Origins of conflict

Some shrewd remarks from Dr Malcolm Vale on the early stages of the Hundred Years War:

‘To describe a conflict as ‘futile’ or ‘useless’ may be to place too high a value upon the efficacy of war as a solvent to political problems. Medieval wars were not fought solely for political, economic or material gain. A society which set a high value upon lavish gift-giving and exchange, and upon what later generations have seen as a ‘conspicuous waste’ and conscious dissipation of resources, was unlikely to have much room for more recent notions of political and diplomatic gain. Warfare commenced when diplomacy failed. Diplomacy was conducted in a highly legalistic manner, and the points at issue in this extended lawsuit tended to focus upon rights and status as well as income and revenues. We should not underestimate the defence of honour or the realization of claims to certain titles, rights and privileges as motivating factors leading to the outbreak of open and public war during this period. Warfare was both a demonstration of right and a gesture, symptomatic of more general tendencies within later medieval society. However misguided and deluded we may believe the rulers of this period and their advisors to have been in seeking to resolve conflicts by force of arms, the relative weakness of diplomatic alternatives must always be borne in mind. Princes were conditioned to believe in the justificatory, and even cathartic nature of war as a positive force in human affairs.’

Vale was speaking of the Anglo-French war of 1294-98, but his comments can equally well be applied to later stages of the HYW. There is a recent argument that the war was a complete waste of time from an English view, and a shocking dissipation of manpower and resources. That is to apply some very convenient hindsight, and to judge the conflict via modern perceptions of ‘gain’.

It certainly wasn’t the view of the inhabitants of Gascony, the last major English possession in France. The Gascons went through hell and high water on behalf of the Plantagenets; to suggest they ought to have been abandoned to their fate, simply to avoid ‘waste’, is a rather Anglocentric perspective:

‘The war effort did not collapse and financial stringency apparently had little effect upon the determination of many Gascons to support the Plantagenets to the bitter end. Many of them - the dispossessed and disinherited nobles, had nothing more to lose. England certainly spent large sums of money on Gascony, but many of the duchy’s inhabitants abandoned their lands and possessions, endured imprisonment and underwent exile in return’.