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175-412: [REDACTED] Kingdom of France [REDACTED] Kingdom of England 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

350-648: A Parliament and a constitutional Charter , usually known as the " Charte octroyée " ("Granted Charter"). His reign was characterized by disagreements between the Doctrinaires , liberal thinkers who supported the Charter and the rising bourgeoisie , and the Ultra-royalists , aristocrats and clergymen who totally refused the Revolution's heritage. Peace was maintained by statesmen like Talleyrand and

525-438: A centralized state governed from the capital of Paris. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism still persisting in parts of France and, by compelling the noble elite to regularly inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles , built on the outskirts of Paris, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the earlier " Fronde " rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he consolidated

700-434: A gros valet (or varlet), an armed servant, adding up to another 10,000 potential fighting men, though some historians omit them from the number of combatants. The French were organized into two main groups (or battles ), a vanguard up front and a main battle behind, both composed principally of men-at-arms fighting on foot and flanked by more of the same in each wing. There was a special, elite cavalry force whose purpose

875-545: A revolt led by Eleanor and three of their four sons, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned, made the Duke of Brittany his vassal, and in effect ruled the western half of France as a greater power than the French throne. However, disputes among Henry's descendants over the division of his French territories, coupled with John of England 's lengthy quarrel with Philip II , allowed Philip to recover influence over most of this territory. After

1050-475: A semonce des nobles , calling on local nobles to join the army. By 24 October, both armies faced each other for battle, but the French declined, hoping for the arrival of more troops. The two armies spent the night of 24 October on open ground. The next day the French initiated negotiations as a delaying tactic, but Henry ordered his army to advance and to start a battle that, given the state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid, or to fight defensively: that

1225-404: A cavalry force at the rear specifically designed to "fall upon the archers, and use their force to break them," but in the event, the French archers and crossbowmen were deployed behind and to the sides of the men-at-arms. The French archers seem to have played almost no part, except possibly for an initial volley of arrows at the start of the battle. The cavalry force, which could have devastated

1400-480: A crown. Whether this was part of a deliberate French plan or an act of local brigandage is unclear from the sources. Certainly, d'Azincourt was a local knight but he might have been chosen to lead the attack because of his local knowledge and the lack of availability of a more senior soldier. In some accounts the attack happened towards the end of the battle, and led the English to think they were being attacked from

1575-792: A long-standing dispute over the rights to Gascony in the south of France, and the relationship between England and the Flemish cloth towns, led to the Hundred Years' War of 1337–1453. The following century was to see devastating warfare, the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War , peasant revolts (the English peasants' revolt of 1381 and the Jacquerie of 1358 in France) and the growth of nationalism in both countries. The losses of

1750-474: A longbow again. Whether this was true is open to question and continues to be debated to this day; however, it seems likely that death was the normal fate of any soldier who could not be ransomed. The French army had 10,000 men-at arms plus some 4,000–5,000 miscellaneous footmen ( gens de trait ) including archers, crossbowmen ( arbalétriers ) and shield-bearers ( pavisiers ), totaling 14,000–15,000 men. Probably each man-at-arms would be accompanied by

1925-580: A major English victory and an overwhelming disaster for the Valois side. The Armagnac and Burgundian factions of the French court began negotiations to unite against the foreign enemy. Notable leaders of the Armagnac faction, such as Charles, Duke of Orléans , John I, Duke of Bourbon , and Arthur de Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany ), became prisoners in England. The Burgundians, under John

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2100-639: A part of France. West Frankish kings were initially elected by the secular and ecclesiastical magnates, but the regular coronation of the eldest son of the reigning king during his father's lifetime established the principle of male primogeniture , which became codified in the Salic law . During the Late Middle Ages , rivalry between the Capetian dynasty, rulers of the Kingdom of France and their vassals

2275-446: A press of comrades while wearing armour weighing 50–60 pounds (23–27 kg), gathering sticky clay all the way. Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades. The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and, using hatchets , swords , and

2450-655: 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)

2625-480: A risk to the still-outnumbered English and could have easily turned their victory into a mutually destructive defeat, as the English forces were now largely intermingled with the French and would have suffered grievously from the arrows of their own longbowmen had they needed to resume fighting. The English knights refused to assist in the killing of these prisoners due to their belief that it was unchivalrous. Keegan, estimating that only around 200 archers were involved in

2800-716: A superpower from 1643 until 1815; from the reign of King Louis XIV until the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars . The Spanish Empire lost its superpower status to France after the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (but maintained the status of Great Power until the Napoleonic Wars and the Independence of Spanish America ). France lost its superpower status after Napoleon 's defeat against

2975-578: A system of absolute monarchy in France that endured 150 years until the French Revolution . McCabe says critics used fiction to portray the degraded Turkish court, using "the harem, the Sultan court, oriental despotism, luxury, gems and spices, carpets, and silk cushions" as an unfavorable analogy to the corruption of the French royal court. The king sought to impose total religious uniformity on

3150-401: Is credible" is 15,000 French against 8,000–9,000 English. Barker opined that "if the differential really was as low as three to four then this makes a nonsense of the course of the battle as described by eyewitnesses and contemporaries". Barker, Sumption and Rogers all wrote that the English probably had 6,000 men, these being 5,000 archers and 900–1,000 men-at-arms. These numbers are based on

3325-483: Is likely that the English adopted their usual battle line of longbowmen on either flank, with men-at-arms and knights in the centre. They might also have deployed some archers in the centre of the line. The English men-at-arms in plate and mail were placed shoulder to shoulder four deep. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes , or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. This use of stakes could have been inspired by

3500-583: 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

3675-434: Is supported by many other contemporary accounts. Curry, Rogers and Mortimer all agree the French had 4 to 5 thousand missile troops. Sumption, thus, concludes that the French had 14,000 men, basing himself on the monk of St. Denis ; Mortimer gives 14 or 15 thousand fighting men. One particular cause of confusion may have been the number of servants on both sides, or whether they should at all be counted as combatants. Since

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3850-470: The Armagnac party . This battle is notable for the use of the English longbow in very large numbers, with the English and Welsh archers comprising nearly 80 percent of Henry's army. Henry's standard-bearer was William Harrington , he being an official Standard Bearer of England . The Battle of Agincourt is one of England's most celebrated victories and was one of the most important English triumphs in

4025-498: The Battle of Nicopolis of 1396, where forces of the Ottoman Empire used the tactic against French cavalry. The English made their confessions before the battle, as was customary. Henry, worried about the enemy launching surprise raids, and wanting his troops to remain focused, ordered all his men to spend the night before the battle in silence, on pain of having an ear cut off. He told his men that he would rather die in

4200-623: The British , Prussians and Russians in 1815 . Following the French Revolution , which began in 1789, the Kingdom of France adopted a written constitution in 1791, but the Kingdom was abolished a year later and replaced with the First French Republic . The monarchy was restored by the other great powers in 1814 and, with the exception of the Hundred Days in 1815, lasted until the French Revolution of 1848 . During

4375-544: The British Expeditionary Force 's attempts to stop the German advances were widely likened to it. Shakespeare's portrayal of the casualty loss is ahistorical in that the French are stated to have lost 10,000 and the English 'less than' thirty men, prompting Henry's remark, "O God, thy arm was here". In 2008, English-American author Bernard Cornwell released a retelling of both the events leading up

4550-556: The Capetian dynasty on the throne. With its offshoots, the houses of Valois and Bourbon , it was to rule France for more than 800 years. The old order left the new dynasty in immediate control of little beyond the middle Seine and adjacent territories, while powerful territorial lords such as the 10th- and 11th-century counts of Blois accumulated large domains of their own through marriage and through private arrangements with lesser nobles for protection and support. The area around

4725-422: The Duke of Anjou (about 600 men), and the Duke of Brittany (6,000 men, according to Monstrelet), were all marching to join the army. For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting. Military textbooks of the time stated: "Everywhere and on all occasions that foot soldiers march against their enemy face to face, those who march lose and those who remain standing still and holding firm win." On top of this,

4900-694: The Duke of Richelieu , as well as the King's moderation and prudent intervention. In 1823, the Trienio Liberal revolt in Spain led to a French intervention on the royalists' side, which permitted King Ferdinand VII of Spain to abolish the Constitution of 1812 . However, the work of Louis XVIII was frustrated when, after his death on 16 September 1824, his brother the Count of Artois became king under

5075-655: The Franco-Dutch War , 1672–1678) brought further territorial gains ( Artois and western Flanders and the free County of Burgundy , previously left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival royal powers, and a legacy of an increasingly enormous national debt . An adherent of the theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" , which advocates the divine origin of temporal power and any lack of earthly restraint of monarchical rule, Louis XIV continued his predecessors' work of creating

5250-522: The Gesta Henrici Quinti and the chronicle of Jean Le Fèvre, the only two eyewitness accounts on the English camp. Curry and Mortimer questioned the reliability of the Gesta , as there have been doubts as to how much it was written as propaganda for Henry V. Both note that the Gesta vastly overestimates the number of French in the battle; its proportions of English archers to men-at-arms at

5425-510: The House of Plantagenet , who also ruled the Kingdom of England as part of their so-called competing Angevin Empire , resulted in many armed struggles. The most notorious of them all are the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) in which the kings of England laid claim to the French throne. Emerging victorious from said conflicts, France subsequently sought to extend its influence into Italy , but after initial gains

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5600-533: The Hundred Days . When a Seventh European Coalition again deposed Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Bourbon monarchy was once again restored. The Count of Provence - brother of Louis XVI, who was guillotined in 1793 - was crowned as Louis XVIII , nicknamed "The Desired". Louis XVIII tried to conciliate the legacies of the Revolution and the Ancien Régime, by permitting the formation of

5775-598: The Industrial Revolution that was beginning in Britain, the rising middle class of the cities felt increasingly frustrated with a system and rulers that seemed silly, frivolous, aloof, and antiquated, even if true feudalism no longer existed in France. Upon Louis XV's death, his grandson Louis XVI became king. Initially popular, he too came to be widely detested by the 1780s. He was married to an Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette . French intervention in

5950-612: The Jansenists , a group that denied free will and had already been condemned by the popes. In this, he garnered the friendship of the papacy, which had previously been hostile to France because of its policy of putting all church property in the country under the jurisdiction of the state rather than that of Rome. In November 1700, King Charles II of Spain died, ending the Habsburg line in that country. Louis had long planned for this moment, but these plans were thrown into disarray by

6125-624: The July Revolution . The King abdicated, as did his son the Dauphin Louis Antoine , in favour of his grandson Henri, Count of Chambord , nominating his cousin the Duke of Orléans as regent. However, it was too late, and the liberal opposition won out over the monarchy. On 9 August 1830, the Chamber of Deputies elected Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans as "King of the French": for the first time since French Revolution,

6300-677: The Loire , the Seine , and other inland waterways increased. During the reign of Charles the Simple (898–922), Vikings under Rollo from Scandinavia settled along the Seine, downstream from Paris, in a region that came to be known as Normandy . The Carolingians were to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two dynasties, the accession in 987 of Hugh Capet , Duke of France and Count of Paris, established

6475-542: The Master of Crossbowmen ( David de Rambures , dead along with three sons), Master of the Royal Household (Guichard Dauphin) and prévôt of the marshals. According to the heralds, 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility

6650-597: The Third Republic , the French monarchy has not restored. Before the 13th century, only a small part of what is now France was under control of the Frankish king; in the north there were Viking incursions leading to the formation of the Duchy of Normandy ; in the west, the counts of Anjou established themselves as powerful rivals of the king, by the late 11th century ruling over the " Angevin Empire ", which included

6825-646: The War of the Polish Succession from 1733 to 1735. Large-scale warfare resumed with the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). But alliance with the traditional Habsburg enemy (the " Diplomatic Revolution " of 1756) against the rising power of Britain and Prussia led to costly failure in the Seven Years' War (1756–63) and the loss of France's North American colonies. On the whole,

7000-740: The War of the Three Henrys in which Henry III assassinated Henry de Guise , leader of the Spanish-backed Catholic League , and the king was murdered in return. After the assassination of both Henry of Guise (1588) and Henry III (1589), the conflict was ended by the accession of the Protestant king of Navarre as Henry IV (first king of the Bourbon dynasty ) and his subsequent abandonment of Protestantism (Expedient of 1592) effective in 1593, his acceptance by most of

7175-430: The absolute and divine right of kings , and her conversations with saints and the archangel Michael , 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,

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7350-509: The baggage train at the battle. A recent re-appraisal of Henry's strategy of the Agincourt campaign incorporates these three accounts and argues that war was seen as a legal due process for solving the disagreement over claims to the French throne. Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III of England , although in practice

7525-862: The conquest of Algeria . The absolutist tendencies of the King were disliked by the Doctrinaire majority in the Chamber of Deputies , that on 18 March 1830 sent an address to the King, upholding the rights of the Chamber and in effect supporting a transition to a full parliamentary system. Charles X received this address as a veiled threat, and in 25 July of the same year, he issued the St. Cloud Ordinances , in an attempt to reduce Parliament's powers and re-establish absolute rule. The opposition reacted with riots in Parliament and barricades in Paris, that resulted in

7700-506: The kingdom of England . It was only with Philip II of France that the bulk of the territory of Western Francia came under the rule of the Frankish kings, and Philip was consequently the first king to call himself "king of France" (1190). The division of France between the Angevin (Plantagenet) kings of England and the Capetian kings of France would lead to the Hundred Years' War , and France would regain control over these territories only by

7875-423: The mallets they had used to drive their stakes in, attacked the now disordered, fatigued and wounded French men-at-arms massed in front of them. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants, who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour, combined with the English men-at-arms. The impact of thousands of arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through

8050-408: The victory at Agincourt, a number of popular folk songs were created about the battle, the most famous being the " Agincourt Carol ", produced in the first half of the 15th century. Other ballads followed, including " King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France ", raising the popular prominence of particular events mentioned only in passing by the original chroniclers, such as the gift of tennis balls before

8225-532: The 11th century and increased intermittently throughout the Middle Ages, with multiple expulsions and returns. Battle of Agincourt The Battle of Agincourt ( / ˈ æ dʒ ɪ n k ɔːr ( t )/ AJ -in-kor(t) ; French : Azincourt [azɛ̃kuʁ] ) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War . It took place on 25 October 1415 ( Saint Crispin's Day ) near Azincourt , in northern France. The unexpected English victory against

8400-612: The 17th century under Louis XIV . Throughout the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, France was Europe's richest, largest, most populous, powerful and influential country. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. In the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 square kilometres (3,900,000 sq mi),

8575-503: The 18th century saw growing discontent with the monarchy and the established order. Louis XV was a highly unpopular king for his sexual excesses, overall weakness, and for losing New France to the British. The writings of the philosophes such as Voltaire were a clear sign of discontent, but the king chose to ignore them. He died of smallpox in 1774, and the French people shed few tears at his death. While France had not yet experienced

8750-505: The 23rd. Henry returned a conquering hero, seen as blessed by God in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside France. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France. Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of

8925-426: The 25th, Henry deployed his army (approximately 1,500 men-at-arms and 7,000 longbowmen ) across a 750-yard (690 m) part of the defile . The army was divided into three groups, with the right wing led by Edward, Duke of York , the centre led by the king himself, and the left wing under the old and experienced Baron Thomas Camoys . The archers were commanded by Sir Thomas Erpingham , another elderly veteran. It

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9100-532: The American War of Independence was also very expensive. With the country deeply in debt, Louis XVI permitted the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes , but noble disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation in 1776. They were replaced by Jacques Necker . Necker had resigned in 1781 to be replaced by Calonne and Brienne , before being restored in 1788. A harsh winter that year led to widespread food shortages, and by then France

9275-474: The Ancien Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts (like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts ), internal conflicts and civil wars, but they remained a confusing patchwork of local privilege and historic differences until the French Revolution brought about a radical suppression of administrative incoherence. For most of the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), ("The Sun King"), France

9450-682: The Bald with the Treaty of Verdun (843). A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty . The territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum ('king of the Franks') well into the High Middle Ages . The first king calling himself rex Francie ('King of France') was Philip II , in 1190, and officially from 1204. From then, France

9625-555: The Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields. Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Modern test and contemporary accounts conclude that arrows could not penetrate the better quality steel armour, which became available to knights and men-at-arms of fairly modest means by

9800-523: 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

9975-477: The Catholic establishment (1594) and by the Pope (1595), and his issue of the toleration decree known as the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed freedom of private worship and civil equality. France's pacification under Henry IV laid much of the ground for the beginnings of France's rise to European hegemony. France was expansive during all but the end of the seventeenth century: the French began trading in India and Madagascar , founded Quebec and penetrated

10150-400: The Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the Huguenots , which led to a series of civil wars, the Wars of Religion (1562–1598). The Wars of Religion crippled France, but triumph over Spain and the Habsburg monarchy in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. The kingdom became Europe's dominant cultural, political and military power in

10325-433: The English advance. French chroniclers agree that when the mounted charge did come, it did not contain as many men as it should have; Gilles le Bouvier states that some had wandered off to warm themselves and others were walking or feeding their horses. The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank

10500-439: The English had overcome the onslaught of the French men-at-arms and the weary English troops were eyeing the French rearguard ("in incomparable number and still fresh"). Le Fèvre and Wavrin similarly say that it was signs of the French rearguard regrouping and "marching forward in battle order" which made the English think they were still in danger. Henry ordered the slaughter of most of the French prisoners, possibly numbering in

10675-446: The English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny ). He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the ensuing negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to

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10850-423: The English line if it had attacked while they moved their stakes, charged only after the initial volley of arrows from the English. It is unclear whether the delay occurred because the French were hoping the English would launch a frontal assault and were surprised when the English instead started shooting from their new defensive position, or whether the French mounted knights instead did not react quickly enough to

11025-408: The English lines. The use of stakes was an innovation for the English: during the Battle of Crécy , for example, the archers had been instead protected by pits and other obstacles. The tightness of the terrain also seems to have restricted the planned deployment of the French forces. The French had originally drawn up a battle plan that had archers and crossbowmen in front of their men-at-arms, with

11200-576: The English numbers dwindled; they tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army. Despite the numerical disadvantage, the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the English. King Henry V of England led his troops into battle and participated in hand-to-hand fighting. King Charles VI of France did not command the French army as he suffered from psychotic illnesses and associated mental incapacity. The French were commanded by Constable Charles d'Albret and various prominent French noblemen of

11375-424: The English rear. The French apparently had no clear plan for deploying the rest of the army. The rearguard, leaderless, would serve as a "dumping ground" for the surplus troops. The field of battle was arguably the most significant factor in deciding the outcome. The recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland favoured the English, both because of its narrowness, and because of the thick mud through which

11550-413: 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

11725-417: The English were outnumbered by at least four to one, says that the armed servants formed the rearguard in the battle. Mortimer notes the presence of noncombatant pages only, indicating that they would ride the spare horses during the battle and be mistakenly thought of as combatants by the English. The battle remains an important symbol in popular culture. Some notable examples are listed below. Soon after

11900-444: The Fearless , Duke of Burgundy , had conserved their forces, not having fought at Agincourt, but the duke's younger brothers — Anthony, Duke of Brabant and Philip II, Count of Nevers — died at that battle. At a meeting between the Dauphin Charles and John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy was assassinated by the Dauphin's followers in 1419, prompting his son and successor, Philip the Good , to form an alliance with Henry V. In

12075-405: The French had many more men-at-arms than the English, they would accordingly be accompanied by a far greater number of servants. Rogers says each of the 10,000 men-at-arms would be accompanied by a gros valet (an armed, armoured and mounted military servant) and a noncombatant page, counts the former as fighting men, and concludes thus that the French in fact numbered 24,000. Barker, who believes

12250-566: 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

12425-408: The French knights had to walk. Accounts of the battle describe the French engaging the English men-at-arms before being rushed from the sides by the longbowmen as the melee developed. The English account in the Gesta Henrici says: "For when some of them, killed when battle was first joined, fall at the front, so great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind them that

12600-553: The French monarchy maintained a significant degree of autonomy, namely through its policy of " Gallicanism ", whereby the king selected bishops rather than the papacy. During the Protestant Reformation of the mid 16th century, France developed a large and influential Protestant population, primarily of Reformed confession; after French theologian and pastor John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France,

12775-522: The French monarchy was effectively abolished by the proclamation of the French First Republic . The role of the King in France was finally ended with the execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on Monday, January 21, 1793, followed by the " Reign of Terror ", mass executions and the provisional " Directory " form of republican government, and the eventual beginnings of twenty-five years of reform, upheaval, dictatorship, wars and renewal, with

12950-400: The French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot", the plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the distance to the English lines after the English longbowmen started shooting from extreme longbow range (approximately 300 yards (270 m)). A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used, although

13125-401: The French prisoners, whilst attempting to justify it and distance himself from the event. This moment of the battle is portrayed both as a break with the traditions of chivalry and as a key example of the paradox of kingship. Shakespeare's depiction of the battle also plays on the theme of modernity. He contrasts the modern, English king and his army with the medieval, chivalric, older model of

13300-460: The French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Anjou , Brittany , Flanders , Normandy , and Touraine , as well as Aquitaine . Henry would marry Catherine , Charles VI 's young daughter, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered

13475-533: 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 . 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

13650-455: The French victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the English monarchs maintained power only in southwestern Duchy of Aquitaine . The death of Charles IV of France in 1328 without male heirs ended the main Capetian line. Under Salic law the crown could not pass through a woman (Philip IV's daughter was Isabella , whose son was Edward III of England ), so the throne passed to Philip VI , son of Charles of Valois . This, in addition to

13825-468: The French were expecting thousands of men to join them if they waited. They were blocking Henry's retreat, and were willing to wait for as long as it took. There had been a suggestion that the English would run away rather than give battle when they saw that they would be fighting so many French princes. Henry's men were already very weary from hunger and illness and from their ongoing retreat. Apparently Henry believed his fleeing army would perform better on

14000-426: The French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. In such a " press " of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles. The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually

14175-545: The French. Shakespeare's play presented Henry as leading a truly English force into battle, playing on the importance of the link between the monarch and the common soldiers in the fight. The original play does not, however, feature any scenes of the actual battle itself, leading critic Rose Zimbardo to characterise it as "full of warfare, yet empty of conflict." The play introduced the famous St Crispin's Day Speech , considered one of Shakespeare's most heroic speeches, which Henry delivers movingly to his soldiers just before

14350-476: 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

14525-491: The Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed. Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415, carried by a vast fleet. It was often reported to comprise 1,500 ships, but was probably far smaller. Theodore Beck also suggests that among Henry's army was "the king's physician and a little band of surgeons". Thomas Morstede , Henry V's royal surgeon, had previously been contracted by

14700-488: The Hundred Years' War, along with the Battle of Crécy (1346) and Battle of Poitiers (1356). The battle continues to fascinate scholars and the general public into the modern day. It forms the backdrop to notable works such as William Shakespeare 's play Henry V , written in 1599. The Battle of Agincourt is well documented by at least seven contemporary accounts, three from eyewitnesses. The general location of

14875-467: The King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy). France in the Middle Ages was a decentralised, feudal monarchy. In Brittany and Catalonia (the latter now a part of Spain), as well as Aquitaine , the authority of the French king was barely felt. Lorraine , Provence and East Burgundy were states of the Holy Roman Empire and not yet

15050-563: The King was designated as the ruler of the French people and not the country. The Bourbon white flag was substituted with the French tricolour , and a new Charter was introduced in August 1830. The conquest of Algeria continued, and new settlements were established in the Gulf of Guinea , Gabon , Madagascar , and Mayotte , while Tahiti was placed under protectorate . However, despite

15225-476: The League of Augsburg") had just concluded. The reign (1715–1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715–1723) of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans , whose policies were largely continued (1726–1743) by Cardinal Fleury , prime minister in all but name. The exhaustion of Europe after two major wars resulted in a long period of peace, only interrupted by minor conflicts like

15400-790: The North American Great Lakes and Mississippi , established plantation economies in the West Indies and extended their trade contacts in the Levant and enlarged their merchant marine . Henry IV's son Louis XIII and his minister (1624–1642) Cardinal Richelieu , elaborated a policy against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) which had broken out in Germany. After

15575-463: The Spanish territory of Roussillon after the crushing of the ephemeral Catalan Republic and ushered a short period of peace. The Ancien Régime , a French term rendered in English as "Old Rule", or simply "Former Regime", refers primarily to the aristocratic, social and political system of early modern France under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The administrative and social structures of

15750-504: The Welsh esquire Dafydd ("Davy") Gam . Jean de Wavrin , a knight on the French side, wrote that English fatalities were 1,600 "men of all ranks". Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on

15925-509: 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

16100-415: 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

16275-537: 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

16450-406: The battle are also different from those of the English army before the siege of Harfleur. Mortimer also considers that the Gesta vastly inflates the English casualties – 5,000 – at Harfleur, and that "despite the trials of the march, Henry had lost very few men to illness or death; and we have independent testimony that no more than 160 had been captured on the way". Rogers, on the other hand, finds

16625-475: The battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris. This lack of unity in France allowed Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it

16800-415: The battle is not disputed and the site remains relatively unaltered after 600 years. A paucity of archeological evidence, though, has led to a debate as to the exact location of the battlefield. Immediately after the battle, Henry summoned the heralds of the two armies who had watched the battle together with principal French herald Montjoie, and they settled on the name of the battle as Azincourt , after

16975-443: The battle is not known. It may be in the narrow strip of open land formed between the woods of Tramecourt and Azincourt (close to the modern village of Azincourt ). The lack of archaeological evidence at this traditional site has led to suggestions it was fought to the west of Azincourt. In 2019, the historian Michael Livingston also made the case for a site west of Azincourt, based on a review of sources and early maps. Early on

17150-481: The battle, urging his "band of brothers" to stand together in the forthcoming fight. Critic David Margolies describes how it "oozes honour, military glory, love of country and self-sacrifice", and forms one of the first instances of English literature linking solidarity and comradeship to success in battle. Partially as a result, the battle was used as a metaphor at the beginning of the First World War , when

17325-475: The campaign. The most famous cultural depiction of the battle today is in Act IV of William Shakespeare 's Henry V , written in 1599. The play focuses on the pressures of kingship, the tensions between how a king should appear – chivalric, honest, and just – and how a king must sometimes act – Machiavellian and ruthless. Shakespeare illustrates these tensions by depicting Henry's decision to kill some of

17500-567: The century of war were enormous, particularly owing to the plague (the Black Death , usually considered an outbreak of bubonic plague ), which arrived from Italy in 1348, spreading rapidly up the Rhône valley and thence across most of the country: it is estimated that a population of some 18–20 million in modern-day France at the time of the 1328 hearth tax returns had been reduced 150 years later by 50 percent or more. The Renaissance era

17675-428: The charge started. The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from Saint Denis Basilica who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield. Despite advancing through what

17850-415: The coming battle than be captured and ransomed . Henry made a speech emphasising the justness of his cause, and reminding his army of previous great defeats the kings of England had inflicted on the French. The Burgundian sources have him concluding the speech by telling his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw

18025-486: 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,

18200-489: The country, repealing the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It is estimated that anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000 Protestants fled France during the wave of persecution that followed the repeal, (following " Huguenots " beginning a hundred and fifty years earlier until the end of the 18th century) costing the country a great many intellectuals, artisans, and other valuable people. Persecution extended to unorthodox Roman Catholics like

18375-418: The counts of Eu , Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt , and marshal Jean Le Maingre . While numerous English sources give the English casualties in double figures, record evidence identifies at least 112 Englishmen killed in the fighting, while Monstrelet reported 600 English dead. These included the Duke of York , the young Earl of Suffolk and

18550-588: The crown unrivalled power in senior ecclesiastical appointments, France was deeply affected by the Protestant Reformation 's attempt to break the hegemony of Catholic Europe. A growing urban-based Protestant minority (later dubbed Huguenots ) faced ever harsher repression under the rule of Francis I's son King Henry II . After Henry II's death in a joust, the country was ruled by his widow Catherine de' Medici and her sons Francis II , Charles IX and Henry III . Renewed Catholic reaction headed by

18725-574: The death of both king and cardinal, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) secured universal acceptance of Germany's political and religious fragmentation, but the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin experienced a civil uprising known as the Fronde (1648–1653) which expanded into a Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659) . The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) formalised France's seizure (1642) of

18900-442: 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,

19075-417: The defensive, but had to halt the retreat and somehow engage the French before a defensive battle was possible. This entailed abandoning his chosen position, in which the longbowmen were defended from cavalry charges by long sharpened wooden stakes set in the ground and pointed towards the French lines. These stakes had to be pulled out of the ground, carried to the army's new position, and reinstalled to defend

19250-620: The end of the Hundred Years' War: Prior to the French Revolution , the Catholic Church was the official state religion of the Kingdom of France. France was traditionally considered the Church's eldest daughter (French: Fille aînée de l'Église ), and the King of France always maintained close links to the Pope, receiving the title Most Christian Majesty from the Pope in 1464. However,

19425-431: The enemy". The deep, soft mud particularly favoured the English force because, once knocked to the ground, the heavily armoured French knights had a hard time getting back up to fight in the melee. Barker states that some knights, encumbered by their armour, actually drowned in their helmets. On the morning of 25 October, the French were still waiting for additional troops to arrive. The Duke of Brabant (about 2,000 men),

19600-459: The exact numbers Curry uses, Bertrand Schnerb, a professor of medieval history at the University of Lille, states the French probably had 12,000–15,000 troops. Juliet Barker , Jonathan Sumption and Clifford J. Rogers criticized Curry's reliance on administrative records, arguing that they are incomplete and that several of the available primary sources already offer a credible assessment of

19775-445: The exhausted English forces. Contemporary chroniclers did not criticise Henry for ordering the killing. In his study of the battle John Keegan argued that the main aim was not to actually kill the French prisoners but rather to terrorise them into submission and quell any possibility they might resume the fight, which would probably have caused the uncommitted French reserve forces to join the fray, as well. Such an event would have posed

19950-440: 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

20125-419: The front lines and the other troops, for which there was no remaining space, to be placed behind. Although it had been planned for the archers and crossbowmen to be placed with the infantry wings, they were now regarded as unnecessary and placed behind them instead. On account of the lack of space, the French drew up a third battle, the rearguard, which was on horseback and mainly comprised the varlets mounted on

20300-435: The front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet. The only French success was an attack on the lightly protected English baggage train, with Ysembart d'Azincourt (leading a small number of men-at-arms and varlets plus about 600 peasants) seizing some of Henry's personal treasures, including

20475-450: The generous terms of marriage with Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. By 1415, negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked

20650-408: The horses belonging to the men fighting on foot ahead. The French vanguard and main battle numbered respectively 4,800 and 3,000 men-at-arms. Both lines were arrayed in tight, dense formations of about 16 ranks each, and were positioned a bowshot length from each other. Albret, Boucicaut and almost all the leading noblemen were assigned stations in the vanguard. The dukes of Alençon and Bar led

20825-418: The initial reforms, Louis Philippe was little different from his predecessors. The old nobility was replaced by urban bourgeoisie, and the working class was excluded from voting. Louis Philippe appointed notable bourgeois as Prime Minister , like banker Casimir Périer , academic François Guizot , general Jean-de-Dieu Soult , and thus obtained the nickname of "Citizen King" ( Roi-Citoyen ). The July Monarchy

21000-481: The king to supply a team of surgeons and makers of surgical instruments to take part in the Agincourt campaign. The army of about 12,000 men and up to 20,000 horses besieged the port of Harfleur . The siege took longer than expected. The town surrendered on 22 September, and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English army had suffered many casualties through disease. Rather than retire directly to England for

21175-572: The kingdom of France. Charles the Bald was also crowned King of Lotharingia after the death of Lothair II in 869, but in the Treaty of Meerssen (870) was forced to cede much of Lotharingia to his brothers, retaining the Rhône and Meuse basins (including Verdun , Vienne and Besançon ) but leaving the Rhineland with Aachen , Metz , and Trier in East Francia . Viking incursions up

21350-501: The late 17th century by Louis XIV . The resulting exodus of Huguenots from the Kingdom of France created a brain drain , as many of them had occupied important places in society. Jews have a documented presence in France since at least the early Middle Ages . The Kingdom of France was a center of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages, producing influential Jewish scholars such as Rashi and even hosting theological debates between Jews and Christians. Widespread persecution began in

21525-558: The later years of Charlemagne 's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of the Kingdom of the Franks . After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining political unity and the empire began to crumble. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts, with Charles the Bald ruling over West Francia , the nucleus of what would develop into

21700-437: The leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. The English Gesta Henrici described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards. According to contemporary English accounts, Henry fought hand to hand. Upon hearing that his youngest brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in

21875-445: The limbs, particularly at close range. In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and

22050-402: The living fell on top of the dead, and others falling on top of the living were killed as well." Although the French initially pushed the English back, they became so closely packed that they were described as having trouble using their weapons properly. The French monk of St. Denis says: "Their vanguard, composed of about 5,000 men, found itself at first so tightly packed that those who were in

22225-485: 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. Kingdom of France The Kingdom of France was descended directly from the western Frankish realm of the Carolingian Empire , which was ceded to Charles

22400-423: The longbowmen because of the encroaching woodland; they were also unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as

22575-647: The lower Seine became a source of particular concern when Duke William of Normandy took possession of the Kingdom of England by the Norman Conquest of 1066, making himself and his heirs the king's equal outside France (where he was still nominally subject to the Crown). Henry II inherited the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou , and married France's newly single ex-queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine , who ruled much of southwest France, in 1152. After defeating

22750-491: The main battle. A further 600 dismounted men-at-arms stood in each wing, with the left under the Count of Vendôme and the right under the Count of Richemont . To disperse the enemy archers, a cavalry force of 800–1,200 picked men-at-arms, led by Clignet de Bréban and Louis de Bosredon , was distributed evenly between both flanks of the vanguard (standing slightly forward, like horns). Some 200 mounted men-at-arms would attack

22925-466: The manoeuvre as a deliberate provocation to battle aimed at the dauphin , who had failed to respond to Henry's personal challenge to combat at Harfleur. During the siege, the French had raised an army which assembled around Rouen . This was not strictly a feudal army, but an army paid through a system similar to that of the English. The French hoped to raise 9,000 troops, but the army was not ready in time to relieve Harfleur. After Henry V marched to

23100-478: The mid 15th century. What is now eastern France (Lorraine, Arelat) was not part of Western Francia to begin with and was only incorporated into the kingdom during the early modern period . Territories inherited from Western Francia: Acquisitions during the 13th to 14th centuries: Acquisitions from the Plantagenet kings of England with the French victory in the Hundred Years' War 1453 Acquisitions after

23275-426: The middle of the 14th century, but could penetrate the poorer quality wrought iron armour. Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at 220 yards (200 m). He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting

23450-447: The military and political leaders of the past generation". Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes ( Alençon , Bar and Brabant ), nine counts ( Blâmont , Dreux , Fauquembergue, Grandpré , Marle , Nevers , Roucy , Vaucourt, Vaudémont ) and one viscount ( Puisaye ), also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable (Albret), an admiral (the lord of Dampierre ),

23625-435: The mud, the heat and difficulty breathing in plate armour with the visor down, and the crush of their numbers, meant the French men-at-arms could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line. The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. As the melee developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with

23800-654: The name of Charles X . Charles X was a strong reactionary who supported the ultra-royalists and the Catholic Church . Under his reign, the censorship of newspapers was reinforced, the Anti-Sacrilege Act passed, and compensations to Émigrés were increased. However, the reign also witnessed the French intervention in the Greek Revolution in favour of the Greek rebels, and the first phase of

23975-400: The narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. After the initial wave,

24150-479: The nearest fortified place. Two of the most frequently cited accounts come from Burgundian sources, one from Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy who was present at the battle, and the other from Enguerrand de Monstrelet . The English eyewitness account comes from the anonymous author of the Gesta Henrici Quinti , believed to have been written by a chaplain in the King's household who would have been in

24325-518: The north, the French moved to block them along the River Somme . They were successful for a time, forcing Henry to move south, away from Calais, to find a ford . The English finally crossed the Somme south of Péronne , at Béthencourt and Voyennes and resumed marching north. Without a river obstacle to defend, the French were hesitant to force a battle. They shadowed Henry's army while calling

24500-427: The number 5,000 plausible, giving several analogous historical events to support his case, and Barker considers that the fragmentary pay records which Curry relies on actually support the lower estimates. Historians disagree less about the French numbers. Rogers, Mortimer and Sumption all give more or less 10,000 men-at-arms for the French, using as a source the herald of the Duke of Berry , an eyewitness. The number

24675-497: The number of French Protestants ( Huguenots ) steadily swelled to 10 percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people. The ensuring French Wars of Religion , and particularly the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre , decimated the Huguenot community; Protestants declined to seven to eight percent of the kingdom's population by the end of the 16th century. The Edict of Nantes brought decades of respite until its revocation in

24850-404: The numbers involved. Ian Mortimer endorsed Curry's methodology, though applied it more liberally, noting how she "minimises French numbers (by limiting her figures to those in the basic army and a few specific additional companies) and maximises English numbers (by assuming the numbers sent home from Harfleur were no greater than sick lists)", and concluded that "the most extreme imbalance which

25025-500: The numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France, and started a new period of English dominance in the war that would last for 14 years until England was defeated by France in 1429 during the Siege of Orléans . After several decades of relative peace, the English had resumed the war in 1415 amid the failure of negotiations with the French. In the ensuing campaign, many soldiers died from disease, and

25200-556: 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

25375-563: The powerful dukes of Guise culminated in a massacre of Huguenots (1572), starting the first of the French Wars of Religion , during which English, German, and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant and Catholic forces. Opposed to absolute monarchy, the Huguenot Monarchomachs theorized during this time the right of rebellion and the legitimacy of tyrannicide . The Wars of Religion culminated in

25550-533: 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

25725-479: The rear. Barker, following the Gesta Henrici , believed to have been written by an English chaplain who was actually in the baggage train, concluded that the attack happened at the start of the battle. Regardless of when the baggage assault happened, at some point after the initial English victory, Henry became alarmed that the French were regrouping for another attack. The Gesta Henrici places this after

25900-462: 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

26075-654: The second-largest empire in the world at the time behind the Spanish Empire . Colonial conflicts with Great Britain led to the loss of much of its North American holdings by 1763. French intervention in the American Revolutionary War helped the United States secure independence from King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain , but was costly and achieved little for France. France through its French colonial empire , became

26250-555: 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

26425-402: The task and recognizing the difficulty of killing thousands of prisoners quickly, speculates that relatively few prisoners were actually killed before the French reserves fled the field and Henry rescinded the order. The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men were killed. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, "read like a roll call of

26600-430: The third rank could scarcely use their swords," and the Burgundian sources have a similar passage. Recent heavy rain had made the battle field very muddy, proving very tiring to walk through in full plate armour . The French monk of St. Denis describes the French troops as "marching through the middle of the mud where they sank up to their knees. So they were already overcome with fatigue even before they advanced against

26775-399: The thousands. He ordered only the highest-ranked prisoners to be spared, presumably because they were the most likely to fetch a large ransom under the chivalric system of warfare. The prisoners outnumbered their captors; according to most chroniclers, Henry feared that the prisoners would realise their advantage in numbers, rearm themselves with the weapons strewn about the field, and overwhelm

26950-615: The throne would end up recreating the grand multi-national Empire of Charles V ; of the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and the Spanish territories in Italy, which would also grossly upset the power balance. However, the rest of Europe would not stand for his ambitions in Spain, and so the long War of the Spanish Succession began (1701–1714), a mere three years after the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697, a.k.a. "War of

27125-641: The various Napoleonic Wars . Following the French Revolution (1789–99) and the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1814), the monarchy was restored when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the House of Bourbon in 1814. However the deposed Emperor Napoleon I returned triumphantly to Paris from his exile in Elba and ruled France for a short period known as

27300-532: The way for France to undertake the long Italian Wars (1494–1559), which marked the beginning of early modern France. French efforts to gain dominance resulted only in the increased power of the House of Habsburg . Barely were the Italian Wars over, when France was plunged into a domestic crisis with far-reaching consequences. Despite the conclusion of a Concordat between France and the Papacy (1516), granting

27475-464: The will of King Charles, which left the entire Spanish Empire to Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou , (1683–1746). Essentially, Spain was to become a perpetual ally and even obedient satellite of France, ruled by a king who would carry out orders from Versailles. Realizing how this would upset the balance of power, the other European rulers were outraged. However, most of the alternatives were equally undesirable. For example, putting another Habsburg on

27650-407: The winter, with his costly expedition resulting in the capture of only one town, Henry decided to march most of his army (roughly 9,000) through Normandy to the port of Calais , the English stronghold in northern France, to demonstrate by his presence in the territory at the head of an army that his right to rule in the duchy was more than a mere abstract legal and historical claim. He also intended

27825-540: Was a powder keg ready to explode. On the eve of the French Revolution of July 1789, France was in a profound institutional and financial crisis, but the ideas of the Enlightenment had begun to permeate the educated classes of society. On September 3, 1791, the absolute monarchy which had governed France for 948 years was forced to limit its power and become a provisional constitutional monarchy. However, this too would not last very long and on September 21, 1792,

28000-454: Was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois , Ponthieu , Normandy, Picardy ." Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon ,

28175-468: Was beset by corruption scandals and financial crisis. The opposition of the King was composed of Legitimists , supporting the Count of Chambord , Bourbon claimant to the throne, and of Bonapartists and Republicans , who fought against royalty and supported the principles of democracy. The King tried to suppress the opposition with censorship, but when the Campagne des banquets ("Banquets' Campaign")

28350-454: 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. 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,

28525-511: Was continuously ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines under the Valois and Bourbon until the monarchy was abolished in 1792 during the French Revolution . The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which the institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though

28700-575: Was defeated by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in the ensuing Italian Wars (1494–1559). France in the early modern era was increasingly centralised; the French language began to displace other languages from official use, and the monarch expanded his absolute power in an administrative system, known as the Ancien Régime , complicated by historic and regional irregularities in taxation, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions, and local prerogatives. Religiously, France became divided between

28875-468: Was how Crécy and the other famous longbow victories had been won. The English had very little food, had marched 260 miles (420 km) in two and a half weeks, were suffering from sickness such as dysentery , and were greatly outnumbered by well-equipped French men-at-arms. The French army blocked Henry's way to the safety of Calais, and delaying battle would only further weaken his tired army and allow more French troops to arrive. The precise location of

29050-519: 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

29225-473: Was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle. Most primary sources which describe the battle have the English outnumbered by several times. By contrast, Anne Curry in her 2005 book Agincourt: A New History argued, based on research into the surviving administrative records, that the French army was 12,000 strong, and the English army 9,000, proportions of four to three. While not necessarily agreeing with

29400-404: 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

29575-425: Was noted for the emergence of powerful centralized institutions, as well as a flourishing culture (much of it imported from Italy ). The kings built a strong fiscal system, which heightened the power of the king to raise armies that overawed the local nobility. In Paris especially there emerged strong traditions in literature, art and music. The prevailing style was classical . The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

29750-481: 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

29925-666: Was repressed in February 1848, riots and seditions erupted in Paris and later all France, resulting in the February Revolution . The National Guard refused to repress the rebellion, resulting in Louis Philippe abdicating and fleeing to England. On 24 February 1848, the monarchy was abolished and the Second Republic was proclaimed. Despite later attempts to re-establish the Kingdom in the 1870s, during

30100-591: Was signed into law by Francis I in 1539. Largely the work of Chancellor Guillaume Poyet , it dealt with a number of government, judicial and ecclesiastical matters. Articles 110 and 111, the most famous, called for the use of the French language in all legal acts, notarised contracts and official legislation. After the Hundred Years' War, Charles VIII of France signed three additional treaties with Henry VII of England , Emperor Maximilian I , and Ferdinand II of Aragon respectively at Étaples (1492), Senlis (1493) and Barcelona (1493). These three treaties cleared

30275-490: Was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Cardinal Richelieu's successor as the King's chief minister, (1642–61) Cardinal Jules Mazarin , (1602–1661). Cardinal Mazarin oversaw the creation of a French Royal Navy that rivalled England's , expanding it from 25 ships to almost 200. The size of the French Royal Army was also considerably increased. Renewed wars (the War of Devolution , 1667–1668 and

30450-417: 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. Henry V of England , of the House of Plantagenet, asserted a claim of inheritance of the French throne through

30625-430: Was to break the formation of the English archers and thus clear the way for the infantry to advance. A second, smaller mounted force was to attack the rear of the English army, along with its baggage and servants. Many lords and gentlemen demanded and received position in the front lines, where they would have a higher chance to acquire glory and valuable ransoms; this resulted in the bulk of the men-at-arms being massed in

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