English King example essay topic

The Hundred Years War was a long, complicated war with its roots in political struggles, the want of Kings and the people of their nations to expand territory, and to take territory that they believe is theirs. This war lasted more than a century, from 1337-1453, and was a actually a series of wars broken only temporarily by treaties doomed to fail. The English king controlled much of France, particularly in the fertile South. These lands had come under control of the English when Eleanor of Aquitaine, heiress to the region, married King Henry II of England in the mid-12th century. There was constant bickering along the French-English frontier, and the French kings always had to fear an English invasion from the South. Between Flanders in the North and the English in the South, they were caught in between the two English colonies.

The French responded by doing the same to the English. They allied with the Scots in an arrangement that persisted well into the 18th century. Thus the English faced the French from the south and the Scots from the north. The French trap would only work if the French could invade England across the English Channel.

Besides, England could support their Flemish allies only if they could send aid across the North Sea, and, moreover, English trade was dependent upon the free flow of naval traffic through the Channel. Consequently, the French continually tried to gain the upper hand at sea, and the English constantly resisted them. Both sides commissioned what would have been pirates if they had not been operating with royal permission to prey upon each other's shipping, and there were frequent naval clashes in those constricted waters. The last son of King Philip IV, the fair, died in 1328, an the direct male line of the Capetian's finally ended after almost 350 years. Philip had had a daughter, however. This daughter, Isabelle, had married King Edward II of England, but her and a group of barons had murdered him, because they thought he was incompetent.

So, Edward their son was declared king of England. He was therefore Philip's grandson and successor in a direct line through Philip's daughter. The French could not tolerate the idea that Edward might become King of France, and French lawyers brought up some old Salic Laws, which stated that property, including the throne, could not descend through a female. The French then gave the crown to Philip of Valois, a nephew of Philip IV.

Nevertheless, Edward had a valid claim to the throne of France if he wished to pursue it. Although France was the most populous country in Western Europe and also the wealthiest, England had a strong central government, many veterans of hard fighting on England's Welsh and Scottish borders, as well as in Ireland, a thriving economy, and a popular king. Edward was disposed to fight France, and his subjects were more than ready to support their young king who was only 18 years old at the time. Also many went to loot and pillage the fair and plenteous land of France.

1 The war truly started in 1340. The French had assembled a great fleet to support an army with which they intended to crush all resistance in Flanders. When the ships had anchored in a dense pack at Sluts in modern Netherlands, the English attacked and destroyed it with fire ships and victory in a battle fought across the anchored ships, almost like a land battle on a wooden battlefield. The English now had control of the Channel and North Sea. They were safe from French invasion, could attack France at will, and could expect that the war would be fought on French soil and thus at French expense. A three year truce was signed by England and France in 1343, but in 1345 Edward again invaded northern France 1.

The Black Death had arrived, and his army was weakened by sickness. As the English force tried to make its way safely to fortified Channel port, the French attempted to force them into a battle. The English were finally pinned against the coast by a much superior French army at a place called Crecy. Edward's army was a combined force: archers, pike men, light infantry, and cavalry; the French, by contrast, clung to their old-fashioned feudal cavalry and used the powerful, but slow firing crossbow. The English had archers using the longbow, a weapon with great penetrating power that could sometimes kill armored knights, and often the horses on which they rode. Also, the longbow could fire three of its arrows to the crossbows one in the same amount of time.

As a result the French knights were unhorsed by a blinding shower of arrows. The battle was a disaster for the French. The English took up position on the crest of a hill, and the French cavalry tried to ride up the slope to get at their opponents. The long climb up soggy ground tired and slowed the French horses, giving the English archers and foot soldiers ample opportunity to wreak havoc in the French ranks. Those few French who reached the crest of the hill found themselves faced with rude, but effective, barriers, and, as they tried to withdraw, they were attacked by the small but fresh English force of mounted knights. Another interesting thing about this battle, was that for the first time the cannon was used.

Thus introducing artillery to war in the west. 9+ As the war dragged on, the English were slowly forced back. They had less French land to support their war effort as they did so, and the war became more expensive for them. This caused conflicts at home, such as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and the beginning of civil wars. Nevertheless, in the reign of Henry V, the English took the offensive once again.

At Agincourt, not far from Crecy, the French relapsed into their old tactics of feudal warfare once again, and were again disastrously defeated in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt. Durring this battle French casualties totaled about 5000 men. English loses numbered fewer than 200 men. 1 The English recovered much of the ground they had lost, and a new peace was based upon Henry's marriage to the French princess Katherine. In the following years, the French developed a sense of national identity, as illustrated by Joan of Arc, a peasant girl who is said to have played a major part in the English withdrawing from their siege on Orleans, and ten days later, Charles VII being crowned king at Reims.

These two things were the true tuning points in the war. The French now had a greater unity, and the French king was able to field massive armies on much the same model as the British. In addition, however, the French government began to appreciate the "modern" style of warfare, and new military commanders, such as Bertrand du Guesclin, began to use guerilla and "small war" tactics of fighting. This war marked the end of English attempts to control continental territory and the beginning of its emphasis upon maritime supremacy. By Henry V's marriage into the House of Valois, an hereditary strain of mental disorder was introduced into the English royal family. There were great advances in military technology and science during the period, and the military value of the feudal knight was thoroughly discredited.

The order of knighthood went down fighting, however, in a wave of civil wars that racked the countries of Western Europe. The European countries began to establish professional standing armies and to develop the modern state necessary to maintain such forces. In both of these countries the idea of Nationalism, which is a feeling of unity and identity that binds together a people who speak the same language, have common ancestry and customs, and live in the same area, spread durring the war. By the late middle ages, a vague loyalty to a particular dynasty might have been created, and in a sense, derived from the Hundred Years War of being different from other people. 1 There was no true winner of this war. Both sides suffered severe losses.

Even for England when none of the war was fought in England. The cost for them was an amazing amount of more than five million pounds. The price, although not as much in dollars, may have been even greater. The English had laid waste to hundreds of thousands of acres of rich farm land, leaving the rural economy, and many parts of French in shambles. Price, Roger, A Concise History of France, Cambridge Concise Histories, New York, New York, 1993. S chama, Simon, Citizens, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York, New York, 1989 Scho m, Alan, One Hundred Days, Maxwell Macmillan International, New York, New York, 1992 B arnie, J., War in Medieval English Society: Soca il Values and the Hundred Years War, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1974.