96 Fun Facts About The Hundred Years' War

Despite its name, the Hundred Years' War between England and France actually spanned how many years?

116 years, from 1337 to 1453, though truces and plague kept halting the fighting; nobody who fought in it used the name, which historians coined in the 19th century.

Edward III claimed the French throne in 1328 through which relative, a sister of the last Capetian king?

His mother Isabella was the sister of Charles IV, who died without a son in 1328. The French barons ruled that she could not pass on a right she did not hold herself, and gave the crown to a French cousin.

The Hundred Years' War's last phase, begun by Henry V, is named after which English royal house?

The House of Lancaster gives the Lancastrian War of 1415–1453 its name. Henry V's father, Henry IV, had put the family on the throne only in 1399, by deposing his cousin Richard II.

Which French dynasty ultimately kept the throne of France at the war's end?

The House of Valois: Charles VII, disinherited by his own father's treaty in 1420, lived to win the war and be remembered as Charles the Victorious, and his dynasty reigned until 1589.

England backed John of Montfort and France backed Charles of Blois in a long succession war over which duchy?

Brittany: the war ran from 1341 until Charles of Blois was killed at Auray in 1364, and a year later France had to accept the English-backed Montfort heir as Duke John IV.

Which wine-exporting duchy, held by Edward III as a French vassal, was the main territorial quarrel behind the Hundred Years' War?

Aquitaine: when Philip VI declared the duchy confiscated in May 1337, Edward III answered by claiming the French crown itself, and the war began.

In 1340 Edward III changed England's royal coat of arms by adding what to its three lions?

Fleurs-de-lis: Edward quartered France's gold lilies with England's lions when he proclaimed himself King of France at Ghent in 1340, and they were not finally dropped from the royal arms until 1801.

Which pact brought an invading army over England's northern border while Edward III besieged Calais in 1346?

The Auld Alliance bound France and Scotland to make war on England together. In 1346 it cost David II of Scotland his freedom: he was captured at Neville's Cross soon after crossing the border.

Off which port did the English navy win a crushing victory in June 1340?

Sluys, on 24 June 1340: Edward III's fleet captured or sank almost the whole French fleet that had gathered to bar his way, and from then on he could ferry armies to the Continent.

Which 1346 battle was a disaster for France, won by English longbowmen after the French attacked before their army was ready?

Crécy was followed weeks later by the defeat and capture of Scotland's David II, invading to help France, at Neville's Cross.

How long did Edward III's siege of Calais last before starvation forced the city to surrender in 1347?

Eleven months: the siege ran from September 1346 until Calais surrendered in early August 1347; Philip VI had ordered the city to hold out at all costs but failed to lift the siege.

According to Froissart, who persuaded Edward III to spare the six burghers of Calais?

Queen Philippa of Hainault pleaded for the six men, who had come out with nooses round their necks expecting to hang, and Edward gave way; Froissart, who tells the story, later served at her court.

Which sculptor's bronze group commemorates the surrender of the burghers of Calais?

Auguste Rodin gave Calais all six men, anguished and expecting to die, when the town had wanted a single statue of their leader; the bronze was unveiled there in 1895.

Which French king was captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356?

John II, 'the Good', led the last French charge himself and was taken prisoner with a great many of his knights, leaving a shaken France to be governed by his teenage heir, the dauphin Charles.

The French king captured at Poitiers went home for a three-million-crown ransom, then chose to return to captivity in which city?

London: when a son he had left as a hostage for the unpaid ransom broke his word and fled, the king sailed back to England as a point of honour, and died there in April 1364.

What freak event in April 1360, known as Black Monday, killed about 1,000 English soldiers and pushed Edward III to negotiate?

A hailstorm lashed Edward's camp outside Chartres in April 1360; the disaster was taken for a sign from God, and within weeks he had made peace at Brétigny.

Which cathedral city did Edward III besiege in the winter of 1359–60, hoping to be crowned King of France there?

Reims had strengthened its walls before he arrived; they held through the winter, and Edward marched away uncrowned in January 1360.

By what nickname is Edward of Woodstock, victor of Poitiers, best known?

The Black Prince is not known to have been called that in his lifetime: the name first appears in the 16th century, and whether it came from black armour or a black reputation in France is still argued over.

Which Breton knight led the French recovery under Charles V, avoiding pitched battles, and became Constable of France in 1370?

Bertrand du Guesclin rose from minor Breton nobility to command France's armies; wearing the English down by siege and raid, he and Charles V won back almost everything ceded in 1360.

In which Spanish kingdom's civil war of the 1360s did English and French armies fight on opposite sides?

Castile: an English army put King Peter back on his throne at Nájera in 1367, but two years later his French-backed half-brother Henry defeated him at Montiel, killed him with his own hand and took the crown.

The Black Death, which stalled the Hundred Years' War for years, first entered France through which port?

Marseille: the plague came ashore from a ship out of Italy over the winter of 1347–48 and swept north; the truce made after Calais fell had to be renewed again and again while it raged.

Charles VI's madness from 1392 let two factions fight for control of France: the Burgundians and which rival party?

The Armagnacs took their name from Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac, who led the party after its first chief, the king's brother Louis of Orléans, was murdered in a Paris street in 1407.

What did the mad Charles VI reportedly believe his own body was made of?

Glass: the king is reported to have feared he would shatter, wrapping and padding himself against knocks; his is the best-known early case of what doctors later called the glass delusion.

Which Duke of Burgundy ordered the 1407 assassination of Louis, Duke of Orléans, plunging France into civil war?

John the Fearless had Louis of Orléans cut down in a Paris street on 23 November 1407; he was himself murdered at Montereau in 1419, pushing Burgundy into a formal alliance with Henry V.

On which feast day was the Battle of Agincourt fought in 1415?

Saint Crispin's Day falls on 25 October; Shakespeare built Henry V's 'band of brothers' speech around it, with the king promising that the feast would never again pass without the battle being remembered.

At Agincourt, where archers made up five-sixths of his army, what did Henry V have them set up against French cavalry?

Sharpened stakes, hammered into the ground at an angle, stopped the French horsemen riding the bowmen down; once the attack bogged down, the archers dropped their bows and joined the hand-to-hand fighting.

Which port, the setting of Shakespeare's 'Once more unto the breach', did Henry V besiege for five weeks before Agincourt?

Harfleur fell after five weeks, but dysentery and losses had so thinned Henry's army that he gave up campaigning and marched for Calais and home, the march that ended at Agincourt.

Which Constable of France was killed at Agincourt in 1415?

Charles d'Albret, Constable of France, shared command of the French army at Agincourt on 25 October 1415 and died on the field; Marshal Boucicaut and the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon were captured.

By the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, Henry V became heir to France and married which daughter of Charles VI?

Catherine married Henry at Troyes on 2 June 1420. Widowed two years later, she had children with a Welsh squire, Owen Tudor, and their grandson took the English throne as Henry VII.

Henry V's brother and heir presumptive, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was killed in 1421 at which battle after charging without his archers?

Baugé, 22 March 1421: Clarence attacked a Franco-Scottish army with barely 1,500 men-at-arms, leaving his archers behind, and was killed in the mêlée; Henry V had to return from England to restore the position.

Which king inherited the thrones of both England and France in 1422, before his first birthday?

Henry VI was born in December 1421; his father died the following August and his French grandfather seven weeks later, so both crowns fell to a baby.

Which brother of Henry V governed English France as regent after 1422 and crushed the Dauphin's army at Verneuil?

The Duke of Bedford was named by the dying Henry V to govern English France while his brother Gloucester took charge in England; he won Verneuil on 17 August 1424.

Joan of Arc reached which besieged city in April 1429, only for the English to abandon the siege nine days later?

Orléans had been under siege since October 1428; Joan entered on 29 April, and on 8 May the English marched away, the relief that later earned her the name Maid of Orléans.

In which village in north-east France was Joan of Arc born to a peasant family?

Domrémy lay on the frontier between Burgundian lands and the Dauphin's France, and its villagers had to flee raiders before Joan set out; it is now called Domrémy-la-Pucelle, 'of the Maid', in her honour.

The rout of the English at Patay in June 1429 cleared the road for which royal ceremony the following month?

A coronation: Charles VII was crowned that July with Joan at his side. At Patay the French cavalry had ridden down the English archers and routed their army, and the coronation city then opened its gates without a fight.

Joan of Arc was captured in May 1430 during a sortie from which besieged town?

Compiègne: she stayed with the rearguard covering a retreat on 23 May 1430 and was cut off when the town gate closed; her captor, a nobleman in Burgundian service, sold her to the English.

Joan of Arc was burned in 1431 after being convicted of what, a verdict overturned 25 years later?

Heresy: a court of pro-English clergy burned her as a relapsed heretic, but a retrial authorised by Pope Callixtus III declared the verdict void in 1456, and the Church made her a saint in 1920.

Where was England's ten-year-old king crowned King of France in December 1431?

Notre-Dame in Paris, on 16 December 1431: the usual coronation city was in enemy hands, so the English crowned the boy in the capital they still held. No other English king has been crowned King of France.

Which 1435 congress, in a town famed for tapestries, saw Burgundy make peace with Charles VII?

Arras: Burgundy recognised Charles VII as king, who in turn condemned the murder of the duke's father, and the English were left to fight on alone; the next year Paris was back in Charles's hands.

Which 1453 battle, the last of the Hundred Years' War, saw French cannon destroy a charging English army?

Castillon, 17 July 1453: the veteran John Talbot charged what he took for a retreating enemy and rode straight into the guns of a fortified camp; he was killed, and Bordeaux surrendered three months later.

Which province, held by England for three centuries, was lost for good when its capital Bordeaux fell in October 1453?

Gascony's townsmen had no wish to be French: when Talbot landed in October 1452 they rose and let him into Bordeaux, and the city surrendered for good only after his army was destroyed the next summer.

Louis XI paid which invading English king 75,000 crowns and a yearly pension to take his army home in 1475?

Edward IV had crossed with a large army, then took the money at Picquigny without fighting a battle; the truce is often counted as the war's real end.

Which English conflict broke out in 1455, two years after the final defeat in France?

The Wars of the Roses: defeat left the crown short of money and its nobles blaming one another for losing France, and the king's mental collapse in 1453 gave the rival houses a government to fight over.

The compagnies d'ordonnance that Charles VII created in 1445 gave the French crown a permanent what?

Standing army: the mounted companies stayed in royal pay in peace as well as war, and within eight years Charles VII's reformed forces had driven the English from everything in France but Calais.

Which order of knighthood did Edward III found around 1348 for his comrades in arms?

The Order of the Garter: its motto, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense' (shame on whoever thinks evil of it), may have been a jab at doubters of Edward's claim to France, though legend credits a lady's dropped garter.

Which Norman city surrendered to Henry V in January 1419 after a six-month siege?

Rouen, the capital of Normandy, surrendered on 19 January 1419 after the starving city had expelled thousands of its poor, whom Henry refused to let through his lines and left trapped in the ditches below the walls.

Which British king gave up the title King of France in 1801, centuries after the Hundred Years' War?

George III dropped the style as the Act of Union took effect. Revolutionary France, by then a republic, had objected to a title English monarchs had used for centuries.

Which future poet was captured in France in 1360 and ransomed with £16 from Edward III?

Geoffrey Chaucer was a young soldier in Edward's invasion army when the French took him, decades before he became the best-known English poet of the Middle Ages.

Which French currency began as a gold coin minted in 1360 to pay a captured king's ransom?

The franc first showed the king on a richly decorated horse and was struck to buy his freedom from the English. The name outlived the coin by centuries, until the euro arrived in 2002.

Geoffroi de Charny, killed at Poitiers in 1356, is widely linked to the first showings of which relic?

The Shroud of Turin is tied to Lirey, the tiny fief where Charny founded a church three years before his death. Whether the knight ever displayed the relic himself is now doubted.

Which fish gave its name to a 1429 battle in which an English supply convoy beat off a French attack?

Herring filled the convoy's barrels because the meatless days of Lent were close. The outnumbered English drew their supply wagons into a makeshift fort and shot down the attackers from behind it.

Which American humorist ranked a novel about Joan of Arc as the best of all the books he wrote?

Mark Twain asked for the story to be serialised anonymously, worried that his fame as a comic writer would stop readers taking it seriously.

Which English playwright made the 1415 victory at Agincourt a national legend in a 1599 history play?

William Shakespeare's play reached cinemas in 1944, when Laurence Olivier filmed it as a patriotic rallying cry around the Allied invasion of Normandy.

Which English monarch was on the throne when Calais, England's last foothold in France, fell in 1558?

Mary I felt the loss so keenly that, as the story goes, she said on her deathbed that Calais would be found inscribed on her heart.

Which wood was preferred for English longbows, with demand so heavy it depleted stocks over a huge area?

Yew staves were being imported to England by 1294, and by 1472 every ship entering an English port had to bring four bowstaves for each tun of cargo.

Joan of Arc was condemned as a relapsed heretic in 1431 after she went back to doing what?

Wearing men's clothes was one of the things Joan had formally renounced at her trial. When she was found dressed as a man again, her judges voted unanimously that she had relapsed.

Which French royal emblem did Edward III quarter with England's lions to press his claim to the throne?

The fleur-de-lis stayed on the English royal arms long after the fighting stopped, a standing boast that the claim to France had never been withdrawn.

Which French king declared Edward III's lands in France forfeit in May 1337, opening the Hundred Years' War?

Philip VI had been chosen as king in 1328 over Edward, the late king's nephew, because the French nobility preferred a cousin on the father's side.

Which grandson of Edward III became king of England in 1377 because his father had died a year earlier?

Richard II was ten when he came to the throne. Less warlike than his father or grandfather, he tried to bring the long conflict with France to an end.

Which disease, probably caught at the siege of Meaux, do scholars think killed Henry V of England?

Dysentery thrived in the unsanitary English siege camp. Henry died aged thirty-five, weeks before the French king whose crown he had been promised.

At Agincourt in 1415, what did Henry V order his men to do when he feared the French were regrouping?

The order to kill their prisoners spared only the highest-ranked captives, who could fetch the richest ransoms. The captured men had come to outnumber the soldiers guarding them.

Which actor plays Henry V in the 2019 Netflix film The King, which climaxes in the mud of Agincourt?

Timothée Chalamet's king fights a Dauphin played by Robert Pattinson, although the real French heir was at neither the battle nor the siege before it.

Which blind king died charging the English in 1346, his reins reportedly tied to those of his knights?

John of Bohemia had been blind for a decade and asked his companions to lead him far enough forward to strike one blow. All of them were found dead the next day.

Which Italian trading city hired out the crossbowmen who were routed by English longbows in 1346?

Genoa's crossbowmen went into action without their big protective shields, which had been left with the baggage. French knights hacked at them as they fell back.

Which archangel did Joan of Arc say appeared to her in a garden when she was about thirteen?

Michael was a patron saint of Joan's home region and was seen as a defender of France. She said two female saints later joined him in guiding her.

How was Joan of Arc put to death in 1431, aged about nineteen, after a church court found her guilty?

Burned at the stake before a crowd, Joan was left no grave. Her remains were thrown into the Seine.

Which English export did the textile towns of Flanders rely on, tying them to Edward III's cause?

Wool mattered so much to England that Edward III had his chancellor sit on a woolsack in council. In 1340 the Flemish towns recognised Edward as sovereign of France.

Which export from English-held Bordeaux raised more for the Crown than all other customs duties combined?

Wine duties brought in more than anything else the English state collected, which helps explain why its kings fought so long to keep their lands in south-west France.

Which 1358 revolt in northern France took its name from the nobles' mocking nickname for peasants?

The Jacquerie was named for 'Jacques', the nobles' jeer at villagers and the padded jackets they wore.

Which rebel leader was killed at Smithfield in 1381 in an English rising fuelled by taxes for the French war?

Wat Tyler was cut down by London's mayor during talks with the young king. The high taxes that enraged his followers had been raised to pay for the conflict with France.

What name was given to the bands of discharged soldiers who plundered France after the peace of 1360?

The Free Companies were mostly men dismissed from Edward III's army. With no trade but war, they lived by pillaging the countryside until the fighting resumed.

What French word names the fast mounted raids that English armies drove across France to loot and lay waste?

A chevauchée aimed to wreck what a region could produce rather than to win a battle. One in 1355 bypassed Toulouse because the raiders were not equipped for a siege.

Which sacred French war banner, blood-red on a gilded lance, was kept at the Abbey of Saint-Denis?

The Oriflamme was taken by the king from the saint's tomb when war began. While it flew over a battlefield, no quarter was to be given.

Which English cathedral holds the tomb of Edward of Woodstock, the heir who died before Edward III?

Canterbury buried him in its Trinity Chapel, where he was later joined by Henry IV, the king who seized the crown from the dead man's own son.

At which castle town did Joan of Arc first meet the uncrowned Charles VII early in 1429?

Chinon was where the seventeen-year-old told the court she had been sent by God. Charles had her examined by a council of theologians before he trusted her with soldiers.

Which city did Charles VII's forces recover in 1436, ending an English occupation begun under Henry V?

Paris had been occupied since 1420. When Joan of Arc tried to storm it in 1429 she was wounded, and the city's merchant class sided with the English to keep her out.

Which French bishop, a partisan of the English, presided as judge at Joan of Arc's heresy trial in 1431?

Pierre Cauchon claimed the right to try her because she had been captured inside his diocese of Beauvais. The Church later overturned his verdict.

Which Marshal of France, who fought beside Joan of Arc in 1429, was hanged in 1440 for murdering children?

Gilles de Rais has been linked since the 19th century with the fairy-tale wife-killer Bluebeard, though the idea that his crimes inspired the story remains speculative.

Which French captain who fought beside Joan of Arc is traditionally the jack of hearts in French card decks?

La Hire lends his name to the knave of hearts in the traditional French pack, where the other three knaves are legendary heroes such as Hector and Lancelot.

Which pope made Joan of Arc a saint in 1920, nearly five centuries after her death?

Benedict XV canonised her in May 1920, completing a cause that the French bishops had opened with a petition back in 1869.

Which Irish playwright wrote Saint Joan in 1923, prompted by Joan of Arc's canonisation three years earlier?

George Bernard Shaw had considered a play about her as early as 1913. It opened in New York in December 1923 and reached London three months later.

Which son of Edward III led a great raid from Calais to Bordeaux in 1373 and lost most of his army?

John of Gaunt reached Bordeaux on Christmas Eve having lost at least a third of his men in action and another third to disease. He soon began to favour peace talks.

Which Scottish king was captured in 1346 after invading England at France's request and held for over a decade?

David II took two arrow wounds to the face before he was seized. His nephew governed Scotland while he sat in English captivity.

Which Welsh rebel leader won backing from France that put a French army ashore in Wales in 1405?

Owain Glyndŵr's allies landed in force at Milford Haven and set fire to Haverfordwest, but most of them soon withdrew as the French court turned toward peace.

Which Italian city's Bardi and Peruzzi banks lent Edward III vast sums and collapsed in the 1340s?

Florence's two houses were said to be owed 1.5 million florins. Edward's default was long blamed for their ruin, though historians now find that explanation too simple.

Which British Crown possession, invaded by France in 1338, is the last remnant of the Duchy of Normandy?

The Channel Islands stayed with England when its king gave up his claim to mainland Normandy in 1259. French forces held part of them from 1338 until 1345.

Which order of chivalry did Burgundy's duke, an English ally, found at Bruges in 1430 to celebrate his wedding?

The Golden Fleece celebrated the wealthy domains the duke had gathered, running from Flanders to Switzerland. Five years later he was reconciled with the French king, a turning point in the conflict.

Which French queen attended the 1420 signing at Troyes that cut her own son out of the succession?

Isabeau of Bavaria was married to the unstable Charles VI. The agreement she witnessed made the English king heir to France once her husband died.

Which French noblewoman married Henry VI in 1445, a match followed by England's surrender of Maine?

Margaret of Anjou was crowned at Westminster Abbey in May 1445. The loss of Maine was seen as a betrayal by an English public already inclined to mistrust a French-born consort.

Which Breton noblewoman turned privateer against France after its king beheaded her husband in 1343?

Jeanne de Clisson became known as the Lioness of Brittany for her campaign to avenge a husband executed for treason. Her flagship was apparently named My Revenge.

Which French city did Edward of Woodstock storm and sack in 1370 after it opened its gates to the Duke of Berry?

Limoges had been handed over by its bishop, once a trusted friend of Edward. Edward swore to make the town pay and, too ill to ride, was carried to the siege in a litter.

At which 1450 battle did the French destroy the last significant English field army in Normandy?

Formigny cleared the way for the French to retake every remaining English stronghold in the duchy, ending with Cherbourg four months later.

Which church split from 1378 had France backing a pope at Avignon while England backed his rival in Rome?

The Western Schism made the papacy another front in the fighting. In 1383 an English bishop led a crusade into Flanders against supporters of the Avignon claimant.

Charles VII's enemies mocked him as the king of which city, one of the few places left to him in the 1420s?

Bourges, south of the Loire, was where the disinherited heir kept his court. The jibe measured how little of France he controlled before Joan of Arc appeared.

Which British author set the adventure novels The White Company and Sir Nigel during the Hundred Years' War?

Arthur Conan Doyle rated his historical novels above the Sherlock Holmes stories, and in 1893 he killed off the detective to give them more of his time.

Which sport did Edward III ban because it distracted Englishmen from the archery practice his wars relied on?

Football was outlawed again by later kings for the same reason. One decree said the national defence depended on bowmen, so every able-bodied man should shoot instead.