King Edward III of England grants Aquitaine in France to his son, Edward the Black Prince. Aquitaine had come into the English royal family through the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. However, by French law the Dukes of Aquitaine owed homage to the Kings of France, a convention which Philip II invoked so that he could confiscate the duchy from King John in 1202. After this, little remained of English Aquitaine apart from Gascony until 1360, when under the Treaty of Brétigny Edward III recovered Poitou. This larger Aquitaine was his gift to his son, but Poitou was lost again in 1369, and Gascony in 1453.
Part 1 of 2
AFTER the Norman Conquest in 1066, King William’s successors enlarged his French territories through marriage and battle. However, in 1204 the French King Philip II took Anjou, Normandy and much of Poitou from the hapless King John, and in 1294 Philip IV declared prosperous Aquitaine forfeit too,* forcing Edward I to add war in France to his bruising Scottish campaign.
But the Hundred Years’ War truly began in 1337, when Philip VI of France, eager to help his Scottish friends, honoured the Auld Alliance by pressing France’s claim on Aquitaine. Edward III hit back by declaring himself King of France in support of Flanders, an unhappy French possession, and after defeating a French fleet at Sluys in 1340 went on to dominate her armies at Crécy on August 26th, 1346, Calais on August 3rd, 1347, and Poitiers on September 19th, 1356, where John II was taken prisoner.* Nevertheless, by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, Edward offered to renounce his claim in return for Aquitaine.
Aquitaine, the chief bone of contention, was a large Province down on the south western corner of France. The English desperately wanted it, as by the 1330s its trade in wine and other goods was the Crown’s principal source of income. Its borders changed considerably over time, but at its largest extent it included today’s wine-making areas of Cognac, Bergerac, Medoc, Bordeaux, Armagnac and Béarn. Gascony towards the border with Spain was the part of Aquitaine to remain the longest in English hands. See Wikipedia and Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Sluys is now Sluis in the west of Zeelandic Flanders, in the south-western part of the Netherlands, just inside the border with Belgium. See Google Maps. Crécy-en-Ponthieu lies in the Somme department of Hauts-de-France, northern France, a little south of Calais. See Google Maps. Poitiers is further south, a city on the River Clain some seventy-five miles inland from La Rochelle on the west coast of central France. It is the capital of the Vienne department, and formerly was the capital of the Province of Poitou. See Google Maps.
Précis
Following the Norman Conquest, English kings inherited lands in France which the French Kings coveted for themselves. Matters came to a head in 1337, when Edward III claimed the title of King of France as leverage for ensuring that he held onto Aquitaine, the most profitable French province, and a series of military triumphs left him in a strong position. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘The Death of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury’, an illustration for Vigilles de Charles VII, a set of poems by Martial d’Auvergne (1420-1508) published in 1493. John Talbot (1384-1453) was Henry VI of England’s Constable of France, though not recognised as such by the French of course, and dubbed ‘the English Achilles’ for his brilliant soldiering. He was killed in a characteristically courageous, some might say reckless, charge straight into the French artillery during the Battle of Castillon on July 17th, 1453. The battle is generally held to mark the end of the Hundred Years’ War.
YET instead of capitalising on Edward’s diplomacy, his grandson and successor Richard II weakly agreed a truce in 1396.* Richard’s cousin Henry IV maintained it, but Henry’s son Henry V broke it, goaded by the Dauphin, son of the mentally ill Charles VI, into a battle and famous victory at Agincourt on October 25th, 1415.* Charles gave Henry his daughter Catherine in marriage, and named him heir in the Dauphin’s place.
Most unexpectedly, however, Henry died before his father-in-law, and in 1422 the disappointed Dauphin became Charles VII of France after all. Moreover, Henry’s son Henry VI was nothing like his warrior father; Normandy was lost at the battle of Formigny in 1450, and Gascony - all that remained of Aquitaine — at Castillon in 1453.
After such failures the overtaxed people of England would no longer support the costly campaign.* The English monarchs kept Calais until 1558, and invoked the title of King of France as late as 1802, but the Hundred Years’ War was over.
Edward III’s son Edward the Black Prince, who had struck such fear into the French at Crécy and at Poitiers, died in 1376, a year before his father. Richard II was his son.
See Jack Cade’s Revolt, July 1450.
Précis
Edward III’s successors squandered the advantage he had gained in protecting the Crown’s French lands. Richard II preferred a truce; Henry V’s victory at Agincourt saw him named heir to the French throne, but an untimely death handed the initiative back to his rival Charles VII, and in 1453 Henry VI lost everything except Calais, ending the Hundred Years’ War. (59 / 60 words)
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