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The big idea: For centuries the armoured knight on horseback ruled the battlefield.
In the Hundred Years' War the English changed that. They won by standing still on foot behind a storm of arrows — cheap archers and dismounted knights fighting together beat the proud French cavalry again and again.
The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) was a long struggle between England and France over land and the French crown.
What made it stand out was not one clever plan but a whole new way of fighting that the English perfected.
At the heart of it was the longbow. A trained archer could loose 10–12 arrows a minute, far more than a crossbow, and pierce armour at close range.
Thousands of these arrows falling at once could break a cavalry charge before it ever reached the English line.
- Longbow — needed years of training, so a whole class of skilled English and Welsh archers grew up practising every week
- Rate of fire — 10–12 arrows a minute created an 'arrow storm' that killed horses and men before contact
- Range — arrows could wound at over 200 metres, forcing the enemy to advance under fire the whole way
- Cheapness — an archer cost far less to equip than a mounted knight, so England could field many of them
Combined tactics — the real secret: The longbow alone did not win battles. The English success came from combining two kinds of soldier.
The men-at-arms got off their horses and stood in the centre, while archers lined the flanks. Cavalry that survived the arrows then crashed into a solid wall of dismounted knights.
Pick the ground
The English chose a defensive spot — often on a slope, with woods or hedges protecting the flanks so they could not be outflanked.
Archers on the wings
Longbowmen stood in a V or on both flanks, sometimes behind sharpened stakes hammered into the ground to stop horses.
Dismounted men-at-arms in the centre
Knights fought on foot, giving the line a steady core that would not flee and could hold against a charge.
Let the enemy come
The French had to attack uphill, through mud and arrows, and hit an unbroken line — exactly the fight the English wanted.
Ground · Archers on the wings · Dismounted centre · Let them come.
Say 'combined tactics', not just 'longbow': Weaker answers claim England 'won because of the longbow'. Top answers explain the system: chosen ground, archers on the flanks, dismounted men-at-arms in the centre, and a defensive battle that forced the enemy to attack into arrows.
Three battles show the English method working almost the same way each time.
At each one a smaller English army, forced to fight, beat a larger French one through the same mix of longbows and dismounted knights on chosen ground.
| Battle | Year | What happened | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crécy | 1346 | French cavalry charged uphill into massed longbow fire and were slaughtered; Genoese crossbowmen were overwhelmed | First great proof that archers + dismounted knights could destroy heavy cavalry |
| Poitiers | 1356 | The English again fought defensively; they captured the French king, John II, himself | Showed the method still worked and humiliated France; the king's ransom was enormous |
| Agincourt | 1415 | Henry V's tired, outnumbered army beat the French in deep mud that trapped their armoured knights | The most famous victory — mud, stakes and arrows turned French numbers into a death trap |
Crécy, 1346 — the first shock
The French threw wave after wave of cavalry at the English line on a slope. Arrows killed the horses; panicked animals threw the battle into chaos. It was a stunning, unexpected defeat for the strongest army in Europe.
Poitiers, 1356 — a king captured
The Black Prince used the same defensive tactics. The disaster was total: King John II of France was taken prisoner and held for a vast ransom, throwing France into political crisis.
Agincourt, 1415 — mud and arrows
Henry V's small army was cornered on a narrow, waterlogged field. French knights, packed together and stuck in the mud, were easy targets. Thousands died for very few English losses.
Why the pattern repeated: The French kept losing partly because they kept fighting the English way — charging into prepared defensive positions.
Heavy cavalry, the pride of the French nobility, was exactly the wrong weapon against stakes, mud and an arrow storm.
The chevauchée — war by destruction
Big battles were actually rare. Much of the war was fought through the chevauchée.
English forces rode through the French countryside burning villages, crops and towns without stopping to capture them.
- Devastation — burning farms and crops destroyed the enemy's food, wealth and tax income
- Morale — it showed the French king could not protect his own people, weakening loyalty to him
- Provocation — it could bait the French into attacking on English terms, as at Crécy and Poitiers
- Low cost — raiding was cheaper than long sieges and let a small army do huge economic damage
The chevauchée in action: The Black Prince's raids in the 1350s cut a trail of burning towns across southern France.
The goal was not to hold land but to make France ungovernable — to prove the crown was weak and to force the French army into the open, where the longbow waited.
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Beyond battles, the Hundred Years' War slowly changed who fought and with what.
Three shifts stand out: soldiers were increasingly paid, gunpowder began to matter, and control of the sea shaped the whole war.
From feudal levy to paid soldiers
The old system was the feudal levy. But this gave a king soldiers for only about 40 days a year — useless for wars fought overseas for decades.
So kings began to pay for troops instead.
Old way — feudal levy
- Nobles served in return for land, not money
- Limited to roughly 40 days' service a year
- Hard to send far away or keep in the field
- Loyalty was to a lord, not to a campaign
New way — paid, contracted soldiers
- Soldiers hired for wages under a written contract
- Could serve for a whole campaign, anywhere
- England used indenture agreements
- Produced more professional, reliable armies
Why this matters: Paid, contracted armies were more professional and stayed in the field longer.
This is a major step from the medieval feudal host towards the standing armies of later centuries — a real change in the nature of warfare.
Early gunpowder and cannon
Gunpowder weapons appeared early in the war but were clumsy and slow at first. By its later stages, though, cannon were changing warfare.
Their biggest impact was not on the open battlefield but in the siege.
- Early guns were used from the mid-1300s but were unreliable and dangerous to their crews
- Siege cannon could batter down stone walls that had stopped attackers for centuries
- French artillery grew strong by the war's end and helped drive the English out of France
- Long-term effect — castles became far less safe, changing how power was defended
Guns mattered in sieges, not big battles: Don't overstate early gunpowder. At Crécy or Agincourt the longbow decided things.
Cannon's real importance grew later in the war and mainly in sieges, where they cracked open walls that had once seemed impregnable.
Naval warfare and the Channel
England had to ship every army, horse and arrow across the sea, so controlling the Channel was vital.
At the Battle of Sluys (1340) the English destroyed the French fleet in a Flemish harbour.
Why Sluys mattered: Medieval sea battles were fought like land battles at sea — ships were grappled together and men fought hand to hand, with longbowmen firing across the decks.
Victory at Sluys gave England control of the Channel, letting it move armies to France safely and protecting England from invasion for years.