321: Hundred Years’ War: A Storm of Swords (Part 4)

Summary

This The Rest Is History episode follows the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War from England’s apparent supremacy after Poitiers to the collapse of most English gains under Charles V of France. Captive John II, the Jacquerie, Parisian disorder, Charles the Bad, and roaming free companies show why an overwhelming battlefield advantage did not produce a governable settlement.

Edward III failed to convert victory into conquest and accepted the Treaty of Brétigny, but the Black Prince’s taxation and Castilian debts weakened English rule in Aquitaine. Charles V restored revenue and local loyalty, while Bertrand du Guesclin avoided England’s preferred open battles and pursued attritional reconquest, leaving both kingdoms exhausted and politically unstable.

England’s possession of John II and David II, together with loot from France, made victory after Poitiers appear decisive without creating durable control.
The proposed Windsor settlement depended on a French state able to raise the king’s ransom and enforce territorial concessions precisely when royal, urban, noble, peasant, and military order was breaking down.
Edward III’s 1359-1360 campaign failed to take Reims or Paris, showing that raids and battlefield superiority could not by themselves conquer France.
Brétigny gave Edward a greatly enlarged sovereign Aquitaine in exchange for renouncing his French crown claim, but implementation and allegiance remained unstable.
The Black Prince’s expensive court, taxation, and Castilian intervention intensified Aquitanian resistance and supplied Charles V with a legal-political opening.
Charles V rebuilt French revenue and loyalty, while du Guesclin’s avoidance of open battle shifted the war toward attrition and the recovery of territory.
English reconquest attempts deteriorated into costly raids, including John of Gaunt’s 1373 chevauchée, while Edward III and the Black Prince ended their lives amid illness, decline, and lost prestige.
The first phase closes with most English gains lost except Calais and with young kings inheriting war damage, taxation, and unresolved dynastic conflict.

“lose in one day what it had gained in twenty years” - the Duke of Lancaster’s warning in favor of negotiation.

“war of attrition” - the episode’s description of du Guesclin’s alternative to open battle.

Hundred Years’ War, England, and France - conflict and kingdoms whose apparent balance reverses across the episode.
Edward III of England, Edward the Black Prince, John II of France, and Charles V of France - rulers and heirs at the center of captivity, settlement, taxation, and recovery.
Aquitaine, Treaty of Brétigny, and Feudal Homage Sovereignty Conflict - territory, treaty, and disputed legal hierarchy behind renewed war.
Charles the Bad, Jacquerie, and Free Companies in the Hundred Years’ War - interacting forms of political, social, and military disorder in France.
Bertrand du Guesclin, Battlefield Victory and Political Control, and Attritional Reconquest - commander and concepts explaining the reversal of English gains.
Chivalric Romance War Memory and Arthur Conan Doyle - Sir Nigel frame contrasting martial honor with the episode’s devastation and political failure.

No settled contradiction found. The episode fills the early-war gap between the 1337 origins and the wiki’s 1415-1422 Henry V sequence, and it qualifies rather than rejects the earlier heroic-memory framing.
Source-scope caution: motives, force and casualty figures, the political effects attributed to the longbowmen-producing classes, the scale of the Limoges sack, and the compressed account of campaigns after 1368 remain episode-level claims rather than independently audited conclusions.