When Did the Hundred Years' War End?
The Hundred Years’ War ended in 1453. The last pitched battle of the war was fought at Castillon, on the banks of the Dordogne, on 17 July 1453, when a French army under the constable Arthur de Richemont and the artillery master Jean Bureau destroyed the English army of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his son John Talbot, Viscount Lisle. The last English possession in France, the city of Bordeaux, opened its gates to the French on 19 October 1453. Apart from Calais, which would remain in English hands until 1558, the English territorial presence in France was finished.
The end of the war was not, however, the end of the political conflict. The English crown did not formally renounce the title “King of France” until 1801, and the question of the French succession was reopened in various forms for the next three centuries. The English claim to the French throne was a principal cause of every Anglo-French war from the Treaty of Troyes (1420) to the Treaty of Picquigny (1475) and, in a more attenuated form, to the wars of Henry VIII and the Elizabethan expeditions. The dynastic question that had opened the war in 1328 was not finally settled until 1801.
The final campaign of 1453
The final campaign opened in 1452, when the English attempted to recover the territories they had lost in the previous year. The English governor of Gascony, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, arrived in Bordeaux in October 1452 with a small army, and he was soon able to recover much of the territory that had been lost. The French, however, were determined to complete the reconquest, and in the summer of 1453 they assembled a substantial army to besiege Castillon-sur-Dordogne.
The English position at Castillon, on the south bank of the Dordogne, had been fortified by the French under the direction of Jean Bureau, the master of the French artillery train. The French constructed a fortified camp, defended by a substantial train of field artillery, on a low hill south of the town. Talbot, advised by his captains to wait for reinforcements from Bordeaux, decided to attack. The English army, perhaps 4,000 strong, advanced on the French camp on the morning of 17 July.
The French artillery, including the great cannon known as the Virevase or the Bergère, opened fire as the English approached. The English longbowmen, on whom the Agincourt generation had relied, were caught in the open by the French cannon. The English army was destroyed in detail; Talbot and his son were killed on the field. The French cavalry, having been held in reserve, were now committed to the pursuit. The English losses ran into the low thousands; the French losses were trivial.
The surrender of Bordeaux
The surrender of Bordeaux on 19 October 1453 was the final act of the war. The city, which had been the principal English possession in France for more than three centuries, opened its gates to the French without a fight. The English garrison was allowed to march out with the honours of war, and the citizens were guaranteed their traditional privileges. The fall of Bordeaux was a profound shock to the English political class. The Plantagenet dynasty had defined itself by its French possessions, and the loss of Bordeaux, the ancient capital of the duchy of Aquitaine, marked the effective end of English continental power.
The political consequences of the loss were immediate. Henry VI suffered a major mental breakdown in August 1453, the year of the war’s end, and the regency government of Richard, Duke of York, was unable to stabilise the political situation. The loss of France, the financial exhaustion of the crown, the political crisis of the regency, and the dynastic challenge of the House of York fed directly into the Wars of the Roses (1455–1485). The English loss in 1453 is, in the conventional historiography, the proximate cause of the civil war that ended the Plantagenet dynasty.
The Treaty of Picquigny
The formal end of the war was the Treaty of Picquigny of 29 August 1475. Under the terms of this treaty, signed between Edward IV of England and Louis XI of France, Edward renounced his claim to the French throne in exchange for an immediate payment of 75,000 crowns and an annual pension of 50,000 crowns. The treaty was negotiated in a very different political context from the war itself, and it was the first formal agreement between the two kingdoms to renounce the English claim to the French throne. The English claim was, in effect, abandoned.
The treaty marked the formal end of a long diplomatic and military conflict that had begun in 1337. The English claim to the French throne, which had been the central issue of the war, was finally renounced, and the two kingdoms began a new period of coexistence. The treaty of Picquigny was, in this sense, the political end of the war, even if the fighting had ended in 1453.
The end of fighting and the end of the war
It is important to distinguish between the end of fighting and the formal end of the war. The fighting effectively ended with the surrender of Bordeaux in 1453, but the formal end of the war was marked by a series of treaties and truces that were signed over the following decades. The Treaty of Picquigny (1475) was the most important of these, but other agreements, including the Treaty of Étaples (1492) and the Treaty of London (1518), also played a role. The English claim to the French throne was not formally abandoned until 1801, and the question of the French succession was reopened in various forms for the next three centuries.
The end of the war, in the strict sense, was the surrender of Bordeaux in 1453. The end of the political conflict was the Treaty of Picquigny in 1475. The end of the dynastic claim was 1801. The end of the military conflict, in the sense of the last French invasion of England, was 1801, when Napoleon was reported to be massing troops on the Channel coast.
The legacy of the end
The end of the war had profound consequences for both kingdoms. The English lost virtually all of their continental possessions, and the Plantagenet dynasty entered a long period of decline that would culminate in the Wars of the Roses. The French, by contrast, emerged from the war as the dominant power in Western Europe, and the Valois monarchy began a long period of expansion that would shape European politics for centuries. The end of the war marked the end of the medieval period in Western Europe: the feudal obligations, the mounted knights, and the localised conflicts were giving way to centralised monarchies, professional armies, and continental wars. The 116 years of conflict were a fitting end to the medieval world.
The standard modern treatment is Jonathan Sumption’s fifth and final volume (forthcoming) of The Hundred Years’ War. Philippe Contamine’s La Guerre de Cent Ans (1968) is the standard French treatment. The site treats the end of the war in the Castillon cluster and in the origins of the Wars of the Roses cluster.