The Hundred Years War, and: Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (review)

206 Reviews an attempt to eliminate some of the verbal viscera. O n the production side, Yale University Press has produced a fine book indeed. Yale has also done credit to CamiUe's choice of colour plates, and the short title of the volume is apposite to what is contained within its covers. CamiUe's volume comprises an Introduction and chapters pertaining to the subjects of the Birth, Life, Face, Body and Death of Death; an Appendix of manuscripts considered by the author to contain miniatures by the illuminator he designates as 'Pierre Remiet'; Abbreviations; Notes to the Text, and an Index which is incomplete. The number of figures which deal with the figure considered by the author to be Remiet is atittleunder hati of the total. Peter RoUe Monks Townsvtile Queensland Curry, Anne, The Hundred Years War (British History in Perspective), Basingstoke, Macmtilan, 1993; paper; pp. xiv, 192; R.R.P. AUS$27.95 Curry, Anne and Michael Hughes, eds., Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, Woodbridge, BoydeU Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xv, 221; R.R.P. £39.50. The 'Hundred Years War' is an unfortunate nineteenth-century label which has stuck. It gives a spurious unity to a series of conflicts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries between the two great kingdoms of Western Europe, England and France, and evokes a romanticised chivalric world of the Black Prince, Joan of Arc, and Henry V, often seen through the distorting mirror of Shakespeare's plays and Froissart's Chronicles. Despite considerable recent scholarship, these interpretations retain then powerful hold on the imagination. Anne Curry, in her textbook for Macmtilan's British History in Perspective series, takes a m u c h more prosaic view, presenting an essentiaUy chronological analysis of Anglo-French relations in the later Middle Ages which emphasises the diplomatic, rather than the mtiitary, aspects of these wars. She focuses on the policies and aims of the main rulers involved, as far as these can be determined. As weU as Reviews 207 covering the relations between England and France, she looks at the involvement of other countries and rulers, including the papacy, and briefly explores the later effects of the wars on European relations. Curry's account is weU-grounded in the best recent researches, and controversial questions are succinctly and carefuUy presented. The style is clear throughout and the analysis judicious. A preliminary essay rapidly and effectively surveys the differing approaches of chroniclers and historians from the fourteenth century to the present day. Included in the apparatus are several fairly simple maps, genealogical trees of the English and French royal houses, and a select bibUography of works in English and French. If her approach is fairly narrow and traditional diplomatic history, without any social, financial or military dimensions, her conclusions are thoroughly revisionist: there was no continuous 'Hundred Years War', but rather three separate conflicts arising from the three treaties of Paris (1259), Bretigny (1369) and Troyes (1420). More specialised and detailed is the volume of essays edited by Anne Curry and Michael Hughes, which originated in a conference at Oxford in November 1991, with several papers revised and updated for this publication. The aim of the conference, and hence the book, was to bring together the professional historian and the lay enthusiast, to mix historical and archaeological approaches, and to be both lively and informative. The contributors here are mainly academic historians, supplemented by m u s e u m curators, an archaeologist, and the actor Robert Hardy, in his capacities as trustee of the Mary Rose Trust and longbow enthusiast. The result is a volume somewhat eclectic and varied in approach. The essays divide into three groups. The first deals with the armies themselves. Matthew Bennett analyses the tactics employed in a variety of battles, and shows h o w the English stuck to a carefully planned and largely successful tactical approach throughout the war. Andrew Ayton and Anne Curry examine the evidence for the size, composition and funding of the English armies and their garrisons in France. In the second group, Mark Ormrod looks at the impact of the war on England, with an emphasis on royal revenue and taxation...