Though a long and at times wearying slog, this book is not an unpleasant one. Sumption's writing style is crisp and clear highly readable. The details it contains of the early years of the Hundred years War are, well, not. It's no fault of the author that the convolutions of the historical and economic and social conditions of the soon-to-be warring nations are so intricate and dull, but they are vital to understanding the reasons why the war goes the way it does, particularly the economic details, which mostly have to do with sheep.
My own understanding of the War was incredibly limited, saving a single Bernard Cornwall novel and Branagh's Henry V, to the extent that I'd mix it up with the Thirty Year's War. Whether it was a good idea to jump feet first into this vast, exhaustive, epic historical narrative without a better understanding of the broad sweep of events and more of the principal characters involved is a moot point at this stage, but it's a bit disheartening to actually feel yourself forgetting stuff almost as soon as you've read it. Anyway, let's see what I CAN remember.
There's a ton of dynastic kingly squabbling in the background here, slivers of France in the possession of the English king, but as a duchy, rendering him a vassal of the French king. The English king should pay homage to the French king, doesn't want to, avoids it like the plague, eventually sends his son, Edward III to do the homage. Edward II is deposed, Edward III ascends, gets to fighting with Scotland, who are allied to France, gets a taste for war, as do his nobles, and decides he wants to reclaim his birthright in France. There follow tortuous rounds of fundraising via taxes and loans and dodgy, not to mention stupid, wool-trading, all in the name of getting an army together to invade France. Dodgy fundraising becomes a repeated and familiar feature of both sides, often with a strategic bearing as on more than one occasion an army is left unopposed as the other side simply can't afford to pay its soldiers. Then again there's all sorts of military incompetence, mismanagement, timidity and downright idiocy which seem to prolong the conflict by failing to bring it to a definitive conclusion. Edward III comes across as a right sod, burning and pillaging all around, while poor old Philip VI is just hapless in the defence of his realm. and his son even worse. Will they ever learn to cope with the withering fire of the English archers?
In the midst of all the campaigning there's the odd startling turn, such as the daring actions of Edward III's French mother ('evil,' Sumption calls her, reserving such emotive adjectives only for her and one other woman in the book,) or the ten French men-at-arms who hold an army at bay at a ford or the six burghers of Calais who appear before Edward III with nooses around their necks. I could have done with more of this sort of thing, but Sumption seems keen to avoid the more sensationalistic stuff on the grounds that they're more exhaustively covered elsewhere, and the battles as recounted are plenty sensational enough.
Volume 1 leaves us at the fall of Calais the English ascendant and the French humiliated, a state of affairs not likely to change any time soon. I may leave the next two volumes for when I have a slightly better grasp of events and players. It's interesting to think that these events must have formed a sizable chunk of the history lessons of French and English schoolchildren, but only got a passing mention in Irish history books. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention.