The Hundred Years War
The shock in England over the loss of its formerly wide overseas empire was very great.Popular rage against the counsellors and commanders deemed responsible had much to do with the outbreak in the mid-1450s of civil war (the 'Wars of the Roses').The recovery of the lost lands in France long remained a wishful national aspiration,but in material terms the consequences of their loss,for Englishmen living in England at least,was not very great.
Fears that English commerce would suffer now that the Norman Channel harbours were back in French hands proved largely groundless.The only real sufferers from the loss were the professional soldiers and those Englishmen who had sought to settle in France.Their numbers were not seriously significant in social terms.
'The war period witnessed a considerable rise in the importance and frequency of parliaments,and in the influence of the Commons.'
Although most noblemen and a good many among the gentry saw some war service,among the total population the proportion that fought was decidedly low.Since virtually all the fighting was on French soil,there was no English experience comparable to the devastation and dislocation of economic life in the French countryside.Plagues,recurrent after the 1348 Black Death,had much more significant effects on the conditions and living standards of ordinary working people in town and country than the war ever did.
Where the impact of war was most directly felt by most people was in increased taxation.Campaigning abroad called for high government expenditure,and the only means of raising the necessary funding was through taxes.This required the assent of the Commons in parliament,which meant the war period witnessed a considerable rise in the importance and frequency of parliaments,and in the influence of the Commons.This in turn set in train parliament’s future central constitutional role.
Publicity for the war effort,in which,the church played an important part (with royal encouragement),fostered a patriotic sense of English identity.Prayers were regularly ordered for armies serving overseas,and in thanksgiving for victories.Edward III’s promotion of the cult of St George as England’s warrior patron saint played deliberately to nascent national sentiment.
A proud patriotism,nourished by royal propaganda and pulpit oratory,and also,emphatically,by the euphoria of such dramatic English victories as Crécy,Poitiers and Agincourt,was probably the most lasting legacy of the Hundred Years War.
Its origins in national war experience gave that patriotism a chauvinistic edge that continued to colour English popular attitudes to foreigners and especially to the French for a very long time.Francophobia runs as a recurrent thread through the English story from the 15th century down to the start of the 20th,when finally the Germans replaced the French as England’s natural adversaries in the popular eye.
