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La Guerra de los 100 años (INGLATERRA vs. FRANCIA) — Transcript

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0:00There was a war so long that a man
0:02could be born in its shadow, grow old
0:05fighting it, and die without seeing it
0:08end, leaving it as a legacy to his sons
0:11and grandsons. It is one of the most
0:14fascinating wars in history. It lasted
0:17more than a century, and in that
0:18century it forever changed the way the
0:20West killed each other. It began with
0:23knights in shining armor and ended with
0:26fire-breathing cannons and plebeians
0:28capable of annihilating the flower of
0:31Europe's aristocracy from afar. It is
0:34known as the Hundred Years 'War, and
0:37that name already hides two little lies
0:41. The first is that no one called it
0:43that while it was being fought. The
0:45term was coined by historians in the
0:48mid-19th century, long after the last
0:51soldier had died. The second is that
0:54the figure is false. The war did not
0:57last 100 years, as I had anticipated,
1:00but 116, from 1337 to 1453. And it was
1:07not even a century of continuous
1:10battles, but a succession of outbreaks
1:13and lulls, of fierce campaigns, long
1:15truces signed by the popes, epidemics
1:18that emptied continents and phases so
1:21different that they almost seem like
1:23chained wars. This story begins before
1:27the first battle with an enemy that no
1:30army could combat: the climate. At the
1:34beginning of the 14th century, the
1:37temperate weather that Europe had
1:39enjoyed for centuries collapsed and a
1:42long period of cold began that
1:44scientists call the Little Ice Age.
1:48Between 1315 and 1317, glacial winters
1:53and summers of incessant rain rotted
1:56the crops and the great famine claimed
1:59between 10 and 25%of the population of
2:03the cities. An entire generation grew
2:06up malnourished and weak. And this
2:09fragility explains almost everything
2:11that came after. Because when the
2:13plague arrived years later, it found
2:15bodies that had already been defeated.
2:18The cold weather also made life more
2:20expensive and made fertile lands, such
2:23as sunny Gascony in southwestern France
2:26, more coveted than ever. What seemed
2:29like the whim of proud kings was also,
2:32deep down, a war for food. And on the
2:35ground itself, many sieges would later
2:37fail, not because of the resistance of
2:40the enemy, but because the armies froze
2:43in the mud and died of pneumonia and
2:46dysentery in front of the walls. On
2:49this impoverished soil, an old
2:51political absurdity also played out.
2:54The kings of England were at the same
2:57time dukes of Aquitaine, that rich
3:00wine-growing region in southwestern
3:02France, but they did not rule it as
3:05sovereigns, but as vassals of the
3:08French king, so that the English
3:10monarch had to kneel before the
3:12Frenchman and swear obedience for those
3:15lands. The most curious thing about
3:18this ritual is that both kings
3:20understood each other perfectly without
3:22the need for translators. The
3:24Plantagenets were, by culture and
3:26heritage, French-speaking aristocrats
3:29who did not speak English at their
3:31court in their daily lives; they spoke
3:34French. Remember that the English kings
3:37were descended from the Norman William
3:39the Conqueror and the Counts of Danju.
3:42The humiliation, therefore, was not
3:45just symbolic. The King of France used
3:48this legal power and cultural proximity
3:51to interfere in the affairs of Akitania
3:53and, if the English rebelled, to
3:56confiscate the entire duchy. This had
3:59already happened in the wars of 1294
4:02and 1324. That moment came again in
4:061328 with a succession crisis. That
4:11year, the French king Charles IV died
4:14without leaving a male child and an
4:16assembly of nobles decided that the
4:19crown of France could not be passed
4:21down through a woman. With this
4:24argument, they crowned the cousin of
4:26the deceased Philip VI, the first king
4:29of the Balois dynasty. But on the other
4:32side of the Channel there was an
4:34uncomfortable candidate, Edward I of
4:37England, of the House of Plantagenet, a
4:39direct nephew of the dead king and son
4:42of his sister Isabella, who claimed to
4:44have a closer claim to the throne.
4:47French law, almost tailor-made, blocked
4:50his path precisely because he was
4:52descended from a woman. Edward, young
4:55and still without the strength to
4:57impose himself, swallowed hard and
4:59accepted. The calm lasted less than a
5:03decade. Tensions soared when Philip VI
5:06supported the Scots, England's
5:08historical enemies, with military
5:10support and demanded that they hand
5:13over Robert of Artu, a French nobleman
5:15accused of murder who had taken refuge
5:18at the English court. The final
5:20provocation came in April 1337, when
5:24the French king officially confiscated
5:27the Duchy of Akitania. Edward Iero
5:29responded by breaking his vassalage and
5:32in 1340, standing in the Flemish city
5:37of Ghent, took the irreversible step.
5:40He proclaimed himself the true king of
5:43France. What was theoretically a duel
5:47between two crowns soon dragged half of
5:49Europe into it until it became the
5:52first great continental war. On the
5:55English side, the successive dynasties
5:58fought: the Plantagenette and Lancaster
6:00dynasties, who ruled a kingdom of
6:02barely 4 million inhabitants. They
6:05compensated with good allies: the
6:08Gascons of southwestern France, who
6:11were very loyal because they lived off
6:13the wine trade with England; the
6:16Flemings, several German and Low
6:18Country princes, and, at decisive
6:21moments, the powerful Burgundian
6:23faction. On the other side, the Valua
6:27dynasty ruled over a much more populous
6:30France with more than 12 million people
6:33and relied on the old and loyal
6:35alliance with Scotland, known as the
6:37Aldas alliance from the Castilian war,
6:42on the mercenary crossbowmen of Genoa,
6:45and on the intermittent favor of the
6:47papacy. The fundamental difference was
6:50money. England depended on taxes that
6:53its parliament had to approve one by
6:55one and on the export of its precious
6:58wool. France could exact direct and
7:01constant tributes like the tax on land
7:05or the tax on salt. The first blows
7:09were dealt at sea and through plunder.
7:13As early as 1338, a French fleet
7:15attacked the English port of
7:17Southampton on a Sunday morning, while
7:20the population was praying at mass. The
7:23attackers burned houses and archives,
7:27stole the city's official seal and took
7:30192 of the 194 barrels of red wine
7:34stored there. The English response came
7:37in 1340 with the naval Battle of Swish,
7:41where Edward I destroyed nearly 90%of
7:44the French fleet in a massacre of
7:46boardings. At sea, the aim was not to
7:50sink the enemy, but to capture their
7:52ships, which were too valuable to lose.
7:55On land, Edward I institutionalized a
7:58tactic as cheap as it was cruel: the
8:02caballe. The Chevoé consisted of
8:05sending small, fast columns of horsemen
8:08into the heart of enemy territory, not
8:11to take castles or fight battles, but
8:14to loot, burn, and ravage villages,
8:17crops, and granaries. The troops lived
8:21off what they stole along the way, so
8:23it hardly cost any money. Above all, it
8:26was a devastating psychological warfare
8:29, because each village reduced to ashes
8:31demonstrated to the peasants that their
8:34king was incapable of protecting them.
8:37This placed the French monarch before
8:40an impossible choice: either go out to
8:43fight in unfavorable conditions or
8:45stand still and risk his subjects
8:48stopping paying taxes and rising up
8:50against him. And when French monarchs
8:54yielded to provocation and marched into
8:57battle to avenge their wounded honor,
8:59they did so clinging to a world that
9:02was about to disappear. The response of
9:06French monarchs was usually dictated by
9:09the strict code of honor of their time.
9:12To understand this code of honor, it
9:14must be clarified that at that time,
9:17pitched battles were the exclusive
9:19preserve of the nobility. The cavalry
9:21formed an elite group that trained in
9:24tournaments and monopolized warfare.
9:27For them, showing off and personal
9:29glory mattered more than strategy.
9:32Their main tactic was as basic as it
9:35was spectacular: the frontal charge on
9:38horseback with lance at the ready, pure
9:41brute force driven by passion. However,
9:45coming face to face in open country was
9:48a real rarity in the Middle Ages, a
9:51period when grueling sieges and rapid
9:54looting were the norm. In fact, the
9:58most widely read military manuals of
10:00the time explicitly advised avoiding
10:03pitched battles at all costs due to the
10:06sheer risk they entailed. But when a
10:09clash was inevitable, the battlefield
10:12became the scene of a violent clash of
10:15worlds: the arrogance of traditional
10:18French cavalry versus a cold and
10:21revolutionary tactical discipline. The
10:25English also decided to break the rules
10:28of aristocratic honor, dismounting
10:31their knights to fight on foot and
10:34giving control of battle to the
10:37infantry. This English superiority in
10:41the open field also had its own name:
10:43the longbow. The French preferred the
10:47crossbow, which had a farther range and
10:49could be wielded by almost any
10:52untrained recruit, but the English bow
10:55was cheaper and infinitely more deadly
10:58in mass firing, because while a
11:00crossbowman could load and fire twice,
11:03an English archer would loose 10 arrows
11:06. Multiply that by thousands of archers
11:09and you have a rain of death that could
11:11darken the sky. In 1346 at Gesi, an
11:15outnumbered English army dug in on a
11:19hilltop, displaying a revolutionary
11:22tactical discipline. Their men-at-arms
11:26broke with traditional rules and
11:28dismounted from their horses to fight
11:31on foot as infantry in the center,
11:33solidly protected on the flanks by
11:36thousands of archers. Against them, the
11:39impatience and arrogance of King Philip
11:42VI unleashed disaster. The French
11:45monarch ordered his Genoese crossbowmen
11:48to attack before the ranks were ready.
11:52And then, the proud heavy cavalry of
11:55France charged in disorder down the
11:58hill. Penthoused in a narrow space and
12:02forced to advance uphill, the French
12:05aristocrats fell by the thousands to a
12:08terrifying storm of longbow arrows. It
12:12was the first time that the deadly trap
12:15of chivalric pride was exposed,
12:17demonstrating the folly of launching a
12:20blind charge before the army was well
12:23formed. With the flower of the nobility
12:26massacred and the French army paralyzed
12:29, the path was completely clear. The
12:33following year, in 1347, the English
12:37captured the pass of Calé, a strategic
12:40key that they would hold for more than
12:43200 years. Just then, in that same year
12:481347, an even worse enemy than the
12:53archers burst forth: the Black Death,
12:56which came from the East and spread
12:59across a Europe already weakened by
13:02famine, devouring entire populations
13:05with unprecedented lethality. Its
13:08impact was so brutal that it forced the
13:10war to be halted and a truce brokered
13:12by the Pope was imposed because there
13:15were no longer any able-bodied men left
13:17to take up arms. There was no peace
13:20within France either. In the 14th
13:23century, Charles of Navarre, owner of
13:26vast lands in Normandy, repeatedly
13:28threatened to ally himself with England
13:32and unleashed a bloody civil war
13:34against the heir to the French throne,
13:37to the point that the English ended up
13:41renting the fortress of Cherbourg from
13:44him. In 1356, another catastrophe
13:48struck, and at the hands of a fearsome
13:51figure, Edward the Black Prince, son of
13:54the English king. Famous for the
13:58brutality of his raids in the south of
14:01France, where he ordered the infamous
14:03massacre of civilians in Limos, he
14:06repeated Kesi's defensive tactics at
14:09the Battle of Patiers and achieved
14:12something unusual: capturing alive the
14:15French king himself, Juan Segi,
14:17nicknamed the Good, son of Philip VI.
14:21The monarch belonged to the exclusive
14:24Order of the Star and his oath of honor
14:26forbade him from stepping back. When
14:29the battle turned sour, instead of
14:32fleeing to regroup, his chivalrous
14:35values forced him to stay and fight
14:37until he was captured. The humiliation
14:41was immense. France had to promise an
14:44astronomical ransom of 3 million crowns
14:47for its king. And in 1360, exhausted
14:51and bereft, it signed the Treaty of
14:54Bretí, by which England was on the
14:57verge of taking almost half of the
15:00French kingdom in full sovereignty.
15:04Those truces, however, brought an
15:06unexpected plague. Soldiers who
15:10remained unpaid did not return home,
15:13but instead formed bands of plunderers
15:15called Gutiers. The great companies
15:19roamed across France like armed mafias,
15:22collecting protection taxes and
15:24behaving just like authentic pirates of
15:28the solid land. But the wheel turned.
15:32France’s recovery came at the hands
15:34of a prudent king, Charles V, son of
15:37John II the Good, and one of the finest
15:40soldiers France had ever produced,
15:43Bertran Digeklang. He was a man of
15:46humble origin, short and ugly, but so
15:49cunning and fearsome that French
15:52mothers frightened their disobedient
15:55sons by telling them that Digon would
15:58come for them. Through wit and
16:01guerrilla warfare, he rose to become
16:03Constable of France, the kingdom’s
16:06highest military leader. Between them,
16:09they completely changed their strategy.
16:11Instead of seeking out the great
16:14pitched battles that had cost the
16:17nobility so much, they opted for a
16:19patient war of attrition, harassing,
16:22ambushing and retaking town by town. It
16:26worked. By the end of the 14th century,
16:30France had reclaimed most of what it
16:32had lost, except for Gascony and the
16:35impregnable Calé. That France was able
16:38to consolidate this reconquest without
16:40suffering a massive counterattack was
16:42also due to the sudden political chaos
16:44on the other side of the Channel. The
16:47English king Richard II, grandson and
16:50successor of Edward I, had tried to
16:53make peace, but he was deposed in 1399
16:57by Henry IV, thus establishing the new
17:00Lancaster dynasty. This usurping
17:04monarch spent much of his reign too
17:07busy quelling internal rebellions to
17:10launch major invasions, plunging the
17:13conflict into a kind of Cold War. The
17:17relief, however, was short-lived. At
17:19the beginning of the 15th century,
17:21France made the gravest possible
17:23mistake. It split in two and became
17:26embroiled in civil war. Two major noble
17:30factions, the Burgundians and the
17:32Armagnacs, fought to the death for
17:35control of the kingdom, especially
17:37since King Charles VI suffered from
17:40fits of madness that left him unfit to
17:43govern. That open wound was the golden
17:47opportunity awaited by a new English
17:50king, the young and ambitious Henry V,
17:53who in 1415 reignited the war. That
17:57same year, on a waterlogged field at
18:00Asanug, his sick and exhausted army
18:03crushed the French military elite, who
18:06were huddled together and stumbled on
18:09too narrow and muddy ground, while the
18:12longbow once again did its deadly work.
18:17Henry V then conquered Normandy with
18:19fire and sword. His siege of the city
18:22of Guan during the bitter winter of
18:251418 and 1419 was so relentless that
18:30the trapped inhabitants, starving to
18:33death, ended up eating dogs, cats and
18:37even rats to keep from perishing. The
18:40final blow to French unity came in 1419
18:43when the supporters of the heir to the
18:46throne assassinated Duke John Fearless,
18:49leader of the Burgundians. A furious
18:53Burgundy, a first-rate military power
18:56with fearsome artillery, went over to
18:59the English side. With this support,
19:02Henry V imposed the Treaty of Troyes in
19:061420, by which he was recognized as
19:09none other than heir to the throne of
19:12France, displacing the king's own son.
19:16France seemed definitively lost, but
19:19Henry V died suddenly in 1422, without
19:24ever wearing the crown that was within
19:27reach, leaving his son Henry VI, a 9-
19:30month-old child, as king of England and
19:33, in theory, of France. And then, when
19:37everything seemed over, the miracle
19:39happened. The displaced heir was
19:42Charles VI, known as the Dauphin, a
19:45prince who barely believed in his own
19:48cause anymore. His salvation came in
19:511429 in the most unexpected way, in the
19:55form of a young peasant girl convinced
19:58that God had sent her to save France.
20:01Her name was Joan of Arc. That year she
20:04lifted the English siege of Orleans and
20:07restored the faith that the French had
20:10lost. Shortly afterwards, at the Battle
20:13of Patay, the French cavalry finally
20:16achieved the unthinkable: they
20:18surrounded and annihilated the fearsome
20:20English archers before they could form
20:23their wall of arrows. Joan even managed
20:27to have Charles VI solemnly crowned in
20:30the cathedral of Ré, the sacred place
20:33where the kings of France were anointed
20:36. Her end, however, was tragic, as she
20:39ended up captured by the Burgundians,
20:42handed over to the English and burned
20:45at the stake. The kingdom, now back on
20:48its feet, also recovered its lost son.
20:51In 1435, the Duchy of Burgundy
20:55abandoned the English alliance and made
20:58peace with Charles VI in the Treaty of
21:00Arras. Without the military muscle and
21:04artillery of Burgundy, England was left
21:07alone on the continent and that was the
21:10real beginning of its collapse. France
21:13then finished the job with two real
21:16revolutions. The first was military.
21:19Tired of the old feudal armies, which
21:22only served seasonally and were
21:24impossible to maintain on long
21:26campaigns, the kings created the first
21:29professional and permanent army in
21:31Europe, the so-called ordinance
21:34companies, together with a corps of
21:36archers recruited from the people, the
21:39franchegs. This was the birth of the
21:43modern army. The second revolution was
21:46gunpowder. Although rudimentary cannons
21:49had already existed since the beginning
21:51of the war, their power matured in the
21:5415th century and from 1400 onwards
21:56artillery began to demolish in a few
21:59days walls that had previously resisted
22:02for months, rendering medieval
22:04fortresses obsolete. With these two new
22:07weapons, France swept away the last
22:09English positions. At the Battle of Fog
22:12Miñi in 1450, French cannons forced
22:17the English to abandon their solid
22:19defensive position and led them to
22:22disaster. And in 1453 at Castillon
22:27artillery sealed the final victory.
22:30France had won the war. In October of
22:34that year, the city of Bordeaux
22:37surrendered, ending a conflict that had
22:41never lasted 100 years. When the smoke
22:45cleared, the map and the soul of Europe
22:48had changed. The war had ignited
22:50national sentiment like never before on
22:53both sides of the Channel. In England,
22:55fearing a French invasion and hatred of
22:58French, the English language was
23:01proudly claimed over the French of the
23:04court. To sustain such a prolonged
23:07effort, the kings had to invent
23:09permanent taxes and complex
23:11administrative machinery. And along the
23:14way the old feudal order collapsed. The
23:18traditional system in which nobles
23:20served the king in exchange for their
23:22lands could not sustain armies during
23:25endless wars. So both sides began to
23:28pay their soldiers through contracts
23:31called enturas and to hire mercenaries.
23:34But this did not work out, and so in
23:37the end standing armies were born, and
23:40with them the medieval knight was
23:42buried forever, whose prestige sank
23:45when it became clear that a peasant
23:48with a bow or a commoner with a cannon
23:50could defeat the best-armoured
23:53aristocracy on the continent. The final
23:56outcome was a paradox. France, the
23:58victorious side, ended up with its
24:01territory devastated, depopulated and
24:03impoverished. And yet, from those ruins
24:06emerged a monarchy stronger than ever.
24:10Charles VI and after him Louis XI
24:12centralised military and economic power
24:15in their hands and paved the way for
24:17the absolutism of the following
24:19centuries. England, the losing side,
24:22lost almost everything. Of its former
24:25and vast possessions on French soil, it
24:28retained only the port of Calé, but it
24:31did so only until 1558. Ruined and
24:35humiliated, England immediately
24:38collapsed into its own civil war, the
24:41Wars of the Roses, in which the same
24:44veterans who had fought side by side in
24:47France ended up killing each other,
24:50divided between the houses of Lancaster
24:53and York. There was, however, a wound
24:56to pride. Despite having been expelled
25:00from France in 1453 and losing Calé in
25:031558, the kings of England continued to
25:06sign themselves as kings of France in
25:09their official titles until 1801. They
25:14only renounced that phantom crown when
25:16the French themselves, in the midst of
25:18the revolution, beheaded their monarch
25:21and wiped the old royalty off the map.
25:24A royal head had to roll for that
25:26impossible title to finally become
25:29extinct. And like all great history,
25:32the story of this war continues to be
25:34rewritten. Today, historians such as
25:37Michael Livingstone consider it a
25:39mistake to limit the period between
25:411337 and 1453 and propose stretching it
25:46from the 1290s to the 1490s, almost 200
25:52years of a genuine medieval world war
25:56that also involved Castile, Portugal,
25:59Scotland, Italy and the Holy Roman
26:02Empire. Others have deflated the myth
26:05of English invincibility, recalling
26:08that England never had enough people or
26:11money to conquer France in a lasting
26:13way and that its great triumphs are
26:16explained above all by the fact that
26:18France was destroying itself. More than
26:21a titan, they say he was a cunning
26:23opportunist who knew how to take
26:25advantage of a broken country. The
26:27moral perspective has also changed. The
26:30fearsome cavalcades are no longer
26:32studied as brilliant tactics, but as
26:35state terrorism. And both the profound
26:38trauma of the peasants and the enormous
26:40ecological damage of the Scorched Earth
26:43that devastated forests and fields for
26:45generations are analyzed. And the role
26:48of women has finally been rescued. Far
26:51beyond Joan of Arc, there were peasant
26:54women who organized spy networks, women
26:57who supported the entire logistics of
26:59armies, and such astonishing figures as
27:02Joan of Bellville, a noblewoman who,
27:05after her husband was executed by the
27:08King of France, sold her lands,
27:10assembled a fleet of ships painted
27:12black with red sails, and became a
27:15ruthless pirate who hunted French ships
27:18in the English Channel for years. That
27:22was, in short, the Hundred Years' War.
27:25It was not just a tantrum of capricious
27:28kings; it was something more. It was a
27:32conflict that ended up becoming a
27:34ruthless crucible of fire, hunger, and
27:37gunpowder, where many lessons in
27:39military strategy were learned, because
27:42it all began with knights in shining
27:45armor riding in the name of honor, and
27:47it all ended with fire-breathing
27:50cannons and plebelles capable of
27:52annihilating the flower of the European
27:55aristocracy from afar. On those
27:58mud-stained fields, two nations were
28:01born, self-aware of their own identity,
28:04and an entire world of proud
28:06aristocrats wrapped in shining steel
28:09died forever. An immense cataclysm that
28:13, together with other great historical
28:16struggles on the continent, helped to
28:19forge the foundations of modern Europe
28:22at a truly terrible human cost. So,
28:26what did you think of the video? The
28:29truth is that the story of the Hundred
28:31Years 'War is one of the most epic
28:33stories in existence. I think I've made
28:36it clear throughout the video that the
28:38English longbow was the weapon of mass
28:41destruction of the Middle Ages. But to
28:44what extent did this obsess England?
28:47The answer is that it obsessed them a
28:50lot, a lot. King Edward I knew that the
28:53English longbow could turn the tide of
28:56a battle, as had happened at Kesi, a
28:58decisive English victory thanks to the
29:01longbow. For this reason, the king
29:04enacted a law requiring all men in his
29:07kingdom to practice archery every
29:10Sunday, and to make sure they complied,
29:13he strictly forbade playing football.
29:17That's right, the King of Sports, which
29:19at that time was a very primitive
29:22football and very different from
29:24today's, was outlawed under penalty of
29:26imprisonment because it distracted the
29:29common people from preparing to kill
29:32Frenchmen. It's fascinating to think
29:35how military decisions from some seven
29:38centuries ago shaped the leisure time
29:41of an entire country. Football survived
29:45and evolved, fortunately, but almost
29:48always clandestinely, at least until
29:50the 19th century, so you can see how
29:53important it is to know history. Well,
29:56I hope you enjoyed the video and I
29:59remind you that although the channel
30:02has come out of that horrible slump we
30:04had a year and a half ago due to the
30:07flood of videos made with artificial
30:10intelligence on YouTube, YouTube has in
30:12fact deleted some of those automated
30:15channels. Well, even so, we need to
30:18improve the numbers and we need it to
30:21continue growing in visits and also in
30:25channel members or patrons, because we
30:28are nowhere near the figures for 2023.
30:31We need to have channel members who,
30:34with a small monthly contribution, a
30:37very small amount of money, can make
30:40the project's survival viable. I'll
30:43leave a link in the description box and
30:46in the first pinned comment so you can
30:48become a member of the channel. Right
30:51now we've dropped that number of
30:54members and we're at around 600 members
30:57, but we urgently need to get to 100.
31:00Well, maybe a few more so the channel
31:03can keep going. The rules on YouTube
31:06are changing at breakneck speed. I hope
31:10you understand. Thank you very much in
31:13advance and thank you for the comments
31:15we receive. Thank you very much.

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