Historical Context
Hundred Years War
A prolonged conflict between England and France over the French throne. The war saw the devastating effectiveness of the English longbow at Crécy and Agincourt, the rise of plate armor to counter it, and early experiments with artillery that foreshadowed the end of medieval siege warfare.
Hundred Years War
1337 – 1453
Overview
The Hundred Years War was a series of conflicts between England and France over the French crown and English territorial claims in France. It is one of the most weapons-significant conflicts in medieval history — the English longbow devastated French chivalry in multiple battles before plate armor and early artillery ultimately ended English dominance and drove the French to develop the first standing professional army in Western Europe.
The English Longbow at Its Peak
The early phases of the Hundred Years War produced three of the longbow's greatest victories:
Crécy (1346)
Edward III's English and Welsh longbowmen destroyed a much larger French army. French crossbowmen (Genoese mercenaries) were outranged and outpaced by English archers firing 10–12 arrows per minute. French knights charging into massed arrow fire suffered catastrophic losses. The Genoese crossbows, with wet bowstrings from rain, were unable to respond effectively.
Weapons lesson: Rate of fire and range defeated superior numbers and heavier armament.
Poitiers (1356)
The Black Prince's forces defeated and captured the French King John II. English longbowmen again destroyed French cavalry attacks, while dismounted English men-at-arms held the defensive line.
Agincourt (1415)
Henry V's heavily outnumbered army destroyed a much larger French force. Stakes planted by the archers prevented French cavalry from overrunning the longbow line. French knights in full plate armor, exhausted from crossing muddy ground, were cut down by archers and men-at-arms.
Weapons lesson: Even full plate armor could not protect against massed longbow fire at the flanks, legs, and horses.
The French Response: Plate Armor and Artillery
Plate Armor Improvement
French knights responded to the longbow with increasingly complete plate armor — reducing the vulnerable areas between mail sections. By the mid-15th century, full plate armor was common enough that Agincourt-style longbow dominance became less reliable.
Artillery and Siege Warfare
French Bureau brothers (Jean and Gaspard) developed highly effective artillery in the 1440s, using cannon to rapidly reduce English-held fortifications across France. The same artillery defeated the last English field army at Castillon (1453) — the first major battle in Western history decided primarily by artillery fire. An English counterattack into prepared French gun positions was devastated.
Joan of Arc and the Transition
Joan of Arc's campaigns (1429–1431) broke the English siege of Orléans partly through aggressive use of French artillery alongside infantry assaults — a combined-arms approach that foreshadowed later doctrine.
Weapons Summary
| Period | Dominant Weapons | Victor | |--------|-----------------|--------| | 1337–1360 | English longbow | England | | 1360–1415 | Consolidated plate armor | Stalemate | | 1415 | Longbow + defensive stakes | England (Agincourt) | | 1429–1453 | French artillery | France |
This article is a stub. Contributions covering specific battles, weapons, and commanders are welcome.
Battles & Operations
Weapons
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Arbalest
The arbalest was the heavy crossbow of the late Middle Ages, with a bow of steel or thick composite so powerful it had to be drawn with a windlass or a geared cranequin rather than by hand. Its draw weights ran to several hundred pounds and more, and its short, heavy bolts could pierce mail and some plate at close range. It was slow to load, so its users often fought from behind large shields called pavises, but it needed little training to shoot well, and it served in European armies and on city walls for two centuries.
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English Longbow
The English longbow was the great ranged weapon of the later Middle Ages: a self bow of yew, as tall as its archer or taller, drawing well over a hundred pounds and loosing a heavy arrow capable of killing at two hundred meters and more. Massed in their thousands and shooting many times faster than any crossbow, English and Welsh archers broke French chivalry at Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt and made the yeoman bowman the most feared common soldier in Europe.
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Falchion
The falchion was a single-edged medieval sword with a broad blade, heavier toward the point, that combined the chopping power of an axe with the handiness of a sword. It appears from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century in two main forms: a broad cleaver-like blade, like the famous Conyers Falchion at Durham Cathedral, and a slimmer blade with a clipped or cusped point. Few examples survive, but manuscripts show falchions in the hands of knights and foot soldiers alike, including through the Hundred Years War.
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Gothic Plate Armor
Gothic armor is the name collectors give to the full plate harnesses made in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire from roughly 1460 to 1500, the high point of the medieval armorer's art. Slender, pointed and fluted, with rippled edges and cusped borders echoing the architecture of the age, the Gothic harness enclosed its wearer entirely in articulated tempered steel yet weighed no more than an infantryman's modern kit. Made by the great workshops of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Landshut, it was the rival of the rounded Milanese style and the ancestor of the fluted Maximilian armor.
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Great Helm
The great helm was the fully enclosed, flat-topped or sugarloaf helmet of the high medieval knight, worn from around 1220 until the mid fourteenth century over a mail coif and often over a smaller skullcap as well. Riveted together from several iron plates, pierced by narrow eye slits and breathing holes, it gave the mounted lancer the most complete head protection yet seen in Europe at the cost of vision, hearing and air. Topped with heraldic crests, it became the knight's badge of rank, and it survives in coats of arms to this day.
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Longsword
The longsword is the two-handed knightly sword of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance: a straight, double-edged blade of roughly 33 to 43 inches on a grip long enough for both hands, with a simple cross guard and a heavy pommel that balances the whole. It was a cut-and-thrust weapon carried by men-at-arms in war, by gentlemen in the duel, and by the students of the great German and Italian fencing masters, whose surviving manuals make it the best-documented sword in European history.
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Poleaxe
The poleaxe was the knight's weapon for fighting on foot in full plate armor during the fifteenth century. About five to six feet long, it carried an axe blade or hammer on one side of the head, a beak or fluke on the other, and a spike on top, with steel strips called langets protecting the shaft and a small rondel guarding the hands. Men-at-arms used it in battle, in formal combats in the lists and in judicial duels, and fencing manuals of the period teach it as a weapon of skill, not brute force.
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War Hammer
The war hammer is the late medieval answer to plate armor: a steel head with a blunt, often toothed hammer face on one side and a stout curved spike on the other, mounted on a short haft for horsemen or a long one for fighting on foot. Where a sword skidded off a steel breastplate, a hammer delivered concussion through it, and the spike could punch through plate or find the gaps. It was the knightly weapon of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and its horseman's form survived into the seventeenth century as the nadziak of the Polish hussars.