This book is intended to be the first volume of a history of the Hundred Years War, from its outbreak in the 1330s until the final expulsion of the English from France in the middle of the fifteenth century. This succession of destructive wars, separated by tense intervals of truce and by dishonest and impermanent treaties of peace, is one of the central events in the history of England and France, as well as in that of their neighbours who were successively drawn into it: Scotland, Germany, Italy and Spain. It laid the foundations of France’s national consciousness, even while destroying the prosperity and political pre-eminence which France had once enjoyed. It formed her institutions, creating, in the effort to control anarchy and defeat invasion, the germ of the absolute state of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England, it brought intense effort and suffering, a powerful tide of patriotism, great fortune succeeded by bankruptcy, disintegration and utter defeat.
I have written about England and France together, almost as if they were a single community engaged in a civil war as, in some respects, they were. I have tried to describe not only what happened, but why it happened and how it affected those who experienced it, whether they were close at hand, like the soldiers in the field and the inhabitants of countless burned-out villages and towns, or saw it at a distance, like the bankers, war contractors, bureaucrats and tax-payers, and the readers of newsletters and proclamations. But this book is a narrative. The sweep of events provides its framework. I make no apology for that. Although narrative history has not always been fashionable, the facts sometimes explain themselves better than any analysis of them could possibly do. Moreover, while there have been many valuable monographs on this or that aspect of the Hundred Years War, some fine histories of isolated incidents and campaigns, and one magnificent account of a single ruler (Charles V of France), no general history of the war has been written on the scale which it deserves. The best account remains that of the great French historian and anglophile, Edouard Perroy, written without access to books while the author was working with the French resistance in the later years of the Second World War. But in a single volume covering 120 years not even Perroy, with his profound knowledge of both English and French sources, could convey more than the outline of events, or penetrate behind the screen to observe the lives of men who never pretended to call the order of events but were only spectators and victims.
My approach has been to work primarily from the record sources of England and France, printed and unprinted. Later volumes will draw on the archives of Italy and Spain also. The chroniclers have an important but subordinate place. They have much to say about the character of the war and their anecdotes are often very revealing. They provide insights into the aristocratic mentality which the records can rarely offer. Depending upon the quality of their sources, they can be reliable guides to the course of events. But most of them are episodic, prejudiced, inaccurate and late. Froissart is particularly unreliable. Moreover, being essentially journalists, the chroniclers were also snobs. They rarely showed much interest in events in which no duke, earl or count participated. So, except for the tremendous battle at Sluys in 1340, they said almost nothing about the war at sea, which was waged by lowly men. Gascony was virtually ignored until 1345, when the first earl fought there. But the records throw a flood of light on these events, unselfconscious evidence, written by clerks who had no idea of recording history. I have identified in the notes the authorities for what I say in the text. But with rare exceptions I have not discussed conflicts of evidence or debated the divergent opinions of scholars. I have simply resolved the differences to my own satisfaction, and I hope to yours.
J.P.C.S.
Greenwich
May 1989
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