The Lancastrian War was the third and final phase of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It lasted from 1415, when Henry V of England invaded Normandy, to 1453, when the English were definitively defeated in Aquitaine. It followed a long period of peace from the end of the Caroline War in 1389. The phase is named after the House of Lancaster, the ruling house of the Kingdom of England, to which Henry V belonged.
The early years of the Lancastrian War were dominated by the forces of the House of Plantagenet, who held the English throne and also claimed that of France. Initial English successes, notably at the Battle of Agincourt, coupled with divisions among the French ruling class, allowed Henry V to win the allegiance of large parts of France. Under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, the English king married the French princess Catherine of Valois and was made regent of the kingdom and heir to the throne of France. A victory on paper was thus achieved by the English, with their claims now having legal standing. Some of the French nobility refused to recognise the agreement, however, and so military conflict continued. Henry V and, after his death, his brother John, Duke of Bedford, brought the English to the height of their power in France, with a Plantagenet crowned in Paris.
The second half of this phase of the war was dominated by forces loyal to the House of Valois, the French-born rivals of the Plantagenets who continued to claim the throne of France themselves. Beginning in 1429, French forces counterattacked, inspired by Joan of Arc, La Hire and the Count of Dunois, and aided by a reconciliation with the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, who had previously sided with the Plantagenets. Charles VII was crowned in Notre-Dame de Reims in 1429, and from then a slow but steady reconquest of English-held French territories ensued. Ultimately the English would be expelled from France, except for the Pale of Calais, which would be re-captured by the French a century later.
The Battle of Castillon (1453) was the final major engagement of the Hundred Years' War, but France and England remained formally at war until the Treaty of Picquigny in 1475. English, and later British, monarchs would continue to nominally claim the French throne until 1802 though they would never again seriously pursue it.
England resumes the war
Henry V of England, of the House of Plantagenet, asserted a claim of inheritance of the French throne through the female line; female agency and inheritance were recognised in English law but rejected in France due to the Salic law. Henry sought to succeed to the French throne via the claim of his great-grandfather, Edward III of England, through Edward's mother – a claim which the court of France had previously rejected in favour of a more distant but male-line successor, Philip VI.
On his English accession in 1413, Henry V pacified the realm by conciliating the remaining enemies of the House of Lancaster, and suppressing the heresy of the Lollards. In 1415, Henry V invaded France and captured Harfleur. Decimated by diseases, Henry's army marched to Calais to withdraw from the French campaign. The French forces of Charles VI of Valois harassed the English, but refrained from making an open battle while amassing their numbers. The French finally gave battle at Agincourt, which proved to be a major English victory and an overwhelming disaster for the Valois side.
In the spring of 1420, Henry and Philip forced Charles VI of France to sign the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry would marry Charles's daughter Catherine of Valois, and Henry and his heirs would inherit the throne of France, disinheriting Charles's own son, the Dauphin Charles. Henry formally entered Paris later that year and the agreement was ratified by the Estates-General of France. In March, an English army under the command of the Earl of Salisbury had ambushed and destroyed a Franco-Scottish force at Fresnay 20 miles north of Le Mans. According to a chronicler, the French and Scottish lost 3,000 men, their camp and its contents including the Scottish treasury. In 1421, an English army of 4,000 was defeated by a Franco-Scottish army of 5,000 at the Battle of Baugé. During the battle the Duke of Clarence, brother of Henry V, was killed.
At the end of his life, Henry V's forces and allies controlled most of northern France, but other parts of the kingdom remained loyal to the Valois claimant, the Dauphin Charles. On his deathbed, Henry detailed his plans for the war after his death: his followers must continue the war until the Treaty of Troyes had been recognised in all of France; the Duke of Burgundy must be offered the regency of France, with the Duke of Bedford as substitute should he decline; the Burgundian alliance must be preserved at all costs; and the Duke of Orléans and some other prisoners must be retained until Henry's son had come of age. There would be no treaty with the Dauphin unless Normandy would be confirmed as an English possession. Bedford adhered to his brother's will, and the Burgundian alliance was preserved as long as he lived.
After Henry's death in 1422, almost simultaneously with that of his father-in-law, his infant son was crowned Henry VI of England and II of France. The Armagnacs did not acknowledge Henry and remained loyal to Charles VI's son, the Dauphin Charles. The war thus continued in central France.
In 1423, the Earl of Salisbury completely defeated another Franco-Scottish force at Cravant on the banks of the Yonne river. He personally led the crossing of the river, successfully assaulting a formidable enemy position, and in the resulting battle the Scots took very heavy losses. The same year saw a French victory at the Battle of La Brossinière.
The following year, Bedford won what has been described as a "second Agincourt" at Verneuil when his army destroyed a Franco-Scottish army estimated at 16,000 men. This was not a victory of the longbow; advances in plate armour granted armoured cavalry a much greater measure of protection. Due to the August heat, the English archers could not implant their defensive stakes, allowing the archers of one flank to be swept away. However, the English men-at-arms stood firm and waded into their enemy. Assisted by a flank attack from the other wing’s archers, they destroyed the allied army. The Scots were surrounded on the field and annihilated, virtually to the last man. Approximately 6500 died there, including all their commanders. As a result, no large-scale Scottish force landed in France again. The French were also subjected to heavy punishment, as their leaders were killed on the field and the rank and file were killed or mostly dispersed.
The following five years witnessed the peak of English power, extending from the Channel to the Loire, excluding only Orléans and Angers, and from Brittany in the west to Burgundy in the east. This was achieved with a shrinking number of available men, however, as forces were needed to occupy the newly-captured territory.
In 1428, the English army laid siege to Orléans, one of the most heavily defended cities in Europe, with more cannons in their possession than the French. However, one of the French cannons managed to kill the English commander, the Earl of Salisbury. The English force maintained several small fortresses around the city, concentrated in areas where the French could move supplies into the city. In 1429, Joan of Arc convinced the Dauphin to send her to the siege, saying she had received visions from God telling her to drive out the English. With her belief in the absolute and divine right of kings, and her conversations with saints and the archangel Michael,[1] she raised the morale of the local troops and they attacked the English redoubts, forcing the English to lift the siege only nine days after her arrival. At the same time, the Valois had updated and enhanced their army, and took advantage of the differing war aims of the Plantagenets and Burgundians.
Inspired by Joan, the French took several English strong points on the Loire and then broke through English archers at Patay commanded by John Fastolf and John Talbot.[2] This victory helped Joan to convince the Dauphin to march to Reims for his coronation as Charles VII. Although a number of other cities were opened to Charles in the march to Reims and after, Joan never managed to capture Paris, equally well defended as Orléans. She was captured on 23 May 1430 during the siege of Compiègne by Burgundian forces still allied with the Plantagenets. Joan was transferred to the English, tried by an ecclesiastic court headed by the pro-English Pierre Cauchon, and executed.
Defection of the Burgundians
Bedford was the only person that kept the Burgundian forces on the side of the Plantagenets. The Duke of Burgundy was not on good terms with Bedford's younger brother, Gloucester. At Bedford's death in 1435, the Burgundians deemed themselves excused from the English alliance, and signed the Treaty of Arras, restoring Paris to Charles VII. Their allegiance remained fickle, but the Burgundian focus on expanding their domains into the Low Countries left them little energy to intervene in France. The death of Bedford at the same time removed the one uniting force on the English side, while foreshadowing the decline of English dominance in France.
Long truces that marked the war at this point; they gave Charles time to reorganise his army and government, replacing his feudal levies with a more modern professional army that could put its superior numbers to good use, and centralising the French state. A repetition of Du Guesclin's battle avoidance strategy paid dividends and the French were able to recover town after town.
By 1449, the French had retaken Rouen. In 1450, the Count of Clermont and Arthur de Richemont, Earl of Richmond, of the Montfort family (the future Arthur III, Duke of Brittany) caught an English army attempting to relieve Caen at the Battle of Formigny and defeated it. The English army was attacked from the flank and rear by Richemont's force just as they were on the verge of beating Clermont's army. The French proceeded to capture Caen on July 6 and Bordeaux and Bayonne in 1451. The attempt by Talbot to retake Guyenne, though initially welcomed by the locals, was crushed by Jean Bureau and his cannons at the Battle of Castillon in 1453 where Talbot had led a small Anglo-Gascon force in a frontal attack on an entrenched camp. This is considered the last battle of the Hundred Years' War.
Henry V, also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England from 1413 until his death in 1422. Despite his relatively short reign, Henry's outstanding military successes in the Hundred Years' War against France made England one of the strongest military powers in Europe. Immortalised in Shakespeare's "Henriad" plays, Henry is known and celebrated as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England.
The siege of Orléans marked a turning point of the Hundred Years' War between France and England. The siege took place at the pinnacle of English power during the later stages of the war, but was repulsed by French forces inspired by the arrival of Joan of Arc. The French would then regain the initiative in the conflict and began to recapture territories previously occupied by the English.
The Capetian House of Valois was a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. They succeeded the House of Capet to the French throne, and were the royal house of France from 1328 to 1589. Junior members of the family founded cadet branches in Orléans, Anjou, Burgundy, and Alençon.
Charles VII, called the Victorious or the Well-Served, was King of France from 1422 to his death in 1461. His reign saw the end of the Hundred Years' War and a de facto end of the English claims to the French throne.
Charles VI, nicknamed the Beloved and in the 19th century, the Mad, was King of France from 1380 until his death in 1422. He is known for his mental illness and psychotic episodes that plagued him throughout his life.
The Treaty of Troyes was an agreement that King Henry V of England and his heirs would inherit the French throne upon the death of King Charles VI of France. It was formally signed in the French city of Troyes on 21 May 1420 in the aftermath of Henry's successful military campaign in France. It forms a part of the backdrop of the latter phase of the Hundred Years' War finally won by the French at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, and in which various English kings tried to establish their claims to the French throne.
Pierre Cauchon was a French Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Beauvais from 1420 to 1432. He was a strong partisan of English interests in France during the latter years of the Hundred Years' War. He was the judge in the trial of Joan of Arc and played a key role in her execution. The Catholic Church overturned his verdict in 1456.
John I was a scion of the French royal family who ruled the Burgundian State from 1404 until his assassination in 1419. He played a key role in French national affairs during the early 15th century, particularly in his struggle to remove the mentally ill King Charles VI and during the Hundred Years' War against Kingdom of England. A rash, ruthless and unscrupulous politician, John murdered Charles's brother, the Duke of Orléans, in an attempt to gain control of the government, which led to the eruption of the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War in France and in turn culminated in his own assassination in 1419.
John V, sometimes numbered as VI, bynamed John the Wise, was Duke of Brittany and Count of Montfort from 1399 to his death. His rule coincided with the height of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. John's reversals in that conflict, as well as in other internal struggles in France, served to strengthen his duchy and to maintain its independence.
Arthur III, more commonly known as Arthur de Richemont, was briefly Duke of Brittany from 1457 until his death. He is noted primarily, however, for his role as a leading military commander during the Hundred Years' War. Although Richemont briefly sided with the English once, he otherwise remained firmly committed to the House of Valois. He fought alongside Joan of Arc, and was appointed Constable of France. His military and administrative reforms in the French state were an important factor in assuring the final defeat of the English in the Hundred Years' War.
The Battle of Cravant was fought on 31 July 1423, during the Hundred Years' War between English and French forces at the village of Cravant in Burgundy, at a bridge and ford on the banks of the river Yonne, a left-bank tributary of the Seine, southeast of Auxerre. The battle ended in a victory for the English and their Burgundian allies.
Yolande of Aragon was Duchess of Anjou and Countess of Provence by marriage, who acted as regent of Provence during the minority of her son. Yolande played a crucial role in the struggles between France and England, influencing events such as the financing of Joan of Arc's army in 1429 that helped tip the balance in favour of the French. She was also known as Yolanda de Aragón and Violant d'Aragó. Tradition holds that she commissioned the famous Rohan Hours.
The Burgundian party was a political allegiance against France that formed during the latter half of the Hundred Years' War. The term "Burgundians" refers to the supporters of the Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, that formed after the assassination of Louis I, Duke of Orléans. Their opposition to the Armagnac party, the supporters of Charles, Duke of Orléans, led to a civil war in the early 15th century, itself part of the larger Hundred Years' War.
Events from the 1420s in England.
The Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War was a conflict between two cadet branches of the French royal family: the House of Orléans and the House of Burgundy from 1407 to 1435. It began during a lull in the Hundred Years' War against the English and overlapped with the Western Schism of the papacy.
The Hundred Years' War was a conflict between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the Late Middle Ages. It emerged from feudal disputes over the Duchy of Aquitaine and was triggered by a claim to the French throne made by Edward III of England. The war grew into a broader military, economic, and political struggle involving factions from across Western Europe, fuelled by emerging nationalism on both sides. The periodisation of the war typically charts it as taking place over 116 years. However, it was an intermittent conflict which was frequently interrupted by external factors, such as the Black Death, and several years of truces.
The dual monarchy of England and France existed during the latter phase of the Hundred Years' War when Charles VII of France and Henry VI of England disputed the succession to the throne of France. It commenced on 21 October 1422 upon the death of King Charles VI of France, who had signed the Treaty of Troyes which gave the French crown to his son-in-law Henry V of England and Henry's heirs. It excluded King Charles's son, the Dauphin Charles, who by right of primogeniture was the heir to the Kingdom of France. Although the Treaty was ratified by the Estates-General of France, the act was a contravention of the French law of succession which decreed that the French crown could not be alienated. Henry VI, son of Henry V, became king of both England and France and was recognized only by the English and Burgundians until 1435 as King Henry II of France. He was crowned King of France on 16 December 1431.
The Treaty of Amiens, signed on 13 April 1423, was a defensive agreement between Burgundy, Brittany, and England during the Hundred Years' War. The English were represented by John, Duke of Bedford, the English regent of France, the Burgundians by Duke Philip the Good himself, and the Bretons by Arthur de Richemont, on behalf of his brother the Duke of Brittany. By the agreement, all three parties acknowledged Henry VI of England as King of France, and agreed to aid each other against the Valois claimant, Charles VII. It also stipulated the marriage of Bedford and Richemont to Burgundy's sisters, in order to cement the alliance.
Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years' War is a 2013 documentary television series written and presented by cultural historian Dr. Janina Ramirez looking at a time when the ruling classes of England and France were bound together by shared sets of values, codes of behaviour and language for three hundred years that ended with the Hundred Years' War when chivalry ended with the devastating warfare of cannon and betrayal between rulers when England lost her French possessions. It was originally broadcast by the BBC in February 2013.
After the French lifted the siege of Orléans and won a decisive victory at the Battle of Patay, the English and Burgundians no longer posed a threat. Joan of Arc convinced the Dauphin Charles to go to Reims for his coronation. Successfully marching their army though the heart of territory held by the hostile Burgundians solidified the Dauphin’s regrasp of the throne of France. He had been disinherited from it through the Treaty of Troyes.
References
↑ Françoise Meltzer, Jas Elsner, Saints: Faith Without Borders, chapter "Reviving the Fairy Tree: Tales od European Sanctity", University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2011, p. 47, ISBN 978-0-226-51992-0.
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