Limousin, and Bigorre to England.
- It paid 3,000,000 crowns for the return of the king.
- In return, Edward and his successors gave up any claim to the throne of France.
The Treaty of Brétigny was signed on 8 May 1360, and a third of France, seething, came under the banner of the English government. John's two sons, the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Berry, were sent to England as hostages and guarantors of France's loyalty to the treaty.
The Return and Death of John the Good
John returned to Paris amid the cheers of the nobles and the simple-minded. When the Duke of Anjou broke his word and fled from England to join his wife, John himself went back to England to serve as hostage and guarantor of France's loyalty in his son's place, and also in the hope of making the terms of the truce a little more moderate. Edward received him as a guest and held a feast in honor of this symbol of chivalry and manliness. John died in captivity in London in 1364 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The dauphin, aged twenty-six, took the throne of France as Charles V.
Charles V and the Reconquest
Charles V deserved the title "the Wise" that the people gave him, even if the deserving lay in his knowing how to end battles to his advantage without lifting a hand. His right hand was always swollen and his arm paralyzed, so he could not take up a lance. It is said that Charles the Bad had poisoned him and brought him to this state. Because he was partly forced into seclusion, he gathered around himself prudent and far-sighted advisers.
- He reorganized all the government offices and reformed the judiciary.
- He improved the army, promoted industry, and stabilized the value of money.
- He supported literature and art and formed a royal library in the Louvre, which became the basis of the writing and translation of classical French texts in the Renaissance and the nucleus of the French national library.
- He gave in to the nobles on the feudal road tolls but brought them under his control by appointing a commander-in-chief, a swarthy, flat-nosed, thick-necked, big-headed man from Brittany named Bertrand du Guesclin.
His faith in the superiority of this "Breton eagle" over all English commanders had a considerable part in Charles's decision to free France from English rule. In 1369 he formally declared war on Edward III.
Limoges and the Fabian Strategy of du Guesclin
The Black Prince answered Charles's declaration of war by besieging Limoges and massacring three thousand men, women, and children. That was the extent of his understanding of military teaching. But this slaughter bore no fruit. All the towns in his path had prepared their fortifications, troops, and supplies for defense, and the prince had no choice but to raid the empty plains, burn grain and harvests, and destroy the abandoned houses of peasants.
Du Guesclin refused to confront him directly but repeatedly attacked the rear of the prince's army. He set traps for the forage and supply parties of the army, captured them, and waited until the English troops, starving, gave up the ghost. This is what happened, and the English retreated. Du Guesclin advanced and took back, one by one, the towns that had been ceded to England. After two years of admirable generalship and loyalty to the king, the English were driven from all the provinces and cities of France except Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais. For the first time the borders of France reached the Pyrenees. Now Charles and his commander could, on the threshold of victory, close their eyes with full honor in a single year (1380).