Stick Theater Presents: (The Rest Of) The Hundred Years' War!
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This is the conspicuous link to Part One and Part Two. They go before Part Three. This is Part Three.
It's 1415!
France is embroiled in a civil war between the royal Armagnacs and the English-sympathizing Burgundians. England, meanwhile, has just finished putting down some Irish/Scottish/Welsh insurgency, and now he's totally itching to get back to a REAL war.
He's also got this guy.
I don't know if you play video games? But I invite you to think of Henry V as an elite hero. The kind of unit you randomly acquire and you immediately have to suppress a squeak of diabolical joy, because your opponents are so boned.
Something like this:
England is like,
And France is like,
So England invades!
Henry V kicked ass, took names, captured Harfleur, raided his way towards Calais, etc.
Along the way, the Battle of Agincourt happened.
Remember the sparkletext about the Battle of Crecy?
WELL GET READY FOR MORE SPARKLETEXT.
Seriously, if you only remember two battles from the entire Hundred Years' War, make them Crecy and Agincourt. (It's…a bit sad that they were both crushing English victories.) English forces totaled about 8500, yeah? (Yeah, about 7000 of those were longbowmen.) French forces…well, no one's really sure, because afterwards nobody on the French side wanted to admit they took part on Agincourt, but there were at least 10,000 men-at-arms, and when you add in all the archers and military servants and whatnot, the full strength of the French army could have been anywhere from 36,000 to 50,000. So, you know, about four to five times the size of the English army.
On top of that, the English army was starving, plagued by dysentery, and had marched 260 miles in two weeks, whereas the French feudal army was mostly fresh and well-supplied. And more French reinforcements were arriving every day. Things looked bad for England, in other words.
Do I really need to tell you how this turned out?
The battlefield looked like this:
So, narrow hemmed-in corridor, can't really flank the archers because they're protected by spikes and the dense woodland surrounding the battlefield, and it's muddy as shit. The French cavalry charges first, yeah? Trouble is, their horses are only armored on the head, so the hail of arrows makes them go wild. The charge is a miserable failure, and only succeeds in churning up the muddy ground even worse. Then the heavily armored vanguard charges in, only they're slogging through mud up to their thighs, getting pounded by arrows, and the crush of the French advance is so dense that no one can even take a full step. Inching through mud, at a crawl. Arrows everywhere. In full plate armor. There are reports that some of the French knights fell down, couldn't get back up, and drowned in the mud, to be trod over by the men behind them. Yeah.
By the time they reached the English lines, most of the French nobility were too exhausted to even lift their swords. Henry ordered all but the noblest French prisoners to be immediately executed, to discourage the rearguard from pressing the attack. It worked. The remainder of the French army routed.
French casualties: somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000.
French prisoners: 700 to 2,400.
English casualties: about 450.
This had a negative effect on French morale, to put it lightly.
After that, I mean, it was just a mess. The English won victory after victory against the shattered French armies. In 1419, Henry made a formal alliance with the Burgundians (remember them? The penis-haters?), who had managed to capture Paris during all the civil warring. In 1420, Henry met with the mad French king Charles VI, who signed the Treaty of Troyes, in which it was agreed that Henry would marry Charles's daughter Catherine of Valois, and Henry's heirs would inherit the crown of France. The dauphin (also named Charles) was declared illegitimate (which he very well might have been, if you recall the kind of shenanigans his mother got up to).
So…France is completely and utterly boned.
I'll show you the map, if you want, but it's not pretty.
Are you sure? It's gonna hurt.
However…two things happened at around the same time which saved France from becoming a 3 AM pub story England could bust out whenever he wanted to pick up girls.
The first thing happened in England, in 1422.
Yes; at the tender age of 36, that overpowered son of a bitch was dead. The English crown (and the French crown too, depending on who you asked) passed to his one-year-old son. England, and this will probably not astonish any of you, has never really done well with children. English child-kings have inevitably led to disaster.
The second thing happened in France, in 1429.
GOD, FINALLY, RIGHT? This is the part where the Almighty himself took pity France. He was just like, "Fuck me, I can't watch. This is just painful. Somebody send that poor bastard a saint."
(Shameless plug: I wrote a fic about this. It is also funny.)
Joan went and found the Dauphin, Charles VII, who was super busy being useless and indecisive. She managed to convince him that she was on a mission from God (like the Blues Brothers!) and was named Commander of the Armies of France. She then marched immediately north and forced the English to lift the siege at Orleans. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that if Orleans had fallen, France would probably have fallen soon afterwards.
So how'd she do it?
I have no fucking idea.
Suddenly, the war turned around for France. Where before he faced defeat after defeat, now everything was coming up roses (GET IT?). French forces were victorious in Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency, and the Loire campaign culminated in a crushing French victory (for once) at the Battle of Patay. Charles VII was crowned king right after that. Most of northern France had been reclaimed from the English and Burgundian forces. All of this happened in the space of about a year. Yeah, I know. Go figure.
Then England captured Joan and…well…
Yeah, that was pretty lame.
Still, the French war effort continued to see success! Which was really inevitable, I mean…France had twice the territory and four times the native population of the English. Once the French recovered their confidence, a French victory was really only a matter of time. The Burgundians also switched sides--
--And while their loyalties would remain fickle for some time, the periods of peace allowed Charles VII to overhaul the French military structure and centralize the state. By 1451, France had reclaimed virtually all territory that had been taken by the English. In 1453, the last English holding on the European continent fell at the Battle of Castillon, and the Hundred Years' War was over.
The English king, Henry VI, reportedly went into shock when he heard the news of the defeat, and soon after that England would be plunged into the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. France would laugh for thirty years.
AND THAT'S IT.
HOSHIT IT'S ACTUALLY FINISHED.
I hope the Hundred Years' War makes more sense to some of you out there, and that you all enjoyed this idiocy. =D Ghostie, I swear to God, if another offer like this ever comes your way, PICK SOMETHING SHORTER. ♥