Major Battles of the Hundred Years' War

The Hundred Years’ War produced a small number of engagements that have become canonical: Sluys, Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, and Castillon, with the siege of Orléans as the hinge. These battles are the moments at which the long, slow attrition of the war is condensed into a single day, and the way they have been remembered — in chronicles, in paintings, in Shakespeare, in the textbook tradition — is as much a part of their meaning as their tactical substance.

The standard treatment in English is Anne Curry’s The Battle of Agincourt: An Anatomy (2020) and her earlier Agincourt: A New History (2005). The standard French treatment of Agincourt is Christophe Gilliot’s edition of the Vie du Prince Noir and Contamine’s Azincourt (1964, reprinted 2015). For the broad sweep, see Jonathan Sumption’s The Hundred Years’ War, vols. I–V.

Sluys, 24 June 1340

The first major action of the war was a fleet engagement. The French, who had spent the early months of 1340 assembling a large fleet in the Flemish port of Sluys (now part of Vlissingen, in the Netherlands), intended to use it to support a landing in southern England. Edward III sailed from the Thames with perhaps 120–150 ships, caught the French at anchor, and used his high-sided cogs and massed longbowmen to destroy them. Froissart’s figure of 18,000 French killed is rhetorical; the more sober modern estimates put the French losses in the low thousands. The result was control of the Channel, and the end of the prospect of a French invasion of England, for the rest of the war.

The battle is treated in detail in the Battle of Sluys article. The fleet context is discussed in the Battle of Sluys and the Channel and in the Edwardian phase article.

Crécy, 26 August 1346

The first great land battle of the war. Edward III had landed in Normandy in July 1346, conducted a chevauchée through the duchy (sacking Caen), and was retreating northward toward the English-held territory of Ponthieu when he was caught by Philip VI at the village of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. Edward chose his ground on a ridge between the village and the forest, deployed his army in three divisions (the Black Prince, sixteen years old, commanding the vanguard; Edward the main body; the earls of Arundel and Northampton the rearguard), and dismounted his men-at-arms behind a screen of longbowmen and sharpened stakes.

The French attacked uphill, in successive waves — Genoese crossbowmen, the cavalry of the first division, then the men-at-arms of the second and third divisions — and were broken by longbow fire. The Count of Alençon, the Count of Flanders, the Count of Blois the Duke of Lorraine, and the blind King of Bohemia were among the dead. Modern estimates of French losses cluster around 1,500–2,500; the figure of 4,000 in the older chronicles is rhetorical.

The battle is treated in detail in the Battle of Crécy article.

Poitiers, 19 September 1356

The second great English victory of the Edwardian phase. The Black Prince, returning from a chevauchée through southern France, was caught at the village of Maupertuis, near Poitiers, by King John II. The English army, perhaps 6,000 strong, was substantially outnumbered; the Black Prince, advised by John Chandos and the Captal de Buch, chose a defensive position behind hedges and a sunken road. As at Crécy, the longbow and the dismounted men-at-arms did the work. King John himself was captured and held to ransom, the basis of the Treaty of Brétigny (1360).

Agincourt, 25 October 1415

The most famous battle of the war, and the most studied. Henry V had invaded France in August 1415, taken Harfleur after a five-week siege, and was marching his army overland to Calais when Charles d’Albret, the French constable, brought the French army to block him in the narrow plain of Picardy. The English, perhaps 6,000 strong, were outnumbered by between two and four to one (modern estimates for the French side cluster around 12,000–18,000).

Three features did the work. The narrow battlefield, between two woods, neutralised the French numerical advantage by forcing them to attack in successive columns. The muddy ground, after a wet autumn, made the mounted charge impossible. And the longbow, fired in disciplined volleys, broke each French wave in turn. The Duke of Alençon, the Duke of Brabant, the Constable d’Albret, and a substantial proportion of the higher French nobility were killed. Modern estimates of English losses cluster around 400–600; French losses, perhaps 1,500–4,000 of all ranks, are recorded in the chronicles but cannot be precisely quantified.

The historical accuracy of Shakespeare’s account is treated in How Accurate Is Shakespeare’s Henry V?; the casualty question in How Many Died at Agincourt?; the French disaster in Why Was Agincourt a Disaster for France?.

Verneuil, 17 August 1424

The English attempt to repeat Agincourt. JohnDuke of Bedford, regent of France for the infant Henry VI, faced a Franco-Scottish force under the Earl of Douglas and the Duke of Alençon. The battle was ferociously contested, the Scottish contingent was almost annihilated, and the Duke of Alençon was killed. Strategically, however, the engagement mattered less than Agincourt, because by 1424 the French had already lost most of their leadership and the English had no realistic political objective to follow up the victory.

The Siege of Orléans, 1428–1429

The siege began in October 1428 under the Earl of Salisbury, who was killed by a cannonball in November. The lifting of the siege by Joan of Arc in May 1429 — the French attacked and captured the English bastides one by one, and the English retreated on 8 May — is conventionally treated as the turning point of the war. The relief of Orléans made possible the French victories at Jargeau (11–12 June), Meung-sur-Loire (15 June)Beaugency (16–17 June), and Patay (18 June, in which John Talbot was defeated but not captured) and the coronation of Charles VII at Reims on 17 July 1429.

The siege is treated in detail in the Siege of Orléans article; the Loire campaign of 1429 in the Loire Campaign article.

Castillon, 17 July 1453

The last battle of the war. John TalbotEarl of Shrewsbury, in his late sixties and one of the last of the great English captains of the war, attempted to relieve the French siege of Castillon-sur-Dordogne. The French, under the constable Arthur de Richemont and the artillery master Jean Bureau, had constructed a fortified camp defended by a substantial train of field artillery. Talbot attacked without scouting, his army was caught in the open by the French cannon, and the English force was destroyed in detail. Talbot and his son John TalbotViscount Lisle, were killed. Bordeaux surrendered on 19 October 1453. Apart from Calais the English territorial presence in France was finished.

Castillon is conventionally treated as the moment when the gun replaced the longbow as the dominant battlefield arm. The argument is set out in artillery in the war and in how gunpowder changed medieval warfare.

Sieges

For all the romance of the pitched battle, sieges were the dominant military activity of the war. The English and French fought hundreds of sieges between 1337 and 1453; the great English castles of Normandy and Aquitaine were taken, lost, and retaken. The Siege of Calais (1346–1347), the most famous English siege of the war, lasted eleven months and ended with the surrender of the town. The Siege of Orléans (1428–1429) is treated above. The changing art of fortification — from the high medieval castle to the low, thick-walled bastion fort of the 16th century — is one of the most important military legacies of the war.

The revolution in warfare

The Hundred Years’ War is one of the canonical cases of military revolution. The mounted charge, the feudal levy, and the high medieval castle all became obsolete within the same century, and the longbow, the professional infantry, and the gunpowder cannon replaced them. The structural reading of the war — most fully developed by Philippe ContamineGeorges Duby, and the contributors to Clifford Rogers’ The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology (2010) — is that the war was both cause and consequence of the transition from medieval to early modern warfare.

For the specific weapons and tactics, see the longbow, artillery, plate armour, and military innovations articles.