The Treaty of Troyes (1420) looked to have all but secured English victory in the Hundred Years War. England was undefeated in open battle and decisive victories at Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) further reinforced their apparent invincibility in the field. Furthermore the victorious King Henry V had become both the heir and regent of France, a kingdom ruled by a crazed king and crippled by civil war. Yet ultimately the English were defeated and this essay shall explore how the emergence of Joan of Arc, fiscal crises in England and the defection of Burgundy contributed to such a dramatic change of fortunes within the Hundred Years War.

From the outset of the war it was political turmoil within France which drove English success. King Edward III compensated for England’s comparatively small army by capitalising on ‘provincial grievances and provincial separatism’ to acquire the support of key nobles within both Brittany and Normandy by 1354. Faced with the superior military technology and tactics of the English, and occupied on too many fronts by both the English and her own subjects, France simply could not sustain the war effort. Consequently France was forced into ratifying the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) which saw provinces such as Ponthieu and Aquitaine ceded to England in full sovereignty.

Within fifty years history was repeating itself, as the bouts of madness suffered by King Charles VI meant that the French government was all but completely controlled by the French princes of the blood, and in particular the Dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. When Duke John of Burgundy had Duke Louis of Orléans assassinated in 1407, France was ‘plunged into fully-fledged civil war’ as the Armagnacs (Louis’ supporters) battled the Burgundians. Burgundy responded by tentatively allying itself with England as Henry V, like Edward III before him, capitalised on the political divisions in France to invade and win a stunning victory over the Armagnacs at Agincourt. Yet by 1419 the Armagnacs and the Burgundians appeared to have forged an alliance in order to expel the English from France. As Keen points out, Henry had over-extended himself and warring against a united France would have ‘inevitably overstrain[ed] his English resources’. However, the Armagnac’s assassination of Duke John later in 1419 prompted both Burgundy and its ally Brittany to completely defect to the English. Within a year the Treaty of Troyes had been ratified and Henry V had become both the regent and heir of France. It appeared as if France’s very own nobility had all but delivered France to the English; however, the signs were ominous that England’s success in France totally depended upon the continuing loyalty of their French allies.

By 1428 the Armagnacs were at their nadir as the strategically crucial city of Orléans, their capital, was under siege and in danger of falling. It was at Orléans that Joan of Arc turned the tide of the war as she relieved the city and lifted the siege. The victory was a huge morale boost as Joan then proceeded to break the ‘Valois cycle of defeat’ with another decisive victory, this time at Patay. The aura of English invincibility had been shattered as Joan’s victories allowed the Dauphin to conquer Champagne and be crowned King Charles VII at Rheims in 1429. The Duke of Gloucester’s private war with Burgundy in the mid-1420s had already strained Anglo-Burgundian relations, and this sudden reversal in fortunes merely exacerbated the existing tensions.

If the arrival of Joan of Arc had proved to be the turning point of the war, in hindsight the defection of Burgundy in 1435 is what ended any hopes of an English victory. The Anglo-Burgundian alliance had been a product of circumstance, devoid of any firm foundations. They had united in opposition to the Armagnacs, but ultimately the Burgundians realised that they had more common cause with the Armagnacs than the invading English. As Anne Curry so succinctly put it ‘English kings could only be realistic claimants to the throne of France if French princes supported them. By the same token, withdrawal of such support was bound to undermine and finally to destroy the English position.’
Burgundy’s defection was then compounded by the Duke of Bedford’s death in 1435 and the subsequent loss of Paris in 1436, as Charles VII became king of France in practise as well as name.

When the English had been faced with setbacks in the 1370s and 1380s, the government had responded by ‘pouring money into their war effort’. However, by the 1430s this was no longer possible as the government was lacking the necessary funds to adequately sustain the war. A potential reason for this is the way in which the nature of warfare had changed between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the fourteenth century, particularly under Edward III, the English campaigns were made up of devastating chevauchées in which swathes of France were plundered and pillaged. The chevauchées were highly successful as they would often bring the French to battle, such as at Poitiers, and allow the English to win a decisive victory. This style of campaigning also meant that at the end of the campaigning season, the army would return to England ‘laden (hopefully) with prisoners and booty’. Yet when Henry V invaded France he initiated a campaign of conquest rather than raiding, and the need to occupy conquered lands prevented them from being ravaged. Furthermore soldiers were required to stay in France for longer periods in order to garrison towns and defend conquered lands. As such, spoils of war often stayed in France, whereas in the fourteenth century they had returned to England along with the army. Consequently the English nobles who were not campaigning in France were less willing to finance a conquest ‘from which no profit came their way’. Whereas Edward III’s war had, to some extent, paid for itself through the gains of the chevauchées, in the fifteenth century this was no longer possible.

Further evidence of England’s increasing financial burden can be found in the ratio of men-at-arms to archers being deployed to France. Between 1415 and 1427, the ratio was almost exclusively 1:3 in all of their expeditionary armies, indicating England viewed such a ratio as optimal to military success. Yet from 1428 onwards the ratio would increase to 1:5, as the English sought to cut costs (a man-at-arms’ wage was twice that of an archer’s) whilst maintaining a high number of troops in the field. Furthermore the continuous nature of warfare meant that the nobility had to campaign (and therefore leave their English estates unattended) for substantially longer periods of time, and this may have reduced their willingness to partake in the war. It is possible then that England’s lack of men-at-arms contributed to France’s growing military success after 1428.

The final key reason why the English could no longer financially sustain the war effort was a fall in income from taxation. The total revenue received from taxation plummeted in the fifteenth century; and in particular from the 1420s onwards. Even after Henry V had conquered most of northern France, England’s parliament was hesitant in funding his war effort as the upkeep of his existing conquests were already draining the English treasury. Yet this decline can be explained by the fact parliament lowered the taxes it was charging whilst also ‘spreading the payment of direct levies over longer periods’. This had the effect of temporarily sustaining the war, whilst simultaneously hindering its ability to fund the war going forward. Thus the fall in revenue from taxation, and consequently the reduced spending on the war effort, reflected not only parliament’s diminished capacity to finance the war, but also its reduced willingness to do so.

Joan of Arc’s offensive in 1429 had seen the English forced onto the defensive for the first time in the war. The ensuing French victories, in conjunction with growing financial difficulties in England and the defection of Burgundy in 1435, allowed France to slowly recapture its lost territories. By the 1440s England was on the verge of bankruptcy and it was also losing the war. When previously faced with similar circumstances, the French had responded by suing for peace in order to bide their time and strengthen their position. It was through such actions that the treaties of Brétigny and Troyes came into being. However, the Treaty of Troyes prevented the English from doing the same, for its terms were simply too favourable. England needed peace in order to survive, yet in order to prevent a public outcry on the domestic front it needed a settlement in which England made fewer concessions than France. As Shakespeare so eloquently put it, ‘no king of England if not king of France’. Yet England’s waning military might meant that they could not negotiate from a position of strength and as such they were caught between a ‘ruinous war and a shameful peace’. The Truce of Tours in 1444 saw England finally opt for the latter, as they grudgingly ceded Maine in exchange for peace.

In 1449 the English unsuccessfully attempted to have Brittany defect from France; however, this only served to give Charles VII the excuse he needed to resume his assault on the English. England’s defences in Normandy had already been weakened from the truce, and their defeat was hastened when many of their Norman allies/subjects defected to the French. The growing effectiveness of artillery and the establishment of a professional standing army (the compaignies d’ordonnance) allowed Charles to take Normandy within a year, Gascony by 1451 and to finally crush and expel the English from France at Castillon in 1453.

English success in the Hundred Years War had been primarily accompanied by political turmoil within France and alliances with various factions of the French nobility. Hence following the arrival of Joan of Arc and the defection of Burgundy in 1435, the tide of the war irreversibly shifted in France’s favour. With victory a near impossibility, the Treaty of Troyes hindered England’s ability to negotiate and would, in conjunction with a severe lack of funds, lead to the collapse of the English occupation in France and the end of the Hundred Years War.
Word Count: 2199
Karlo Rafael Doroc

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[ 1 ]. “The Hundred Years War: Battles and Rulers,” eHistory @ The Ohio State University, accessed 5 June 2013, http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/archive/hundredyearswar2.cfm.
[ 2 ]. M. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” in The Penguin History of Medieval Europe, eds. Maurice Keen (London: Penguin UK, 1991), 247.
[ 3 ]. Ibid., 248
[ 4 ]. Ibid.
[ 5 ]. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” 253
[ 6 ]. Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 78.
[ 7 ]. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” 247-253.
[ 8 ]. Maurice Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms in the Middle ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), 232-233.
[ 9 ]. Ibid.
[ 10 ]. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” 254.
[ 11 ]. Ibid.
[ 12 ]. Ibid., 257.
[ 13 ]. “The Hundred Years War: Battles and Rulers,” eHistory @ The Ohio State University, accessed 5 June 2013, http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/archive/hundredyearswar2.cfm.
[ 14 ]. C.J. Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” in Medieval Warfare a History, eds. Maurice Keen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 157.
[ 15 ]. Anonymous, “The First Chronicle to Record Joan of Arc's Exploits” in The First Biography of Joan of Arc, eds. Daniel Rankin and Claire Quintal (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), 113-125
[ 16 ]. Curry, The Hundred Years War, 96-107.
[ 17 ]. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” 255.
[ 18 ]. Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms, 237.
[ 19 ]. Ibid.
[ 20 ]. Curry, The Hundred Years War, 113.
[ 21 ]. Curry, The Hundred Years War, 97
[ 22 ]. Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms, 243.
[ 23 ]. Curry, The Hundred Years War, 97.
[ 24 ]. A. Curry, “English Armies in the Fifteenth Century,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, eds. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1994), 39-68.
[ 25 ]. “The English plunder Champagne,” Jean Froissart, edited by Steve Muhlberger, Tales from Froissart, last modified 21 January 2004, http://faculty.nipissingu.ca/muhlberger/FROISSART/CHAMPAGN.HTM.
[ 26 ]. Jean Froissart, translated by John Bourchier, and Lord Berners, The Chronicles of Froissart (New York: The Collier Press, 1994), 5-60
[ 27 ]. Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms, 247.
[ 28 ]. Curry, “English Armies in the Fifteenth Century,” 39.
[ 29 ]. Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms, 247.
[ 30 ]. Ibid., 246-249.
[ 31 ]. Keen, Nobles, Knights and Men-At-Arms, 249.
[ 32 ]. Keen, “The Hundred Years War,” 249.
[ 33 ]. Curry, “English Armies in the Fifteenth Century,” 44-48.
[ 34 ]. Ibid.
[ 35 ]. Ibid.
[ 36 ]. Ibid.
[ 37 ]. D. Jones and E. D. McCulloch, “Lancastrian Politics, the French War, and the Rise of the Popular Element” Speculum 58, 1 (1983): 100.
[ 38 ]. W. M. Ormrod, “The Domestic Response to the Hundred Years War,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, eds. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1994), 93-94.
[ 39 ]. Ibid., 93-94.
[ 40 ]. Nicholas Wright, Knights and Peasants the Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 2.
[ 41 ]. Ormrod, “The Domestic Response,” 88.
[ 42 ]. Jones and McCulloch, “Lancastrian Politics,” 100.
[ 43 ]. Curry, The Hundred Years War, 103.
[ 44 ]. Ormrod, “The Domestic Response,” 96.
[ 45 ]. Jones and McCulloch, “Lancastrian Politics,” 112.
[ 46 ]. Ibid., 115-116.
[ 47 ]. Curry, “English Armies in the Fifteenth Century,” 52-60.
[ 48 ]. M. Keen, “The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder, and Permanent Armies,” in Medieval Warfare a History, eds. Maurice Keen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 278-287.