100 Years War

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The 100 Years war between France and England lasted more than 100 years and was not one war but many. We explore Henry V and other important kings, and finish by exploring Joan of Arc as the savior of France.

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Henry V wasn't the first one to use the long bow. Edward III used them at Crecy. And it was actually the battle of Bonnackburn that foot soldiers first defeated a mounted cavalry charge of knights.

forever-pkhn
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The longbow wasn't invented in a response to plate armor. ötzi the iceman had a longbow. The problems with longbows is that you need to learn and train with the longbow from a very early age in order to use it. So if you didn't excercise everyday since the age of seven, chances are you were never able to pull the 300 pounds necessary to pierce through armor in your teens when you were conscripted to fight against the french. So the English shire reeves simply made a law that everybody was requieredto train at least two hours a day with a longbow.It puzzles me how historians view a simply yewrod from the sap and a string of hemp and sinew to be the culmination of warfaretechnology in the 14th century.330 pounds is pretty much the maximum a human being can achieve, but the windlass operated heavy crossbows had a force of 1200-2500 pounds and could not only pierce through lines of armored horsemen, but also through wagons, parapets and oakshields. The advantage of the longbow however, is that it can be mass produced and fired in a rapid succession. It may not kill a heavy armored knight, but when the knight arrives alone at the enemy front because everone of his unarmored footman has been shot down he's gonna find himself in a bit of a hassle.

juliantheapostate
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More relevant than Joan of Arc in defeating the English was the adoption of gunpowder and cannon by the French.

radzewicz
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I want to thank you for your work! I just discovered it and look forward to hours of educational, well-spoken and pictured videos. Much better than reading on wikipedia. You deserve more attention and views :)

Krimpf
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Wait a sec, the French king didn't want to ransom Joan because it would weaken the English king, so he didn't? THAT requires an explanation. I thought the whole purpose of the French was to weaken the English?

radzewicz
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longbows were made from yew.... not from 'all kinds of pieces of wood'

kohgoomah
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The map of Flanders you are showing is present day Flanders. This is very different from the region of Flanders in the Middle Ages.

Eukurios
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The outcome of the Hundred years war was determined by the Burgundians (who controlled Flanders). I believe around 1435 they switched sides, from being allies with the English to being allies with the French. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this has to do with economics. As soon as the Burgundians switched sides, things started going bad for the English and never really reversed.

Flanders was one of the wealthiest places in Europe because it was the center of cloth production in the middle ages. The Flemish got their raw material for the cloth, raw wool, from England, especially the northern Midlands and Yorkshire which was great for raising sheep and had short easy access to Flemish ports. The production of cloth takes skill and infrastructure and a developed network of skilled people and supply chain, etc... In essence, in the manner of cloth production England was the colony supplying raw material to the more advanced and richer manufacturing country and the bulk of the wealth in the creation of cloth going to the manufacturer not the colonial raw material supplier. This economic relationship made them natural allies at the beginning of the Hundred Years war.

In the 16th century England begins to implement a proto-form of industrial policy. They are no longer satisfied being just a cloth provider. They have the wool - which they can control if they want to; now they aspire to be the cloth manufacturers too, because that's where the value is really added and where the big wealth is. So they begin to prop up trade barriers, both for the import of finished cloth from Europe as well as the export of raw wool to Flanders. This economic history can be picked up in "Bad Samaratans" by Ha Choong Chan (Korean scholar at Cambridge) and if memory serves, also in "Global Economic History: A very short introduction" by Oxford Economic Historian Richard Allen (This is a very very good book and yet incredibly brief and accessible, not just to read but to buy). The (industrial) policy for the development of cloth manufacturing took a very long time (centuries, perhaps hampered by English civil wars) before it became successful.

As I recall from my reading, i.e. if memory serves, England's policy was not just tariff's against imported cloth, but tax and/or (perhaps at times) embargoes of raw wool to Flanders and other parts of the continent. This was a dagger aimed at the heart of Burgundian wealth in the Netherlands/Flanders.

I'm quite sure that the emergence of English industrial policy regarding cloth production and the Burgundians deciding to switch sides in the 100 years war is not a coincidence.

(The Duke's of Burgundy almost successfully achieved the creation of a major state between Germany and France, from from Burgundy (including Franche Compte) north to the Netherlands and was relying on England to help them do this. Imagine a state from the alps, north, consisting of Burgundy, Loraine, Belgium and the Netherlands, perhaps with an eastern border on the Rhine. Had they succeeded, how might history have been different? Anyway, they would have had problems with identity because there are 3 different languages involved: French German and Flemish/Dutch. The nations of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg might be seen as legacies of this failed attempt).

I don't have to tell anyone that the English ultimately prove successful in their industrial policy (but it took a long time). It is the cloth trade that is first revolutionized in the English industrial revolution in the 18th century - this would not have happened if the English had not developed a strong establishment in cloth production but it took centuries for them to become successful.

I think this is an episode of change in history. England basically chooses to lose lands in France in order to succeed in becoming a major manufacturer of cloth. This is a shift in what is viewed as a source of wealth away from land ownership in favor of manufacturing and trade. In the middle ages, the source of wealth was land. And France had the best land for growing things. The population of France, even when its eastern border was the Rhone-Meuse line, was never less than 3 times more than Englands.

By the time of the Napoleonic wars, thanks to the industrial revolution, England's industrial production exceeds that of the entire continent combined in a host of areas. But at this time things are again changing. Napoleonic Code will create a legal system that brings the continent up to proximity of that of England's common law for purposes of trade and individual status (eliminating vestiges of fuedalism and making everyone equal before the law) and Hamilton's Report to Congress on Manufacturers laying out the industrial policy that will industrialize the rest of the world outside Britain, and the widespread diffusion of the Prussian education system making it possible for societies to absorb technology and technological change necessary for industrialism to take place.

kaneinkansas
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"We'll see how British Longbows fare against French Cannon."

whispererbordah
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I thought it was under Mary 1st (Bloody Mary) that Calais was lost.

Nefritari
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Quick question, you said twice that Calais was lost under the reign of Henry VIII, but from what I know it was under his daughter Mary, so you sure about that ?

"If you open my heart, you'll find the name of Calais engraved in it" - Queen Mary Tudor upon hearing the loss of Calais in 1558

paulcramers
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Great video. Though I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but the Longbow was used at both Crecy and Poitiers and was well established far before Agincourt. It was probably used in the opening stages of the battle, but the English and Welsh ran out of Arrows very early in the battle and took on hand to hand combat. Most seem to agree that mud won the day for the English.

fifeandflute
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Bows weren't really used as it is presented in the movies. If you shoot the the arrow in to the air and then let it fall down on the enemy it looses it's power and won't pierce anything. Simple physics.

kungcz
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Ryan Reeves is excellent, but he ought to know that "coronated" is not a word. "Crowned" is what he means.

nickburningham
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That's interesting and correct but it's a really quick summary, the story is much more complicated than that.
French population was divided between 2 factions. One standed for the English as they believed the English king had the strongest legitimacy to take the French throne. The other one standed with the French Dauphin. Actually the 100 years war was a deep civil war, most fights opposed the French factions. It was French opposed to French, and the situation favored the English.
Of course at first the English won important pitch battles and managed to hold vast lands in France, but the French population supported them. It's all about royal dinasties history, at that time the nationalist sentiment isn't prominent.
After Joan of Arc's arrival the French won most of other battles, the 1 century's conflict involved a war in Spain, and a lot of other local conflicts where the French supported a faction against another one supported by the English. Joan of Arc was an important figure, maybe the most important of the war, she raised the French morale and showed nothing was lost yet but she didn't won the war. After her many other important figures won the most decisive battles and used never seen before tactics. For exemple Bertrand Du Guesclin, or Olivier De Clisson. Du Gueslin could defeat the English in pitched battles, but he could use cunning tricks like entering cities disguised in English soldiers, and slauther the garnisons while it was asleep. This war is very interesting from the beginning to the end, there's not only Crécy, Poitiers and Joan of Arc.

guildguild
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Excellent, really clear and well explained. Thank you

ttvRussell
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great video. dr. Ryan Reeves it helped me understand the hundreds years war way better than just reading a packet. i will continue watching your videos for my AP euro class.

aranzamartinez
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henry's son had multiple breakdowns and so england began precipitously loosing land. And that french king was truly a bastard giving the girl up

TheKeithvidz
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the myth that any projectile weapon of the time could "pierce" plate armor needs to die :/

qsywastooshort
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you have a deep booming voice. my neighbor came by to complain about it vibrating through the floor.

aaronmarks
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