Medieval 100: The War for the Crown Workout

At its heart, the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) was a dynastic struggle—a long, bitter feud between England and France over who had the right to wear the French crown.

The roots of the conflict go deep: the English kings were descendants of French nobility, and for centuries they held lands in France as vassals to the French king. But when the Capetian line of France died out, England’s Edward III claimed that, through his mother (a French princess), he had a legitimate right to the French throne.

The French nobility refused, invoking Salic Law to block inheritance through a female line. Instead, they crowned Philip VI—a cousin from the French side. That rejection lit the fuse.

What followed was not a single war, but a generation-spanning series of invasions, truces, betrayals, and battles—fought over land, legitimacy, and national pride. At times, it was a war of kings; at others, it was a war of survival.

It shaped the medieval world and laid the foundations for the modern concept of nationhood. Some monarchs emerged as legends. Others vanished into madness, exile, or disgrace.

This war marked the death of chivalry and the rise of modern warfare. 

Gone were the days of single combat between mounted nobles. Heavy cavalry charges broke on muddy fields, shattered by volleys of English longbowmen hidden behind sharpened stakes.

The English fought lean and brutal—scorched earth raids (chevauchées) laid waste to the countryside, burning towns, crops, and morale alike. They weren’t there to conquer—they were there to cripple. Tactics favored movement, precision, and endurance over ceremony, honour and code.

France, slow to adapt at first, evolved. The romantic ideal of the knight gave way to disciplined infantry, artillery, and siegecraft. Gunpowder crept onto the battlefield. Castles once thought invincible fell to cannon and calculated pressure.

The Hundred Years’ War didn’t just change how wars were fought. It changed why they were fought—and what nations would become in their aftermath.

NB: The Oriflamme

The Oriflamme was the sacred war banner of France, once kept at the Abbey of Saint-Denis. When it was raised in battle, it meant no mercy would be given. Its crimson flame was more than a symbol—it was a warning. To fight under the Oriflamme was to invoke a holy war. No quarter. No retreat.

These were not just battles. They were turning points, legends, and warnings carved into the history of two nations.

🏹 Crécy (1346)

The longbow rewrites the rules of war.
Edward III’s English army, outnumbered and on foreign soil, devastates French knights with volleys of longbow fire. The mounted charge—once the pride of chivalry—is broken in the mud. It marks the beginning of the end for the old ways of warfare.

🏰 Agincourt (1415)

A king’s gamble becomes legend.
Henry V leads a starving, sick, and exhausted English army against a force more than twice its size. His archers, dug in behind wooden stakes, shred the French advance. Mud, steel, and grit make Agincourt one of the most iconic underdog victories in military history.

🔥 Orléans (1429)

A girl in armor changes everything.
The siege that could have broken France is shattered by the arrival of Joan of Arc—17 years old, untrained, but full of divine fire. Her belief rallies the French, and the English retreat. For the first time in years, France begins to push back.

💣 Castillon (1453)

The final blow—and the rise of gunpowder.
The English mount one last assault to retake lost ground, but are met with walls of cannon fire. The battle marks the first time field artillery decisively wins a major engagement. Castillon ends the war—and England’s dream of a French crown.

England entered the war with a sharp sense of entitlement and a tactical mindset. To them, the crown of France wasn’t ambition—it was inheritance. The English monarchy believed it had a legal and dynastic right to rule French lands, and every French refusal was a personal insult and political betrayal. Their fighting spirit was fueled by strategic calculation, disdain for French arrogance, and a grim confidence in their military edge—especially the longbow.

France, by contrast, saw the English invasion as an existential threat. Their soil was sacred—the very idea of a foreign king ruling from Paris was blasphemous and unbearable. As their cities burned and nobles fell, French resistance hardened into a cause of identity, religion, and national survival. From the nobles to the peasants, the war became less about a throne and more about reclaiming sovereignty and pride.

The Hundred Years’ War didn’t just shape borders—it shaped minds, myths, and nations.

In England, the war birthed the idea of the “band of brothers”, immortalized by Shakespeare’s Henry V. It’s where the two-finger salute is said to have originated—English archers allegedly taunting the French by showing the fingers they used to draw the longbow, daring them to try and cut them off. Whether myth or truth, it’s part of the gritty, underdog self-image the English carried forward.

In France, the war left scars—but also symbols. Joan of Arc became a saint, a martyr, and a national icon—her image still burns in the French consciousness as a symbol of resistance and divine justice. The war also helped solidify the French language, culture, and identity under one crown—a unified France rising from feudal chaos.

Even centuries later, the echoes of this war live on in stories, traditions, and national pride. It was the crucible that helped forge what it meant to be English or French.

Medieval warfare was a brutal proving ground—gritty, close-quarters, and utterly unforgiving. This was not the era of distant gunfire or clean kills. Warriors fought in the mud, weighed down by steel, often locked in violent, breathless struggles at arm’s length.

Knights were more than noble figures—they were armoured war machines, trained from childhood in weapons, horsemanship, siegecraft and hand-to-hand combat. They fought with swords, axes, maces, and war hammers, each strike aimed to crush bone or pierce steel. Their endurance was legendary—campaigns could last for years, and the battles could last for hours under the punishing weight of plate and chain.

Archers and foot soldiers were no less deadly. Longbowmen trained for years to pull war bows with draw weights over 100 pounds, unleashing hails of arrows that could shatter charges. Infantry wielded polearms, spears, and crude blades, often fighting in tight, chaotic formations where technique and toughness mattered more than finesse.

There were no clean battles—only exhaustion, broken bodies, and survival by strength, skill, or sheer will. Warfare was physical, punishing, and relentless. Every warrior was a conditioned, hardened killer who fought with everything they had—because losing meant death, or worse.