France gained and lost

In 1413 Henry IV long suffering from ill health, died and his son became Henry V. His tavern-haunting youth as ‘Prince Наl’ was the stuff of later legend. He was a pious, militant and ambitious figure whose impatience to rule was apparent from 1410. He invaded France in 1415, pursuing his claim to the French crown. The capture of Harfleur and the lucky but decisive victory of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 heralded a chain of victories which once again brought English international prestige to a high point. As master of Normandy and most of northern France, Henry was accepted as heir by King Charles VI, and in 1420 he married Catherine of Valois, Charles's daughter.

It was clear from the beginning that Henry VI's kingship of France was not to be taken for granted. The son of Charles VI intended to become Charles VII. Until 1429, the English, in alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, maintained their hold, consolidated by the crushing defeat of a French-Scottish army at Verneuil in 1424. In 1428 the siege of Orleans, held for Charles, began. Against all apparent odds, the siege was raised by a French army led and inspired by an illiterate peasant girl, Joan of Arc. She swept on through English-occupied territory to take Reims and witness the coronation of Charles VII in its cathedral. Her failure to take Paris, her capture, her trial as a witch, and her burning at Rouen in 1431 under the auspices of Norman clerics and the English army, did not put an end to Joan's achievement or her legend. The French were firmly in the ascendant. In 1431, Henry VI was brought to Paris to be crowned, but few were impressed; warfare went on with intermittent fruitless peace negotiations. Burgundy dropped its alliance. In 1437 Henry VI was deemed to have come of age, but was to remain very much under the influence of his Beaufort relations (descendants of John of Gaunt) and a dominating French wife, Queen Margaret. The 'royal saint', in John Milton's words, who founded King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, and preferred reading to hunting, has also been castigated by historians as the king who lost the French lands. After the battle of Castillon in 1453, England was left holding only Calais.

The wars of the roses

Always more of a dynastic power struggle than a real civil war, the 'Wars of the Roses' as they were later named were partly a result of the loss of the French lands, which was seen by all classes in England as a national humiliation and caused intense controversy. There were no more French campaigns, or Crusades, to divert military energy. But the seeds of these wars lay in the contested claims to the throne which had existed since 1400. Even if Henry VI had been strong enough to have the Duke of York killed, the existence of divided loyalties and the opportunities for bold men to profit from a change of ruler would still have promoted conflict. The Earl of Warwick, 'Kingmaker' to later historians, was a prime example. Having assisted Edward IV to the throne, he turned against the king when in 1469 Edward announced his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, widow of a Lancastrian stalwart, with two children, five brothers and seven sisters all eager to benefit from their sudden social elevation. The furor was so great that Edward briefly fled the country in late 1470, but returned, buttressed by Burgundian forces, and first by diplomacy, then by force of arms, retrieved his position. Warwick, having gone full circle and pledged his loyalty to Henry VI, whom he released from the Tower of London, was defeated and killed at the battle of Barnet on Easter Sunday, 1471. A further battle at Tewkesbury, in which Henry VI’s son Edward was killed, confirmed the re-establishment of Edward IV Edward had learned the lesson that Henry VI had shunned; on 24 April that year, Henry was murdered. Until his sudden death in April 1483, Edward IV reigned unchallenged. His elder son, aged thirteen, was duly proclaimed as Edward V.