Can any of you historian types summarise it in 10 sentences or less?

My wife is trying to explain Joan of Arc’s story in little kid terms, I don’t think we can be any more specific than English v French.

No tired old racist French ‘jokes’ please.

How about:

English Kings held large amounts of land in France and were vassals to King of France. Edward III had a tenuous claim to French throne and tried to take it by force. Much fighting ensued. The English had a fair amount of military success but were eventually beaten by the French who had far greater resources and ultimately showed themselves more adaptable to new ways of fighting. The English Kings lost most of their French lands.

The end.

After the Norman Conquest, England was pretty much a vassal state of France and that state included bits of Mainland Europe as the Normans kept some of their home lands.

King of France died leaving only a female heir who wasn’t really allowed to inherit so the English King thought he had a better claim and invaded.

France had more resources but the English did well at first. They were pushed back by the greater numbers of the French.
It all went quiet for a bit then Henry V got a bit uppity and started the fight again. Did well but was again pushed back as the French had more money and mates. No one liked the English (especially the Scots).

The English eventually gave up and tried to forget they got their backsides handed to them.

Eventually it all calmed down with the result that England pretty much lost all their land on the continent except for Calais which they lost later.

Final collapse of the Angevin Empire – Edit – leading to the rise of English & French nations.
Frog’s get France,
English finally get first English king (rather than a Norman/Frenchie i.e. who actually used English for government) since Harold.

More than 10 words sorry 😳

I’m impressed at all these little kids who know what vassals are (cos I don’t).

Horrible Histories Joan of Arc song ftw

I’m impressed at all these little kids who know what vassals are (cos I don’t).

They might now but as part of giving the kids the info you explain it. That how I learned that sort of thing at that age.

I’m not looking for text to relay to kids directly. She just needs a quick summary so she can then condense it. She managed to get it down to about 800 words so far, which for our kid is about 10x what she could manage to read…

No tired old racist French ‘jokes’ please.

You won’t be asking Jeremy Paxman then…..

England was Norman (French ) England was also in what is France The French were also in what is now France. The English Norman ( French ) king wanted all of France instead he lost all of the English bits of France except Calais ( who would want Calais ) WE STILL WON ! (Even though we then are not the we of now.)

Horrible Histories

I bloody HATE the Horrible Histories. 👿

I bloody HATE the Horrible Histories.

Anything that gets kids interested in history (or any learning for that matter) can’t be that bad.

Longbows…there were lots of em, without em probably would have been the 10 years war

France was emerging as a real kingdom, as opposed to bunch of duchies and other variants. The Normans ruling England still had significant interests in what would become France.
Various excuses were used to trigger conflict and each side has its ups and downs but ended with the English Monarchs reduced to just the Calais area.

The Normans were actually Vikings so the King of France was happy when they went an invaded England. And won the short game.

We won the long game by first defeating Napoleon (basically paid everyone else to fight him) and then by the French having to need us to help them stop the Germans in WW1 (and again basically pay for the war) and then rescuing them again in WW2.

🙂

France was emerging as a real kingdom, as opposed to bunch of duchies and other variants

I thought Charlemagne did that 700 years before?

I bloody HATE the Horrible Histories.
Anything that gets kids interested in history (or any learning for that matter) can’t be that bad.

Do they really though? It just seems to be a load of random snippets about people you don’t care about, trying to whip up short term interest by going on about bad deeds. History is about stories and characters, and in any story you need to know who the characters are and why they do what they do.

You might think it’s too much for kids poor little brains but it’s not – they lap up long stories all the time, history is no different. That’s why they make films and TV series about it.

and then rescuing them again in WW2

I said no stupid anti French “jokes”. And it was the Americans who rescued both of us, so give over.

I thought Charlemagne did that 700 years before?

France and then some. I am not quite sure why he got tied so much to France as opposed to Germany for example.
The kingdom ran into the normal inheritance problems after his death.
When you look at the actions of the various Norman counts, Burgundy counts and so on the French kings rule was more in theory than in practice for many years. So long as the king didnt ask for anything the vassal didnt want to provide and the vassal decided occasionally bowing was worth it everyone got along fine. Soon as either of those changed though it was war.

The 100 years war was just one of the battles the French kings had to fight to get proper control over the areas they nominally controlled.

I didn’t realise how much of it was caused by shit-stirring by the French Dukes, I’d always imagined it was the French king trying to get territory back from the English.

And it was the Americans and Russians who rescued both of us, so give over.

FTFY

But I agree with the sentiment…

The Dukedom of Burgundy became a State in all but name, richer and militarily more successful than the Crown of France (several generations of inbreeding didn’t help there, leading to a French Monarch who thought he was made of glass) and had some quite brilliant Dukes. Its a strange period of European history, a de-facto powerful European State quite literally disappeared overnight after the battle of Nancy when Charles the Bold (rash/mad, take your pick) went down to the Duke of Lorraine.
The 100yrs war was in some respects a sideshow to the tussle between the Burgundian and Valois factions that controlled the major portions of what would become France.

We didn’t need rescuing – we won the Battle of Britain ourselves, with the help of the Polish. We could have probably done a deal with Hitler at that point, but that’s not our style. Interesting on the Hundred years war though.

We didn’t need rescuing – we won the Battle of Britain ourselves, with the help of the Polish. We could have probably done a deal with Hitler at that point, but that’s not our style

+1

The Germans made the mistake of attacking the USSR and then managed to bring the USA in too.

WW1

By 1916, Britain was funding most of the Empire’s war expenditures, all of Italy’s and two thirds of the war costs of France and Russia, plus smaller nations as well. The gold reserves, overseas investments and private credit then ran out forcing Britain to borrow $4 billion from the U.S. Treasury in 1917–18.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_World_War_I#British_Empire

WW2

In 1938 the British Commonwealth was a global superpower, with political and economic control of a quarter of the world’s population, industry and resources. From 1938 to mid-1942, the British coordinated the Allied effort in all global theatres. They fought the German, Italian, Japanese and Vichy armies, air forces and navies across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, India, the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. British forces destroyed Italian armies in North and East Africa and occupied overseas colonies of occupied European nations. Following engagements with Axis forces, British Empire troops occupied Libya, Italian Somaliland, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran and Iraq. The Empire funded and delivered needed supplies by Arctic convoys to the USSR, and supported Free French forces to recapture French Equatorial Africa. Britain also established governments in exile in London to rally support in occupied Europe for the Allied effort. The British defeated, held back or slowed the Axis powers for three years while mobilizing their globally integrated economy and industrial infrastructure to build what became, by 1942, the most extensive military apparatus of the war. This allowed their later allies (such as the United States) to mobilise their economies and develop the military forces required to play a role in the war effort, and for the British to go on the offensive in its theatres of operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Economy

I would sum it up by saying that the Norman Empire, which had matured and mutated into the Plantagenet Empire consisted of England/Wales and significant parts of France tried to take over the rest of France, & ultimately failed. Leaving the French part of the Empire being Calais.

No summary but when visiting the Agincourt battle site my dad commented to the French tourist bod that it was a small memorial for something so significant, his reply how big is the one in Hastings?

his reply how big is the one in Hastings?

It’s pretty big.

What was the point he was trying to make?

Nobody celebrates losing

100 years’ war has been replaced by 100 years of willy waving about another war.