HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. — In 1336 Edward III of England, who had at first acknowledged the new King of France Philip VI of Valois, laid claim to the French crown on the ground that his father Edward II had married Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair. Thus began the war, which lasted more than a century (from 1339 to 1475) but with long interruptions. From 1346 (battle of Crécy) to 1360 (peace of Bretigny) France suffered a series of reverses, aggravated by a twofold internal upheaval: that of the Parisian bourgeois (to establish a free commune) and that of the peasants (Jacquerie); two movements from which the English derived good advantage.
A recovery was made by France under Charles V (1364–80), who was able to avail himself of a great captain, Bertrand Du Guesclin: England, then agitated by the Lollard movement, was compelled to sue for a truce lasting several years. But under the mad king Charles VI, the internal strife between Burgundians and Armagnacs plunged France once more into anarchy. With the aid of the Burgundians, Henry V landed in France and defeated the French at Agincourt. In 1420 the Treaty of Troyes decreed that Henry V should be regent of France and, on the death of Charles VI, his successor. When Charles died, the son of Henry, Henry VI, was proclaimed king, but the fact that he was still a child favoured the French rally, and the dynastic war became a war of national independence. The domains of Charles VI’s heir, Charles VII, were reduced to a few lands in central France; but Joan of Arc restored the irresolute monarch to action, led him to be crowned at Reims and to attack the English besieging Orléans. The mystic fervour of the heroine restored to the French their self-confidence, and even after Joan was captured by the English and burnt, their impetus did not cease: in 1453 only Calais remained in English hands. Finally Louis XI made peace with the English and ended the war with the Treaty of Picquigny (1475).