Best Books on the Hundred Years War Between England and France

The Hundred Years War lasted from 1337 to 1453, which means it was actually closer to 116 years. It also was not really a single war. It was a series of conflicts, interrupted by long truces and complicated by internal politics on both sides, over the English crown's claim to the French throne. By the time it ended, France had become something recognizably like a modern centralized state, and England had been expelled from the continent entirely. Joan of Arc had lived and died. The longbow had changed medieval warfare. Feudalism had taken another step toward its eventual end. These books tell that story properly. ## The Essential Narrative History **"A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century" by Barbara Tuchman** is not exclusively about the Hundred Years War, but it is the best popular history of the period in which the conflict was rooted. Tuchman follows the life of a single French nobleman, Enguerrand de Coucy VII, as a way into the larger catastrophes of the 14th century: the Black Death, which killed perhaps a third of Europe's population; the social upheavals that followed; and the early campaigns of the war with England. Tuchman writes with unusual clarity and she never loses sight of the human stakes behind the political narrative. The book is sometimes criticized by historians for overstating the representativeness of its central figure. That is a fair point. As an introduction to the period and the texture of medieval life, however, it remains unsurpassed. ## The Military History The Hundred Years War produced several engagements that transformed how medieval warfare worked. Crecy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356, and Agincourt in 1415 each demonstrated the devastating effectiveness of the English longbow against mounted knights. These were not flukes. They reflected a shift in the military balance between infantry and cavalry that would eventually end the age of armored knights. **"Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England" by Juliet Barker** focuses on the most famous of these battles with a historian's precision. Barker reconstructs the campaign in detail, from Henry V's invasion of Normandy through the negotiations that failed and the battle that followed. She is clear about what is known from the sources and what is contested, and she resists the temptation to make Agincourt more decisive than it actually was. Henry won a stunning tactical victory but did not win the war. It took another 38 years and a great deal more fighting before France finally expelled the English. ## Joan of Arc and the Turn of the War Joan of Arc is one of history's most improbable figures: a teenage peasant girl from Lorraine who convinced the Dauphin of France to give her command of his army, lifted the siege of Orleans in 1429, and was burned as a heretic two years later. Her story has been told so many times, and interpreted in so many ways, that distinguishing the historical Joan from the mythological one requires some effort. Régine Pernoud's **"Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses"** is the most rigorous approach available in English. Pernoud was a French medievalist who spent decades studying the primary sources, including the transcripts of Joan's trial and the rehabilitation proceedings that followed her death. She builds her account from what Joan actually said and what contemporaries actually wrote, rather than from later legend. The result is a portrait that is stranger and more interesting than the familiar icon. ## The Long-Term Consequences The war ended with France in control of virtually all of its territory and England withdrawing from the continent for good. The French monarchy came out of the conflict considerably stronger than it went in. The English monarchy came out of it heading toward the Wars of the Roses, a succession crisis that would convulse England for another 30 years. Both outcomes were shaped by the war in ways that contemporaries did not fully understand. The growth of French royal authority, the development of standing armies funded by royal taxation, the decline of feudal military obligation: these were not planned outcomes but the accumulated results of a century of military necessity. Understanding the Hundred Years War means understanding how the medieval political order in Western Europe began to dissolve into something new. The books above are the best guides to that process. ## Further Reading Explore more books on medieval history, English history, and the history of France at [/category/medieval-history](/category/medieval-history).