The sheer length of the Anglo-French conflict known as the ‘Hundred Years War’ – which actually lasted 116 years – has long invited debate about the label. Contemporaries, of course, did not use the term, which was first coined by a French historian in the early 19th century. The fighting was not continuous, prompting some scholars to argue that the war should be divided into shorter sub-periods. Others have seen the period between 1337, when hostilities broke out over legal rights to the Duchy of Aquitaine in south-west France, and the expulsion of English forces from most of the country in 1453, as part of a longer continuum.
Michael Livingston’s book is firmly within this second camp. He makes the case for a conflict that spanned a total of 200 years. In his account, it began with the so-called ‘Pirate War’ of 1292, a clash between Norman and Gascon sailors over access to water on an island off the coast of Brittany. And it ended in 1492 with the Peace of Étaples, by which England’s Henry VII renounced his claim to all French territory except a small enclave around Calais. How convincingly has Livingston made his case?
The author comes well-equipped for his task. He is a well-respected historian based at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, and has already produced studies of the two best-known encounters of the conflict: Crécy and Agincourt. Both books attracted praise for their immersive narrative, while arousing controversy by challenging the accepted view of the exact location of the battles. In The Two Hundred Years War, Livingston is working on a larger canvas, offering a reinterpretation of the conflict as a whole.
