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1337-1453 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

England and France fight the Hundred Years' War, from Crecy to Joan of Arc

A dynastic dispute over the French crown produces some of the era's most famous battles

On the timeline · around 1337-1453 CE · Crisis and CalamityCrisis and CalamityEngland and France fight the Hundred Years' War, from Crecy to Joan of Arc1300132513501375

Quick facts

Duration
1337-1453 CE
Key battles
Crecy (1346), Agincourt (1415)
Turning point
Siege of Orleans lifted, 1429
Final English holding
Calais

What happened

Edward III of England pressed a claim to the French throne through his mother, a claim French nobles rejected in favor of Philip VI, and the dispute escalated into open war after Philip confiscated English-held Gascony in 1337. English longbowmen and dismounted knights won a decisive victory over French cavalry at Crecy in August 1346, a tactical pattern repeated decades later when Henry V's badly outnumbered army destroyed the French nobility's ranks at Agincourt on 25 October 1415, following his conquest of Normandy. The war swung back toward France after 1429, when a peasant girl who said she was guided by religious visions, Joan of Arc, lifted the siege of Orleans and helped restore the disinherited Dauphin as Charles VII. Despite Joan's capture and execution in 1431, French forces steadily retook Normandy and Gascony through the 1440s and 1450s, ending the war in 1453 with England holding only the port of Calais.

Why it matters

The war's cost in French nobility killed in battle and English taxation to fund campaigns abroad reshaped both kingdoms' politics, pushed France toward a more centralized nation-state, and, through relentless wartime taxation, helped provoke domestic revolts including England's Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

How we know

Contemporary chronicles from both English and French sides document the war's major battles, and Joan of Arc's own words survive in the transcript of her 1431 trial, one of the best-documented individual testimonies of the medieval period.

Sources

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England and France fight the Hundred Years' War, from Crecy to Joan of Arc · The Middle Ages · SourcedStory