Effects of the Hundred Years War

Oct 30, 2010 Michael Streich

Agincourt was one of the Last Battles of the War - Wikimedia Commons Image

The Hundred Years' War took Europe from the Middle Ages into the pre-modern period, changing warfare and developing a mood of early nationalism.

The Hundred Years’ War started in 1337 but lasted until 1453. It was a conflict that began with mounted knights and the waning code of chivalry but ended with primitive canons and the use of gunpowder. The long series of battles, representative of the different phases of the war, resulted in a spirit of early nationalism and, at least in England, increased the civil bureaucracy. The Hundred Years’ War characterized a transition for England and France from the medieval to the early pre-modern period. By 1453, only Calais remained in English hands, leaving a clearly defined France, at least geographically.

English Yeomen Archers against French Mounted Knights

At the start of the war in 1337, English king Edward III had more money to wage war than Philip VI of France, although the overall resources of both nations were equal. England employed the use of yeomen infantry armed with the longbow, an influence of the Welsh who had, in earlier years, opposed the English under Edward I.

English bowmen could shoot ten to twelve arrows a minute, each one capable of piercing chain mail, while the French, using the traditional crossbow, could only fire two arrows per minute. Edward III relied heavily upon his archers to stop the French mounted knights. This strategy was successful throughout the war, beginning with Crecy and Poitier and ending at Agincourt.

Effects of the Hundred Years War on English Government

The on-going Anglo-French conflict resulted in the expansion of government bureaucracy and Parliamentary interference with royal endeavors. Wars cost money and although the English Parliament raised funds, as in 1341, they served to remind the king that no direct taxes would be approved without the approval of Parliament.

But the English monarchy became unstable after the death of Edward III in 1377. Edward’s son, Edward, the Prince of Wales (also known as the “Black Prince”), died of plague a year before his father. Not until the second decade of the 15th Century would England be led by a king of the stature of Edward III, and that was Henry V.

After the Hundred Years’ War

Despite Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415, France prevailed in the conflict. In 1429, an obscure young female named Joan arrived in Chinon to convince the French dauphin that she was sent by God to rid the land of the hated English. After raising the siege of Orleans, Joan enabled the heir apparent to be crowned king at Rheims.

By 1450 the English were beaten, forced to return to England and endure the War of the Roses before finally settling an internal peace under the Tudor dynasty. In France, the monarchy would spend decades consolidating power over powerful provincial nobles. Not until the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” in the 17th Century, would France be fully attuned to an absolutist monarch who controlled the restless French nobility.

Effects of the Hundred Years War on Military Traditions

Chivalry ended in the Hundred Years’ War. The rules of conflict changed. Cannons became a regular feature of siege warfare and gunpowder changed military strategies. In many ways, the Hundred Years’ War was a “military revolution” that forced Europe to adapt. In 1490, for example, the powerful Venetian city-state replaced bowmen with trained gunners.

The use of cavalry would remain as a core element of military preparedness until World War I, but the notion of knights clad in heavy chain mail ended. City walls were strengthened – as evidenced by the Italian city-states, to accommodate the new warfare. The ending of the Hundred Years’ War coincided with significant social, cultural, and intellectual changes in Western European history.

Sources:

• Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c. 1300-c. 1450 (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
• Desmond Seward, The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1453 (Atheneum, 1978)
• Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War I: Trial by Battle (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990)

Copyright Michael Streich. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

 Lost Opportunity to Stop the Holocaust?

 Michael Streich

Pope Pious XI died in February 1939, leaving unfinished a final encyclical that his successor, Pious XII, chose not to promulgate. Historians and theologians have long suggested that Humani Generis Unitas may have represented a significant statement of justice that might have postponed or even prevented the Holocaust much like the earlier encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, lessened state interference with Catholic doctrine. Connor O’Brien, writing in the April 27^th, 1989 New York Review of Books, refers to the 1939 encyclical as a possible “lost chance to save the Jews.”

 

Two Concurrent Goals

 

Both National Socialism and the Catholic hierarchy feared Communism. It was this mutual hatred that initially led prominent prelates to support the Hitler regime. According to Cardinal Faulhaber, Pope Pious XI praised Adolph Hitler, “for his stand…against Communism.”  Guenter Lewy, in his book The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, states that both Pious XI and Pious XII, “were preoccupied with the threat of Communism and therefore showed considerable benevolence to both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.” These attitudes would change as the Hitler regime began its systematic racial persecutions that culminated in the Final Solution.

 

Voices of Opposition

 

What was perceived as growing neopaganism in the German Reich was addressed in 1937 through Pious XI’s encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Concern”). The papal letter was smuggled into Germany and read in every church, incurring the wrath of the Nazis. Although addressing issues of religious freedom, it marked a turning point in the relationship between Berlin and the Vatican.

 

By early 1939 Humani Generis Unitas (“On the Unity of Humanity”) was prepared for Pious XI’s review. Sub-section 132 addresses “the present persecution of the Jews” and carries a strong message decrying anti-Semitism. Sub-section 152, a summary conclusion titled “Doing the Truth,” urges for “a vigorous condemnation of anti-Semitism and racism” and relates this to “the cause of justice and charity.” Prepared as a draft by two Jesuits, the pope may never have even seen it before his death. Pope Pious XII was elected in March 1939 and refused to publish it. According to Michael Phayer in his book, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust:1930-1965, “diplomacy would now take precedence over justice.”

Speculation and Confrontation

 

Could Humani Generis Unitas have slowed the persecution of Jews or even averted the Holocaust? Conor O’Brien believes it could have and writes that, “the failure to publish…was one of the greatest and most tragic missed opportunities in history.” To what extent might the November 1938 horrors of Kristallnacht have influenced Pious XI had he lived beyond March 1939?

 

In 1941, Clement von Galen, bishop of Muenster, delivered a sermon that Sociologist Gordon Zahn calls, “the single most stirring statement of Episcopal opposition to the Nazi rule.” Galen, elevated to the Cardinalate after the war, slowed state euthanasia policies. The argument can be made that if the Nazis “backed down” in 1941, might they have moderated their treatment of Jews in 1939 had this unpublished encyclical been promulgated?

 

How Hitler might have reacted is, of course, speculation. The Nazis dealt with Catholic opposition ruthlessly. Maximillian Kolbe and Edith Stein died in Auschwitz. Both were canonized by Pope John Paul II. In matters of social justice, Bishop Galen said it best: “it is better to die than to sin.”

 

Sources:

 

Humani Generis Unitas

Lewy, Guenter, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964)   

 

O’Brien, Conor Cruise, “A Lost Chance to Save the Jews?” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 36, No. 7, April 27, 1989

 

Phayer, Michael, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965 (Indiana University Press, 2000)

 

Zahn, Gordon, German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962)

 Copyright owned by Michael Streich. Any republishing of any kind requires written permission. First published in Suite101

The Endurance of Luther's 1517 Reformation

Political and Secular Considerations Enabled Successful Reform

© Michael Streich

Nov 23, 2008

By 1517 German princes were ready to embrace a local movement that, while begun as a debate on Church practices and beliefs, encompassed elements of political reform.

The start of the Protestant Reformation is usually dated to October 1517 when the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, published his Ninety-Five Theses, a series of statements meant for debate and prompted by the sale of indulgences. Luther, a professor of Scripture at Wittenberg University, had become increasingly uneasy with the wholesaling of indulgences, notably by the Dominican Johaan Tetzel. Unlike past attempts at church reform under Jan Huss and John Wycliffe, Luther’s Reformation established a permanent movement, splitting Christendom in half, and was supported by secular authority.

Of Politics and Piety

North German nobility in the early Sixteen Century were beginning to explore greater means of territorial autonomy both from Church and Emperor. Luther’s hearing at the 1521 Diet of Worms coincided with a more general meeting attended by various ambassadors addressing taxation issues. Luther’s own patron, Saxony’s Frederick the Wise, protected him as public opinion swelled in support of Luther’s refusal to recant. Excommunicated in early 1521, Luther had already written several documents further identifying crucial issues of Reform, including The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Christian Liberty, and An Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of Christendom.

Although Luther’s message of reform was theological (his first Theses point had stated, “when Christ our Lord says ‘repent’, He means that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.”), many saw the growing movement in secular terms and sought to incorporate everyday grievances. The 1524 Peasant Revolt was caused, at least in part, by a misunderstanding of Luther’s message. Luther rejected the goals of the revolt and supported the nobility. In his Commentary on Romans, Luther writes that, “The Apostle therefore commands that Christians should honor the power of governments and not use their liberty of grace as a cloak for their maliciousness.” (Chapter 13) Luther rendered unto Caesar those things that were Caesar’s and rendered unto God those things that were His, although he viewed God’s omnipotence as a totality that included human government.

An Enduring Movement

By the time Luther died in 1546, the Council of Trent had begun the task of reclaiming lapsed Catholicism but the Reformation was solidly entrenched. Leaders after Luther such as John Calvin would further the movement and in England an unhappily married Tudor king would divorce Catholicism from his realm purely for personal, political reasons. Far from promoting authentic Christianity, the Reformation would spawn bloody wars of religion, notably in France, and culminate in the hellish Thirty Years’ War. From those turmoils new Christian groups would emerge, espousing many of the reforms Luther had advocated, chief among which may have been access to a vernacular Bible. Reformation beliefs may have enabled the evolution of secular considerations of governmental reform such as Resistance Theory that ultimately contributed to early notions of constitutionalism.

One long term legacy of 1517 was the freedom to think and to discourse, whether on religious or secular themes. Carlo Ginzburg’s unfortunate miller never had this opportunity (The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller). In this, Luther freed people from rigidly strident Christianity and began a process that would eventually separate church and state. The Reformation as an enduring movement proved beneficial to both.

The copyright of the article The Endurance of Luther's 1517 Reformation in German History is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish The Endurance of Luther's 1517 Reformation in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

 

Martin Luther's Peasant Background Examined

Archaeological and Literary Evidence Suggests a Well-to-do Family

© Michael Streich

Dec 18, 2008

Recent excavations in Mansfeld and Wittenberg confirm the literary sources that point to a social status above the norms of general peasant life in 16th Century Germany.

New evidence in the life of Reformer Martin Luther suggests that his upbringing did not reflect the lifestyle of typical peasantry. Luther scholar Roland Bainton’s assessment that “Luther was not brought up in grinding poverty,” [1] is corroborated by artifacts currently displayed in Halle at the State Museum of Prehistory. According to the Atlantic Times, the evidence demonstrates that Luther’s family “led an extravagant lifestyle…” [2] Although studies of Luther’s early life confirm that his father, Hans, was a man of means, the new discoveries give a more detailed picture of the family’s prosperity.

Literary Evidence of the Luther Family Lifestyle

Luther’s family had settled in Mansfeld the year after he was born in Eisleben. Bainton states that Luther’s mother came from a “well established burgher family,” [3] and that her social status was higher than that of her husband. Some scholars speculate that it was financial help from her family that enabled Hans to lease a copper mine in partnership with a friend.

This enterprise allowed Hans to eventually own shares in eight copper and silver mines and three foundries. Although by no means rich, the income derived from these enterprises permitted him to afford a university education for his son Martin. According to Luther, recollecting in later years, his father paid “bitter sweat and toil.”

When Martin obtained the Master of Arts degree, his father presented him with a copy of the Corpus Juris. Such books were not inexpensive. Later, on the occasion of Luther’s first Mass, Hans presented the Augustinian Order with a gift of twenty florins. The Italian florin, in use throughout Europe at the time, was a gold coin containing 3.5 grams of gold. Such examples indicate that Luther’s family had risen from the days when, as Luther later recalled, his mother carried all her firewood home on her back.

Evidence from the Artifacts

According to the Atlantic Times, in Mansfeld, the Luther family owned, “not only a house but three interconnected buildings as well.” Behind the structures, archaeologists found a garbage dump dated to the time the family lived there. According to findings, numerous articles were quickly buried here. The scientists speculate that this may have been done to avoid contamination after two of Luther’s brothers died in 1505.

Archaeologists found “300 silver coins, pieces of jewelry, cookware, and children’s toys.” Additionally, the dump contained the bones of pigs and poultry. This would indicate that the Luther family ate substantially better than most families, particularly since meat was seldom found in a peasant diet.

The article concludes with a brief list of artifacts found from Luther’s own Wittenberg house, dumped after his death. These include “exotic dishes from Venice” as well as dinnerware and other personal objects. While these findings do not impact Luther’s early life, they may shed light on Luther’s taste’s which would have been formed as a young adult.

Notes and Sources:

[1] Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950) p. 24.

[2] “Martin Luther Revisited: An exhibition shows that the reformer was not from a poor background,” Atlantic Times, Vol. 5, No. 12, December 2008, p.20.

[3] Bainton, p. 24.

See also:

M.A. Kleebery and Gerhard Lemme, In the Footsteps of Martin Luther, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1966).

Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)

The copyright of the article Martin Luther's Peasant Background Examined in German History is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish Martin Luther's Peasant Background Examined in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

 

Child Soldiers: An On-Going Practice Throughout the World

Michael Streich

May 25, 2013

First published in Decoded Past

 

In December 2012 a journalist in North Lebanon asked fifteen year Hussein what types of weapons he uses. “AK-47, AKMS, SKS, M16, M4...I know how to use many types of guns. I know how to use G#, FAL, Seminov…I participate in all the battles.” The boy told the reporter he would die as a martyr and wasn’t afraid to die. The interview was documented by the Middle East Media Research Institute. April 24, 2013, the German daily Bild featured a brief video filmed in North Waziristan depicting a small group of boys learning to fire various weapons. Some are orphans. All are ready to fight for al-Qaeda.

 

Child Soldiers in History

 

That young boys would be a part of military action was taken for granted during the Middle Ages. Several years ago, an attempt was made to consider English King Henry V as a war criminal for slaughtering prisoners at the 1415 battle of Agincourt. William Shakespeare’s play on the subject suggests that Henry reacted to the killing of boys - young men who stayed behind the lines guarding the baggage train. Contemporary British historians suggested that this massacre of boys may be overstated, although young men, some as young as twelve, filed the ranks of the infantry.

 

Boys were indispensable in wars. Over four hundred years later, as Britain forged an imperialist empire, its armies utilized drummer boys, “…a tough lot…soldier’s orphans and the like as young as ten years of age…they could hardly remember a life outside the barracks…” Writer Donald Morris’ detailed accounting of the tragedy at Isandhlwana (1879) notes that age was no barrier to both sides of the Zulu conflict.

 

If the few sources - some unreliable, can be trusted, the year 1212 was marked by several attempts on the part of charismatic youths to launch a Children’s Crusade. Recent scholarship questions the reliability of available sources and many general texts do not even mention this popular crusade. The Economist, in December 21, 2000, however, published a brief account of the crusade, blaming a small group of leaders inspiring the others. The writer gave valid historical parallels: “Adolescents defended Berlin against the Russians in 1945, ships’ boys were long a feature of the British navy…”

 

If any part of the fanciful medieval stories are true, the child-crusaders were in several cases captured and sold as slaves, drowned at sea, or settled in areas like Genoa, Italy. What was the parental response? According to the same dubious sources, the father of one of the leaders of the Children’s Crusade was hanged by angry parents. Some writers attempting to explain this crusade, reference the folklore tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, but the legend is not traced to 1212 and there is no other evidence to support this analysis.

 

Historical Perceptions of Children

 

A basic problem lies in the notion that the past can be explained by contemporary standards, at least within industrial societies. The use of children as soldiers, for example, continues to be documented in over two dozen nations according to NGOs and organizations like UNICEF. The “rights of the child,” however, are relatively contemporary. Historians have referred to children in the Middle Ages, for example, as “little adults.” Jacques Le Goff, writing about social and cultural trends, comments that, “…childhood was not treated as a matter of serious concern…”

 

The twenty-first century has not changed the perception of children as commodities to be exploited by groups seeking power. A January 2012 report by Human Rights Watch, for example, details the use of children in Mali. According to observers, “…several were only 12 or 13 years old, all armed with big guns…” An April 2011 discussion on a WikiLeaks document by Spiegel Online notes that several inmates at the Guantanamo camp “were minors.” Spiegel profiled one detainee from Afghanistan who was 17 when captured as a “child soldier.”

 

Is There a Double Standard?

 

It can be argued that child soldiers were integral to the survival of a society, such as in the case of Ancient Sparta. The Agoge, an exceptionally rigorous training center for males, created the warriors famed in the Ancient world for their prowess. The contemporary debate, however, is fueled by societies that value children and hold deep sensibilities regarding childhood and youth. At the same time, western societies accept military prep schools and summer camps that serve to turn young boys into military ready recruits.

 

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) contains many protocols governing every aspect of children under the age of eighteen, including their use in military conflicts. Most member nations signed the Convention, although the United States Senate never ratified it. Despite such global efforts, however, children continue to be recruited and trained at very young ages in a practice woven deep in the history of many cultures: the exploitation of society’s weakest and most vulnerable members.

 

Resources

 

The children’s crusade: fairly holy innocents. (December 21, 2000). The Economist. Accessed May 22, 2013.

 

Flock, Elizabeth. Child soldiers still used in more than 25 countries around the world. (March 14, 2012). Washington Post. Accessed May 22, 2013.

 

Le Goff, Jacques. Medieval Civilization. (1988). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

 

Mali: Islamists Should Free Child Soldiers. (January 15, 2013). Human Rights Watch.

 

Morris, Donald R. The Washing Of The Spears. (1965). New York: Simon & Schuster.

 

Report on Sunni Child Soldiers in North Lebanon. (December 18, 2012). Special Dispatch No. 5097.  The Middle East Media Research Institute.

 

Schmitz, Gregor Peter. Guantanamo’s Child Soldiers. (April 28, 2011). Spiegel Online International. Accessed May 21, 2011

 

Sadly, Ancient Democracies are best viewed in the graveyards of Greece, Rome, and the Ancient Middle East. This tomb is in Turkey along the western coast.

 
The Rise and Fall of Democracy: Can it Happen in the United States?

Michael Streich    

The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins with the ringing words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal…” Thomas Jefferson’s words go on to highlight the “unalienable” rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But, as students of American history have long pointed out, this would not become reality for over two hundred years. The development of a democratic society in which all members share both political and social rights, took a very long time in American history.

 

The Early Republic

 

Framers of the United States Constitution were cautious and followed the precepts known to them regarding representation. Only white males that owned property (land) could participate politically. The Constitution, as it was originally ratified, only allowed for the House of Representatives to be elected by direct popular vote. The President, ultimately, was elected by an Electoral College and Senators serving in the national legislature were appointed by state legislatures.

 

By the 1820s states began to change voting qualifications to open the franchise to all white males whether they owned property or not. Historians estimate that between 1824 and 1828, nearly one million new voters were eligible to participate in the political life of the fledgling nation.

 

By the 1840s, groups of women began to actively advocate for the right to vote. The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention publicized the Declaration of Sentiments, written by early Feminist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The early Women’s Movement would join forces with a growing Abolitionist Movement, hopeful that their political emancipation would come with the emancipation of slaves. The 15^th Amendment proved them wrong.

 

The Post Civil War Years

 

The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in 1870, upheld the right to vote by all citizens regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” On the heels of the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing “equal protection of the laws” and “due process,” the Fifteenth Amendment enabled African Americans the opportunity to participate politically.

 

But even as Southern states sought to circumvent Reconstruction legislation designed to mainstream freedman into the political system, social equality was not addressed. Additionally, the clamor to include women in the political process met with deaf ears.

 

The “separate but equal” doctrine, affirmed by the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson, denied blacks social equality while prohibitive policies geared toward political participation kept blacks from exercising the vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other local devices in the South stifled the notion that “all men are created equal.”

 

Women finally achieved the right to vote in 1920 with the adoption of the Twentieth Amendment, although some territorial jurisdictions had already allowed women to vote in that last 1800s.  It was not until 1964 that the Twenty-Fourth Amendment did away with the “poll tax” as a requirement to vote in a national election. By 1971, citizens attaining the age of 18 were given the right to vote.

 

Social Equality in the United States

 

Enough evidence exists from the lives of post Civil War Radical Republicans that social equality between races was not a part of the political equality enshrined in federal law and Constitutional amendments. Social equality began with Brown v. Board of Education when the Warren Court ruled that separate but equal was “inherently unequal.” The inability of African American students to obtain an equal education directly impacted their ability to be successful in society.

 

Ultimately, the Civil Rights movement and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s legislative initiatives would pave the road toward social equality for all citizens. Over two hundred years after Jefferson’s Declaration, the nation would truly become the world’s greatest democracy.

 

Sources:

 

Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins & Development

Addendum February 12, 2021

 

Can democracies survive? Venezuela, once a wealthy nation due to vast oil reserves, is led by a dictator, Nicholas Maduro, who is supported by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Turkey, under Tayyip Erdogan, has grown closer to the Kremlin as any aspects of democratic government in Ankara have been weakened. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whom former President Trump calls his “favorite dictator” presides over an ever tightening government with fee personal freedoms.

 

In many so-called democracies elected leaders are being replaced by military groups as in Myanmar (Burma) where Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted February 1, 2021 by a military coup. Even India, in recent history a strong democracy, is showing movements weakening freedoms and parliamentary rule. As to the ten-year-old “Arab spring,” this turned out to be a media myth and wishful thinking on the part of western democracies.

 

There is also the fear that the Covid pandemic may bring out the weaknesses in some democracies as vaccination inequalities become apparent throughout the world.

 

In the United States, over 250 years of democratic tradition, albeit with many historical obstacles to overcome, may be in dire jeopardy with the growing divide between Republicans, Democrats, and “patriot-populists” tied only to Donald Trump and who will stop at nothing to appease their man. During one “rally,” they cheered "twelve more years" and the press have quoted individual MAGA followers proudly stating that Mr. Trump was their dictator.

 

Perhaps the fault lies in the American classroom where standards in American History have been obliterated for several decades. Additionally, American education has split decisively between non-public and public schools over the last few years with Trump’s Secretary of Education. Little wonder most Americans do not know their own history and can easily be exploited.

This can be seen in the formulation of policies favoring the private schools and weakening restrictions and regulations designed to bring education equity in all aspects of the classroom.

 

There is much to be done to rebuild a strong democracy with leaders of integrity that the citizens can look up to. There is much to be done to ensure that EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS, indeed to government itself, reads and knows the Constitution.

{First part of Article originally published in 2009 in Suite 101. Copyright of entire article belongs to Michael Streich. Any reprints require written permission.]