The Hundred Years' War Trivia
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96 free The Hundred Years' War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Hundred Years' War trivia quiz covers the 116-year struggle between England and France that ran from 1337 to 1453 and reshaped both kingdoms. The easy questions handle the basics: how long it really lasted, which king's claim to the French throne started it, the peasant girl who lifted the siege of Orléans, the weapon that won Crécy and Agincourt, and the last English foothold in France. From there it moves through the three phases, Edwardian, Caroline and Lancastrian, and the great set pieces: the naval slaughter at Sluys, the capture of King John at Poitiers, the six burghers of Calais with nooses round their necks, Henry V on St Crispin's Day and the Treaty of Troyes that made him heir to France. The harder half is for medieval history buffs: the Salic-law succession crisis of 1328, Robert of Artois, the Auld Alliance, the hailstorm of Black Monday, John II's three-million-crown ransom and his return to captivity, du Guesclin the Eagle of Brittany, Charles VI's belief that he was made of glass, the Duke of Clarence's death at Baugé, Philip the Good's desertion at Arras, and the field artillery of Jean Bureau at Castillon. If you enjoyed our medieval England, Joan of Arc or Wars of the Roses quizzes, this is the deep dive on the longest war in European history. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the Hundred Years' War, its battles, treaties and the rulers and commanders named before publishing.
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Q 01Despite its name, the Hundred Years' War between England and France actually spanned how many years?
116
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.
Q 02Edward III claimed the French throne in 1328 through which relative, a sister of the last Capetian king?
His mother Isabella
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.
Q 03The Hundred Years' War's last phase, begun by Henry V, is named after which English royal house?
House of Lancaster
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.
Q 04Which French dynasty ultimately kept the throne of France at the war's end?
The House of Valois
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.
Q 05England backed John of Montfort and France backed Charles of Blois in a long succession war over which duchy?
Brittany
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.
Q 06Which wine-exporting duchy, held by Edward III as a French vassal, was the main territorial quarrel behind the Hundred Years' War?
Aquitaine
Aquitaine: when Philip VI declared the duchy confiscated in May 1337, Edward III answered by claiming the French crown itself, and the war began.
Q 07In 1340 Edward III changed England's royal coat of arms by adding what to its three lions?
Fleurs-de-lis
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.
Q 08Which pact brought an invading army over England's northern border while Edward III besieged Calais in 1346?
The Auld Alliance
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.
Q 09Off which port did the English navy win a crushing victory in June 1340?
Sluys
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.
Q 10Which 1346 battle was a disaster for France, won by English longbowmen after the French attacked before their army was ready?
Crécy
Crécy was followed weeks later by the defeat and capture of Scotland's David II, invading to help France, at Neville's Cross.
Q 11How long did Edward III's siege of Calais last before starvation forced the city to surrender in 1347?
Eleven months
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.
Q 12According to Froissart, who persuaded Edward III to spare the six burghers of Calais?
Queen Philippa of Hainault
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.
Q 13Which sculptor's bronze group commemorates the surrender of the burghers of Calais?
Q 21The Black Death, which stalled the Hundred Years' War for years, first entered France through which port?
Marseille
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.
Q 22Charles VI's madness from 1392 let two factions fight for control of France: the Burgundians and which rival party?
The Armagnacs
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.
Q 23What did the mad Charles VI reportedly believe his own body was made of?
Glass
Auguste Rodin
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.
Q 14Which French king was captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356?
John II
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.
Q 15The French king captured at Poitiers went home for a three-million-crown ransom, then chose to return to captivity in which city?
London
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.
Q 16What freak event in April 1360, known as Black Monday, killed about 1,000 English soldiers and pushed Edward III to negotiate?
A hailstorm
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.
Q 17Which cathedral city did Edward III besiege in the winter of 1359–60, hoping to be crowned King of France there?
Reims
Reims had strengthened its walls before he arrived; they held through the winter, and Edward marched away uncrowned in January 1360.
Q 18By what nickname is Edward of Woodstock, victor of Poitiers, best known?
The Black Prince
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.
Q 19Which Breton knight led the French recovery under Charles V, avoiding pitched battles, and became Constable of France in 1370?
Bertrand du Guesclin
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.
Q 20In which Spanish kingdom's civil war of the 1360s did English and French armies fight on opposite sides?
Castile
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.
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.
Q 24Which Duke of Burgundy ordered the 1407 assassination of Louis, Duke of Orléans, plunging France into civil war?
John the Fearless
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.
Q 25On which feast day was the Battle of Agincourt fought in 1415?
Saint Crispin's Day
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.
Q 26At Agincourt, where archers made up five-sixths of his army, what did Henry V have them set up against French cavalry?
Sharpened stakes
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.
Q 27Which port, the setting of Shakespeare's 'Once more unto the breach', did Henry V besiege for five weeks before Agincourt?
Harfleur
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.
Q 28Which Constable of France was killed at Agincourt in 1415?
Charles d'Albret
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.
Q 29By the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, Henry V became heir to France and married which daughter of Charles VI?
Catherine
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.
Q 30Henry V's brother and heir presumptive, Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was killed in 1421 at which battle after charging without his archers?
Baugé
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.