Hundred Years' War (1415–53)

The Lancastrian War was the third phase of the Anglo-French Hundred Years' War. It lasted from 1415, when Henry V of England invaded Normandy, to 1453 with the failure of the English to recover Bordeaux. It followed a long period of peace from 1389 at end of the Caroline War. The phase was named after the House of Lancaster, the ruling house of the Kingdom of England, to which Henry V belonged. After the invasion of 1419, Henry V and, after his death, his brother John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, brought the English to the height of their power in France, with an English king crowned in Paris. However, by that time, with charismatic leaders such as Joan of Arc and La Hire, strong French counterattacks had started to win back all English continental territories, except the Pale of Calais, which was finally captured in 1558. Charles VII of France was crowned in Notre-Dame de Reims in 1429. The Battle of Castillon (1453) was the last battle 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 claim the French throne until 1800.

The Anglo-Burgundian alliance leads to the Treaty of Troyes
Henry V of England made a formal alliance with Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, who had taken Paris, after the Armagnac execution of John of Burgundy in 1419. Together, they forced the mad king Charles VI sign the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry would marry Charles' daughter Catherine of Valois and Henry's heirs would inherit the throne of France. The Dauphin, the future Charles VII, was declared illegitimate. Henry formally entered Paris later that year and the agreement was ratified by the French Estates-General. Earlier that year an English army under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, ambushed and destroyed a Franco-Scottish force at Fresnay 20 miles north of Le Mans (March 1420) - according to a chronicler the allies lost 3000 men, their entire camp and its contents including the Scottish treasury.

In 1421, an English army of 10,000 was defeated by a Franco-Scottish army of 6000 at the Battle of Baugé. During the battle Thomas of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Clarence, brother of Henry V, was killed.

Anglo-Burgundian armies acute pressure on the Armagnac party and Dauphin Charles
After Henry's early death in 1422, almost simultaneously with that of his father-in-law, his baby son was crowned King Henry VI of England and King 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 the banks of the Yonne river. He personally led the crossing of the river, successfully assaulting a very strong 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.

In 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. Nor was this a victory of the longbow, for advances in plate armour had given armoured cavalry a much greater measure of protection. The heat of August meant the English archers could not implant their stakes, led to the archers of one flank being swept away. However the English men-at-arms stood firm and waded into their enemy, assisted by a flank attack from archers from the other wing, they destroyed the allied army. The Scots were surrounded on the field and annihilated, virtually to the last man - some 6500 dying there, including all their commanders. And as a result no large scale Scottish force landed in France again. The French too took heavy punishment, all their leaders were killed on the field, the rank and file killed or mostly dispersed.

The following 5 years saw English power at its peak, reaching from the Channel to the Loire, excluding only Orléans and Angers, and from Brittany in the west to Burgundy in the east. But this was achieved with ever-decreasing resources of man-power.

Joan of Arc uprising, coronation of Charles VII and English defeat
By 1428, the English were laying siege to Orléans, one of the most heavily-defended cities in Europe, with more cannon than the English, one of which managed to kill the English commander, Salisbury. The English force was insufficient to fully invest the city, but larger French forces remained disorganised. 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. She raised the morale of the local troops and they attacked the English redoubts, forcing the English to lift the siege. At the same time the French king had updated and enhanced his army and took advantage of the lack of common goal between allies.

Inspired by Joan, 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, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. 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, and she was captured in curious circumstances by English allies as she defended Compiègne which had opened its doors to her.

Joan was captured in 1430 and later sold to the English, tried by an ecclesiastic court, and executed. But, in 1435, the Burgundians under Philip III switched sides, signing the Treaty of Arras and returning Paris to the King of France. Burgundy's allegiance remained fickle, but their 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.

The long truces that marked the war also 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, the French had retaken Rouen, and 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 having been 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 Gascony, though initially welcomed by the locals, was crushed by Jean Bureau and his cannon 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.