The Hundred Years' War Lasted 116 Years — So Why Isn't It Called That?

Few historical naming decisions capture the approximate nature of historical categorization quite like the Hundred Years' War. The conflict between England and France that consumed most of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries lasted from 1337 to 1453 — a span of 116 years. The name "Hundred Years' War" was not used by anyone who lived through it. It was invented by historians in the nineteenth century as a retroactive label for a series of wars, truces, alliances, and resumptions that the people of the time experienced as simply the ongoing, grinding reality of Anglo-French conflict.

What the War Was Actually About

At its root, the Hundred Years' War was a dynastic dispute over who had the right to the French throne. The conflict was triggered when the French king Charles IV died in 1328 without a male heir. The nearest male-line relative was Edward III of England, who was Charles's nephew through his mother Isabella of France. The French nobility, invoking a principle known as Salic law — which barred inheritance through the female line — rejected Edward's claim and crowned Philip VI instead.

Edward initially accepted this, but when Philip began supporting Scotland against England and threatened English-controlled territories in Gascony (southwestern France), Edward changed his mind. In 1337 he formally claimed the French crown, triggering the first phase of the war. The conflict was therefore simultaneously about royal succession, territorial control, trade, and the question of whether English kings could plausibly rule France — a question the English would spend over a century trying to answer in the affirmative.

A War of Phases, Not Continuity

Calling it one war is a simplification that historians acknowledge freely. The 116 years were not 116 years of continuous fighting. The conflict moved through distinct phases separated by truces and treaties, some of which lasted for decades. The Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 ended the first major phase and gave England enormous territorial gains, including full sovereignty over Gascony. Peace of a sort held for nearly two decades before fighting resumed.

The conflict produced some of the most iconic figures of medieval history. Edward the Black Prince, the English heir who won the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and captured the French king John II, became the archetype of chivalric military excellence. Henry V's improbable victory at Agincourt in 1415, where a heavily outnumbered English force decimated the French nobility, remains one of the most studied battles in medieval military history. And Joan of Arc, the French peasant girl who claimed divine guidance and reinvigorated French resistance in 1429, became the war's most enduring symbol — and one of its most consequential figures despite dying burned at the stake at nineteen years old.

Why England Lost

The English advantage in the early and middle phases of the war rested heavily on the longbow — a weapon that allowed English archers to kill at distances and rates of fire that conventional medieval cavalry could not counter. At Crécy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356, and Agincourt in 1415, English longbowmen devastated French forces that outnumbered them significantly.

But military technology was only part of the story. The English position in France ultimately collapsed because of the fundamental difficulty of governing a foreign population that did not want to be governed. English-controlled territories faced constant French resistance, guerrilla warfare, and the steady erosion of resources required to maintain them. The emergence of a more centralized French state under Charles VII, armed with improved artillery and a professional army, gradually reversed English gains. By 1453, England had lost virtually everything in France except Calais, which it held until 1558.

The name may be imprecise by sixteen years, but the Hundred Years' War accurately captures something about the conflict that a more pedantic title would miss: it was an era, not an event, and its impact on both nations — shaping English national identity and forging a unified France — lasted far longer than any name could contain.