Timeline of the Hundred Years' War | The Hundred Years' War

The Hundred Years’ War was not a single conflict but a series of wars, truces, and resurgences that stretched across 116 years. The war opened with Edward III’s renunciation of his homage to Philip VI on 7 October 1337 and ended with the French victory at the Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453, followed by the surrender of Bordeaux on 19 October 1453. The name “Hundred Years’ War” is a historian’s label coined in the 19th century and popularised in English by May McKisack’s The Fourteenth Century (1959); the war is conventionally divided into three phases, the Edwardian (1337–1360), the Caroline (1369–1389), and the Lancastrian (1415–1453), each separated by long truces.

The standard narrative is Sumption’s The Hundred Years’ War, in progress since 1990 (vols. I–IV to date). The standard French narratives are Contamine’s La Guerre de Cent Ans (1968) and Favier’s La Guerre de Cent Ans (1980). The dates below are given in the form day/month/year; the year is Julian until 1582, but the convention in English historiography is to use the modern calendar.

The drift toward war, 1328–1337

1 February 1328: Death of Charles IV of France, the last direct Capetian king. The French throne is offered to Philip, Count of Valois, who becomes Philip VI. The young Edward III of England, whose mother Isabella was Charles IV’s sister, has his claim set aside in favour of the Salic Law.
6 June 1329: Edward III does homage to Philip VI for the duchy of Aquitaine at Amiens, but disputes immediately arise over the conditions of the homage.
October 1330: Edward III assumes personal rule at the age of 17 and deposes the regent Roger Mortimer.
1336: Philip VI summons Edward III to appear before the Parlement of Paris to answer charges brought against him by Robert d’Artois.
24 May 1337: Philip VI confiscates the duchy of Aquitaine by judgment of the Parlement of Paris, the immediate pretext for war.
7 October 1337: Edward III renounces his homage to Philip VI. (He formally assumed the title “King of France” on 26 January 1340 at the Westminster Parliament.) This is usually taken as the formal beginning of the war.

The Edwardian phase, 1337–1360

24 June 1340: The Battle of Sluys is fought off the Flemish coast, a decisive English naval victory that secures control of the English Channel.
26 August 1346: The Battle of Crécy is fought in Picardy. The English longbow proves decisive, and the French army is shattered.
1346–1347: The English besiege and capture Calais, which remains in English hands until 1558.
1347–1351: The Black Death strikes Europe, killing perhaps a third of the population. The pandemic has profound effects on both kingdoms, including disruption of military campaigns and severe labour shortages.
19 September 1356: The Battle of Poitiers is fought near the city of Poitiers. The Black Prince defeats the French army, and King John II of France is captured and taken to England.
1358: The Jacquerie, a peasant uprising in northern France, is brutally suppressed.
8 May 1360: The Treaty of Brétigny is signed. Edward III renounces his claim to the French throne in exchange for territorial concessions, and King John is released.

The Caroline phase, 1369–1389

April 1364: Charles V becomes King of France, succeeding his father John, who dies in captivity in London in April 1364. Charles appoints Bertrand du Guesclin as Constable of France in October 1370.
3 April 1367: The Battle of Najera is fought in Castile. The Black Prince, intervening on behalf of Pedro of Castile, defeats a Franco-Castilian army. The campaign proves ruinous for English Aquitaine.
30 November 1369: Charles V revokes the territorial concessions of the Treaty of Brétigny and reopens the war.
23 June 1372: The Battle of La Rochelle is a French-Castilian naval victory that cuts off English Aquitaine from sea-borne reinforcements.
1372: The Black Prince returns to England, ill.
8 June 1376: Death of the Black Prince.
21 June 1377: Death of Edward III, succeeded by the ten-year-old Richard II.
16 September 1380: Death of Charles V, succeeded by the twelve-year-old Charles VI. Death of du Guesclin on 13 July 1380.
18 June 1389: A truce is signed at Leulinghem, ending the Caroline War.

The interwar period, 1389–1415

5 August 1392: Charles VI suffers his first known bout of madness at the forest of Le Mans, which proves to be the first of many.
30 September 1399: Richard II is deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king.
23 November 1407: The Duke of Orléans is murdered on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, beginning the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war.
20 March 1413: Henry V becomes King of England on the death of his father Henry IV.
25 October 1415: The Battle of Agincourt is fought in Picardy. Henry V destroys a much larger French army.

The Lancastrian phase, 1415–1453

1417–1419: Henry V conquers Normandy in a rapid campaign: Caen falls in 1417, Rouen surrenders in January 1419.
21 May 1420: The Treaty of Troyes is signed. Henry V is recognised as the regent and heir of the mad Charles VI, and the Dauphin is disinherited.
31 August 1422: Death of Henry V, of dysentery, at the Château de Vincennes. His infant son becomes Henry VI.
21 October 1422: Death of Charles VI, seven weeks after Henry V. The infant Henry VI is proclaimed King of France and England.
17 August 1424: The Battle of Verneuil is a costly English victory over a Franco-Scottish force; the Scottish contingent is almost annihilated.
October 1428: The English begin the Siege of Orléans.
8 November 1428: The Earl of Salisbury is killed by a cannonball at the siege.
April 1429: Joan of Arc arrives at the Dauphin’s court at Chinon.
29 April 1429: Joan of Arc arrives at Orléans.
8 May 1429: The siege of Orléans is lifted by the French.
18 June 1429: The Battle of Patay is a major French victory; John Talbot is defeated but escapes.
17 July 1429: Charles VII is crowned King of France at Reims.
23 May 1430: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne.
21 February 1431: Joan’s trial opens at Rouen.
30 May 1431: Joan of Arc is burned at the stake in Rouen.
September 1435: The Congress of Arras ends the war between France and Burgundy. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, abandons the English alliance.
1449: The French complete the reconquest of Normandy.
1451: The French reconquer most of Gascony.
17 July 1453: The Battle of Castillon is the final battle of the war. The English army is destroyed by French artillery, and John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, is killed.
19 October 1453: Bordeaux surrenders to the French. The Hundred Years’ War is effectively over, although a few residual claims and truces would be negotiated over the following decade.

A war of three phases

The timeline above makes clear that the Hundred Years’ War was, in fact, three distinct wars separated by long periods of uneasy peace. Each phase had its own character, its own commanders, and its own strategic logic. The Edwardian phase was dominated by the personal command of Edward III and the spectacular victories of the longbow. The Caroline phase was a long French reconquest conducted by Charles V and du Guesclin. The Lancastrian phase opened with Henry V’s dramatic invasion and ended with the French recovery under Charles VII.

The history of each phase is examined in its own article: the Edwardian phase, the Caroline phase, and the Lancastrian phase.

How long was the war?

The name “Hundred Years’ War” is a historian’s label coined in the 19th century. In fact, the war lasted 116 years, from 1337 to 1453. The label has stuck because the three phases of the war share a common cause (the Anglo-French dynastic dispute), a common geography (the principal fighting was on French soil), and a common set of participants (the English and French crowns, with shifting allies). The label is, however, a historian’s convenience rather than a medieval reality: the people who fought the war did not think of themselves as fighting a single 116-year conflict, and the truces of Brétigny (1360) and Leulinghem (1389) were recognised at the time as the ends of distinct wars.