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The Apotheosis of Conflict: Great Britain and France in the New World

The Apotheosis of Conflict: Great Britain and France in the New World . England's Foundation to 1550.

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The Apotheosis of Conflict: Great Britain and France in the New World

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  1. The Apotheosis of Conflict:Great Britain and France in the New World

  2. England's Foundation to 1550 • The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago. Modern humans are known to have first inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years. • According to John T. Koch and others, England in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-networked culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age, that included the whole of the British Isles and much of what we now regard as France, together with the Iberian Peninsula. • Earlier divisions are unknown because the Britons were not literate. Like other regions on the edge of the Empire, Britain had long enjoyed trading links with the Romans. Julius Caesar of the Roman Republic attempted to invade twice in 55 BC; although largely unsuccessful, he managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes. • The Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 during the reign of Emperor Claudius, subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Britannia province.

  3. There is debate about when Christianity was first introduced; it was no later than the 4th century, with probability lying much earlier. According to Bede, missionaries were sent from Rome at the request of the chieftain Lucius of Britain in AD 180 to settle differences as to Eastern and Western ceremonials which were disturbing the church. • Roman military withdrawals left Britain open to invasion by pagan, seafaring warriors from north-western continental Europe, chiefly the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who had long raided the coasts of the Roman province and began to settle, initially in the eastern part of the country. • Contemporary texts describing this period are extremely scarce, giving rise to its description as a Dark Age. The nature and progression of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is consequently subject to considerable disagreement. Roman-dominated Christianity had in general disappeared from the conquered territories, but was reintroduced by missionaries from Rome led by Augustine from 597 onwards. • Despite a period of 500 years of tribal squabbles leading ultimately to the battle of Hastings in 1066, the Tudor family emerged as the dynastic family in the English isles.

  4. During the Tudor period, the Renaissance reached England through Italian courtiers, who reintroduced artistic, educational and scholarly debate from classical antiquity.During this time England began to develop naval skills, and exploration to the West intensified. • Henry VIII broke from communion with the Catholic Church, over issues relating to divorce, under the Acts of Supremacy in 1534 which proclaimed the monarch head of the Church of England. In contrast with much of European Protestantism, the roots of the split were more political than theological. He also legally incorporated his ancestral land Wales into the Kingdom of England with the 1535–1542 acts.

  5. France’s Foundation to 1550 • Stone tools indicate that early humans were present in France at least 1.57 million years ago. The first modern humans appeared in the area 40,000 years ago. The first written records for the history of France appear in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were a Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. • Over the course of the first millennium BCE the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BCE, and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC. • In the later stages of the Roman Empire, Gaul was subject to barbarian raids and migration, most importantly by the Germanic Franks.

  6. A succession crisis following the death of the last direct Capetian monarch in 1328 led to the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War between the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet. The war formally began in 1337 following Philip VI's attempt to seize the Duchy of Aquitaine from its hereditary holder, Edward III of England, the Plantagenet claimant to the French throne. Despite early Plantagenet victories, including the capture and ransom of John II of France, fortunes turned in favor of the Valois later in the war. Among the notable figures of the war was Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who led French forces against the English, establishing herself as a national heroine. The war ended with a Valois victory in 1453. • Victory in the Hundred Years War had the effect of strengthening French nationalism and vastly increasing the power and reach of the French monarchy. During the period known as the Ancien Régime, France transformed into a centralized absolute monarchy. During the next centuries, France experienced the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation.

  7. List of English/French Wars (as Enemies) Wars of Henry II of England Stephen and Matilda conflict Saintonge War (1242) War of Saint-Sardos (1324) Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) Parts of the Italian Wars (1511–1559) War of the League of Cambrai Anglo-French War (1627–1629) Second Anglo-Dutch War (1666–1667, France sided with the Dutch Republic) War of the Grand Alliance (Nine Years' War) (1688–1697) War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) Seven Years' War (1756–1763) American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815)

  8. Wars of Henry II (1150) • Henry had a problematic relationship with Louis VII of France throughout the 1150s. The two men had already clashed over Henry's succession to Normandy and the remarriage of Eleanor, and the relationship was not repaired. Louis invariably attempted to take the moral high ground in respect to Henry, capitalizing on his reputation as a crusader and circulating rumours about his rival's behaviour and character. • Henry had greater resources than Louis, however, particularly after taking England, and Louis was far less dynamic in resisting Angevin power than he had been earlier in his reign. • On his return to the continent from England, Henry sought to secure his French lands and quash any potential rebellion. As a result, in 1154 Henry and Louis agreed a peace treaty, under which Henry bought back the Vernon and the Neuf-Marché from Louis. The treaty appeared shaky, however and tensions remained • Henry was not prepared to directly attack Louis, who was still his feudal lord, and withdrew, settling himself with ravaging the surrounding county, seizing castles and taking the province of Quercy.The episode proved to be a long-running point of dispute between the two kings and the chronicler William of Newburgh called the ensuing conflict with Toulouse a "forty years' war".

  9. Saintonge War (1242) • The Saintonge War was a feudal dynastic encounter that occurred in 1242 between forces of Louis IX of France and those of Henry III of England. • The conflict arose because some vassals of Louis were displeased with accession of his brother, Alphonse, as count of Poitou. The French decisively defeated the English at the Battle of Taillebourg and concluded the struggle at the Siege of Saintes, but because of dynastic sensibilities and the desire to go on a crusade, Louis did not annex Guyenne. • Casualties are unknown, but were probably not heavy. Hugh's revolt and Henry's assistance were primarily aimed at exploiting the diversion provided by French involvement in the Albigensian Crusades. Raymond VII of Toulouse led a revolt in May 1242, but his allies revoked their support after the English were defeated; Raymond submitted to the king's authority at Montargis in January 1243. Louis did not take advantage of his victory by annexing the Plantagenet fief of Guyenne, probably because he was mostly concerned with going on the Seventh Crusade in 1248. He simply allowed Henry to do homage without inflicting further punishment.

  10. Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) • The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France for control of the French throne. Many allies of both sides were also drawn into the conflict. The war had its roots in a dynastic disagreement dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, who became King of England in 1066 while retaining possession of the Duchy of Normandy in France. As the rulers of Normandy and other lands on the continent, the English kings owed feudal homage to the king of France. In 1337, Edward III of England refused to pay homage to Philip VI of France, leading the French king to claim confiscation of Edward's lands in Aquitaine. • Edward responded by declaring that he, not Philip, was the rightful king of France, a claim dating to 1328, when Edward's uncle, Charles IV of France, died without a direct male heir. Edward was the closest male relative of the dead king, as son of Isabella of France, daughter of Philip IV of France and sister of Charles IV. But instead, the dead king's cousin, Philip VI, the son of Philip IV's younger brother, Charles, Count of Valois, was crowned king of France in accordance with Salic law, which disqualified the succession of males descended through female lines. The question of legal succession to the French crown was central to the war over generations of English and French claimants.

  11. The war is commonly divided into three phases separated by truces: the Edwardian Era War (1337–60), the Caroline War (1369–89) and the Lancastrian War (1415–53), which saw the slow decline of English fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. Contemporary European conflicts directly related to this conflict were the War of the Breton Succession, the Castilian Civil War, the War of the Two Peters, and the 1383-85 Crisis. The term "Hundred Years' War" is a periodization invented later by historians to encompass all of these events. • The war owes its historical significance to multiple factors. Although primarily a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of French and English nationalism. Militarily, it saw the introduction of weapons and tactics that supplanted the feudal armies dominated by heavy cavalry. The first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire were introduced for the war, thus changing the role of the peasantry. For all this, as well as for its duration, it is often viewed as one of the most significant conflicts in medieval warfare. With respect to the belligerents, English political forces over time came to oppose the costly venture; while English nobles' dissatisfactions, resulting from the loss of their continental landholdings, was a factor leading to the civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses. In France, civil wars, deadly epidemics, famines and bandit free companies of mercenaries reduced the population drastically.

  12. The Hundred Years' War was a time of rapid military evolution. Weapons, tactics, army structure and the social meaning of war all changed, partly in response to the war's costs, partly through advancement in technology and partly through lessons that warfare taught. • Before the Hundred Years' War, heavy cavalry was considered the most powerful unit in an army, but by the war's end, this belief had shifted. The heavy horse was increasingly negated by the use of the longbow (and, later, another long-distance weapon: firearms). Edward III was famous for dismounting his men-at-arms and have them and his archers stand in closely integrated battle lines; the horses only being used for transport or pursuit. The English began using lightly armoured mounted troops, known as hobelars. Hobelars tactics had been developed against the Scots, in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 14th century. Hobelars rode smaller unarmoured horses, enabling them to move through difficult or boggy terrain where heavier cavalry would struggle. Rather than fight while seated on the horse, they would also dismount to engage the enemy. • By the end of the Hundred Years' War, these various factors caused the decline of the expensively outfitted, highly trained heavy cavalry and the eventual end of the armoured knight as a military force and of the nobility as a political one.

  13. The war stimulated nationalistic sentiment. It devastated France as a land, but it also awakened French nationalism. The Hundred Years' War accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a centralized state. The conflict became one of not just English and French kings but one between the English and French peoples. The Hundred Years' War basically confirmed the fall of the French language in England, which had served as the language of the ruling classes and commerce there from the time of the Norman conquest until 1362. • Lowe (1997) argued that opposition to the war helped to shape England's early modern political culture. Although anti-war and pro-peace spokesmen generally failed to influence outcomes at the time, they had a long-term impact. England showed decreasing enthusiasm for conflict deemed not in the national interest, yielding only losses in return for high economic burdens. In comparing this English cost-benefit analysis with French attitudes, given that both countries suffered from weak leaders and undisciplined soldiers, Lowe noted that the French understood that warfare was necessary to expel the foreigners occupying their homeland. Furthermore French kings found alternative ways to finance the war – sales taxes, debasing the coinage – and were less dependent than the English on tax levies passed by national legislatures. English anti-war critics thus had more to work with than the French. • Bubonic Plague and warfare depleted the overall population of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. France, for example, began with a population of about 17 million, but by the end of the Hundred Years' War it had declined by about one-half.

  14. Why Did I Come Here Today?!? • Britain and France come from a common ancestry (Celts) that took a drastically divergent path. • The events of 1066 caused centuries of strife that would set up the 100 Years War and the tensions surrounding New World Colonialism. • With such a history of mistrust and violence, neither country was willing to truly trust each other’s intentions in the New World (magnified by the HBC and 13 Colonies being separated by the French (through landmass). • Old tensions and new borders set these two powers onto a new warpath, in the context of an old rivalry.

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