End of the War 1453

After the 1430s the tide of the war turned to the advantage of the French. There were several reasons for this. Seward notes that this had become a national war rather than the feudal conflict it started out to be. The French came to think of themselves as 'French' over these years, and of the English as the invaders and aggressors. The English faced a series of rebellions in their territories, making it necessary for them to divert resources to hold past seizures, as well as to continue with their conquests.

The French had a maturing leader while the English had a child king in Henry VI. The English also faced internal dissension over the control of the crown and government.

The French had an advantage in terms of financial resources. The south of France was richer than the English and Burgundian north, making it easier to for the French royalists to carry on the conflict. The English came to be financially stressed, as they were repeatedly over the course of the war.

The English had longer lines of supply. It took hundreds of ships to mount an invasion, incurring significant costs before they even got to the fighting grounds.

The series of alliances on which the English relied unraveled over the second quarter of the century. John of Brittany, an English ally, turned on them and allied himself with Charles VII. After the death of Bedford, Philip of Burgundy broke the English alliance and began to support Charles.

Charles developed into an effective tactician. He started a national standing army that was not laid off as soon as the fighting stopped. Seward says "In 1445 an edict established 15 companies of 100 lances, each lance a unit of six men ... By 1446 Charles had 20 such companies." The standing army replaced the forces gathered at Crecy, where loyalty was to the lord and not the king, and the battle plan was based on the tenets of chivalry rather than on more modern tactical considerations. These troops took a systematic approach to taking English fortifications one at a time. The French also started to make effective use of artillery.

Charles invaded Guyenne and established a strong presence there. Over time Normandy fell, Guyenne fell and the English were pressed back to Calais. The French were victorious at Fomigny in 1450, where the English lost almost 4000 men. It was their worse defeat since Bannockburn (Scotland) in 1314. The English were defeated at Castillon in 1453 in Guyenne. Seward notes that while the war was effectively over, no one realized it at the time.

Coincidentally, on the other side of the continent, Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, opening Europe to several centuries of Turkish incursions. For a look at European coinage in this seminal year, visit the 1453 page.

Source: Seward, The Hundred Year's War