The Hundred Years War Vol 5: Triumph and Illusion (Hundred Years War, 5)

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My children's and my grandchildren's life is worth much more than mine because they've got a lot more of it ahead". It is a detailed narrative including about the mercenary companies among whom was the Essex born John Hawkwood. Likewise, the fascinating French invasion of England in 1405, which was executed in conjunction with Glyndwr's rebellion and actually reached as far as Hereford, merits a mere three pages of cursory discussion despite the great many questions it presents regarding Wales as a front in the Hundred Years War.

Essentially, as long as France was united, it was a richer and stronger country and as long as the fRench king did not give up the fight, England could ultimately not win, not with smaller resources in terms of manpower and wealth. It is now 33 years, and more than 3,000 pages since Jonathan Sumption’s first readers followed Charles IV on his last journey, as his funeral procession wound its slow way from Notre-Dame across the Grand Pont and out through the streets of Paris into the open countryside to the north of Europe’s most populous and richest city. There is a great service in this, and a great necessity in the stabilization of ground that it provides for the next generations of scholars to build against and upon.As an overarching theme, Sumption has subtitled the volume "Cursed Kings," and a reading of this massive tome reveals the aptness of the choice: the author's attentions are sharply focused on the troubles of the men wearing (and those seeking to wear) the crowns of France and England. As the first detailed multi-volume history of the hundred years war, certainly in recent decades, this is obviously a considerable achievement. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today.

From a French perspective, the dates represent the ignominious death of the insane Charles VI and the ultimate victory of his son, Charles VII. But rather than view this characteristic as exclusively negative, I view it instead as intensely positive: in this monumental, extraordinary, generational project, Sumption essentially summarizes the Hundred Years War as it stood at the end of the twentieth century. Over the next 30 years, the prosperity of England, founded in that era on the wool trade and with substantial markets in Flanders and the Low Countries, went into serious decline. And all that is to say nothing of the impact of the Hundred Years War as it was lived among the people, far away from the gilded royal halls that are Sumption's near-constant focus.Behind the clash of arms stood some of the most remarkable personalities of the age: the Duke of Bedford, the English Regent who ruled much of France from Paris and Rouen; Charles VII of France, underrated in both countries, who patiently rebuilt his kingdom after the disasters of his early years; the captains who populate the pages of Shakespeare – Fastolf, Montagu, Talbot, Dunois and, above all, the extraordinary figure of Joan of Arc, who changed the course of the war in a few weeks at the age of seventeen. The real turning point came with the collapse of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance in 1435 (the year of Bedford’s death) and the loss of Paris the following year. At the time of his death his queen was seven months pregnant, and when she gave birth to a daughter in the spring the crown was assumed by the late king’s cousin, the grandson of Philip III, Philip of Valois. Perhaps because royal successions are not always straightforward, and possession becomes nine ninths of the law. He adds that “if Henry V and the Duke of Bedford had achieved their ambition of uniting France and England under the house of Lancaster… England’s subsequent history would have been very different.

He believes that history should not be apologised for once perpetrators of injustices are no longer alive, describing apologies for events such as the Irish Famine and the Armenian genocide as "morally worthless", although saying that, "we have a duty to understand why things happened as they did" and there are "lessons to be learned". Behind the clash of arms stood some of the most remarkable personalities of the age: the Duke of Bedford, the English Regent who ruled much of France from Paris and Rouen; Charles VII of France, underrated in both countries, who patiently rebuilt his kingdom after the disasters of his early years; th It was not an ideal situation in which to fight an expensive, if sporadic, war; and within a couple of years of the defeat in France, the factionalism and disquiet that had helped undermine English unity in the closing years of the conflict sparked a new one: the Wars of the Roses. He wrote that, "All of these patronising explanations of their decision seems to me to be mere attempts to evade unpalatable truths.The eagerly anticipated final volume in Jonathan Sumption’s prize-winning history of the Hundred Years War, ‘one of the great historical undertakings of our age’ (Dan Jones, Sunday Times). Lord Sumption and the values of life, liberty and security: before and since the COVID-19 outbreak". During the last ten years or so of the war, the English were worn down, first gradually, then suddenly.

Jonathan Sumption's magisterial history of the Hundred Years War concludes with the detailed, judicious and far-sighted Volume Five . It was in support of his contention to be King of France that Edward III had started the conflict, and a succession of English triumphs had only reinforced the country’s determination to maintain its French lands.Even some of the walk-on parts are startling, such as the south-western magnate John V of Armagnac, who married his own sister and had three children by her. There is not as much direct reference to sources as in recent early medieval history, though that could be because it resembles more modern history, in the wide range of source documents.