We know it as the "Hundred Years' War," but in reality the hostilities lasted twice as long and were much bloodier - at least that's what historian Michael Livingston argues in his book The Two Hundred Years' War: Bloody Crowns of England and France, 1292–1492 [The Two Hundred Years War: The Bloody Crowns of England and France, 1292–1492].
By: Mathew Lyons / The Telegraph
Translation: Telegrafi.com
It was early 1292, most likely during Lent. Two ships sailing around the coast of Brittany stopped at the small island of Chimines. One ship was from Normandy, which at the time was loyal to the King of France, Philip IV; the other was from Aquitaine, whose duchy was controlled by the King of England, Edward I. There was only one source of drinking water on the island, and both crews wanted to be the first to drink it.
The men quarrelled, and then fought. One man was soon killed. It is not known whether he was Norman or from Bayonne: the sources do not agree on this. However, this event was the trigger for a series of bloody reprisals in the months that followed. In one incident, the Normans attacked ships sailing from Winchelsea and Hastings, killing around 40 people. It is said that the victims had their hands and feet cut off first, before being beheaded in the Crib. The following spring, English and Norman ships clashed in open battle near Brittany. The Normans are said to have lost up to 200 ships; emboldened, the English attacked La Rochelle, further south on the coast.
The events of 1292 led, within a few years, to a series of genuine military clashes in Gascony - between England and France. They lasted from 1294 to 1303, and historians generally treat them as early signs of the discord between the two nations that would erupt into what is called the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453).
The Battle of Slaise from a manuscript of Froissart's "Chronicles", circa 1470.National Library of France
But Michael Livingston thinks otherwise. In his fascinating new book on the long-running Anglo-French conflict in the Middle Ages, he sees the events of 1292 as the beginning of what he argues should be called the “Two Hundred Years’ War” – which lasted much longer: from 1292 until the Peace of Étaples that followed Henry VII’s brief siege of Boulogne in 1492. It is true that the term Hundred Years’ War is not contemporary, but it has been widely accepted since the early 19th century. If Livingston’s claim is correct, then a large number of professional historians have been wrong in their analyses of the period. But how convincing is it?
Livingstone likes the long-term perspective. He begins the Two Hundred Years’ War almost a thousand years before its supposed end, with the baptism in 508 of Clovis, the first king of the Franks. He rightly points out that the roots of the conflict lie in the events of 1066, when the Norman Conquest made William, duke of Normandy, also king of England. As Richard I, William’s great-grandson, is said to have said: a king “is born of a rank that knows no one above him but God” – except, in this situation, William and his successors would have to accept otherwise, because every Norman duke owed allegiance and submission to the king of France.
The extent of English territory in France would expand and contract dramatically in the centuries following the conquest. By the mid-12th century, Henry II held as much territory as the French crown itself. But the fundamental problem remained unchanged. Oaths of allegiance mattered. In an age of weak legal institutions, Livingston writes, “the chief bond that held society together was the belief ... that men would be true to what they had said they would do or would not do.” For one king to demand such an oath from another was no mere political theatre. Sovereignty was at stake, and with it the social and moral order.
Year 1337
Map of the Hundred Years' War
This is exactly what happened in 1293, after an English pirate attack on La Rochelle, which was located in the personal territories of the French king. Philip IV summoned Edward I to account for the actions of his vassals. Edward refused, thus breaking his oath. Philip responded by declaring that Edward's lands in Gascony - the last remaining part of Aquitaine, and in fact the only part of France still under English control - were confiscated and belonged to the French crown.
This was the first time a French king had made such a claim, but it would not be the last. The Hundred Years' War is usually understood to have begun in 1337, when Philip VI demanded that Edward III hand over a French troublemaker, Robert of Artois, who was in exile at the English court. In this demand, Philip referred to a letter that Edward had written in 1331, in which he promised "faith and allegiance", and which had followed a personal act of submission that Edward had made two years earlier. This pattern was repeated generation after generation: Edward refused to comply with the demands; Philip declared the lands his own.
In January 1340, Edward responded to Philip’s claims to Gascony in the most aggressive way possible: he declared himself the true king of France. Some contemporaries saw these years as a turning point. Livingstone quotes an unknown French cleric from 1395 who complained about “nearly 60 years” of war. “Who will describe the sacrilege, the rapes, the violence, the oppression, the extortion, the plunder,” he wrote. “Who will describe the inhuman cruelties”?
A 15th-century miniature depicting the Battle of Agincourt in October 1415Lambeth Palace Library, London
The core of The Two Hundred Years' War is the story of those atrocities - that is, of the Hundred Years' War - as it is commonly understood. Livingstone's military expertise is evident in the way he treats the many battles that run through the narrative. He has visited the places where the battles took place, studied the terrain, and often reached his own conclusions about the fighting. "Topography is one of the most decisive factors in conflict," he notes; his understanding of how the landscape determines the possibilities of maneuver makes for sharp and insightful writing.
For example, writing about the Battle of Poitiers in September 1356, he examines a Gascon unit that moved two miles across a bridge and around a dense forest to burst into the flanks of the French army – at the right moment. “On flat ground,” he writes, “a horse would have covered this distance in 15 minutes, but the local topography ... probably stretched it to something nearer half an hour.”
He writes in the same vein about the brutal reality of war. The strength of the English archers at Agincourt was not based on a single volley of arrows, but on 5,000 archers firing relentlessly and rapidly. Their arrows sometimes struck the weak points of the steel armour – the joints at the neck, shoulder and groin, the eye sockets – but more often they exploded on impact, turning unpredictably into new and deadly projectiles, “scattering fragments like wooden grenades”.
Michael Livingston's book coverApollo
The archers quickly finished off the fallen knights, using short knives “to shoot into the arteries.” The chaos and horror are palpable. One eyewitness reported that the French lords “surrendered more than 10 times,” desperate to avoid death.
It is commonly thought that the Hundred Years' War ended with the loss of Bordeaux - England's last stronghold in Gascony - in 1453, leaving us with Calais. Livingstone does not convince me that the conventional wisdom is wrong here: the fall of Bordeaux remains a much more significant moment than the Peace of Étaples in 1492 - which was a comparable formality whereby Henry VII recognised Charles VIII's authority over Brittany. And, moreover, it is not as if 1492 marked the end of English military engagements across the Channel: Henry VIII sent several armies to France with far more serious intentions than his father. England would hold Calais until 1558 and its claim to the French throne until 1800.
But while the Two Hundred Years' War may not be convincing on its main argument, it is always important to challenge accepted interpretations of history. The complex narrative is handled with skill, and Livingstone's book is a fascinating - sometimes thrilling - account of an epic conflict whose historiography has been fought over almost as much as the ruined territories of Western France themselves. /Telegraph/
