12th–15th centuries

Fighting abroad: the Crusades and the Hundred Years War

The English fought overseas too. Many knights joined the Crusades, wars in which Christians from across Europe tried to take control of the Holy Land.

English kings also fought France in the Hundred Years War. Don't be fooled by the name: it really went on for 116 years. Its most famous battle came in 1415 at Agincourt. There, King Henry V won even though the French army was far bigger than his. Even so, by the 1450s the English had more or less pulled out of France.

After the great victory at Agincourt, England controlled much of northern France for a while, until a peasant girl turned the war around. Her name was Joan of Arc, and she said she heard the voice of God telling her to save France. In 1429, aged about 17, she led an army that broke the siege of Orléans, then took the French heir to the throne to Reims to be crowned as Charles VII. The next year she was captured and handed over to the English, and in 1431 she was burned as a heretic in Rouen, when she was only about 19. After her death the war kept going badly for England. More than twenty years later the Church looked at her case again and declared her innocent, and in 1920 she was made a saint.

Nobody at the time called it the Hundred Years War. French writers only came up with that name in the 19th century, and "the Wars of the Roses" was also named long afterwards; people living through them simply felt the fighting would never stop. You may also have read online that the rude two-finger "V" sign began with English archers, waving the fingers the French supposedly cut off captured archers. It's a popular story, but no record from the time backs it up, so it is most likely a later legend.

Era contents: 1200 – 1400