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THE VICTORIAN AGE (1837-1901)

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837-1901) and empress of India (1876-1901). Her reign was the longest of any monarch in British history and came to be known as the Victorian era.

Queen Victoria was the official head of state not only of the United Kingdom but also of the growing worldwide British Empire, which included Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, and large parts of Africa. As the personal embodiment of her kingdom, Victoria was eager to ensure that her country was held in high esteem throughout the world as an economically and militarily powerful state and as a model of civilization. Victoria brought to the British monarchy such 19^th-century ideals as a devoted family life, earnestness, public and private respectability, and obedience to the law. During the later years of her reign, the monarchy attained a high degree of popularity among most of its subjects.

Queen Victoria was born Alexandrina Victoria on May 24, 1819, in Kensington Palace, London. Her parents were Victoria Mary Louisa, daughter of the duke of the German principality of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Edward Augustus, duke of Kent and Strathern, the fourth son of King George III of Great Britain. When Victoria was eight months old, her father died. Victoria’s mother raised her in Kensington Palace with the help of German governesses, private English tutors, and Victoria’s uncle, Prince Leopold (who in 1831 became King Leopold I of Belgium). Victoria learned to speak and write French and German as readily as English. She also studied history, geography, and the Bible. She was taught how to play the piano and learned how to paint, a hobby that she enjoyed into her 60s. Because Victoria’s uncle, King William IV, had no legitimate children, Victoria became heir apparent to the British crown upon his accession in 1830. On June 20, 1837, with the death of William IV, she became queen at the age of 18.

Immediately after becoming queen, Victoria began regular meetings with William Lamb, 2^nd Viscount Melbourne, the British prime minister at the time. The two grew very close, and Melbourne taught Victoria how the British government worked on a day-to-day basis.

Victoria was very fond of Melbourne, and because he was the leader of the Whig Party (which later became the Liberal Party), Victoria began publicly to support the Whigs rather than the opposition party, the Tories (later the Conservative Party). The Whigs were sympathetic to freedom of speech and of the press and favoured greater religious liberty for those people who did not belong to the official Church of England. The Tories were more concerned with maintaining the country’s established institutions and with making no further legal concessions to religious minorities.

The young queen hoped that the Whigs would continue to keep a majority of seats in the House of Commons (the lower house of the British Parliament) so that Melbourne could remain prime minister. When it appeared in 1839 that he might have to give up the post, the queen successfully used her influence to keep him. In the so-called Bedchamber Crisis, she refused to allow Tory leader Sir Robert Peel to change the ladies-in-waiting of her court, all of whom were Whig sympathizers. Peel then felt unable to form a government, and Melbourne continued as prime minister for two more years. A general election in 1841 resulted in a majority of Tory party members in the House of Commons, however, and Victoria was compelled to accept Peel as prime minister.

In 1839 Victoria fell in love with her first cousin, Prince Albert, of the small German principality of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. They were married in February 1840, and Albert soon developed a keen interest in the government of his new country. Albert was an unusually studious and serious young man, and he served as his wife’s private secretary. He was an active patron of the arts and sciences, and he was the prime organizer of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first true world's fair, which was held in the Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. Albert also favoured the expansion of education, and he served as chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He became a great champion of the strengthening and modernizing of Britain’s armed forces. Though Albert was respected by most of his new countrymen, he was not loved; many resented him because he was a foreigner, and his heavy German accent did not help.

The royal couple took a sympathetic interest in the efforts of Sir Robert Peel in 1846 to abolish the Corn Laws (acts of Parliament that protected landlords and farmers against foreign competition) and to lead Britain toward international free trade, but in the process he divided his Conservative Party. During the 1850s, with the two-party tradition in temporary disarray, the influence of the monarchy on the formation of ministries reached a 19^th-century highpoint. In 1851 royal initiative led to the dismissal of the popular Henry John Temple, 3^rd Viscount Palmerston, from his post as foreign secretary. He had failed too often to consult the queen before sending dispatches to British diplomats abroad.

Although Victoria and Albert were initially unhappy with the manner in which their country drifted into the Crimean War (1853-1856) against Russia, they became enthusiastic supporters of the conflict once fighting had begun, and in 1855 Victoria appointed Palmerston as wartime prime minister. The queen personally instituted the Victoria Cross as the highest British award for wartime valour.

Queen Victoria never truly recovered from Albert’s death in December 1861 at the age of 42. For almost a decade she remained in strict mourning. She rarely set foot in London, and she avoided most public occasions, including the state opening of Parliament. She made an exception, however, for the unveiling of statues dedicated to Prince Albert and, after a few years, for attendance at army reviews.

Behind the scenes, she continued to correspond with and talk to her ministers, and she took comfort in the company of her favourite servant, a Scottish Highlander named John Brown. By the late 1860s, the queen’s absence from the public stage caused her popularity to decline, and there was talk of replacing the monarchy with a republic. In the course of the later 1870s and the 1880s, she gradually returned to the public arena, and her popularity rose once more.

Although in her youth she had been known as the “Queen of the Whigs,” in the course of the later 1860s and 1870s she came to prefer Benjamin Disraeli, the leader of the Conservative Party, to William Ewart Gladstone, the leader of the Liberal Party. Disraeli impressed Victoria as being more concerned with Britain's international prestige and with the strengthening of its empire. She strongly supported Disraeli’s government from 1874 to 1880. In 1876, when Parliament made her empress of India, she showed her gratitude to Disraeli by opening Parliament in person and by creating him earl of Beaconsfield.

When Disraeli’s government was defeated in the general election of 1880, Victoria made little secret of her disappointment in being compelled to name Gladstone prime minister for a second time. Gladstone impressed her as too much a popular demagogue and too ready to tamper with the kingdom's institutions. When in 1866 he proposed home rule (domestic self-government) for Ireland, the queen felt that he was undermining the British Empire. Despite Victoria’s dislike, Gladstone continued to treat the queen with courteous respect.

During the last 15 years of her reign, the Conservatives dominated Britain’s government most of the time under prime minister Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury. Victoria was sympathetic to Salisbury’s views on foreign affairs and the empire. She strongly supported her government’s involvement in the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa; even though the anxieties of the struggle and the criticism that Britain received from other European powers took their toll on the queen.

During the years after Albert’s death, the queen remained concerned with her ever-growing family. All nine of her children married, and eight of them had children of their own. Some of Victoria’s children and grandchildren eventually married the heirs to thrones of Spain, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and Romania. Because of her many descendents, Victoria became known as the “Grandmother of Europe.”

The most important of these marriages occurred when Victoria’s eldest child, also named Victoria, was married at age 17 to Crown Prince Frederick, the heir to the kingdom of Prussia (and, as of 1871, the German Empire). Victoria and Albert had hoped that the marriage would strengthen the bonds of Anglo-German understanding and would help transform Prussia into a constitutional monarchy like that of Britain. In the long run their hopes were disappointed as Frederick’s son (and the queen’s oldest grandchild) went on, as Emperor William II of Germany, to lead the anti-British coalition during World War I (1914-1918).

By the 1880s Victoria had again become the popular symbol of dutiful public service. She appeared in public more often. Excerpts from her private journals that she published in 1868 and 1884 helped to humanize her in the eyes of her subjects. Her personal identification with late-19^th-century empire building and the sheer length of her reign also enhanced her popularity. In 1887 her Golden Jubilee, the 50^th anniversary of her accession to the throne, was celebrated with great enthusiasm. The Diamond Jubilee of 1897 brought representatives of all the different parts of the British Empire to London and led to the first meeting of the prime ministers of Britain’s colonies; it was then that Victoria’s popularity reached its peak. Four years later, after a reign of 63 years, she died on January 22, 1901, in Osborne House.

The length of Queen Victoria’s reign gave an impression of continuity to what was actually a period of dynamic change as Britain grew to become a powerful industrialized trading nation. The queen sympathized with some of these changes—such as the camera, the railroad, and the use of anesthetics in childbirth. She felt doubtful about others, however, such as giving the vote to many more people, establishing tax-supported schools, and allowing women into professions such as medicine. During her reign, the popularity of the British monarchy underwent both ups and downs but ultimately increased. Victoria was important because she brought morality, good manners, and a devotion to hard work to her role as constitutional monarch. She took pride in her role as formal head of the world’s largest multiracial and multireligious empire, and her honesty, patriotism, and devotion to family life made the queen an appropriate symbol of the Victorian era. 

OLIVER CROMWELL – THE FIRST COMMONER TO RULE ENGLAND

Oliver Cromwell, an English soldier and statesman of outstanding gifts and a forceful character shaped by a devout Calvinist faith was lord protector of the republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1653 to 1658. One of the leading generals on the parliamentary side in the English Civil War against King Charles I, he helped to bring about the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy and as lord protector he raised his country status once more to that of a leading European power from the decline it had gone through since the death of Queen Elisabeth I. Cromwell was one of the most remarkable rulers in modern European history; for although a convinced Calvinist, he believed deeply in the value of religious toleration. At the same time his victories at home and abroad helped to enlarge and sustain a Puritan attitude of mind, both in Great Britain and in North America,that continued to influence political life and social life until recent times.

Cromwell was born at Huntington in England on April 25, 1599, the only son of Robert Cromwell and Elisabeth Steward. Oliver went to the local grammar school and then in 1616 for a year attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In August 1620 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, a merchant in the City of London. By her he was to have five sons and four daughters.

Though in 1628 he had been elected a Member of Parliament for the borough of Huntingdon. King Charles I dissolved this Parliament on 1629 and did not call another for 11 years.

In the spring of 1640 Cromwell was elected Member of Parliament for the borough of Cambridge. In November 1640 Cromwell was again returned by Cambridge to what was to be known as the Lord Parliament, which sat until 1653, his public career began.

Cromwell had already become known in the Parliament of 1628-29 as a fiery and somewhat coarse Puritan, who had launched an attack on Charles I’s bishops. He believed that he individual Christian could establish direct contact with God through prayer and that the principal duty of the clergy was to inspire the laity by preaching. He criticized the bishop in the House of Commons and was appointed a member of a committee to investigate other complaints against him. He advocated abolishing the institution of the episcopate and the banning of a set ritual as prescribed in The Book of Common Prayer. He believed that Christian congregations ought to be allowed to choose their own ministers, who should serve them by preaching, and extemporaneous prayer. When in 1642 the King left London to raise an army, and events drifted civil war, Cromwell began to distinguish himself not merely as an outspoken Puritan but also as a practical man capable of organization and leadership. In July he obtained permission from the House of Commons to allow his constituency of Cambridge to form and arm companies for its defense, in August he himself rode to Cambridge to prevent the colleges from sending their plate to be melted down for the benefit of the King, and as soon as the war began he enlisted a troop of cavalry in his birthplace of Huntingdon.

When in December 1653, after a coup d’etat planned by Major General John Lambert and other officers, the majority of the Assembly of Saints (as the new Parliament was called) surrendered power into Cromwell’s hands, he decided reluctantly that Providence had chosen him to rule. As commander in chief appointed by Parliament, he believed that he was the only legally constituted authority left. He therefore accepted an “Instrument of Government” drawn up by Lambert and his fellow officers by which he became lord protector, ruling the three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland with the advice and help of a council of state and a Parliament, which had to be called every three years.

Before Cromwell summoned his first Protectorate Parliament on September 3, 1654, he and his Council of State passed more than 80 ordinances embodying a constructive domestic policy. His aim was to reform the law, to set up a Puritan Church, to permit toleration outside it, to promote education, and to decentralize administration. The resistance of lawyers somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for law reform, but he was able to appoint good judges both in England and Ireland. He was strongly opposed to severe punishment for minor crimes. During his Protectorate, committees known as Triers and Ejectors were set up to ensure that a high standard of conduct was maintained by clergy and schoolmasters. He concerned himself with education, was an excellent chancellor of Oxford University, founded a college at Durham, and saw to it that grammar schools flourished as they had never done before.

In 1654 Cromwell brought about a satisfactory conclusion to the Anglo-Dutch War, which, as s contest between fellow Puritans, he had always disliked. His Council of State was divided, but eventually he resolved to conclude an alliance with France against Spain. He sent an amphibious expedition to the Spanish West Indies, and in May 1655 Jamaica was conquered.

THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII – THE STUPENDOUS PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN

Henry VIII (1491-1547), king of England (1509-1547), the image of the Renaissance king as immortalized by German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, who painted him hands on hips, legs astride, exuding confidence and power. Henry VIII had six wives, fought numerous wars in Europe, and even aspired to become Holy Roman Emperor in order to extend his control to Europe. He ruthlessly increased the power of royal government, using Parliament to sanction his actions. Henry ruled through powerful ministers who, like his six wives, were never safe in their positions. His greatest achievement was to initiate the Protestant Reformation in England. He rejected the authority of the pope and the Roman Catholic Church, confiscated church lands, and promoted religious reformers to power.

Born at Greenwich Palace in London on June 28, 1491, Henry was the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Although a willful child, Henry proved a capable student and studied languages, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and writing and speaking under his first tutor, English poet and satirist John Skelton. He was an even more capable athlete and excelled at hunting and wrestling. Henry loved music and could play, sing, and dance. When he was 11, Henry’s life was transformed by the death of his elder brother, Arthur. He was now heir to the throne and was made Prince of Wales in 1503, the year in which his mother and grandmother died. Henry now came decisively under the influence of his father, a stern and greedy man who left his son a healthy treasury and a secure crown upon his death in 1509.

For the first time in generations an English king came to the throne without the threat of a rebellion against him. Henry VII’s chief concerns had been to control the independence of the nobility and to enrich the crown. When Henry VIII became king, he set out on a different course—to expand England’s power in Europe. He married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon, and entered into an alliance with King Ferdinand of Spain. Whereas his father had avoided war to save money, Henry and his allies were eager for confrontation. In 1513 Henry led a victorious campaign against the French; in retaliation the Scots declared war on England. Henry’s forces repelled the Scots at the Battle of Flodden Field where the king of Scotland, James IV, was killed.

For the next decade, Henry VIII attempted to act as a mediator between France and Spain, playing the countries against each other in hopes of gaining power in Europe. Despite his earlier military victory, Henry’s subsequent diplomatic efforts and military campaigns were fruitless. In 1520 he met with Francis I, king of France, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in France. But no significant political decisions resulted from the meeting. Henry’s wars emptied his treasury, and his efforts to raise taxes led to rioting among his subjects.

A few years after Henry took the throne, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a man as ambitious as the king, became the leader of Henry’s government. Wolsey shouldered the burden of daily government, freeing the king from the work he least enjoyed. The cardinal was a capable administrator and diplomat and something of a social reformer.

To Henry’s mind, the greatest failure of his reign was his inability to produce a male heir. This he blamed on his Spanish wife, Catherine, whose only child was the Princess Mary. Henry soon fell in love with Anne Boleyn, one of the great beauties of the age and a woman of strong will, shrewd political instincts, and Protestant religious beliefs. From 1527 Henry was looking for a way out of his marriage, arguing from biblical authority that the union with his brother’s widow was invalid. Henry sent Wolsey to Rome to present the English case before the papacy, and when this failed Wolsey was forced from power. He was replaced with Sir Thomas More, whom Henry had made lord chancellor. Whatever the merits of the case, however, the divorce was a political impossibility. Catherine’s nephew was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and the most powerful ruler in Europe, and the pope would not take sides against Charles. Henry would have to find another way to accomplish his goal.

Beginning in 1529, Henry used Parliament to exert pressure on the pope. Claiming that they were correcting abuses, the Reformation Parliament, as it came to be called, voted to ban payments from English bishops to Rome and to end the independence of the English clergy. By these acts Henry gained the power to appoint his own bishops; he used it to appoint one of Anne Boleyn’s friends, Thomas Cranmer, as archbishop of Canterbury.

When Anne became pregnant in 1532, the “King’s Great Matter” could no longer await legal resolution. Thomas Cromwell, one of the king’s advisers, led a circle of powerful politicians associated with Anne in counseling Henry to break with Rome. In addition to the laws Parliament had already passed shifting religious authority to Henry, Parliament passed a law prohibiting appeals to the pope in matters of marriage. Such questions were now to be decided by the archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, who declared Henry’s union with Catherine invalid. Henry officially married Anne and made her queen. In September, Anne gave birth to a girl, Princess Elizabeth.

Following the break with Rome, Henry and Cromwell undertook a reorganization of church and state. Henry was declared supreme head of the church in England, and all of the payments normally made to the pope now went to the crown. Parliament altered the succession to exclude Princess Mary in favour of the children of Anne Boleyn, in hopes a boy would eventually be born. It was treason to question either Henry’s new title or the succession. The king accepted small changes in Catholic religious beliefs and practices. The Bible was translated into English, priests were allowed to marry, and the shrines of saints were destroyed. Henry’s own religious beliefs remained Catholic, despite the growing number of people at court and in the nation who had adopted Protestant religious beliefs. He prevented the more fervent of these Protestants from making radical changes to religious doctrine by instituting the Six Articles of 1539. This document outlined the doctrines of the Church of England, all of which were Catholic in nature.

In 1534 Cromwell began a wholesale confiscation of the enormous wealth of the Catholic Church, estimated at three times that of the crown. A survey of the buildings, lands, and possessions of the English religious houses was completed in 1535, and thereafter Parliament began passing laws dissolving these Catholic groups, a process that was completed by 1540. The crown then took possession of all their property. To pay for his continued wars, Henry sold the former monastic lands to nobles and gentry, who thereby gained an interest in the success of Henry’s reformation and became dependent upon the king.

The king’s motives for dissolving the religious houses were mostly financial, and his motives for breaking with Rome were both political and personal; however, these actions fed into the widespread hostility against the Catholic Church that was becoming common throughout Europe. A growing number of Catholics were opposed to the activities of the papacy, the wealth of the clergy, and the corruption of the religious orders. They wanted these institutions to be reformed. English people who favoured these views supported Henry’s reformation.

The Reformation in England was not accomplished without opposition. Throughout the 1530s and into the 1540s more than 300 people were executed for treason, most for rebelling against the new religious order. Among Henry’s councilors, Sir Thomas More refused to recognize the king as supreme head of the church and was executed for his Catholicism, along with a number of bishops and prominent nobles. In 1536 a serious rebellion, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, occurred in the northern counties. The rebellion combined economic grievances with an attachment to the institutions of the Catholic Church. It represented the most serious threat to Henry’s reign, although it was ultimately quelled. In most parishes, however, there was a sullen acceptance of Protestant innovations.

Ultimate power, however, remained in the king’s hands, and Henry used it to become involved in the series of matrimonial disasters for which he is famous. By 1536 Henry had tired of Anne Boleyn, and Cromwell joined with several councilors to turn the king decisively against her. In less than a month she was tried on trumped-up charges of adultery, executed, and replaced by Jane Seymour. Jane finally provided Henry with his male heir, the future Edward VI, although she died in childbirth. Henry’s next three marriages occurred in rapid succession. The king married Anne of Cleves as part of Cromwell’s plan for a Protestant union with German princes, but divorced her after only six months—Henry’s displeasure with Cromwell over this match led to Cromwell’s execution. Henry then married Catherine Howard, had her executed within a year, and finally settled down with Catherine Parr in 1543, the wife who survived him.

As Henry aged he became bitter and angry. One by one he had either killed his old councilors or driven them from royal service. In 1542 he again entered into continental warfare, joining Emperor Charles V in his war against France. That same year the Scots invaded England and were again defeated, this time at Solway Moss where their king, James V, received mortal wounds. James’s death freed England from the threat of invasion for the next generation. The wars of Henry’s old age were no more successful than those of his youth, and to pay for these wars Henry had to sell the richest of the monastic lands, raise taxes, and debase the coinage. His popularity diminished with his strength. He died on January 28, 1547, and was succeeded by his ten-year-old son, Edward VI.

Viewed by some as the embodiment of the warrior king who restored England’s honour, by others as a tyrant who ruled by the chopping block, the life of Henry VIII has been a source of continuous fascination. Catholic writers pictured him as the devil, English Protestants credited him as the founder of their religion. His appetites became legendary, whether he was wrestling with Francis I, eating and drinking enormous meals, or marrying six women. After the civil wars of the preceding century that had weakened the monarchy, Henry VIII reestablished the power of the English crown. This was done largely through the work of his powerful ministers Wolsey and Cromwell. They made use of the new Privy Council (the former royal council) and Parliament, whose members included the aristocracy and gentry. As these groups were brought into government, their individual ability to challenge the king diminished. The confiscation of church wealth enabled Henry’s heirs to rule without new revenues for the rest of the century. The dual defeat of the Scots made his kingdom safe from armed invasion while his strengthening of the navy made it safe from attacks by sea. Henry’s break with Rome was a critical step in the development of English national identity. His vision of an English empire encouraged successive generations to look outward with the spirit of enterprise that eventually led to England’s expansion overseas.

HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (1337-1453)

Hundred Years’ War, given to the series of armed conflicts, broken by a number of truces and peace treaties, that were waged from 1337 to 1453 between the two great European powers at that time, England and France. An immediate pretext for war was the claim of the kings of England to the French throne. Edward III of England, a Plantagenet, claimed that he was the legal heir to the French throne through his mother, Isabella, sister to King Charles IV of France, who had died in 1328. The French, however, said that the crown could not descend through the female line and gave the throne to Philip VI, cousin to the deceased king. The origin of the dispute lay in the fact that successive kings of England, beginning with William I (the Conqueror), controlled large areas of France as feudal fiefs and thus posed a threat to the French monarchy. During the 12^th and 13^th centuries the kings of France attempted, with growing success, to reimpose their authority over those territories. Edward feared that the French monarch, who exercised much power over the feudal lords of France, would deprive him of the duchy of Guienne, which Edward held as a fief from Philip. There had been a few earlier crises, but on May 24, 1337, the date generally held to mark the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War, Philip VI seized Guienne from the English. Edward’s hostility toward Philip was intensified because France had helped Scotland in the wars waged by Edward and his father against the Scottish kings for the throne of Scotland. An important economic cause of the Hundred Years' War was the rivalry between England and France for the trade of Flanders.

In 1338 Edward III declared himself king of France and invaded France from the north. Neither side won any decisive victory on land, but the English fleet defeated that of the French off the city of Sluis in the Netherlands in 1340, and for many years thereafter the English controlled the English Channel. A three-year truce was signed between England and France in 1343, but in 1345 Edward again invaded France. On August 26, 1346, he led his army in a great victory over the French at the Battle of Crecy, and in 1347 Edward took the city of Calais after a siege. Another series of truces (1347-1355) was followed by the capture of Bordeaux in 1355 by Edward the Black Prince, son of Edward III. Using Bordeaux as a base, the English raided and plundered most of southern France. In September 1356 the English, led by the Black Prince, won their second great victory of the war, at Poitiers, in west-central France. In this battle they captured King John II of France, who had succeeded Philip VI in 1350. In 1360 the Peace of Bretigny ended this phase of the first period of the war. The terms of the treaty were generally favourable to England, which was left in possession of great areas of French territory. In 1369 Charles V of France, who had succeeded John II in 1364, renewed the war. In 1372 the Castilians, allied with France, destroyed an English fleet in the Bay of Biscay. The French forces, under the leadership of Bertrand Du Guesclin, avoided pitched battles with the English, harrying them and cutting off their supplies. England fought under several disadvantages. It lost the best English military leader with the death in 1376 of the Black Prince, and in 1377 Edward III himself died and was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II, who was a child. The English war effort was so weakened by the loss of strong leadership that the hit-and-run tactics of Du Guesclin won back for France most of the territory ceded to England by the Treaty of Bretigny. The actual fighting in this first period of the war ended in 1386, but a truce was not signed until 1396.

The truce was intended to last 30 years. In 1414, however, Henry V, then king of England, during the civil war raging in France at the time, reasserted the claim of the English monarchy to the French throne. Henry V inaugurated this period of the war by invading France in 1415. The French, weakened by the conflict between the houses of Burgundy and Orleans for control of the regency that ruled the country for Charles VI, were defeated at Harfleur and then at the decisive Battle of Agincourt. Then, in alliance with the house of Burgundy, Henry V conquered all of France north of the Loire River, including Paris. On May 20, 1420, the Treaty of Troyes was signed, by which Charles VI recognized Henry V as his heir and also as regent of France; Charles VI also declared his son Charles, the dauphin (later Charles VII), to be illegitimate and repudiated him as his heir. The dauphin, however, refused to be bound by the treaty and continued to fight the English, who drove his forces across the Loire and then invaded the south of France.

In 1422 both Henry V and Charles VI died. On the death of his father, the dauphin proclaimed himself king of France, as Charles VII, but the English claimed the French throne for the infant Henry VI, king of England, whose affairs were being conducted by a regent, John of Lancaster. Charles VII was generally recognized as king of France south of the Loire River, and Henry VI as king of France north of the river. In the course of their invasion of the south of France, in 1428 the English laid siege to the last important stronghold of the French, the city of Orleans. The turning point of the entire Hundred Years’ War came in 1429 when French forces under Joan of Arc raised the siege of Orleans, defeated the English at the Battle of Patay, drove them north, and had Charles crowned king at Reims. Charles VII made his position as king of France stronger by making a separate peace with the Burgundians (Peace of Arras, 1435), the allies of the English up to this time; the following year Charles took Paris from the English. From 1436 to 1449 no military action occurred. In 1449 the French attacked the English in Normandy and in Guienne, regaining Normandy in 1450 and Guienne in 1451. Fighting finally ceased in 1453, by which time the English held only Calais and a small adjoining district; they retained these possessions until 1558. No formal treaty was ever signed to end the war.

The Hundred Years’ War resulted in the loss of thousands of lives on both sides and also in great devastation of lands and destruction of property in France. It had important political and social results in France. It helped to establish a sense of nationalism; ended all English claims to French territory; and made possible the emergence of centralized governing institutions and an absolute monarchy.

Historians have long considered the Hundred Years’ War a milestone in the development of national consciousness in Western Europe.