It lasted 116 years. Not a hundred. That’s the first thing everyone gets wrong. You’ve probably heard stories of knights in shining armor and the legendary Longbowmen of Agincourt, but when people ask who won the Hundred Years War, they often expect a simple, one-word answer. History is rarely that tidy. Honestly, if you were a betting person in 1420, you would have put every cent you had on England. They had the momentum, the land, and a king who seemed destined to rule both sides of the English Channel.
France won.
But saying "France won" is a bit like saying "The person who didn't die in the car crash won." It was a brutal, grueling, and transformative slog that fundamentally reshaped how Europe functioned. By the time the dust settled in 1453, the map of the world looked nothing like it did when the conflict kicked off in 1337. The House of Valois kept their throne, the Plantagenets were kicked back to their rainy island, and the concept of "being French" was born out of a century of fire and blood.
Why the English almost walked away with everything
To understand who won the Hundred Years War, you have to look at how close they came to losing it all. Edward III started the whole mess because he had a pretty legitimate claim to the French throne through his mother, Isabella. For decades, England just... dominated. At the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the English longbow turned the flower of French chivalry into a pincushion. Then came Poitiers. Then came Agincourt in 1415, where Henry V pulled off one of the most lopsided victories in military history.
By 1420, the Treaty of Troyes basically handed France to England. Henry V was named the heir to the French throne, marrying the French king’s daughter. He was winning. He had it. And then, he died of dysentery at age 35.
History turns on the smallest things. A king dies of a stomach bug, and suddenly a vacuum opens up. The "Dauphin," the disinherited French prince Charles VII, was hiding out in the Loire Valley, looking less like a king and more like a guy waiting for the inevitable. The English held Paris. They held Normandy. They were besieging Orléans. It looked like the end of France as a sovereign nation.
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The Teenage Peasant and the Turning Tide
Then a girl from Domrémy showed up. Joan of Arc is one of those figures that AI or fiction writers would get wrong by making her a superhero, but the reality is weirder. She was a teenager who claimed to hear voices, and somehow, she convinced a desperate prince to let her lead an army.
She didn't win the war by herself. Not even close. But she changed the vibe.
Before Joan, the French were fighting a losing dynastic struggle. After Joan, they were fighting for France. She gave the French army a sense of divine purpose that the English, who were getting tired of paying for a war that never ended, simply couldn't match. Even after the English captured and burned her at the stake in 1431, the momentum didn't stop. They had created a martyr, and martyrs are much harder to kill than soldiers.
The real reason France took the "W"
If Joan provided the soul of the comeback, Jean Bureau provided the hardware. We talk a lot about longbows, but the Hundred Years War was actually won by gunpowder. The French military underwent a massive professionalization under Charles VII.
The Bureau brothers, Jean and Gaspard, revolutionized the French artillery.
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For a century, the English relied on the defensive power of the longbow. It was great for stopping cavalry charges. It was useless against a bronze cannon that could tear through a line of infantry from half a mile away. At the Battle of Castillon in 1453—the actual final chapter of the war—the English commander John Talbot tried a desperate charge against French fortifications. The French cannons absolutely shredded them.
Castillon proved that the age of the knight was over. The English lost their greatest commanders, their foothold in Gascony, and eventually, every single piece of territory in France except for the tiny port of Calais.
Was there actually a winner?
When we look at who won the Hundred Years War, we have to look at the wreckage. England was broke. The defeat in France led directly to the Wars of the Roses, a bloody civil war that wiped out much of the English nobility. You could argue the English people "won" because they finally stopped pouring taxes into a war for French land they’d never see, but the Crown certainly lost its prestige.
France "won," but they won a graveyard.
Large swaths of the country had been pillaged by "routiers"—mercenary bands who robbed everyone when they weren't being paid to fight. The Black Death had hit in the middle of the war, killing a third of the population. Yet, out of this misery, the French monarchy emerged stronger. They created the first standing army in Europe since the Romans. They gained the power to tax without asking the nobles every single time.
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The Long-Term Impact: How the World Changed
- Nationalism was born. People stopped saying "I belong to the Count of Anjou" and started saying "I am French."
- The End of Chivalry. Being a "noble knight" mattered less than having a battery of cannons and a disciplined line of infantry.
- English Isolation. England stopped trying to be a continental power and started looking toward the sea. This eventually led to the British Empire and their naval dominance.
- The Language Shift. Before the war, the English upper class spoke French. By the end, they spoke English. The war made French the language of the enemy.
The war ended without a formal treaty. There was no big ceremony. The English just... stopped coming back. They were too busy killing each other at home to worry about Bordeaux anymore. In 1453, the last English garrison in Gascony surrendered, and that was that.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs and Travelers
If you want to see the scars of this war yourself, skip the tourist traps and head to the Dordogne region of France. You can visit "rival" castles like Castelnaud and Beynac, which sit across the river from each other, representing the front lines of the English and French claims.
For those studying the military side, look into the "Ordnance Companies" of Charles VII. It’s the blueprint for every modern army you see today. The shift from feudal levies (guys showing up because they owe the Duke a favor) to professional soldiers (guys getting a paycheck from the state) happened right here.
If you’re researching your own genealogy or historical interests, remember that the "Hundred Years War" is a Victorian-era term. People living through it just called it "the troubles" or didn't name it at all. They were too busy trying to survive the longest family feud in human history.
To truly understand the victory, read The Hundred Years War by Jonathan Sumption. It’s a multi-volume beast, but it’s the gold standard for showing how France didn't just win by luck—they won by out-organizing a crumbling English state. France became a superpower because this war forced them to either evolve or disappear. They chose to evolve.