Analyze the reasons and outcome of the Hundred Years' War, and what made it different from previous wars in Europe.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. The Hundred Years' War was the first military combat fought over ideas of political patriotism rather than as an obligation of feudal design, appealing to the protonationalism of England and France. It was the first to use wide-scale conscription of citizens for warfare. Finally, it was a war fought on the European continent, rather than at a foreign location. The Crusades had been the only previous large-scale military experience seen within Europe since the eleventh-century Battle of Hastings, other than localized skirmishes between warring feudal lords. The background to the Hundred Years' War was the conflict between England and France over the ownership of large amounts of land in France taken by Eleanor of Aquitaine when she married Henry II. These lands were subsequently passed to her son Richard and lost by her son John when he was king in the early thirteenth century, restricting England to a limited amount of territory. Subsequent marriages for political alliance made connections between the Plantagenet and Capetian families of England and France, respectively. After the death of all male successors to the French throne, Edward III, son of Isabella and grandson of the former French king, sought to assert his claim. The French nobility, however, declined to see an English king on a French throne and bypassed his claim in favor of Philip Valois. The war was initiated in 1337 and continued through several generations. The English originally did well, aided by the use of the superior long bow, at Crécy and Poitiers. The war was declared a truce in 1360 and all seemed to be well, but it was not yet over. It finally came to a conclusion in the mid-fifteenth century, when the English lost all territory but Calais. Both sides were significantly drained financially, militarily, and in prestige over this war, but the concepts of nationalism, the technology used in the war, the tactics employed, the mass conscription, and the figures involved made this war significantly different than those fought previously in Europe.