What Caused the Hundred Years War?

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley concludes his series and considers what the key reasons for the Hundred Years War truly were.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here, and the expansion of Plantagenet power here, and Anglo-French conflict in the 13th century here.

A depiction of the marriage of King Charles IV of France and Marie of Luxembourg. By Jean Fouquet.

The Hundred Years War did not just begin as a dynastic dispute which left the throne of France having multiple claimants with the death of Charles IV of France, the last male of the mainline of the Capet dynasties, in 1328. The driving forces behind this conflict were geopolitical, historical, and dynastic disputes over the succession and the expansion of Capet’s dynastic power in France during the 12th and 13th centuries.

The End of the Capetian Kings of France

During Charles’ six years as the King of France from 1322 CE to 1328 CE, he launched his attempt to claim Gascony from King Edward III’s father, Edward II of England, who reigned from 1307 CE to 1327 CE. Philip VI of France, the successor to Charles IV and the first Valois King of France from 1328 CE to 1350 CE, attempted to seize Gascony from King Edward III of England the same way the French kings from 1295 tried to take Gascony away from the Plantagenet dynasty. Philip VI also blocked trade or attempted to block English wool merchants from selling their wool to be turned into cloth in Flanders; this was an economic reason for the Hundred Years' War (Sumption, 1999). Another reason that contributed to the conflict was the renewed alliance between King David I of Scotland and Philip Vi of France during the 1330s, when King Edward III attempted to bring Scotland into the English crown. This meant an inevitable clash between the kings of England and France over territory, economics, security, and the aims of both dynasties in England and France. Another factor that must be considered is the weight of history. Since Hugh Capet was elected King of the Franks in 987, this conflict became an inevitability because since Hugh became King, his descendants have all slowly expanded the role, dynastic prestige, and other avenues of symbolism, practicality to expand their power within and without the kingdom of France. This goes to show that the Hundred Years War was not created from a vacuum, merely a continuation of foreign policy and the conflict between territorial princes that began as early as the 1050s with Henry I of France fighting Duke William II of Normandy due to him being a threat to royal power in the north of France.

The Political and Geopolitics Between the Kingdoms of England & France

The kingdoms of England and France have historically been fighting each other since the Norman conquest. Until the battle of Waterloo in 1815 CE, this violence and conflict spanned the globe and Europe for centuries, although it did not come purely from the Hundred Years War. Still, there is a political and geopolitical dimension to this. There is a reason why nations, kingdoms, and even civilizations did not survive until the modern era; the answer can be summed up in simple geography. The kingdom of England, by the 13th century encompassed the principalities of Wales and parts of Scotland and Ireland, and by the start of the Hundred Years War in the mid-14th century, England had many good reasons to fight France. One of these reasons was that English territory too often did not enable trade - England was also full of swampland and hard to navigate terrain, with areas such as East Anglia and northern England being far from London. Equally, Wales is hilly and not useful for growing crops. So, why did this contribute to the Hundred Years War? The answer to that is that the kings of England no longer had useful territories that could be taken within the British Isles and that the ancestral Plantagenet lands in Europe were a good option for the continued growth of the kingdom.

As for the French, the rulers of the country had been in or wanted some type of conflict with England for centuries. The Valois dynasty that succeeded after the death of Charles IV of France in many ways continued the policy of Capetian Kings since 987 CE in securing and expanding the Royal domains. Indeed, Philip IV and his successors had attempted to remove Plantagenets from the mainland European continent.

All told, the reasons for the Hundred Years War were varied and complex - and they form part of a long history of conflict between England and France.

What do you think the key reasons for the Hundred Years War were? Let us know below.

Bibliography

Brown, E. A. R. (2012). Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France. Speculum, 87(1), 1–36. https://www.jstor.o rg/stable/41409273?searchText=Philip%20iV%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BiV%2Bof%2BFrance&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A53cb91140781cd8dbcae9f5db0030351

Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business.

Conflict Between England and France in the 13th Century

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley looks at how France and England interacted during the 13th century, including the framework between France and England, and France’s alliance with Scotland.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here, and the expansion of Plantagenet power here.

An apparent depiction of King Edward I of England.

The cause of The Hundred Years War were a series of territorial and legal disputes between the French crown and their vassals, the kings of England, regarding their continental holdings. The Treaty of Paris in 1259 established a framework of peace between both kingdoms. It lasted until the Anglo-French war of 1294 to 1298, with the peace ending due to Philip iV of France’s war in the Netherlands and alliance with Scotland. The peace was only temporarily restored with the second marriage of Edward I of England and Princess Margaret, the daughter of King Philip III of France.

Constitutional Legal Framework

The constitutional legal framework that sparked the conflict was King Edward I of England’s inability to pay homage to the King of France in the 1290s. His inability to come to Paris caused the war to begin. Historians debate why King Philip, known as Philip the fair or Philip the Iron King, restarted the conflict with the Plantagenet kings of England. Some believed Philip was given poor council and others described Philip as highly intelligent and like an “owl all-seeing” (Brown, 2012). Regardless of the reasons, the most plausible is that Philip was a long line of Capetian kings that have merely continued the dynasties policy of centralizing the kingdom within the feudal structures of their age by reducing the powers and independence of its leaders. By the late 13th century the dukedom of Normandy was incorporated into the Royal French lands permanently with the lands of Poitier, Champagne, Valois, greater Anjou and Artos going to cadet branches of the ruling French dynasties. In this context, we have a strong plausible reason why the conflict known as the Hundred Years War was destined to happen (Hallam & West, 2020). No feudal dynasty would willingly give up their ancestral lands. This meant the Plantagenets had no choice but to keep fighting to expand or retain what remained of their continental holdings, which the family did until their disposition in 1485 CE (Jones, 2015).

Origins of the Hundred Years War

Before the Hundred Years War there was an alliance between King John I of Scotland and King Philip iV of France. This alliance would last until 1560, and was known as the Auild alliance or old alliance. The reason why this alliance made the Hundred Years War inevitable was that King Edward I of England was establishing a legal framework for him to be the arbitrator of justice and law in the kingdom of Scotland. King Edward undermined the King of Scots royal authority, which led to a 30 years war between the kings of England and Scotland over control over the kingdom of Scotland. This began with Edwards’ first invasion in 1295 over the alliance between Scotland and France, which was deemed a direct threat to the English crown. With the continued backing of the French crown for the kings of Scotland, this meant that for the kings of England to subdue Scotland, they would have to make peace with France or fight a two-way war, one to the north against Scotland and one to the south protecting the Plantagenet domains in Gascony and the English Channel from French invasions.

Wars in the 1290s

King Edward I became King of England in 1272, and he was England’s fifth Plantagenet king since 1154. In practical terms, this meant that the dynasties transformed from one being a descendant of William to a legitimate and established kingdom with its own legal and royal traditions that were becoming increasingly independent, and an English identity was starting to emerge. It was this growing independence and the growing confidence of the English nation and the English kingship that enabled Edward I of England to have the support of his nobility when fighting. Wars in France, the Netherlands, Wales, Gascony, and Scotland with the support for the four-way conflict shows that the balance between the monarchies of England and France was changing (King, 2016). Previous Plantagenet kings could not rely on their nobility when it came to conflicts with the kings of France. With this dynamic changing, it meant that England’s seventh Plantagenet king, Edward III of England, who reigned from 1327 CE until 1377 CE, had the support and dynastic legitimacy to fight a war against the kings of France and the descendants of Charlemagne - something that previous Norman and Plantagenet kings of England did not have.

What do you think of the engagements between England and France in the 13th century? Let us know below.

Bibliography

Brown, E. A. R. (2012). Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France. Speculum, 87(1), 1–36. https://www.jstor.o rg/stable/41409273?searchText=Philip%20iV%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BiV%2Bof%2BFrance&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A53cb91140781cd8dbcae9f5db0030351

Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business. 

The Norman Conquest of England and the Expansion of Plantagenet Power in the 11th and 12th Centuries

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley looks at the Norman conquest of England and the expansion of Plantagenet power in the 11th and 12th Centuries as factors for the later outbreak of war.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here.

William the Conqueror, or William II of Normandy, as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.

William II of Normandy, was nominated heir to the throne of England in 1066 CE. This created unfortunate political conflicts between the thrones of England and France because, under feudal politics, God’s anointed cannot bow to other kings or emperors (Bates, 2018). This meant that in practical terms, the relationship between the Dukes of Normandy, who were also kings of England from 1066 to 1204, was that there was an un-codified feudal, political and social relationship between the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of the Franks.

Feudal Relationships 

There is such contention in the feudal relationship between the kings of England after the Norman conquest and the Kings of the Franks because of the vast territories the kings of England held within the kingdom of modern day France by 1154. The Norman dynasty’s crown, after the extinction of the male line of William the Conqueror in 1135 with the death of King Henry I of England, passed to Stephen of Balos, who became King Stephen I of England. He fought for control of the crown from Empress Matilda who was the only legitimate surviving child of Henry I of England, thus leading to over 20 years of anarchy from 1135 to 1154. When the Plantagenets managed to finally secure the crown with a peace deal with King Stephen, the Plantagenets were not only the Counts of greater Anjou but also the Dukes of Normandy and Dukes of Aquitaine. This massive territorial expansion placed the Plantagenet dynasties and Capetian Kings of France on a collision course of conflict and war (Jones, 2014).

To reiterate, the kings of the Franks did not truly have centralized government to control their lords. This meant a constant power struggle between the territorial princes over power and prestige with the crown, at least symbolically the head of the kingdom. With the rapid expansion of Norman power with the conquest of England, England and Normandy during the 11th and 12th centuries were probably the most centralized kingdoms in Europe in terms of resources. This meant that the kings of England, also as Dukes of Normandy, could outcompete the kings of France, Dukes of Brittany, Counts of Anjou, and other lords within the kingdom of the Franks. The massive gains of King Henry II of England with his marriage to the heiress of the Aquitaine, Eleanor of Aquitaine, further catapulted the kings of England as the most powerful rulers in Western Europe for a time. However, even with these gains, the accurate picture is not that simple. King Henry II of England did not rule his continental domains as a fiefdom of the kingdom of England; this can be hard to grasp with the modern concepts of nationhood and country. It is essential to highlight that from 1066 CE until 1399 CE, the language of the English nobility was not English, but French. The coronation oath was not spoken predominantly in English until the rule of King Henry IV of England (1399 CE to 1413 CE). In practical terms, until the beginning of the Hundred Years War and the long divorce between the English and French nobility, England and its aristocracy would be predominantly French and involved in affairs on the continent. Henry II of England styled himself as the King of the English, Lord of the Normans, Lord of the Angevin, and the Lord of Aquitania (Gold, 2019). What this meant in practical terms was that the Plantagenets were not ruling monarchs in their continental lands; they were still subservient to the throne of the Franks, for these holdings created a constitutional, legal and diplomatic problem regarding the legal relationship between the kings of England and the kings of France which contributed to the causes of the Hundred Years War (Strayer, 1956).

Anglo-Norman Realm and Hundred Years War 

The establishment of the Anglo-Norman realm between 1066 CE and 1204 CE placed the dynasties of England and France on a collision course towards war and conflict, and it is more accurate to say that there have been three different Hundred Years’ War between the kingdoms. The first was from 1052 CE to 1214 CE, the second was from 1294 CE to 1453 CE, and the final conflict was from 1689 CE to 1814 CE. Though these dates are all more than 100 years, and historians have debated the start of these conflicts, the main point is that over nearly 800 years, England and France have been trying to conquer one another (Zeihan, 2020).

The cause of the Hundred Years War was the feudal relationship between the English kings as Dukes of Normandy, Dukes of Aquitaine and other territories on the continent as vassals to the King of France. This position was untenable and was one of the driving factors in conflicts between the dynasties (Sumption, 1999). Even after Philip II, Augustus of France (1180 CE to 1223 CE) won back the bulk of the Plantagenet and Norman territories from King John of England in the early 13th century. Then, after the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, which was a pivotal battle in French history which is the cultural equivalent of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 or the Battle of Bosworth Field which ended the Plantagenets rule in England in 1485. The battle of Bouvines was significant in the emergence of French national identity, with proto-nationalism in France and England starting to emerge in the 13th and 14th centuries (van Gorp, 2011). Philip II and his son Louis VIII of France, who between them ruled from 1180 CE to 1226 CE, established Capetian authority in northern, central and southern France, reaching its apex under Philip IV of France in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. This is relevant to the causes of the Hundred Years War. Until their destruction in 1485, the Plantagenet dynasty would continue to try to reclaim its lost territories. However, this answer is not entirely clear cut because King Henry III of England, who reigned from 1216 CE to 1272 CE, made a peace treaty with St Louis or Louis IX of France, who reigned from 1226 CE to 1270 CE. This peace treaty was the Treaty of Paris signed in 1259 CE (Rothwell, 1927). The treaty would be important because it maintained peace between the kingdoms from 1259 CE to 1294 CE. After all, no framework split the duties of the kings of England and their duties as the Dukes of Aquitaine/Gascony. It was this legal framework that, by a technicality, gave Philip IV of France’s claims to dominion or at least legal dominion over the kings of England. This legal framework was a massive contributor towards the beginning of the Hundred Years War (Morris, 2016).

What do you think of the rise of the expansion of Plantagenet power Let us know below.

Bibliography

Brown, E. A. R. (2012). Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France. Speculum, 87(1), 1–36. https://www.jstor.o rg/stable/41409273?searchText=Philip%20iV%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BiV%2Bof%2BFrance&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A53cb91140781cd8dbcae9f5db0030351

Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business.