The Hundred Years’ War

1337 O.S. – 1456 O.S.61 items

medievalwar
The Battle of Crécy: English longbowmen, right, against Genoese crossbowmen, from a manuscript of Froissart’s Chronicles illuminated by Loyset Liédet, 15th century. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Battle of Crécy: English longbowmen, right, against Genoese crossbowmen, from a manuscript of Froissart’s Chronicles illuminated by Loyset Liédet, 15th century. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

116 years, five kings a side

In 1337 Philip VI of France confiscated the English king’s duchy of Gascony, and Edward III answered by claiming the French crown itself. Five kings of England and five of France later, the last English army in the south was destroyed at Castillon and Bordeaux surrendered in October 1453. This timeline follows the war from the confiscation to Bordeaux, Crécy to Castillon, with one epilogue: Joan of Arc’s condemnation annulled in 1456.

How to read it

  • Every date is Julian, as contemporaries kept them and as the chronicles and treaties give them. Add eight days for the modern calendar in the 1300s and nine in the 1400s: Agincourt, on 25 October 1415, fell on what would now be 3 November.

  • French and English clerks began the year at Easter or on 25 March. The years here start on 1 January, as modern historians give them, so Rouen fell in January 1419, a month English documents dated 1418.

  • The bands are the war’s three phases, Edwardian, Caroline and Lancastrian, with the truces between them, and the stories that ran across them: the Black Death, Charles VI’s madness, the Armagnac–Burgundian civil war and Joan of Arc’s two years. Campaigns are bands too, with their battles inside, and the great marches are drawn as routes on the map.

  • Filter by battles, sieges or diplomacy for the war itself; longbow and artillery for the weapons that decided it, first one and then the other; and civilians for what the raids, sieges and revolts cost the people in their way.

Army sizes and death tolls are disputed, some of them fiercely. Chroniclers inflated them, and historians working from pay records and muster rolls have revised many downwards. The notes give the range and say whose figure is whose.

If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. — Joan of Arc, asked at her trial whether she was in God’s grace, 24 February 1431

Items

  1. Edwardian phase

    ≈ 22 years, 11 months

  2. Philip VI confiscates Gascony

    English Gascony, roughly, in 1337

  3. Edward III takes the title King of France

    Friday Market, Ghent

  4. Battle of Sluys

    The Zwin estuary off Sluis

  5. Edward III’s march from La Hougue to Calais

    1 month, 24 days · Edward III, 1346: La Hougue, Caen, Poissy, Blanchetaque, Crécy, Calais

  6. Sack of Caen

    Caen

  7. The ford at Blanchetaque

    Blanchetaque ford on the Somme

  8. Battle of Crécy

    Crécy battlefield, Crécy-en-Ponthieu

  9. Siege of Calais

    ≈ 11 months · Calais

  10. Battle of Neville’s Cross

    Neville’s Cross, west of Durham

  11. The Black Death

    2 years

  12. The Black Prince’s great chevauchée

    1 month, 28 days · The Black Prince, 1355: Bordeaux to Carcassonne and Narbonne and back

  13. Battle of Poitiers

    Poitiers battlefield, near Nouaillé-Maupertuis

  14. The Jacquerie

    13 days · Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, on the Oise

  15. The Market of Meaux

    The Market of Meaux

  16. The Free Companies

    6 years

  17. Black Monday

    Near Chartres

  18. Treaty of Brétigny

    Brétigny, near Sours

  19. Caroline phase

    ≈ 19 years, 11 months

  20. Sack of Limoges

    The Cité of Limoges

  21. The Black Prince dies

    Palace of Westminster

  22. Du Guesclin dies

    Châteauneuf-de-Randon

  23. The Peasants’ Revolt reaches London

    City of London

  24. Charles VI’s madness

    ≈ 30 years · The forest outside Le Mans

  25. Armagnac–Burgundian civil war

    ≈ 27 years, 10 months

  26. Louis of Orléans is murdered

    Rue Vieille-du-Temple, by the Hôtel Barbette, Paris

  27. Lancastrian phase

    ≈ 38 years

  28. Siege of Harfleur

    1 month, 5 days · Harfleur

  29. Henry V’s march to Calais

    21 days · Henry V, 1415: Harfleur, along the Somme to Voyennes, Agincourt, Calais

  30. Battle of Agincourt

    Agincourt battlefield, Azincourt

  31. Siege of Rouen

    5 months, 23 days · Rouen

  32. John the Fearless is murdered at Montereau

    The bridge at Montereau

  33. Treaty of Troyes

    Troyes Cathedral

  34. Battle of Baugé

    Baugé, Anjou

  35. Henry V dies

    Château de Vincennes

  36. Battle of Verneuil

    Verneuil-sur-Avre

  37. Siege of Orléans

    6 months, 28 days · Les Tourelles, Orléans bridge

  38. Battle of the Herrings

    Rouvray-Saint-Denis

  39. Joan of Arc, from Chinon to Rouen

    ≈ 2 years, 2 months

  40. Joan reaches Chinon

    Château de Chinon

  41. The siege of Orléans is lifted

    Les Tourelles, Orléans bridge

  42. Battle of Patay

    Patay

  43. Charles VII is crowned at Reims

    Reims Cathedral

  44. The assault on Paris fails

    Porte Saint-Honoré, Paris

  45. Joan is captured at Compiègne

    Compiègne bridgehead

  46. Joan’s trial opens at Rouen

    Castle of Rouen (Bouvreuil)

  47. Joan of Arc is burned at Rouen

    Place du Vieux-Marché, Rouen

  48. Henry VI is crowned King of France in Paris

    Notre-Dame de Paris

  49. Treaty of Arras

    Arras

  50. Paris opens its gates to Charles VII

    Paris

  51. Truce of Tours

    Tours

  52. France gets a standing army

  53. The reconquest of Normandy

    ≈ 1 year, 11 days

  54. Rouen surrenders

    Rouen

  55. Battle of Formigny

    Formigny

  56. The last campaigns in Gascony

    ≈ 2 years, 11 months · English Gascony, roughly, in 1337

  57. Bordeaux surrenders for the first time

    Bordeaux

  58. Talbot retakes Bordeaux

    Bordeaux

  59. Battle of Castillon

    Castillon battlefield, east of Castillon-la-Bataille

  60. Bordeaux surrenders for good

    Bordeaux

  61. Joan’s condemnation is annulled

    Archbishop’s palace, Rouen