The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

  In the years that followed it became obvious that Charles VII had made good use of the long truces that punctuated the war in France, since he went on to pursue long-term changes in French military and civilian administration. A more professional army and a more centralized state, supplemented by the du Guesclin strategy of avoiding battle, meant that the French could inflict regular defeat on the English. Rouen was retaken in 1449, as was Caen in 1450, and Bordeaux and Bayonne fell the following year. The final engagement of the Hundred Years’ War was fought at Castillon in 1453, when the superior cannon of the French commander Jean Bureau defeated John Talbot’s Anglo-Gascon force.

  THE CONSEQUENCES OF WAR

  A period of over a century was inevitably one that saw major military, social and political changes. The Hundred Years’ War reflected those developments, while also contributing to them. Parliament’s power to approve taxation gave 14th-century England a new source of centralized authority, and the country’s feudal levy was replaced by a paid army whose professional captains recruited troops. In terms of technology, the war gave a significant boost to the artillery; the longbow—and at a latter stage of the conflict firearms as well—grew to rival the cavalry in importance. English innovations in military strategy also transformed the art of war, and the victories at Crécy and Agincourt owed much to the deployment of men-at-arms occupying fixed defensive positions. The typically English deployment of lightly-armed mounted troops—later called dragoons—who dismounted in order to fight would be adopted on a pan-European scale. These changes brought about a gradual decline in the use of heavy cavalry, which came to be seen as expensive and inflexible. The social and cultural position of the institution of knighthood declined as a result.

  But despite enjoying these institutional and strategic advantages, England was faced with an insuperable difficulty: the enemy’s territory was simply too extensive for it to be occupied for any substantial period of time. France’s land mass was three times the extent of England’s, and the French population was four times greater. English forces did occupy large parts of France during the war, but since such areas needed to be garrisoned, the ability of the occupying army to campaign and strike at the enemy was compromised. Shrewsbury’s army at Orléans had 5000 men, but that was not enough to take control of the city since it was greatly outnumbered by the French troops within the city and its environs. Once the inspiration of Jeanne d’Arc had raised the morale of French troops their victory was well-nigh inevitable. John Talbot was one of the most aggressive and effective of all English commanders, but even he could not prevail against the inherent strategic disadvantages of the English position in France.

  These prolonged wars also had profound effects on the civilian population. The French countryside experienced widespread devastation, but the suffering also contributed to a new sense of national identity. When victory came at last it was seen as being due to the French government’s ability to organize men and materials more effectively than in the past; the country’s feudal structures were giving way to the evolution of more systematic and centralized methods of government. England’s culture was affected in similar ways, with a national spirit of resistance being reflected in the rumors that a French invasion would mean the extirpation of the English language. From the time of the Norman Conquest the culture of England’s ruling élites had been French. But by the end of the 14th century that dominance had passed. England’s economic base also shifted. Before the war England had been a massive exporter of raw wool to the southern Netherlands where weavers then turned the wool to fine cloth. The unpredictable alliances of the dukes of Burgundy disrupted that trade, as did the high levels of taxation imposed on exports by the English Crown in order to help pay for the war. As a result weavers in England started to develop their own textile industry, and cloth from their looms acquired an international renown.

  ABOVE After each of his four elder brothers died without producing an heir, Charles VII became king of France in 1422. This contemporary portrait was painted in c.1444–51 by Jean Fouquet (1420–81).

  CHANGES IN MILITARY STRATEGY

  The war confirmed the longbow’s technological superiority over the crossbow. While the longbow required immense strength and great expertise to use, it was extremely accurate. The crossbow, on the other hand, was relatively easy to use and had great fire power against both plate and chain mail, but it was a cumbersome and heavy weapon that took time to reload. Bowmen serving with the Welsh and Scottish armies had taught their English enemy a painful lesson: deployed in fixed positions, they could inflict immense damage from a distance and so destroy a cavalry charge. The same strategy was deployed by the English on French soil: after choosing a site of battle they would fortify their position and subsequently destroy the enemy. But although the triumph of the longbow was a significant feature of 14th-century Anglo-French warfare, it became less important in the early 15th century; by then, advances in plating techniques meant that armor could resist penetration by arrows. The introduction of gunpowder and cannon to the field of battle in the late 14th century transformed the art of war, and artillery was a deciding factor in the French victory at the Battle of Castillon (1453), the last major engagement of the Hundred Years’ War.

  ABOVE This anonymous contemporary illustration shows a castle being stormed as its walls are breached during a 15th-century siege. The soldiers are using crossbows, cannon and harquebuses (an early form of the rifle).

  New kinds of weapons made for new kinds of armies. Victory now came to kings and other rulers who could raise large armies consisting of a rank-and-file armed with longbows and firearms, and who had the resources to employ and pay mercenary soldiers. This new professionalism displaced the earlier military model of armies consisting of knights summoned by their superior lords to do battle when required. A new sense of national solidarity also meant that kings could obtain through taxation the monies needed to pay for these large armies. This new access to great martial power meant kings could now use military means to quell internal dissent as well as to counter the threat of foreign invasion. It therefore became possible for a monarch to raise a standing army—a military force that existed in times of peace as well as of war. The French monarchy was the pioneer of that development, and although the innovation spread throughout continental Europe it encountered resistance in England. The military basis of knighthood was undoubtedly whittled away during these conflicts, but its cultural aspect in terms of the chivalric code remained powerful.

  THE IMPACT OF WAR ON FRENCH AND ENGLISH MONARCHIES

  By the mid-15th century it had become very obvious that the monarchies in France and in England were very different kinds of institutions. In France the Estates-General had tried to assert its own independent power at the very nadir of the nation’s military fortunes. The Estates had the power to confirm or disagree with the levée—the main tax imposed by the Crown on its subjects. Étienne Marcel’s leadership saw the Estates exploiting that source of power and attempting to impose major restrictions on the powers of French monarchs. Under the proposed Great Ordinance the Estates were to have the power to collect and spend the levee, to meet regularly as an independent body and to play a role in government as well as exercising some judicial powers. But the collapse of that campaign in the violence of the 1350s, when the Jacquerie threatened a form of mob rule, meant that the nobility rallied to the cause of the Crown. The Great Ordinance would be abandoned and the Estates-General would not develop along the lines of England’s consultative parliament. It was this strengthened monarchy that helped to win the war for France, and the association between the country’s national identity and the institutional power of its kings became one of profound historical importance.

  In England, too, the institution of monarchy acquired a new dimension as the focus of national identity in the face of a threat from abroad. But the English Crown’s domestic authority in the mid-15th century was far weaker than that of its French counterpart. The Peasants’ Revolt o
f 1381 had some parallels with the French Jacquerie. Some 100,000 of the aggrieved marched on London to protest at the high taxation imposed to pay for the war and at the subjection of many of the peasantry to serfdom by the English nobility. Authority was soon restored. The rebellion’s leader Wat Tyler was killed by the king’s men, and the peasantry returned to the countryside with their grievances unresolved. Taxation levels therefore remained high, and both the Crown and the nobility were enriched as a result of the acquisition of large parts of France—especially during the war’s earlier stages. But by the latter stages of the conflict the English treasury was essentially bankrupted by the high costs of waging the war in France and by the need to administer and maintain its conquered territories. Lack of money contributed to a loss of regal authority, and England descended into a prolonged civil conflict as the rival noble houses of Lancaster and York vied with each other for control of the English Crown during the “Wars of the Roses” conducted intermittently between 1455 and 1485.

  * * *

  THE PLANTAGENET DYNASTY DURING THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

  EDWARD III

  (1312–1377)

  r. 1327–77

  EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES

  [“the Black Prince”]

  (1330–76)

  JOHN OF GAUNT

  (1340–99)

  RICHARD II

  (1367–1400)

  r. 1377–99

  HENRY IV

  (1366–1413)

  r. 1399–1413

  HENRY V

  (1387–1422)

  r. 1413–22

  HENRY VI

  (1421–71)

  r. 1422–61, 1470–71

  * * *

  English disillusion with the great continental adventure was profound, and at the end of the war Calais was the Crown’s sole foreign possession. But although so much had been lost to England in territorial terms, perhaps the deepest impact of the war was a psychological one. England had withdrawn from France and was now defining itself in conscious opposition to the rest of the European continent. Viewed from the continental mainland, England appeared to be a marginalized and insular country. But England’s geographical position, and the country’s maritime traditions, also enabled it to take advantage of the opportunities which beckoned across the Atlantic in the great age of discovery that was now dawning.

  THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND

  The term “parliament” came into use in the early 13th century to describe a national forum for discussion, and the institution’s origins lay in the consultative Great Council, consisting of the nobility and senior clergy, which had been regularly summoned by English monarchs since the Norman Conquest.

  Parliamentary constitutionalism was built on Magna Carta’s enunciation of fundamental rights and its declaration that the king’s will was bound by law. Renounced by King John after he signed it in 1215, the document was reissued by Henry III’s regent William Marshal and then by the king himself in 1225 when he attained his majority. By 1297, when Edward I’s parliament issued it yet again, the charter was fundamental to the English legal tradition. Following Magna Carta’s adoption the convention was established that parliaments ought to be summoned when monarchs wished to raise money through taxation, and by the mid-13th century knights of the English shires were occasionally attending parliament to advise the Crown—especially on financial matters.

  The nobility and senior clergy played an especially important administrative role during Henry III’s minority, and aristocratic resentment at his failure to consult once he started to rule led to the adoption of the Provisions of Oxford (1258). Henry had to agree to the establishment of a supreme administrative council of 15 barons whose performance was monitored by thrice-yearly meetings of parliament. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester (and son of the anti-Cathar crusader) emerged as the leader of this constitutionalist movement. But in 1264 Henry obtained a papal bull which exempted him from having to abide by his oath to uphold the Provisions. In the military hostilities that followed, Henry was defeated and taken prisoner by de Montfort’s army at the Battle of Lewes (May 14, 1264). Many of the nobility became alarmed at this turn of events.

  In December 1264 de Montfort summoned the first English parliament to be convened without a preceding royal authorization. The senior clergy and the baronage were summoned as well as two knights from each shire, and the presence of two burgesses from each borough, chosen by a form of democratic election, was a real innovation. De Montfort’s system was adopted by Edward I during the “Model Parliament” of 1295, by which time the knights and burgesses were collectively known as “the Commons.” The Provisions of Oxford had been allowed to lapse following de Montfort’s defeat, and death, at the Battle of Evesham (August 4, 1265). Nonetheless, the knights and burgesses who attended parliament had continued to gain in authority, and it became widely accepted that discussion of taxation usually required the summoning of the Commons. The idea however that knights and burgesses should attend every parliament only gained ground in the mid-14th century.

  In 1341 the Commons started to meet separately from the nobility and clergy, and Edward III’s reign saw the establishment of the principle that the support of both Houses of Parliament and of the monarch was needed before any law could be approved or any tax levied. The Hundred Years’ War is therefore part of the story of English constitutionalism, since the king was forced to seek parliamentary approval for the very high levels of taxation needed to meet the costs of campaigning. Parliamentary consent had also been important in approving the deposition of Edward II and in establishing his son’s legitimate right to rule. Edward III nonetheless tried to avoid parliamentary scrutiny as much as possible. During the Good Parliament (1376), the Commons were critical of the way the war was being conducted and its members demanded a novel right to scrutinize public expenditure.

  Edward I presides over parliament in c.1278 in this anonymous 16th-century illustration. He is flanked symbolically by Alexander III of Scotland and Llywelyn II of Wales.

  AVIGNON AND THE SCHISM

  1301–1417

  The traditionally close association between the papacy and French monarchy broke down during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303) as a result of Philip IV’s attempt to tax the clergy. However, the relationship was restored following the election of Bertrand de Goth, archbishop of Bordeaux, to the papacy in 1305. For security reasons the conclave of 1304–05 was held in Perugia rather than in Rome, where armed conflict had broken out between powerful aristocratic groupings, the most important of whom were the Colonna and the Orsini families. Moreover, the electors were divided between the French and Italian members of the College of Cardinals, and the new pope, Clement V (r. 1305–14), chose to be crowned in Lyon. Clement’s court therefore stayed in Poitiers for the first four years of his papacy. The destruction by fire of much of the Lateran palace, the official papal residence, in 1307 provided another reason for staying away from Rome.

  In March 1309 Clement removed his court to Avignon, part of the county of Provence, whose feudal overlord was the king of Naples. This event heralded a longer-term shift of policy. Clement and his successors, as leaders of the Latin Church, would base themselves in Avignon for almost 80 years—a period when competition between Europe’s national monarchies was putting the idea of a united Christendom under increasing strain.

  Pope Gregory XI (r. 1370–78) who, like his seven predecessors in Avignon was a Frenchman, returned the papal court to Rome in January 1377. However, the conclave to elect his successor in the following year saw a renewed Franco-Italian split. The local mob agitated for the election of a Roman, but it was Bartolomeo Prignano, the archbishop of Bari and a Neapolitan by birth, who was chosen by the cardinals. As Urban VI (r. 1378–89), the pope embarked on a vigorous reform of some of the financial abuses that had crept into the curia during the years of exile in Avignon, and he castigated the cardinals for accepting gifts and favors from secular rulers. But an intemperate manner lim
ited Urban’s effectiveness, and a group of French cardinals withdrew to Anagni where they issued a manifesto of grievances and declared that they had been pressured by the mob to elect an Italian pope. The dissenting cardinals then elected Robert of Geneva, archbishop of Cambrai, to the papacy in September 1378. As the antipope Clement VII (r. 1378–94), he set up his own court in Avignon in opposition to the official papacy. Robert’s four successors continued the line of dissident anti-popes during the period of the Western schism, which was only finally resolved in 1417 when a general Council of the Church meeting at Constance (1414–18) set aside the rights of all the current papal claimants and elected a new pope, Martin V (r. 1417–31).

  RIGHT This gilded bronze statue of Pope Boniface VIII was sculpted in 1301 by Manno di Bandino, two years before the pope died.