Product Description

For over a hundred years England repeatedly invaded France on the pretext that her kings had a right to the French throne. France was a large, unwieldy kingdom, England was small and poor, but for the most part she dominated the war, sacking towns and castles and winning battles - including such glorious victories as Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, but then the English run of success began to fail, and in four short years she lost Normandy and finally her last stronghold in Guyenne. The protagonists of the Hundred Year War are among the most colourful in European history: for the English, Edward III, the Black Prince and Henry V, later immortalized by Shakespeare; for the French, the splendid but inept John II, who died a prisoner in London, Charles V, who very nearly overcame England and the enigmatic Charles VII, who did at last drive the English out. Desmond Seward's account traces the changes that led to France's final victory and brings to life all the intrigue and colour of the last chivalric combats as they gave way to a more brutal modern warfare.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157229 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
"- 'Mr Seward shows us all the famous sights of those roaring times... and illuminates them with an easy scholarship, a nice sense of detail... and a most agreeable clarity of style.' New Yorker - 'Sharp with political and military sense.' C.P. Snow, Financial Times - 'A well-written narrative, beautifully illustrated, and which takes into account most recent scholarship. It is also a good read.' Richard Cobb, New Statesman

About the Author
Born in Paris of a Franco-Irish family, was educated at Cambridge. He has written numerous history books, including The Wars of the Roses (Robinson 2002) - described by the Independent as 'history as compelling as any novel.'

Customer Reviews

A hundred years never seemed so short a time!
As the typical student of history at school, I found the subject tedious and irrelevant. Not so with this book. The years flew past as the author gave us enough information to identify with the main characters, enough details of the main events without becoming overwhelming and enough of the gory details to keep us interested! Holidays to South western France will never be the same again. This is history without the corderouy jackets, without the essays, warts and all. Fascinating.
PS It is no wonder the French still do not trust us as a nation.

Superb intoduction to a fascinating period...
The book does exactly what it says on the cover... it's a brief (but suprisingly detailed) look at a very long, very bloody conflict between two great nations in a period of many changes. He handles the political events of the period with care, never overpowering the reader with to much data.

The battle descriptions are fantastic, some of the best I've read outside of historical fiction. The Hundred Years War is in my opinion one of the most interesting periods of history and Seward does it justice, describing in detail the colourful characters of the period including Edward the Black Prince, Henry V and the mad Charles VI of France (he thought he was made of glass... not to good a conviction when in battle)...

This book will leaving you desperate for more information on the period, I would recommend any of the Osprey books to do with the period (in particular that on Crecy), The Bowmen of England by Featherstone is also a good light read... and of course the Jonathon Sumption epic histories...

A tabloid view of the Hundred Years War
Desmond Seward is a commercial historical writer and this book looks at the events and battles of Hundred Years War purely through English eyes. The book covers the great English victories over the French at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt together with rise of the Longbow as the supreme battlefield weapon.

My first concern with this book is that Seward doesn't publish any of his sources, so for a novice on the subject one is unable to check for further reading if interested in a certain incident he covers. His descriptions of the battles and other incidents are always totally biased towards the English and he does tend to give us a rather tabloid style of reporting when relating the events and characters involved. Saying that, the book does suck you in and is written in an entertaining style, with the hardback version being very well illustrated.

For those who know little about the HYW this is a reasonable account, but it does have severe limitations due to the complexity and time scale of the subject it attempts to cover. The book will leave you hungry for more information, and although Seward doesn't supply you with any pointers, you will find a wealth of superb books out there which are also far more accurate and detailed than this. Anything by Dr Anne Curry for example.