Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years War, Volume 2 by Jonathan Sumption

Trial by Fire: The Hundred Years War, Volume 2 Reviews

• 
  Yair Zumaeta Acero

  De todos los libros que puedan haberse escrito acerca de ese conflicto sangriento y cuasi eterno entre Francia e Inglaterra a lo largo de los siglos XIV y XV y que se denominó “La Guerra de los Cien Años”; salta a la vista que es la ciclópea obra del historiador y juez de la Suprema Corte del Reino Unido, Jonathan Sumption – Lord Sumption - la que se erige como la publicación definitiva de una de las conflagraciones más emocionantes y que mejor definieron el futuro y la configuración del continente europeo, así como el principio del fin de la Edad Media.
  
  “The Hundred Years War” es una gigantesca obra histórica que está dividida en 4 volúmenes, los cuales han sido publicados entre 1990 y 2015. El estilo narrativo de Lord Sumption es una delicia de la prosa inglesa (según sus propias declaraciones, influenciado por la “pulida e impecable prosa de Edward Gibbon”), con una manera especial de narrar los acontecimientos, la preparación y el desarrollo de las batallas, la actuación de los personajes y las consecuencias de los enfrentamientos bélicos y diplomáticos; algo que se agradece considerando los distintos escenarios en lo que se desarrolló una guerra más que todo estática y llena de escaramuzas y treguas cortas seguidas de largos períodos de inactividad, lo que podría hacer perder y confundir al lector casual. La bibliografía es bastante extensa y las fuentes por lo general, son primarias y soportan un exhaustivo trabajo de investigación que se ve reflejado en una maravillosa y muy objetiva exposición histórica del conflicto que arrasó los campos y pueblos de Francia.
  
  En este segundo volumen titulado “Trial by Fire” continuaremos con las lides tal como las dejamos en el tomo anterior: La humillante derrota francesa en Calais y la posterior tregua declarada en 1347 que no serían nada más que abrebocas para las desgracias que vendrían para Francia en los próximos años: Las esporádicas y mortales reapariciones de la Peste Negra; la muerte del rey Felipe VI y el ascenso de su sucesor, un mediocre, terco y defensor a ultranza de las ya caducas técnicas de caballería Juan II “El Bueno”; el surgimiento de la figura de Carlos II de Navarra “El Malo” quien en su disputa por la corona de Francia y los territorios de Borgoña y Normandía (por línea materna, con los mismos derechos sucesorales que Juan II), traería a Francia una innecesaria e inconveniente guerra civil que la desangraría hasta 1365. Por si fueran pocas las tribulaciones que enfrentaba la corona francesa otro revés militar de considerable envergadura, la famosa batalla de Poitiers de 1356 acabaría no sólo con la élite militar de Francia sino también con la captura del Rey Juan II a manos de Eduardo de Woodstock (mejor conocido como el Príncipe Negro, heredero de la corona inglesa). Con el rey preso en Inglaterra, el Delfín Carlos tuvo que enfrentarse no sólo a los continuos ataques ingleses y al asedio de las tropas de Carlos de Navarra a París sino también a dos de los fenómenos que marcarán la guerra en los 22 años contenidos en este volumen: Las primeras revueltas campesinas en la Europa feudal, coronada con la Grande Jacquerie de 1358 que condensó todo el descontento popular luego de 20 años de guerra, campos devastados por ingleses, bretones y gascones así como la humillante derrota en Poitiers. De igual manera, surgirían en Francia las llamadas “Compañías Libres”, grupos de soldados y mercenarios que en tiempos de paz se dedicaban a saquear y extorsionar pueblos y castillos y que recorrían Francia y el norte de Italia buscando combatir por el mejor postor. Estas compañías, compuestas en su mayoría por soldados ingleses, bretones, normandos y gascones, impidieron que en Francia se consolidara un gobierno central y como consecuencia, fraccionó la defensa del reino de la cual quedaría encargada cada región o condado. La situación se vería agravada con el tratado de paz de Brétigny de 1360 firmado entre Inglaterra y Francia, dejando a muchos de ellos desempleados y con el bandidaje y el saqueo como única fuente de ingresos.
  
  Este segundo volumen termina con el giro de tornas a favor de los franceses con la muerte de Juan II y el ascenso de su hijo Carlos V “El Sabio”, un rey extremadamente audaz, inteligente y ambicioso -cualidades de las que carecía su padre-; forjado a sangre y fuego en las lides de la guerra durante el cautiverio de Juan II. Carlos logra diseñar la estrategia para expulsar a las Compañías de territorio francés, así como sanear las finanzas del reino. Por otra parte, las conquistas de Eduardo III y el Príncipe Negro en Francia, si bien espectaculares, se hacen efímeras y se desvanecen ante la imposibilidad de contar con los recursos administrativos y financieros para dirigirlas, sumado al declive de un Eduardo III que con los años se vuelve excesivamente avaricioso y la vez dilapidador, endeudando cada vez más al reino. La cereza del helado sería la campaña inglesa en Castilla, donde el Príncipe Negro logró un apabullante triunfo en Nájera en 1367, victoria pírrica si se consideran las consecuencias políticas y el descalabro económico que supuso la aventura en tierras españolas y que desembocarían en 1369 en el repudio al tratado de Brétigny y el reinicio de las hostilidades.
  
  Por la apasionante narración histórica aquí contenida; por la impresionante atención que presta el autor a los pequeños detalles y hechos que fueron configurando poco a poco la enmarañada red de acciones y protagonistas de una conflagración ya consolidada; por la forma minuciosa y ordenada como se presenta la cronología de una guerra que duró más de un siglo y por la manera amena y a la vez erudita de presentar este tomo, no me resta más que recomendar la obra a todo aquel apasionado por la historia de la Edad Media, de Francia y de Inglaterra o por quien desee conocer el desarrollo de los años más brutales de la Guerra de los Cien Años. Más que ansioso por hincarle el diente al tercer tomo, “Divided Houses”, donde seguramente llegue el declive de la fortuna inglesa en batalla, la sonrisa del hado para los franceses y la aparición de la locura en los tronos de Europa.
• 
  Ray

  Part 2 of a delightful history of the Hundred Years War. The wealth of detail in this book is amazing. It takes you right into the 14th Century and the intrigues and machinations at courts across Western Europe ("countries" are still part cultural/geographic entities and part dynastic accident)
  
  A rattling read, though I must admit to being a bit confused at times by the regular lists of castles and fortified monastries held, captured and lost by the English, French and sundry freebooters and bandits in between.
  
  This second volume leaves us on a real cliffhanger. England has won a number of stunning victories, captured French Who's Who 1360 and central authority in France has disintegrated. The Prince of Wales owns much of South West France and is running it as his own principalty. He even has time to meddle in dynastic rows in Spain - though in winning the crown of Castile for his favoured candidate he may just have bankrupted himself in the process. It seems that rulers are great with promises but reluctant to pay the bills when presented - plus ca change.
  
  Now the pendulum is starting to swing back as a new King reinvigorates France, and disgruntled local barons decide they don't quite like English rule. I think the Rosbifs are in for a basting.
  
  
• 
  Thomas Ray

  DC96 S96 1990 Memorial Library
  UW-Madison has volumes 2 & 3 only.
• 
  Marks54

  This is the second volume of Jonathan Sumption’s wonderful four volume history of the Hundred Years War. It covers the period from the capture of Calais and the following truce up until 1369, following a very dark period for the French. This book includes the resumption of conflict after the conquest of Calais, the Black Death and its consequences, and the major English victory at Poitiers. There is also much civil disorder and even revolution along with the capture of the French king.
  
  There is so much going on here that it is hard to summarize. However, a continuing story concerns the development of modern and effective financial and organizational institutions as a necessary basis for effective statecraft and military action. This line of development seems to set up the last two volumes of the series and helps the story of how the English won major battles but did not end up winning control of the French throne.
  
  This is a difficult read but very much worth the effort.
• 
  Simon Mcleish

  Originally published on my blog
  here in February 2002.
  
  The second volume of Sumption's enormous history of the Hundred Years' War covers the period between the aftermath of Crécy and that of Nájera, just under twenty five years - basically the reign of John II of France. The first part up until the treaty of Brétigny marks one of the lowest points in France's fortunes in the whole war, with the country unable to do anything about the destructive raids of the routier companies, holding towns and villages to ransome, encouraged yet not controlled by the English; the after effects of the Black Death; the battle of Poitiers, with the capture of the French king and many high ranking nobles; revolution in Paris and other northern cities; and effective civil war between different members of the Valois dynasty.
  
  The major cause of the French problems dates back all the way to the weakness of the late Carolingian kings. This led to power becoming diffused among the provincial nobility, causing cultural fragmentation and political disunity symbolised by the Angevin empire, where Henry II ruled more of France than the French kings. The major aim of the Capetian and then Valois monarchy over centuries was to centralise power into their own hands, but even in the fourteenth century this was far from being realised. Although France was much richer than England, collecting taxes was so difficult that much of this period saw the crown in financial crisis. Different communities tended to refuse to pay taxes, and even when they did often put unwelcome conditions on the money raised, such as reserving it for operations within their specific area (with the result that the most hard hit areas were unable to pay for defence and the others were unwilling). Rulers who had a high level of personal prestige were more easily able to persuade the different areas of France to grant them money, but continual defeat and perceptions that the money was used to enrich favourites reduced the reputations of the Valois monarchs almost to nothing.
  
  Militarily, the English had the advantage of better generalship (Dagworth, Lancaster, Chandos, Knolles and the Black Prince all outclassed the French regularly), but they lacked the resources to hold on to their gains. Once the French managed to reform their finances - bringing in the franc in 1360 and setting up a new tax system to end decades where the main source of the crown's income had been unpopular manipulation of the silver content of the currency - the end of this phase of the war became inevitable. They still had to make concessions, the English holdings in Gascony being extended and gains in the area around Calais being confirmed, but the treaty of Brétigny and the accession of Charles V marked something of a new beginning.
  
  The story of these turbulent decades is ably told by Sumption, the details he gives (principally drawing on French archives) helping to make the whole course of events much clearer. The history is truly a great (if old fashioned) achievement, and it is to be hoped that Sumption manages to bring the whole thing to completion in as accomplished a manner.
• 
  Mark

  The second volume of Jonathan Sumption's monumental history of the Hundred Years War begins with the English basking in the glow of the twin victories of Crécy and the capture of Calais. It was only the beginning of a series of miseries for the French, though, with the military blows soon followed by the destabilizing effects of the Black Death and the demise of their king Philip VI. Though his successor, John II, subsequently had the appellation "the Good" attached to his name, Sumption leaves the reader wondering what he had done to deserve it, as his 14-year reign was characterized by a series of missteps. The ambitions of his son-in-law, Charles of Navarre, only added to the chaos of French politics, while the resumption of the war in 1355 saw an invasion of France the following year by the English king Edward III's son, the "Black Prince." Confronting the English invaders at Poitiers, John led his forces to a defeat that ended in his capture.
  
  While a king's capture (or at least the inescapable prospect of it) may signal the end of a chess match, John's capture did not signify the end of the war. For while the French king negotiated with his captors in London, his kingdom gradually unraveled. With power dispersed among several individuals, there was no effective coordinated response to the bands of unemployed soldiers who roamed the country living off of plunder and extortion. In response, French peasants rose up in the rebellion known as the Jacquerie, while the demands for John's enormous ransom created a political crisis in Pars that ended in bloodshed. Though the English king Edward III enjoyed a commanding position, the terms he sought proved too objectionable to John's subjects, while a second treaty was never fully implemented because of Edward's unwillingness to make the necessary renunciation of his claims to the French throne. As Sumption demonstrates, this soon proved to be a serious error, as John's death in captivity in 1364 brought to the throne a new king who would prove a far more formidable opponent to English ambitions.
  
  All of this Sumption recounts in a detailed account that builds upon his previous volume,
  Trial by Battle, to convey the complexity of this epic conflict. His narrative ranges widely, from the maneuvering of monarchs to the efforts by towns to resist the locust-like hordes of mercenaries that periodically descended upon them. Buttressing his description is an analysis that offers nuanced judgments that help explain the reason why events took the course that they did. In all this is history at its finest, one that is must-reading for anyone seeking to understand this complex conflict which defined so much of the history of the Middle Ages.
• 
  J

  Justly acclaimed and excellent narrative history which details the conflict between the capture of Calais and the reopening of hostilities after a short peace treaty -in just under 600 pages.
  
  There's lots of juicy anecdotes and welcome personal profiles of some less high profile protagonists of the conflict and Sumption is at his strongest when describing these. He's also strong on using primary source material from provincial towns which brings alive the Black Death (in which soldiers remarkably survived for the most part as they were fitter and better fed than their civilian counterparts). He also uses these sources to describe how France shockingly jumped from crises and near-crises whilst England applied the pressure by invasion and alliances with Charles of Navarre and the civil war for the dukedom of Brittany.
  
  The narrative is disrupted somewhat by the detailed accounts of the Jacquerie and uprising in Paris against the Crown following the defeat at Poitiers at the hands of the Black Prince. The same is true for several chapters on the soldiers turned brigands rampaging France in companies - Sumption gets bogged down by so much geographic and personal detail it becomes wearying. He's clearly access primary sources and it shows.
  
  References are unhelpfully bunched together in footnotes but the maps are excellent and in my copy at least I only spotted 3 typos out of 600 plus pages.
  
  A medievalists summer reading.
  
  
• 
  Rindis

  The second volume of Sumption's massive, and excellent history of the Hundred Years War covers just over twenty years, from 1347 to 1369. The first volume ended with the siege of Calais, which the English ended up occupying for 212 years.
  
  Of course, a city on the coast by itself is not a very secure, nor self-sustaining location. So even as a truce is agreed to, it becomes a friction point as English troops start taking over other nearby locations and building up a proper defensive zone for the city, which became the Pale of Calais. This was made all the more important by the collapse of Flanders communes, and the Count of Flanders' reasserting control, which meant that Calais was now the only realistic point of debarkation of an English army in northern France.
  
  So even as repeated efforts at truces and real peace are made, there's plenty of friction and not a little actual fighting. A few things complicate what would ordinarily have probably led to a renewed round of hostilities. First, the arrival of the Black Death disrupts plans, and more seriously(!) France's finances are a shambles, and collecting money to collect troops is nearly impossible in any great scale.
  
  Fortunately for France, England's financial woes are also serious. There's actually a fair amount of money coming in (unlike France, which misses out on a decade of economic prosperity enjoyed by the rest of western Europe), but just garrisoning Calais and other 'static' military expenditures eat up most of what is left after paying off the debts caused by the previous decade of warfare.
  
  However, the real action is in south-western France, where all this trouble began. Companies of military adventurers had gotten fairly well organized (as far as such things go) and were carrying out operations of seizing local castles and fortified points, and then effectively holding the surrounding region for ransom. Then, they find somewhere else in reach of that point and take that.
  
  This isn't armies on the move, and sieges, great or small, these are quick operations done by surprise at night, generally by escalade (and I'll save you trip to the dictionary; it means taking the place by putting ladders against the walls, and climbing over; this is also a commentary on how boring guard duty is). A lot of the book is actually taken up describing the course of these campaigns and showing how widespread they ended up. The upshot is that these regions are effectively no longer administered by France, and aren't contributing any taxes, and most of the rest of France was insisting that taxes collected be used for local defense instead of providing an army to defeat the English and retake strategically important castles.
  
  The ending portion of the book deals with the sequel to all of this as the formal Treaty of Bretigny puts these companies out of any official work, and both sides are trying to get them out so that the terms of the treaty can be implemented. This turns into several years of trying to corner and ship out of the country bands of experienced military adventurers.
  
  Meanwhile, we have the King of Navarre, who has extensive holdings in France, has a number of grievances with the French court, and quite a lot of ambition. He murders one of John II's advisors and launches several rounds of civil war with France. There's the battle of Poitiers, in which John II is captured, and the interminable treaty wrangling after that (and need to gather a 'king's ransom' for real). The Estates General and the Dauphin struggle for control, and neither can raise the money needed for the war effort or ransoming the king, and Paris ends up cut off on all sides and controlled a middle-class council. All of this erodes the power and prestige as France as a nation.
  
  But all of this is not enough to actually dissolve it as an entity, and end of the book shows how French authority recovered in the late 1360s, as well as going into the complicated situation around Pedro of Castile and Henry of Trastamara, which both sides get involved in. Sumption takes his time with all these complications, which is why this is such a massive series, and of course, why it such an informative one. This is definitely an essential work on the period.
• 
  Norman Smith

  This is an amazingly well-written history of an extraordinarily complex period of French history (the history of England does not enter into the account). The research and the presentation are really amazing!
  
  I developed a very visceral loathing for a large number of the leaders of the various companies roaming about France during this period, but particularly for Charles ("The Bad"), King of Navarre. That personalities can emerge from the mists of history is another tribute to the author.
  
  This book does not require that the previous book in the series be read first. I read the first book about 15 years ago, and found that I was able to understand the situation at the start of this volume. It is pretty much necessary, though, that the reader already have some familiarity with the Medieval age of Europe and the practise of feudalism.
• 
  Mark Walker

  Uneven in holding my interest. The general observations about life during this period are interesting. Unfortunately the author has a great passion for the details of the people and places in France connected with this period, which results in long bits where the reader is unable to follow (or care ) who all the people are, nor follow where the action is happening.
  Remarkable insights into the constraints imposed from lack of funds. And this period has geopolitical power games like our own - just slower paced due to slower pace of travel and communication.
  Much of the internal divisions of France, and that Paris was such a powerful centre, seemed to explain part of the background to the French Revolution which followed many centuries later
• 
  Mervyn Whyte

  Even better than the first volume. To present such a complicated and convoluted story in such a readable fashion is incredible. Shame (and a surprise) about the numerous spelling and grammatical errors.
• 
  !Tæmbuŝu

  Volume 1:
  KOBOBOOKS
  Volume 2:
  KOBOBOOKS
  Volume 3:
  KOBOBOOKS
  
• 
  Michael Jecks

  Second in Sumption's excellent series about the Hundred Years War, this book begins with the end of the siege of Calais and leads on to Poitiers and beyond. For anyone wanting to learn more about the catastrophe that was the Hundred Years War, this is the series to buy.
• 
  Janet

  Indepth.
• 
  Greg

  Book two of the definitive history of the Hundred Years War.