Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIV

[snowblizz]

No offense, but as far as I know this is mostly nonsense, the French won the war largely due to their mastery of cannon.

G

If it is nonsense to say the English lost the war because they were fighting a long way from home it's equally nonsensical to claim they lost it due to cannon.

The French eventually won the war because France outmassed England in just about every measure that was important to medieaval warfare and unless you have an overwhelming technological advantange (or other force multiplier like say magic)*.

Crediting Joan of Arc or the superb French knight Arnoul d'Audrehem is also incorrect. They were an important part however in unifying France which was one of the most important strategic fails France had in the wars with England.

The 100YW started because the English royal line wanted to protect what was left of it's French holdings (at one point a bit earlier the English crown held more land than the rulign French monarch did). The fact that some lands remained was more to do with the local potentates favouring a distant light hand of rule over the French king's desire to control the domains he was titularly head of. Prensenting a claim on the French crown was a slightly later move designed to give a casus belli, and upset the French enough that they'd embark on the for them so disastrous courses of open battle. Some of the motivations did change, and one might say the English rather disastrously pursued the French crown at oen point, but those laying the claim originally didn't set out to conquer France or win the crown.

There are a lot of parallells to WW2 Germany invading the Soviet Union actually, too big a task, muddled objectives and trying to find a decisive target, yet finding none, leading to eventual grinding down of forces.

Almost invariably the English were "making expeditions" to France. Some of the famous wins came as a result of what was essentally raids in force. The reason for this strategy was that the English knew they could not hope to defeat and overrun the French with the resources at their disposal. So they usually went for maximum damage (and pillaging for income). But also their goal was not to conquer France, but to gain concessions to lands they considered theirs by inheritance (and it was, by the laws of the time, the French king was rather unscrupulously trying to enrich himself by taking from the most distant of his powerful vassals).

The reason it even had a shot at working was exactly that the French king was weak compared to his "overmighty subjects" like the Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Aquitane (ie the English king) and others. To a degree by playing Game of Thrones - French edition was a key cornerstone of English policy. Ironically, the 100YW ended by the French doing the same to the English, by enabling and protecting claimants in the War of Roses. Similarly when they could the French would play the Scottish card. Considering how cynically the French took advantage of the Scots it always baffled me how eager they were to have another go (they were hung out to dry a lot).

The French started out playing to the English game of meeting them in battle on English terms, which is what is remembered in the famous victories. When they didn't it went much better. When more effective and unified French leadership was found they fortified the major cities and let the English ravage the comparatively poor countryside, which ruined the English economical disruption and living off the land strategy. Since effectively England did not have the economical output to support sustained and continued operations in France. They did a lot with what they had though. And the French squandered much of their resources too.

Fighting far away from home was important in that without the Battle of Sluys the English could not have transported, supplied or maintained any kind of forces in France at all. The financing of the wars also depended a lot on wine trading from Gascony which was always at risk when the English navy was weak (which it was at times). Thus it is not nonsense at all to say the English lost because they were fighting far away. At trhe later stages not being able to easily and effectively reinforce Gascony lost it to the English too. Distance was most definitely a factor contributing. Homefield advantage isn't necessarily a given though, if like the French you can't effectively organise yourself out of a wet paper bag.

It is certainly true that at the end cannon mattered. The French could retake castles and towns in days or weeks that the English spent months or years besieging. But to suggest *that* is the reason the conflict ended is preposturous. It greatly sped up what was by that time a forgone conclusion.

Basically at the height of her mostly unanticipated success in France ,the English crown decided that the French crown might not be an utopical goal after all, kinda losing sight of what they had been doing in the first place (protecting lands and rights). Which meant they effectively united all the disparate powers in France against what they feared the most, a powerful French monarchy. If you really want to go all jingoistic on stuff one can always claim that the English provided the motivation for France to become France. I think I've seen the argument that without the 100YW France would not have as easily and readily become a centralised(ish) state.
(*) Speaking of technological gaps, the English advantage at the onset of the war was their technological mastery of bureaucracy and centralisation . They could raise and finance fighting forces much easier than the French crown. Unfortunately (for the English) that was something that could be fixed, eventually.

If anything is nonsense about the 100YW it's that *this* one thing was what won or lost it over some other thing.

There's something I find interesting. With many of the battles won by the English during the 1H Years' War, there is widespread knowledge of how and why the English won, be it tactics, mistakes on the other side, equipment, and so on.
Is there a more practically minded explanation of why the French won and the English lost?

Yes.
There is of course an Osprey book on this, "The Fall of English France". It goes into the military, strategical and politcal stuff (and it mentions many fo the battles the English lost). It's really dismal reading if you root for the English btw, like I did :. Man I did not see tha coming.