What Was the Hundred Years' War Really About? The Truth of Joan of Arc

What Was the Hundred Years' War Really About? The Truth of Joan of Arc

On May 24, 1337, French King Philip VI declared the confiscation of Guyenne (around modern Bordeaux), a French fief held by English King Edward III. England immediately declared war; the war that followed lasted 116 years, spanned five generations of monarchs, and shaped Western Europe's destiny. On the surface it was a dispute between two royal houses over the French throne, territory, and trade. Look deeper and it shaped modern France, modern England, and indirectly drove the birth of the nation-state concept. It also produced one of history's most legendary figures — a 19-year-old peasant girl burned at the stake: Joan of Arc. What was the Hundred Years' War really about? Was Joan really a messenger of God? Why did a France that was meant to lose this drawn-out war eventually win it?

Surface Issues: Throne, Land, Wool

The immediate trigger was the extinction of France's Capetian line on the death of Charles IV in 1328. By French tradition, the throne passed to the closest male relative. French nobles picked Philip VI of the Valois branch. But English King Edward III argued his mother was the French princess Isabella (Charles IV's sister), so by blood he had the stronger claim. France invoked the Salic Law: the throne passed only through the male line; women could not transmit succession rights — denying Edward.

The legal argument was a surface reason. Behind it were three deeper conflicts:

Layer one: feudal holdings. Since William the Conqueror in the 11th century, the English king had been a vassal of the French king — as Duke of Normandy and Duke of Aquitaine, the English king held vast lands in France. Legally the English king had to kneel and do homage to the French king. The dual status fed constant conflict. Edward III did not want to kneel to Philip VI, and Philip wanted to confiscate his French fiefs.

Layer two: the Flemish wool trade. England was Europe's biggest wool producer; Flanders (today's southern Belgium-Netherlands) was the biggest wool processor. Bilateral trade was about one-third of English GDP. Flanders was nominally under French jurisdiction; France tried to throttle the wool route. England had to oppose France to protect this economic lifeline.

Layer three: the Scottish question. France long supported Scotland against England — the "Auld Alliance." To subdue Scotland, England had to beat France first.

Added to the throne dispute, these three formed the full motive package. No single cause was enough for so long a war, but together they formed an unresolvable structural conflict.

The English Golden Age: Big Wins in the First Half

For the first 80 years, England largely had the upper hand.

1346, Battle of Crécy. Edward III led 8,000 English (5,000 longbowmen) against Philip VI's 30,000. The French fielded heavy knights and Genoese crossbow mercenaries. When the fight opened, English longbowmen showed astonishing power — range 300 meters, deep penetration, 10 arrows per minute, dense "arrow rain." French knights, charging, were stuck full of arrows; horses fell in heaps; surviving knights crossed corpses to keep coming; the army was nearly destroyed. The French lost 1,500 knights and 30,000 infantry; the English lost 200.

1356, Battle of Poitiers. Edward III's son, the Black Prince, led 6,000 English; surrounded by 20,000 French near Poitiers. French King John II led from the front. Again, English longbow plus flanking tactics crushed the French and captured King John II himself. To redeem the king, France was forced to sign the Treaty of Brétigny, ceding a third of France to England and paying 3 million gold pieces (about 5 years of French revenue).

1415, Battle of Agincourt. Henry V led 7,000 English (6,000 longbowmen) against France's 25,000. Henry positioned the English in muddy ground between forests; French knights charged through mud and crowded into each other. Longbows cut down French knights again — France lost 7,000-10,000 dead, 1,500-2,000 captured, including 8 dukes and over 100 counts; England lost about 400.

After Agincourt, England peaked. The English occupied large parts of northern France; Paris fell; the French Dauphin fled south to little Bourges. He was reduced to the "King of Bourges," nearly a regional warlord. France looked like it would fall.

A Girl Appears

In early 1429, France's situation was desperate. The English besieged Orléans — the last barrier to southern France; its fall would doom the Dauphin's last base. Despair gripped France.

Then, in the Champagne region, a 17-year-old peasant girl named Joan emerged. She said she had heard voices from Saints Catherine, Margaret, and Michael since age 13, telling her to save France and crown the Dauphin. From her home village Domrémy she persuaded local nobles to bring her to the Dauphin. At court, the Dauphin had a noble impersonate him to test her; on entering the hall, Joan ignored the impostor and walked straight to the real Dauphin — seen as the first miracle.

Charles gave Joan an army to relieve Orléans. By late April 1429 she was at the front, in white armor holding a white banner, leading the charge personally. In just nine days the English were driven back and Orléans was relieved. The news swept Europe — a peasant girl had led an army to liberate Orléans, a scene from scripture.

Joan pressed the advantage: April 30 lifting the siege, June 18 a major win at Patay, July 17 escorting the Dauphin to Reims for coronation as Charles VII. By French tradition the king must be crowned at Reims Cathedral to be legitimate; Reims had been under English control. Now it was back.

Was Joan Really God's Messenger?

From a modern perspective, Joan's "hearing the voices of saints" was likely an adolescent hallucination or some psychological condition. But several phenomena resist easy explanation.

Astonishing military intuition. Joan had no military training, yet her tactical calls were repeatedly proven right. She insisted on attacking Orléans' weak side rather than a frontal assault; her timing, routes, and dispositions show the level of a mature commander.

Miraculous unifying effect. Before her arrival, French armies had low morale and fragmented loyalties. Joan focused the army on "led by a saintly maiden" — a moral symbol that pumped up morale. The role of psychology in war is real and acknowledged in modern military science.

Sharp political instinct. Joan insisted on coronating the Dauphin at Reims before besieging Paris. The strategic value: only a crowned Charles VII would be the "legitimate king," while Henry VI of England — supported by the English — had not been crowned on French soil. Once Charles was crowned, French popular loyalty had a clear focus. A brilliant political move.

Joan's "messenger" identity may have been part genuine religious belief, part symbolic need of a unique political moment. In its most desperate hour France needed a spiritual leader, and Joan appeared. The coincidence of "the times made the hero" is itself one of history's deepest mysteries.

Joan's Capture and Martyrdom

In May 1430, Joan was captured by Burgundian troops (the pro-English faction within France) at the Battle of Compiègne. The Burgundians sold her to the English for 10,000 livres. The English took her to Rouen and tried her for heresy — killing a spiritual leader struck French morale more than the battlefield could.

The trial dragged on. A panel of more than 60 theologians grilled Joan repeatedly. She was kept in an iron cage, hands and feet in irons, suffering all manner of psychological torment. The panel found her intellect astonishing; her answers to theologian-designed trick questions were sharper than many senior theologians.

In the end she was convicted on two charges: wearing male clothing (against Christian gender order) and claiming direct communication with God (bypassing the Church's intermediaries). Both carried death. On May 30, 1431, the 19-year-old Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen's old market. The executioner gave her a cross; she clutched it tightly; as flames reached her body she cried "Jesus" — her last word.

Her ashes were thrown into the Seine to prevent relics. But her story spread through Europe and became France's eternal national symbol. In 1920 the Catholic Church canonized her. Twenty-five years after her death, Charles VII ordered a retrial that fully exonerated her — the first French public repudiation of a Church verdict.

The End of the Hundred Years' War

France did not collapse after Joan's martyrdom. Her spirit had ignited French national consciousness. In 1435 the Duchy of Burgundy reconciled with France; England lost its key ally. From 1449 to 1453, French forces recovered Normandy, Gascony, and Aquitaine; English territory in France was lost except for Calais. On July 1453 at the Battle of Castillon, English commander Talbot was killed, ending English hopes. On October 19 England gave up Bordeaux; the Hundred Years' War formally ended.

The final outcome: England lost all French territory and retreated to the British Isles; France unified most of the mainland and set the borders of modern France; both sides emerged with seeds of "national states" — England turned from a French-speaking feudal entity toward an English national state; France from a patchwork of fiefs toward a national polity with strengthened royal power.

The real loser of the war was European medievalism itself. Chivalric ethos, the feudal system, Church authority, Latin culture — all eroded across over a century of war. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of national states can all be traced in part to the old orders the Hundred Years' War broke.

Echoes of the War

In Orléans, Reims, and Rouen today, statues of Joan stand everywhere. She is France's eternal symbol — of national unity, of hope in the most desperate hour. The second Sunday of May each year is Joan of Arc Day, marked with parades, masses, and historical re-enactments.

The Hundred Years' War teaches: the length of a war can reshape everything — political institutions, national consciousness, cultural forms. Over 116 years, soldiers, generals, and crowned kings all turned to dust; only the political results of those bloody fights endure. England became England; France became France; the Middle Ages turned toward modernity. On the surface, treaties, battles, and monarchs decided these changes; deep down, the blood and flesh of countless ordinary people built them up.

Joan of Arc was the brightest interlude in this long war. The real driver of the war's direction was time, geography, economy, and national consciousness — invisible forces slowly reshaping Europe beneath the loud surface of battlefields.