Book description
This text is the first volume in a series that details the long and
violent endeavour of the English to dismember Europe's strongest
state, a succession of wars that is one of the seminal chapters in
European history. Beginning with the funeral of Charles IV of France
in 1328, it follows the Hundred Years War up to the surrender of
Calais in 1347. It traces the early humiliations and triumphs of
Edward III: the campaigns of Sluys, Crecy and Calais, which first made
his name as a war leader and the reputation of his subjects as the
most brutally effective warriors of their time.
Jonathan Sumption is a former History Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford, and a practising QC. He is the author of Pilgrimage and The
Albigensian Crusade, as well as the first three volumes in his
celebrated history of the Hundred Years War - Trial by Battle, Trial by
Fire and Divided Houses. He was awarded the 2009 Wolfson History Prize
for Divided Houses.
