The War that Would not End: Hundred Years War, 1337-1453

The Hundred Years War was about the most famous event to happen to a family already bursting with history.  Rebellions, crusades and endemic struggles for land and titles on the Continent were endemic throughout this tumultuous dynasty's time on the throne.  The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) sounds a little more poetic than the One Hundred and Sixteen Years War.  This war brought us Henry V and Joan of Arc, the battles of Agincourt, Crecy and Patay.  And, like any good three ring circus, there were several events and stages of events going on at one time.

Historians divide up the Hundred Years War in four phases.  They are: the Edwardian War, 1337-1360; the Caroline War, 1369-1389; the Lancastrian War, phase 1, 1415-1420; and the Hundred Years War, phase II, 1420-1453.  The net result for the Plantagenets, including a lot of blood and treasure wasted, was the loss of any and all of their territorial possession in France save for the Port of Calais and a strip of land immediately around it known as the Pale. 

However, even during the lulls or gaps in this war, there was plenty of action for adventurous young knights looking to gain experience and the spurs to prove it, or for bands of mercenaries who sold their services to the highest bidder and behaved worse than any Unsullied ever thought about.  England and France weren't the only rivals for land in what is now France.  France itself claimed several independent duchies and counties.  Spain and France also contended for territory.  And the smaller entities feuded amongst themselves and sometimes with themselves over the same issues, land and resources.  And, often, because the Plantagenets either had dynastic connections or property holdings in the disputed territory, they were sucked into the conflicts.

Some of these smaller wars were: War of the Breton Succession, 1341-1364; Castilian Civil War, 1366-1369; War of the Two Peters (Aragon), 1356-1375, and War in Portugal, 1383-85.  We'll get to each of these wars in good time.