How Do You Understand The Hundred Years War?
By the time it was halfway over, practically everyone involved had forgotten how the Hundred Years’ War had started-and by the time it ended, only a few people remembered what it was all about. That’s what happens when a single war stretches across four or five generations. The Hundred Year’s War was an agonizingly protracted conflict between England and France. The war involved English royal claims to French territory. In medieval times, nation-states were less clearly defined than they are today; the king of one country might have had hereditary claims to an area hundreds (or thousands) of miles away. Such was the case with the English kings, who claimed title to certain areas of France, and eventually to all of France itself. The French territory of Gascony was the first to cause trouble. In the early 14th century, King Edward III of England held sway over the French province of Gascony. The French throne claimed that Edward held Gascony as a “fief,” meaning he was accountable to th
