Late medieval warfare c.1290-c.1450
Edward I and the Welsh and Scottish Wars
Between 1277 and 1283, Edward I conquered Wales in two campaigns, building a network of great stone castles — Caernarfon, Harlech and Conwy, with Beaumaris added after 1295 — that have been described as the most ambitious military architecture in medieval Europe. The castles were planted in Welsh territory as garrison points and symbols of English domination. Welsh resistance continued, including a major revolt in 1294–95, but Edward’s strategic use of castle-building and supplied garrisons proved decisive.
Scotland proved harder to subdue. Edward I was asked to judge a disputed Scottish succession in 1291–92 and chose John Balliol as king. In 1296 he invaded, deposed Balliol and declared himself overlord. Scottish resistance under William Wallace (defeated at Falkirk 1298) and later Robert Bruce (crowned 1306) prolonged the conflict. The First War of Scottish Independence continued until the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton (1328), which recognised Scottish independence under Robert I. Edward I’s Scottish campaigns were financially ruinous and politically divisive, demonstrating the limits of English military power even against a smaller neighbour.
Edward I conquered Wales using a combination of castle-building (Caernarfon, Harlech) and military campaigns in 1277 and 1282–83. His Scottish campaigns (1296–1307) ultimately failed: Scotland remained independent under Robert Bruce, confirmed by the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton in 1328.
The Hundred Years’ War and Changing Warfare
The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) between England and France was driven by English kings’ claims to the French throne and disputes over territory. It transformed how wars were fought. The traditional feudal levy — knights and foot soldiers serving for forty days per year under feudal obligation — was increasingly replaced by the indenture system, in which captains contracted with the Crown to provide set numbers of soldiers for pay. Professional, paid armies were more reliable and easier to supply on long campaigns abroad.
The English longbow was the defining weapon of the early phases of the war. Battles such as Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) showed English and Welsh archers inflicting devastating casualties on French cavalry. At Crécy, Edward III’s archers fired at rates modern estimates put at ten to twelve arrows per minute, breaking repeated French cavalry charges. The tactical dominance of the longbow undermined the social prestige of mounted knights and accelerated the shift towards infantry-based armies.
At Agincourt on 25 October 1415, Henry V’s army of perhaps 6,000–9,000 men defeated a French force estimated at three to five times its size. The English positioned themselves between two woods, forcing the French to advance along a narrow muddy field that negated their numerical advantage. Longbowmen on the flanks poured arrows into tightly packed French ranks. English casualties were reported as very low; French knights died in the thousands.
The Treaty of Troyes (1420) recognised Henry V as heir to the French throne. He died in 1422, aged 35, before inheriting France. The war continued under his son Henry VI, who eventually lost almost all English territory in France. Joan of Arc’s relief of Orleans in 1429 turned the tide decisively in France’s favour. By 1453 England retained only Calais from its French territories. The Hundred Years’ War ended not with a treaty but with England’s effective military defeat.
The Financial Cost of Medieval War
Sustained warfare was enormously expensive. Edward I’s Welsh and Scottish campaigns required repeated taxation that strained his relationship with Parliament. The Hundred Years’ War cost the English Crown vast sums: soldiers had to be paid, ships requisitioned, supplies shipped to France and castles garrisoned. To raise money, kings increasingly relied on Parliamentary grants of taxation, which gave Parliament growing leverage over royal policy.
Chevauchée tactics — systematic raiding and burning of French countryside — were used by English armies to destroy French tax revenues and force battle, but they also devastated the civilian populations of regions where armies operated. Contemporaries recorded the destruction of hundreds of villages, the slaughter of livestock and the abduction of people for ransom during English campaigns in France.
For ordinary people in regions where armies campaigned, war meant disruption, destruction and death far beyond the battlefield. In Wales, the construction of Edward I’s castles required forced labour and the displacement of Welsh communities. In France, years of English chevauchée campaigns left landscapes stripped of crops and livestock. The Hundred Years’ War coincided with the Black Death (1348–50), compounding the human cost across northern France and southern England.
In England itself, the war’s impact was felt through heavy taxation to fund campaigns, disruption to the wool trade when France was an enemy, and the losses of families who sent men abroad on campaign. The war also transformed social attitudes: the longbow victories at Crécy and Agincourt became sources of national pride, and chronicles celebrated English military prowess, laying the groundwork for later nationalist mythology around these battles.
The indenture system replaced the feudal levy during the Hundred Years’ War. Captains contracted with the Crown to provide paid soldiers. This was better for long overseas campaigns because paid men could serve indefinitely, unlike feudal levies who were only obligated for forty days per year.