Download The Hundred Years War: The History of Europe's Most Famous War of the Middle Ages AudioBook Free
"King of Britain, if you don't do these exact things, I am the commander of the military, and in whatever place I shall find your men in France, I am going to make them flee the country, whether they wish to or not." (Joan of Arc) Although it finished over 550 years ago, the 100 Years' Conflict still looms large in the historical consciousness of Britain and France, even if the name of the famous war is a misnomer. Actually a series of separate conflicts between the English and French monarchies, interspersed with durations of peacefulness, its historical image can be an odd one, in part because its roots were based on royal promises that dated back ages, and the English and French continued to be adversaries for almost 400 years after it finished. However, the war was actually transformative in many respects, and the impact it had on the geopolitical situation of Europe cannot be overstated. Although some might think of the war as being a continuation of the feudal custom of knights and peasants, the 100 Years' Conflict revolutionized Western European warfare, and it truly helped to usher in the idea of nationalism on the continent. In Britain it is kept in mind as a period of grandeur and success, even although English lost the war and huge swathes of place with it, as the French remember it as a strategic victory that ensured the continued freedom of France and the denial of English hegemony. To understand the 100 Years' Conflict is to understand how Britain became politically severed from the continent, the way the knightly chivalric custom slid into irrelevance, and exactly how battlefield dominance can still leave a region a loser in war.
