Abstract
Rarely does a year go by without another contribution to the large literature on the period of Anglo–French conflict between 1337 and 1453 conventionally known as the Hundred Years’ War. The question then for any new general text is whether it can address the same issues in an enlightening fashion. The title of Green’s book reflects a welcome thematic approach, though it is also perhaps a hostage to fortune – which people and whose history? Arranged in ten thematic chapters, his survey takes a middle path between more focused studies and the grand narrative, the latter exemplified by Jonathan Sumption’s magisterial and ongoing five-volume The Hundred Years War. The traditional three orders of medieval society – those who fought, those who worked, and those who prayed – are the focus of the first three chapters. Green then turns expectations on their head by beginning with making peace rather than war, a valuable reminder that the extended period of hostilities was in large part the consequence of the repeated failures of diplomacy to solve the fundamental issues of sovereignty occasioned by an English king holding land in the kingdom of France. War was the inevitable consequence, but was far from continuous. The effectiveness of the making of war or peace was a consequence of the effectiveness of monarchs and the limits of their power, themes explored in the fifth chapter. Only in the sixth chapter is war itself treated explicitly, taking the battle of Agincourt as its focus. This is well chosen, as chronologically it falls in the middle of the period of conflict, but Henry’s victory and subsequent invasion of Normandy was a fulcrum: a war over sovereignty became a war of conquest and this changed the character of Anglo–French relations.
The strains inherent in France and within the Anglo–Burgundian alliance (not least as seen through the eyes of an anonymous citizen of Paris who left vivid witness) are tackled next, as well as an exploration of the economic stresses placed on society through taxation, supplying the war machine, and through the destruction wrought across France by the tactic of the chevauchée – a long-distance mounted raid intended to damage and destabilize rather than to take territory. The final chapters address the role of women (an analysis dominated by Joan of Arc and members of the elite), prisoners of war, and, most intriguingly, national identities. Here Green’s focus is on political identities and the means by which they were exploited, which inevitably results in an overly ‘top-down’ approach and hides some of the nuances apparent in insular culture: Irish and Welsh literature certainly expressed opinions on this ‘English’ war, and though Green notes these, they might have been more fully explored. A neat epilogue provides a chronological and historiographical perspective from which these wars have been viewed in subsequent centuries. Together with 23 generally familiar illustrations, there are five valuable maps, the fifth of which compares the changes in extent of English influence and landholding in France in 1360 and in the aftermath of the Treaty of Troyes (1420), thereby neatly revealing the change in focus of Anglo–French conflicts. Overall, this volume forms a welcome addition to the subject, engages with an extensive literature, and through its intelligent balance of chronological and thematic strands provides a nuanced view of the nature of this protracted conflict.