Plantagenet England. The Hundred Years War.

Plantagenet period, though started with the reign of Henry II, is often used as synonym for Later Middle Ages in Britain: the period of growing cities, trade and commerce. In this case its beginning roughly coincides with the reign of Edward I, the fourth Plantagenet in line.

During the period of later feudalism royal government was dictated by 2 essential weaknesses: the financial inadequacy of the crown’s resources and the fact that the king’s greater subjects were too powerful for him to manage on authority alone. In times of war the king inevitably looked to his subjects for grants of taxation, and bargained for that through accredited representatives – usually in Parliament; subsidies took time to collect, ant it was normal to ask for loans in anticipation of their payment; this often resulted in insolvency of the crown. Stability and authority of the government heavily depended on military success; the focal points in poltitical disputes were the limits if royal pregogative power and the right of his subjects (in extreme circumstances) to resist the king’s government. Edward I to some extent shaped the political landscape of the era. He reigned from 1272 to 1307.

One of Edward's early achievements was the conquest of Wales. Under the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd (who is still considered a Welsh national hero, known to any school-kid) had extended Welsh territories southwards and gained the title of Prince of Wales although he still owed homage to the English monarch as overlord. After Llywelyn repeatedly refused to pay homage to Edward in 1274 -75, Edward raised an army and launched his first campaign against the Welsh prince in 1276 - 77. After this campaign Llywelyn was forced to pay homage to Edward and was stripped of all but a rump of territory in Gwynedd.However, Llywelyn's younger brother, Dafydd (who had briefly been an ally of the English) started another rebellion in 1282. Llywelyn died shortly afterwards in a skirmish. Subsequently, Edward destroyed the remnants of resistance.

To consolidate his conquest, he commenced the construction of a string of massive stone castles encircling the principality, of which Caernarfon Castle provides a notable surviving example. Wales became incorporated into England under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 and in 1301 Edward created his eldest son Edward Prince of Wales, since which time the eldest son of each English monarch has borne the same title.

Edward then turned his attentions to Scotland and on May 10, 1291 Scottish nobles recognised the authority of Edward I. He had planned to marry off his son to the child queen, Margaret of Scotland (Called 'The Maid of Norway') but when Margaret died the Scottish nobles agreed to have Edward select her successor from the various claimants to the throne, and he chose John Balliol over other candidates. Edward was anxious to impose his overlordship on Scotland and hoped that John Balliol would prove the most biddable candidate. Indeed, Edward summoned John Balliol to do homage to him in Westminster in 1293 and made it clear he expected John's military and financial support against France. But this was too much for Balliol, who concluded a pact with France and prepared an army to invade England.

Edward gathered his largest army yet and razed Berwick, massacring its inhabitants, proceeding to Dunbar and Edinburgh. The Stone of Destiny was removed from Scone Palace and taken to Westminster Abbey. Until 1996, it formed the seat on King Edward's Chair, on which all English monarchs since 1308 have been crowned, with the exception of Mary I. In 1996, the stone was returned to Scotland, to return only during royal coronations. Balliol renounced the crown and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for three years before withdrawing to his estates in France. All freeholders in Scotland were required to swear an oath of homage to Edward, and he ruled Scotland like a province through English Viceroys.

Opposition sprang up, and Edward executed the focus of discontent, William Wallace, on August 23, 1305, having earlier defeated him at the Battle of Falkirk (1298). His plan to unite the two countries never came to fruition during his lifetime. Unlike his father, Henry III of England, Edward I took great interest in the workings of his government and undertook a number of reforms to safeguard the preservation of royal rights and improve the administration of the law. He spearheaded a wave of nationalism and solidified central authority over the country, a trend also used by contemporary monarchs.

Edward was largely responsible for the Tower of London in the form we see today, including notably the concentric defences, elaborate entranceways, and the Traitor's Gate.

His heir, Edward II was, however, lacking in drive and ambition and was "the first king after the Conquest who was not a man of business". His main interest was in entertainment, though he also took pleasure in athletics and in the practice of mechanical crafts. He had been so dominated by his father that he had little confidence in himself, and was always in the hands of some favourite with a stronger will than his own.

He stood aside, allowing the country to come under the rule of a baronial committee of twenty-one lords ordainers, who, in 1311, had drawn up a series of ordinances, which substituted ordainers for the king as the effective government of the country. Parliament meant to the new rulers an assembly of barons just as it had done to the opponents of Edward's grandfather, Henry III, in 1258. The Commons were excluded. The effect was to transform England from a monarchy to a narrow oligarchy.

During the quarrels between Edward and the "ordainers", Robert the Bruce (King of Scots) was steadily re-conquering Scotland. His progress was so great that he had occupied all the fortresses save Stirling, which he besieged. The danger of losing Stirling shamed Edward and the barons into an attempt to retrieve their lost ground. In June 1314 Edward led a huge army into Scotland in the hope of relieving Stirling. On June 24, his ill-disciplined and badly led force was completely defeated by Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn. Henceforth Bruce was sure of his position as King of Scots, and took vengeance for Edward I's activities by devastating the northern counties of England.

Edward II's disgraceful defeat made him more dependent on his barons than ever.His energy and efforts were directed, however, to just making his favourites happy (especially Dispencer, his homosexual lover). The baroncy finally agreed on deposition ( низложение) The Articles of Deposition accused Edward of many offences including: being incompetent to govern, unwilling to heed good counsel, allowing himself to be controlled by evil councillors, giving himself up to unseemly works and occupations, and plundering the kingdom. He was deposed by a unanimous consent of magnates, clergy and people and murdered in Berkley castle. Deposition itself, however, was a legal act and set a legal precedent.

The result of Edward II’ reign was loss of livestock, burning of homesteads which ruined agricultural property in the North. Lords of the border were left to defend themselves; the few who managed emerged the most powerful, military magnates, disrespectful of royal authority.

A parliament met at Westminster in January 1327, which proclaimed Edward's son to be king as Edward III. Both Despensers were tried and executed. In the Statute of York parliament was clearly recognized as the body representing the whole community of the realm; parliaments started to deal with judicial business. Commons consolidated. After 1327 until at least 1470 the greatest changes came about not in consequence of the King’s wishes but in response to pressures.

In 1328 the Treaty of Northampton ratified Bruce’s terms of peace; he became king of independent realm with no ties to England.

The Hundred Years' War is the name modern historians have given to what was actually a series of related conflicts, fought over a 116-year period, between the England and France, and later Burgundy; beginning in 1337, and ending in 1453. Historians group these conflicts under the same label, for convenience. The war was primarily fought in France; and though in retrospect, it has the feeling of a French civil war as much as an international conflict

The war was significant, due to factors such as: the introduction of new weapons and tactics, which eroded the older system of feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry; the first "standing armies" in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire; changes in the roles of nobles and peasants, and over-all key developments in the early growth of nations and new monarchies. It is often viewed as one of the most significant conflicts in the history of medieval warfare.

The Anglo-Normans ruled both Normandy and England for over 150 years. However, in 1216, the Anglo-Normans lost their possessions to France, leaving a situation in which most of the English nobles in the 14th century were recent descendants of the Anglo-Normans, who still spoke a version of French, and could remember a time when their grandparents had ruled Normandy. The nobles had never fully given up the dream of one day reconquering their homeland in Normandy; it was a very rich land, and England stood to become very wealthy by retaking it. The war was both a "national" desire to re-take a former kingdom, and personal desires on the part of the nobility to gain wealth and increased prestige.Charles IV, King of France and Navarre, the youngest son of Philip IV, died in 1328, leaving only daughters, and an infant daughter yet to be born. The senior line of Capetian dynasty ended thus in "tail male", creating a crisis about who would become the next king of France.

Meanwhile living in England, Charles IV's sister Isabella was the widow of King Edward II and was at the time effectively in control of the crown, having forced her politically-weak husband to abdicate in favour of their teenage son, Edward III. The young Edward III, being the nephew of King Charles, was his closest living male relative, and was at that time the only surviving male descendant of the senior line of the Capetian dynasty descending from Philip IV (Philip the Fair). By English interpretation of feudal law, this made Edward III the next heir to the throne of France.

The French nobility, however, did not want a foreigner on the throne; in particular, not an English king. The French nobility claimed that royal inheritance could pass only through an unbroken male line, and not through a King's daughter (Isabella) to her son (Edward) (This principle was later, from 1356 onwards, cited under the name "Salic Law"). The French nobility asserted that the royal inheritance should therefore pass to Philip of Valois (Philip VI), through the younger brother of Philip IV, Charles. Both Edward and Philip had good legal cases for the right to the crown, and the force to back it up.

In 1333, Edward III went to war with King David II of Scotland, a French ally under the "Auld Alliance", and began the Second War of Scottish Independence. Philip saw the opportunity to reclaim Gascony, while England's attention was concentrated at home. However, the war was a quick success for England, and David was forced to flee to France after being defeated by King Edward and Edward Balliol, at the Battle of Halidon Hill, in July 1333.

In 1336, Philip made plans for an expedition to restore David to the Scottish throne, and to also seize Gascony. Open hostilities broke out as French ships began ravaging coastal settlements on the English Channel and in 1337 Philip reclaimed the Gascony fief, citing feudal law and saying that Edward had broken his oath (a felony) by not attending to the needs and demands of his lord. Edward III responded by saying he was in fact the rightful heir to the French throne. War had been declared.

The war can be divided loosely into four phases: a phase of English success under Edward III from 1337 to 1360; a phase from 1360 to 1400, where the French were successful in nearly driving out the English; a phase from 1400 to 1429, marked by great English victories under Henry V; and a final phase from 1429 to 1453, in which France was united under the Valois kings. When the war began, France had a population of 14 million, and was generally recognized as having the largest number and best trained knights in Europe; England had a population of only two million.

In the early years of the war, Edward III allied with the nobles of the Low Countries and the burghers of Flanders, but after two campaigns where nothing was achieved, the alliance fell apart in 1340. The payments of subsidies to the German princes and the costs of maintaining an army abroad dragged the English government into a bankruptcy with huge damages to Edward III’s prestige. At sea, France enjoyed supremacy for some time, and several towns on the English coast were sacked. But in 1340, in an attempt to hinder the English army from landing, the French fleet was almost completely destroyed in the Battle of Sluys. After this, England was able to dominate the English Channel for the rest of the war, preventing French invasions.

In July 1346, Edward mounted a major invasion across the Channel, landing in the Cotentin peninsula of Normandy, and marching through Normandy. Philip gathered a large army to oppose him, and Edward chose to march northward toward the Low Countries, pillaging as he went, rather than attempt to take and hold territory. Finding himself unable to outmanoeuvre Philip, Edward positioned his forces for battle, and Philip's army attacked him at the famous Battle of Crecy. The much larger French army made a series of piecemeal attacks against the expert English and Welsh longbowmen, and all of the attacks were dispersed with heavy losses until the French were forced to retreat. Crecy was a crushing defeat for the French.

The year 1348 went down in history as The Black Death Year, which changed the economic situation in the country. After the great pandemic of bubonic plague reached England, 1/3 of population may have perished. Scarcity of labour and the sharp consequent rise of wages led directly to the first major attempt of the English government to freeze prices and wages; this statute was doomed to failure; mobility of labourers increased; it ceased to be possible for landlords to restrain dissatisfied men from leaving home.

After the Black Death had passed and England was able to recover financially, Edward's son, Edward the Black Prince, invaded France from Gascony in 1356, winning a great victory in the Battle of Poitiers, where the English archers repeated the same tactics used at Crecy, and the Gascon noble Captal de Buch led a flanking movement that succeeded in capturing the new Valois king, John II of France, and many of his nobles. John signed a truce with Edward, and in his absence much of the government began to collapse. John's ransom was set to two million, but John believed he was worth more than that and insisted that his ransom be raised to four million.

Later that year (1356) the Second Treaty of London was signed in which the four million ecus ransom was guaranteed by having royal members of the Valois family come to London and surrender themselves as hostages while John returned to France to raise his ransom. As part of the treaty England gained possession of Aquitaine, a large coastal area of southwestern France including the large towns of Poitiers and Bordeaux.

For England, the period was marked by increasing export: wool, hides and coal; from the west country lead and tin; quite substantial quantities of grain were also exported in exchange to silks, sweet wines and spices; pitch, potash and furs and from Scandinavia above all fish – which was the staple item of diet of the medieval Englishman. Wool trade encouraged an elaborate system of credit. There was a considerable development in the English cloth industry: there started mechanisation of fulling ( shrinking and purifying wool with detergents). Lincoln, Norwich and York flourished.

There were 3000 grants of a market issued in the XIV century in England (the grant of a market turned the settlement into a town). Creation of guilds increased the quality of produce. Tillable land was in demand; there already existed 2 or 3 field system; the predominant role of landlord changed from that of a farmer to that of a renter.

In 1358, a peasant revolt in France called the Jacquerie took place. It was caused in part by the deprivations suffered by the country people during the war and their hatred of the local nobility. Led by Guillaume Kale (Carle or Cale), they joined forces with other villages, and beginning in the area of Beauvais, north of Paris, committed atrocities against the nobles and destroyed many chateaux in the area. All the rebellious groups were defeated later that summer and reprisals followed.

Edward invaded France, hoping to capitalize on the discontent and seize the throne, but although no French army stood against him in the field, he was unable to take Paris or Rheims from the dauphin Charles V, and he negotiated the Treaty of Bretigny, renouncing the French crown but greatly expanding his territory in Aquitaine and confirming his conquest of Calais.

The war proved to be costly; the crown constantly demanded more grants and subsidies. So when the Pope sought to collect the 20^th in England the response to his efforts was a petition from the Commons that anyone who levied such a tax without the assent of the king should be considered a traitor; so we can see the first signals of royal supremacy which had grown within the framework of English church.

In 1376, the Black Prince died, and upon the death of Edward III in 1377, the underaged Richard II became King of England. It was not until Richard had been deposed by his cousin Bolingbroke (Henry IV of England), that the English under the House of Lancaster would forcefully revive their claim to the French throne.

From the beginning of Richard’s reign there was continuous pressure for investigation into military and administrative incompetence of king’s advisors and for more stringent control and audit of expenditure. In 1380 the Commons granted a subsidy; in spring of the same year the crown tried to introduce poll tax again, based on the census of before 1348. It was never collected: there followed one of the most powerful peasant revolts in medieval history. The revolt, headed by Wat Tyler, quickly spread in Kent and Essex. Another leader, John Ball, was already asking questions far ahead of his time:

“When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?”

The demands of the rebels boiled down to abolition of serfdom, decreasing rents and execution of ‘traitors’ around the young king. The king himself proved to be a traitor, killing Tyler during the parley.

As to years of Richard’s personal rule, they may be divided into 2 periods; the first culminated in a crisis and ended by the purge of the royal court, instigated by the parliament; the second began in 1397 when Richard carried out a systematic purge of his enemies; in the second part of his rule King’s grace (помилование) was bought and obtained for 1.000 marks per shire. The only notable act of this king was his patronising Chaucer, author of Canturbury Tales.

The deposition of this monarch was a ceremonial affair: the throne stood vacant, covered with a cloth of gold; first, charges against Richard were read out, and the comission representing all estates of realm was appointed, to renounce homage and fealty to him on behalf of the whole country. His successor was left to face instability at home, insolvency and war in France. As to social situation in the country, if we analyse Canterbury Tales, we get a picture of remarkably wide distribution of wealth; prosperity of solid men of middle rank had a profound effect on the English national character. The famous legend of Richard Wittington, once a poor apprentice, who through personal merit rose to the position of London Lord-mayor is a typical story of bourgeois success, but it dates back to 1380! Genty at that time had a generally high standard of literacy; there was a growth of professionally educated gentility and men trained in law.

Henry IV made plans for campaigns in France, but was unable to complete them due to his short reign. In the meantime, though, the French King Charles VI was descending into madness, and an open conflict for power began between his cousin, John of Burgundy, and his brother, Louis of Orleans. After Louis's assassination, the Armagnac family took political power in opposition to John.

By 1410, both sides were bidding for the help of English forces in a civil war.The new English king, Henry V, upon accession had to deal with three main problems: the restoration of domestic peace, the healing of schism in the Church and the recovery of English prestige in Europe. His policy was: a firm central government supported by parliament; church reform on conservative lines; commercial development; and the maintenance of national prestige.

He turned down an Armagnac offer in 1414 to restore the 1369 frontiers in return for support, demanding a return to the full territories of Henry II. In August 1415 he landed with an army at Harfleur in Normandy, taking the city. Although tempted to march on Paris directly, he elected to make a raiding expedition across France toward English-occupied Calais. In a campaign reminiscent of Crecy, he found himself outmaneuvered and low on supplies, and had to make a stand against a much larger French army at the Battle of Agincourt north of the Somme. In spite of his disadvantages, his victory was near-total, and the French defeat was catastrophic, losing many of the Armagnac leaders.

In subsequent campaigns, Henry took much of Normandy, including Caen in 1417 and Rouen on January 19, 1419, placing Normandy under English rule after over 200 years of French control. He made formal alliance with the Burgundians, who had taken Paris, after the Armagnac execution of John of Burgundy in 1419. In 1420, Henry met with the mad king Charles VI, who signed the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry would marry Charles' daughter Catherine of Valois and Henry's heirs would inherit the throne of France. The Dauphin, Charles VII, was declared illegitimate. Henry formally entered Paris later that year and the agreement was ratified by the French Estates-General.

Henry V’ aims in some respects anticipated those of his Tudor successors (as did his modelling himself on King Arthur - Henry VII's eldest son was, of course, named Arthur), but he would have accomplished them on medieval lines as a constitutional ruler. His success was due to the power of his personality. He could train able lieutenants, but at his death there was no one who could take his place as leader. War, diplomacy and civil administration were all dependent on his guidance.

If he was not the founder of the English navy he was one of the first to realize its true importance. Almost two hundred years after death, Henry became the subject of a famous play by William Shakespeare - Henry V.

After Henry's early death in 1422, almost simultaneously with that of his father-in-law, his baby son was crowned King Henry VI of England and also King of France, but the Armagnacs remained loyal to Charles VI's son, the dauphin Charles, and the war continued in central France.

By 1424, the uncles of Henry VI had begun to quarrel over the infant's regency, and one, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, married Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut, and invaded Holland to regain her former dominions, bringing him into direct conflict with Philip III, Duke of Burgundy.By 1428, the English were ready to pursue the war again, laying siege to Orleans. Their force was insufficient to fully invest the city, but larger French forces remained passive. 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. She raised the morale of the local troops and they attacked the English redoubts, forcing the English to lift the siege. Joan proceeded to win several battles against the English, opening the way for the Dauphin to march to Reims for his coronation as Charles VII.

After Joan was captured by the Burgundians in 1430 and later sold to the English and executed, the French advance stalled in negotiations. But, in 1435, the Burgundians under Philip III switched sides, signing the Treaty of Arras and returning Paris to the King of France. Burgundy's allegiance remained fickle, but their focus on expanding their domains into the Low Countries left them little energy to intervene in France. The long truces that marked the war also gave Charles time to reorganize his army and government, replacing his feudal levies with a more modern professional army that could put its superior numbers to good use, and centralizing the French state.

By 1449, the French had retaken Rouen, and 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, using cannon to break up the archers. The French proceeded to capture Cherbourg on July 6 and Bordeaux and Bayonne in 1451. The attempt by John Talbot (the 1st Earl of Shrewsbury) to retake Gascony, though initially welcomed by the locals, was crushed by Jean Bureau and his cannon at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, which is considered the last battle of the Hundred Years' War.

Warfare changed tremendously during the Hundred Years' War. From the type of weapons used, to military tactics, to the very notion of what war meant, the Hundred Years' War challenged the long-established order of medieval society. It became clear that traditional medieval warfare would no longer work as it used to. The war also stimulated nationalistic sentiment: It devastated France, but it also awakened French nationalism. The Hundred Years' War accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a centralized state. The latter stages of the war saw the emergence of the dukes of Burgundy as important players on the political field, and it encouraged the English, in response to the seesawing alliance of the southern Netherlands (now Belgium, a very important textile hub at the time) throughout the conflict, to develop their own clothing industry and foreign markets.

A number of new weapons were introduced during the Hundred Years' War. Of these, the most famous was the Welsh (or English) longbow; while not a new weapon at the time, it was used in new ways. Gunpowder, firearms and cannons played significant roles as early as 1375. The last battle of the war, the Battle of Castillon, was the first battle in European history where artillery was the deciding factor. The early phase of the war triggered the development and rising popularity of the longsword

The consequences of these new weapons meant that the nobility was no longer the deciding factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows or firearms could gain access to the power, rewards and prestige once reserved only for knights who bore arms. The composition of armies changed, from feudal lords who may or may not show up when called by their lord, to paid mercenaries. By the end of the war, both France and England were able to raise enough money through taxation to create standing armies, the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire that there were standing armies in Europe. Standing armies represented an entirely new form of power for kings. Not only could they defend their kingdoms from invaders, but standing armies could also protect the king from internal threats and also keep the population in check. It was a major step in early developments towards new monarchies and nations.

Plantagenet England and a Hundred Years’ war feed-back tasks. Note: the questions are meant to provide kind of a rough plan for your examination answer; you are welcome to rearrange them in a more suitable way.

1. Explain what is: a) a longbow; b) a guild; c) a ‘Stone of Destiny’?

2. In which way are names Llewelyn, Robert Bruce, Joan of Ark important for the period?

3. Where did the title ‘Prince of Wales’ spring from?

4. Comment upon the institute of ‘ordainers’; was it a more democratic institute than the Parliament or not? Is deposition the same as coup d`etat or not? Were there any depositions in Russian history?

5. Enumerate reasons for the Hundred Years’ war: a) political; b) economic.

6. Write out: periods of the war, dates and names of most famous battles, dates and names of major peasant revolts.

7. Comment upon the influence of the Black Death year on reshaping the economic relief of England. Do you have an impression that the economy of the country was undermined by the war and the epidemic? Or that the war in France was a lucrative business? Why?

8. Henry V became the subject of a play by Shakespeare; what do you think made the character attractive to the playwright?

9. Comment upon the consequences of the Hundred Years’ war.

10. Find English equivalents for the following: (не)платежеспособность, стычка, уступчивый, отречься от престола, осадить (осада), снять осаду, низложение монарха, регулярная армия, лишения, подушный налог, отмена крепостного права, переговоры, перемирие, наемники, порох, пушки..

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