The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) was not a single continuous campaign but a series of conflicts punctuated by truces, shifting alliances, and dynastic crises. While the overarching struggle centred on rival claims to the French throne, much of the war’s character was shaped by regional dynamics. Two territories — Normandy in the north and Aquitaine in the southwest — became especially contested, their fates mirroring the broader ebb and flow of English and French fortunes. Understanding how control over these regions passed back and forth reveals the complex interplay of military innovation, local loyalties, and emerging national identities that would come to define the late medieval period.

Background of Normandy and Aquitaine

Normandy and Aquitaine entered the war with very different political inheritances. Normandy had been a self-contained duchy under Norse rulers until its annexation by the French crown in 1204, after which it became a province governed directly from Paris. Its location on the Channel coast made it both a natural springboard for English invasions and a prime target for French defence. Aquitaine, by contrast, traced its English connection to the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II of England in 1152, which brought the region under Angevin rule. Even after Philip II of France seized most of the Angevin territories, the Treaty of Paris (1259) recognised the English king as Duke of Aquitaine, but as a vassal of the French crown. This feudal arrangement created a standing friction point: the English kings resented performing homage, and the French crown consistently sought to erode their authority in the duchy.

Normandy’s Strategic Role and the Shifting Balance of Power

Normandy’s geography made it a critical theatre throughout the war. Whoever controlled the province dominated the Seine and could threaten Paris, while also securing lines of communication with England. The region also possessed a prosperous agricultural base, fine ports such as Rouen, Caen, and Cherbourg, and a dense network of fortifications. Its inhabitants, however, were deeply divided in their allegiances, pulled between a long‑standing French identity and the economic incentives that English overlordship sometimes offered.

Early Engagements and the Crécy Campaign

In the opening phase of the war, Edward III did not aim at permanent occupation of Normandy. His great chevauchée of 1346 was a destructive raid designed to weaken French morale and demonstrate Valois impotence. After landing at Saint‑Vaast‑la‑Hougue, the English army marched through Normandy, sacking Caen and ravaging the countryside. The campaign culminated in the Battle of Crécy, a resounding English victory that temporarily paralysed French resistance. Yet Edward lacked the resources to hold significant Norman territory; after Crécy he turned to the siege of Calais, and Normandy fell back under French control. These early incursions, however, exposed the vulnerability of the region and planted the idea that English power could be projected deep into France.

The Lancastrian Conquest and the Treaty of Troyes

Normandy changed hands decisively only in the fifteenth century. Taking advantage of the internal strife between Armagnac and Burgundian factions, Henry V of England re‑invaded in 1415. His triumphant campaign, crowned by the Battle of Agincourt, was followed by a systematic conquest of Normandy between 1417 and 1419. Rouen, the provincial capital, fell after a terrible siege, and by 1419 the entire duchy was under English occupation. The Treaty of Troyes (1420) sealed Henry’s position: he was recognised as heir and regent of France, and his marriage to Catherine of Valois bound the two crowns. Normandy was no longer a French province but part of a dual monarchy, administered by English captains and garrisoned by English soldiers. Local institutions were adapted to serve the Lancastrian regime, and many Norman nobles accepted the new order in return for confirmed privileges.

French Reconquest and the Battle of Formigny

English rule in Normandy proved fragile. Despite strong military occupation, the region was never fully pacified; resistance bands operated in the countryside, and heavy taxation bred resentment. The turning point came after the intervention of Joan of Arc, whose relief of Orléans in 1429 and the coronation of Charles VII at Reims galvanised French loyalists. Although Joan herself did not campaign in Normandy, her success broke the myth of English invincibility. Charles VII reformed the French army, creating a permanent professional force, and turned his attention to the reconquest of the north. The decisive encounter was the Battle of Formigny on 15 April 1450. A French army commanded by the Count of Clermont and reinforced by the Constable de Richemont intercepted and crushed an English relief force advancing from Caen. Without hope of reinforcement, English garrisons capitulated one after another, and by August 1450 all of Normandy was once again in French hands.

Aquitaine: The Enduring English Foothold

If Normandy was a contested prize for a few decades, Aquitaine represented a far longer and deeper English entanglement. The Plantagenet kings regarded the duchy as their ancestral inheritance, and Gascony in particular developed a strong commercial and cultural affinity with England, fostered by the lucrative wine trade. The Hundred Years’ War in Aquitaine was not simply a conflict of conquest and reconquest but a struggle over identity, sovereignty, and feudal obligation.

The Angevin Legacy and the Treaty of Brétigny

By the 1330s, English-held Aquitaine was reduced to a coastal strip between Bordeaux and Bayonne. Philip VI of France repeatedly attempted to confiscate the duchy, provoking Edward III’s formal claim to the French crown in 1337. The first major peace settlement, the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), dramatically transformed the map: in exchange for renouncing his claim to the French throne, Edward III was granted full sovereignty — not merely feudal tenure — over an enlarged Aquitaine comprising roughly one‑third of the kingdom. For a moment, the English seemed to have achieved a permanent territorial settlement, and the borders of the Plantagenet principality stretched from the Loire to the Pyrenees.

The Black Prince’s Principality and the Revolt of the Nobles

Edward III sent his eldest son, the Black Prince, to govern Aquitaine in 1362. The Prince established a brilliant court at Bordeaux and sought to administer the principality as an independent domain. His financial demands, however, proved the regime’s undoing. To fund an intervention in Castile, the Prince imposed a harsh fouage (hearth tax) that fell on all households without the consent of the local estates. The Gascon nobility, led by the Count of Armagnac and the Lord of Albret, appealed to the French king against their English overlord. Charles V seized the opportunity, reasserting his jurisdiction over Aquitaine in 1369 and triggering a new phase of open war. This legal challenge exposed the fragile contractual basis of Brétigny and demonstrated how local grievances could ignite a wider conflict.

French Reconquest under Charles V and the Collapse of English Gascony

Charles V, advised by the brilliant constable Bertrand du Guesclin, adopted a strategy of avoiding pitched battles and instead reclaiming territory town by town through siege and negotiation. Between 1370 and 1380, French forces steadily rolled back the Plantagenet gains. By the time Edward III died in 1377, the great principality of Aquitaine had shrunk back to a coastal enclave around Bordeaux and Bayonne. Henry IV and Henry V later attempted to revitalise the English position, but their attentions were increasingly absorbed by Normandy and the Troyes settlement. A brief resurgence under the Duke of Bedford in the early 1420s could not reverse the trend.

The Final Collapse: Castillon and the Fall of Bordeaux

The last act of the Hundred Years’ War unfolded in Gascony. After the French reconquest of Normandy, Charles VII turned his full weight against the remaining English possessions in the southwest. In 1451 French armies captured Bordeaux with relative ease, but the city’s inhabitants, deeply tied to English markets, soon revolted and invited a relief expedition led by John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. The decisive clash came at the Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453. French artillery, positioned behind a fortified camp, devastated the English‑Gascon attacks, and Talbot himself was killed. Bordeaux surrendered in October, and with its fall, English territorial sovereignty in Aquitaine came to an end. The Hundred Years’ War effectively concluded, though a formal peace would not be signed until Picquigny in 1475 — a treaty that confirmed French gains without returning any land.

Regional Instability, Economic Disruption, and Societal Change

The repeated transfers of control over Normandy and Aquitaine brought profound disruption to the lives of ordinary people. In Normandy, the English occupation between 1419 and 1450 entailed systematic garrisoning, confiscation of lands from those who fled, and heavy taxation to finance the war against the Dauphin. The countryside was devastated by constant raiding and counter‑raiding; some villages saw their population decline by a third or more. Trade with England increased during the occupation, particularly in textiles and wine, but it proved insufficient to offset the damage of war and plague.

In Aquitaine, the economic patterns were even more tightly bound to the English connection. The Bordeaux wine trade was the region’s lifeblood, with huge quantities shipped annually to London, Bristol, and Southampton. English control guaranteed privileged access to this market, and Gascon merchants fiercely defended their monopoly. When French forces gradually expelled the English, the wine trade suffered a severe shock. Bordeaux’s privileges were eventually restored by Louis XI, but the decades of conflict permanently altered the commercial landscape, shifting trade routes and encouraging new competitors such as Portugal.

Socially, the long war accelerated the transformation of feudal loyalties into national sentiments. In Aquitaine, many Gascon lords had traditionally viewed the distant king of France as a greater threat to their liberties than the Plantagenet duke. Yet French royal propaganda increasingly portrayed the English as foreign oppressors, undermining the legitimacy of English rule. In Normandy, the experience of occupation bred a bitter resentment that would later be channelled into a strong attachment to the French crown. The war thus helped to forge a sharper sense of shared identity, even in regions that had long stood at the margins of the kingdom.

The Enduring Legacy on National Identity and State Formation

The power shifts in Normandy and Aquitaine during the Hundred Years’ War left indelible marks on both England and France. For England, the loss of these continental possessions prompted a painful but ultimately formative reorientation. Deprived of its Angevin inheritance, the English monarchy turned its attention inward and to the seas, eventually laying the foundations of its maritime empire. For France, the reconquest transformed the nature of kingship. Charles VII’s permanent army, funded by the taille, broke the reliance on feudal levies and enabled the crown to impose its will uniformly across the kingdom. The provincial particularism of Normandy and Aquitaine was gradually eroded, replaced by a more centralised administrative apparatus that would reach its apogee under Louis XI and his successors.

Culturally, the war contributed to the evolution of vernacular literature and historical writing that celebrated French resilience and stigmatised the “stranger.” Chronicles such as those by Froissart and Monstrelet documented the shifting fortunes of towns and castles, ensuring that local heroes and martyrs became part of the national story. In England, the memory of Agincourt and the Black Prince endured as foundational myths, while the eventual loss was absorbed into a narrative of providential testing.

Conclusion

The regional power shifts in Normandy and Aquitaine were far more than military episodes; they were the crucible in which the modern states of France and England began to take shape. Control over these provinces swung violently from one crown to the other, driven by the fortunes of battle, the ambitions of princes, and the stubborn loyalties of local communities. Normandy’s recovery after the Battle of Formigny and Aquitaine’s fall at Castillon marked the definitive end of English continental aspirations, but the legacy of those contested years continued to shape political boundaries, economic ties, and national identities for centuries. The Hundred Years’ War thus remains a compelling illustration of how regional conflicts, fought far from the capital, can alter the destinies of entire kingdoms.