For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt.Skip to main content
A prolonged series of conflicts (1337–1453) between the kingdoms of England and France over succession, territory, and feudal sovereignty.
The Hundred Years' War was not a single continuous war but a sequence of armed conflicts, truces, and dynastic disputes fought between the House of Plantagenet (later Lancaster) of England and the House of Valois of France between 1337 and 1453. The proximate trigger was King Edward III of England's claim to the French throne following the death of Charles IV of France in 1328, combined with disputes over English-held fiefs in Gascony and French support for Scotland.
Historians typically divide the war into three phases:
The war reshaped European state-building: it accelerated the decline of feudal levies in favor of standing armies, popularized the English longbow and later gunpowder artillery, and helped forge distinct English and French national identities. England lost all continental possessions except Calais (held until 1558). For IR students, the conflict is a canonical case study in dynastic versus territorial sovereignty, the emergence of the centralized fiscal-military state, and the role of legitimacy claims in protracted interstate war.
No. It spanned 116 years (1337–1453) and consisted of intermittent campaigns punctuated by long truces, not continuous warfare.
France. By 1453, after the Battle of Castillon, the English had been expelled from all French territory except the port of Calais.
It is often cited as an early example of state consolidation, the shift from feudal to national armies, and the use of dynastic claims as casus belli.