English Territorial Claims in France: The Angevin Legacy

The English territorial claims in France were one of the central causes of the Hundred Years’ War. From the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the final loss of Calais in 1558, the kings of England were also continental lords, and the relationship between the English crown and its French possessions was a source of constant friction. The dispossession of the Angevin Empire in the early 13th century, the survival of Aquitaine, the disputed status of the duchy, and the dynastic accident of 1328 produced the conflict that would last, with long interruptions, for more than a century.

The standard treatment in English is Jean Dunbabin’s France in the Making 843–1180 (1985) and the relevant chapters of the Oxford History of England. The standard French treatment is the relevant sections of Jean Favier’s La Guerre de Cent Ans (1980). The most useful single account of the Angevin Empire is John Gillingham’s The Angevin Empire (1984).

The Norman inheritance

The English claim to French territory originated in the Norman Conquest of 1066. When William the Conqueror became King of England, he retained the duchy of Normandy, which he had inherited from his father Robert the Magnificent. The result was that the King of England was also the Duke of Normandy, a vassal of the French crown. The arrangement was inherently unstable, since the King of England was now bound to do homage to the King of France for a territory that was central to the English crown’s identity.

The relationship between the two crowns was further complicated by the conquest of Maine in the early 12th century and by the marriage of Henry I of England to Matilda of Scotland, which provided a new line of succession. The succession crisis that followed Henry I’s death in 1135 led to a long civil war between the supporters of his daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen of Blois, and the eventual accession of Matilda’s son, Henry II, in 1154.

The Angevin Empire

The high point of English power in France came with the accession of Henry II of England in 1154. Henry was the son of Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou, and he inherited not only the duchy of Normandy but also the duchy of Aquitaine, which he gained through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. By 1154 Henry controlled Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Aquitaine, a vast collection of territories in western and central France that collectively became known as the Angevin Empire.

The Angevin Empire was, however, an unwieldy and unstable political construction. The various territories were held by different titles and under different feudal arrangements, and they had little in common with one another. The French kings, who were the feudal overlords of the English king for all of these territories, watched the growth of English power with alarm. The conflict between Henry II and Louis VII of France, and the rebellion of Henry’s sons Henry the Young King, Richard, and John, kept the empire in constant turmoil.

The loss of Normandy

The Angevin Empire began to disintegrate in the early 13th century. King John, the youngest son of Henry II, was a spectacularly unsuccessful ruler, and his reign saw the loss of nearly all the English continental possessions. The murder of Arthur of Brittany in 1203, the disputed succession to Brittany, and the long conflict with Philip II Augustus of France culminated in the French conquest of Normandy in 1204.

The loss of Normandy was a profound shock to the English crown. The duchy had been held by the English kings since 1066, and its loss severed a long-standing political and cultural connection. The Plantagenet kings, from Henry III onward, were determined to recover the lost duchy, and the long attempt to do so would shape English foreign policy for the next three centuries. The campaign of 1214, in which John allied with the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and was defeated at Bouvines (27 July 1214), was the first major attempt; the campaign of 1242, in which Henry III tried and failed, was the second. The recovery of Normandy was eventually achieved by Henry V in 1417–1419, only to be undone again in 1449.

The survival of Aquitaine

Although the English lost Normandy in 1204, they managed to retain Aquitaine, the great duchy in southwestern France that Henry II had acquired through Eleanor. The duchy, which had been ruled by the Plantagenets since 1152, became the principal English possession in France. The dukes of Aquitaine, who were also the kings of England, governed the duchy through a complex network of seneschals and local officials.

The duchy was, however, a source of constant friction. The dukes of Aquitaine were vassals of the French crown for their continental possessions, and the French kings repeatedly summoned them to answer charges of misgovernment. The dukes themselves, for their part, regarded the duchy as a sovereign territory and were reluctant to acknowledge the French king’s authority. The result was a long series of disputes that would culminate in the Hundred Years’ War. The dispute over the manner of the homage — whether it should be liege homage (the liege lord) or simple homage, whether it should be done in person or by proxy, whether it should be done before or after other ceremonies — was the running sore of the 1330s.

The duchy in the 14th century

By the time of the succession crisis of 1328, the English possessions in France had been reduced to a single duchy: Aquitaine. The duchy, which had been enlarged by the addition of Poitou and other territories in the 13th century, was a wealthy and extensive territory in southwestern France, but it was much smaller than the Angevin Empire of the 12th century.

The relationship between the English kings and the duchy was complex. The duchy was held of the French crown, and the dukes of Aquitaine, who were also the kings of England, were vassals of the French king. The English kings were unwilling to acknowledge the French king’s sovereignty over the duchy, and the French kings, for their part, were determined to assert it. The result was a long series of disputes that would provide the immediate pretext for the Hundred Years’ War.

The Treaty of Brétigny (8 May 1360) settled the question for a generation: Edward III renounced his claim to the French throne in exchange for full sovereignty over the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of Ponthieu, and the city of Calais. The settlement was unenforceable, and the French revocation of the territorial concessions in November 1369 reopened the war. The duchy of Aquitaine was gradually reconquered by the French in the Caroline phase, and the final English defeat at Castillon in 1453 marked the end of the duchy as an English possession.

The Scottish and Castilian complications

The English kings’ possession of Aquitaine was complicated by the long-running Anglo-Scottish conflict. The French, determined to weaken the English position in France, had long supported Scotland against English aggression, and the Auld Alliance, signed in 1295, had formalised this relationship. The alliance was renewed by Philip VI shortly after he came to the throne in 1328, and French money and French troops kept Scotland in the war against England for the entire duration of the Hundred Years’ War.

The Castilian complication was the long series of English and French interventions in the Castilian civil war of the 1360s and 1370s. The Black Prince’s campaign in Castile in 1367 (the Battle of Najera, 3 April 1367) and the French support for Henry of Trastámara drew English and French resources into the Iberian Peninsula for the best part of a generation. The Castilian dimension is one of the under-emphasised contexts of the Edwardian and Caroline phases.

The long view

The English territorial claims in France were part of a broader pattern of medieval European politics, in which the great dynasties of the continent competed for territory and influence. The Plantagenets, the Capetians, the Valois, and the Habsburgs were all engaged in a long struggle for control of Europe, and the English claims in France were just one part of this larger picture.

The English territorial claims, however, had a particular character that distinguished them from the dynastic politics of the other great families. The English kings, alone among the great continental dynasties, were simultaneously kings of a substantial non-continental realm and vassals of a continental monarch. The constitutional absurdity of the arrangement — the King of England was a vassal of the King of France for lands the English regarded as sovereign — was the structural cause of the Hundred Years’ War.