By Stephen Brumwell

Set within the grounds of Arundel Castle in Sussex, England, the Fitzalan Chapel contains some of the country's most striking medieval memorials. They include the alabaster monument to John, seventh earl of Arundel, a high-profile casualty of the Hundred Years' War with France.

Arundel died at the age of 27 after his leg was shattered, in May 1435, by a shot from a primitive cannon, or culverin, at Gerberoy, France. Both the timing and manner of his fate are significant. Within months, the course of the conflict in which he'd fought with distinction would turn decisively against England: An erstwhile ally, Philip "the Good," duke of Burgundy, would make peace with Charles VII of France, thus uniting Frenchmen against a common foreign enemy. As a victim of increasingly effective gunnery, Arundel also epitomized another development that would expedite the end of England's sporadic efforts to subdue the rival realm.

These themes, of statecraft and firepower, are explored in "Triumph and Illusion," the fifth and final volume of Jonathan Sumption's impressive narrative of the Hundred Years' War. Despite its popular title (which was only coined in the 19th century), the war is conventionally reckoned to have lasted longer: from 1337, when Philip VI of France confiscated the southwestern territory of Aquitaine -- hitherto held by England's monarchs, subject to the approval of their French counterparts -- until 1453, by which time the English had been ejected from everywhere in France except the port of Calais. The intervening 116 years were characterized by intermittent spasms of far-flung fighting, interrupted by truces and even a formal peace between 1360 and 1369.

Together spanning four decades of research and writing, and resulting in more than 4,000 pages of text, the ambition of Mr. Sumption's quintet is matched by his mastery of complex evidence, which, as befits a former justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, is distilled into a balanced assessment of events and personalities.

Like its predecessors, "Triumph and Illusion" combines exhaustive scholarship with eminent readability. Picking up the story in 1422, when the premature death of Henry V left the fortunes of England's substantial cross-channel conquests in the hands of his brother, John, duke of Bedford, the book follows the war's twists and turns until the expulsion of the English three decades later, first from Normandy, and then Gascony, the wine-rich region of Aquitaine surrounding the city of Bordeaux.

Under Bedford's able leadership, England's cause initially prospered. In 1424, he crushed the Armagnac supporters of the uncrowned claimant to France's throne -- the Dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII) -- and his Scottish allies at Verneuil in Normandy. Contemporaries regarded this merciless battle as "a second Agincourt," akin to Henry V's victory, against the odds, in 1415. But as Mr. Sumption's title notes, such success was deceptive. Within five years a French resurgence would gather momentum, driven by the intervention of a 17-year-old peasant girl known as Joan of Arc.

Mr. Sumption offers convincing explanations of Joan's meteoric career and its importance for the war's trajectory. As Bedford conceded, her victories in 1429 on behalf of the dauphin, which finally enabled his coronation, fractured English morale. In Mr. Sumption's verdict, Joan's relief of the besieged city of Orléans and the ensuing elimination of an English army at Patay were not the result of her "military skill or experience but the ability to inspire others." Her real weapons, he argues, were "her charisma and her faith in herself and her voices." While Mr. Sumption doesn't doubt the sincerity of Joan's beliefs, he emphasizes that widespread acceptance of "the Maid" arose from her own conscious decision to exploit venerable prophesies that France would be saved by just such a "virgin warrior."

The epic scale of Mr. Sumption's work also allows him the scope to consider some less-celebrated participants. William Glasdale, an English captain killed at Orléans, is best known for hurling abuse at Joan from his strongpoint, Les Tourelles. But in Mr. Sumption's estimation, the veteran Glasdale, who'd risen through the ranks from humble archer to respected commander, deserves "to be remembered for more than his foul language."

With so much already written about the Hundred Years' War, the real challenge is to provide fresh perspectives. Michael Livingston, a professor of medieval history at the Citadel, previously picked up that gauntlet with books offering new interpretations of Agincourt and of Edward III of England's victory at Crécy in 1346. In "Bloody Crowns, " Mr. Livingston is more controversial, contesting the conflict's traditional duration by stretching it even further to become the "Two Hundred Years War."

This timeline requires pushing back the start date to 1292 -- when a murderous fracas between mariners on an island off France's Atlantic coast escalated Anglo-French tensions -- and shifting the endpoint forward to the 1492 Treaty of Étaples, by which England's Henry VII accepted a payoff to stop interfering in France's efforts to assimilate the autonomous duchy of Brittany.

Yet it is debatable whether Mr. Livingston's new chronology is any more meaningful than the old one. A central theme of "Bloody Crowns" is that, rather than a contest for "the right and title to the crown of France," the war was instead "a sequence of steps in France's struggle to define itself." This is a plausible argument and a welcome counter to existing Anglocentric perspectives. But if the main issue was the territorial integrity of France, why not end in 1558, when the last English foothold of Calais was recovered?

While Mr. Livingston is unstinting in his admiration for Mr. Sumption's opus, and often cites it in his endnotes, he offers many valuable insights of his own, delivered in a lively, conversational style. An army's progress across country is compared to "the movement of an inchworm, which stretches forward to a spot, then waits while the rest of its body catches up." He also zooms in on "keystone" episodes, and characters such as Jean II Le Maingre, styled Boucicaut (the brave). According to his 1409 biography, Boucicaut was a paragon of knighthood and an athlete who followed a punishing physical training regime, capable of vaulting fully armed onto his horse's back.

Mr. Livingston's extended time frame has implications for his coverage. For example, the victory scored by King Robert the Bruce of Scotland over the English at Bannockburn in 1314 is given as much attention as later Anglo-French clashes. The author argues that the English learned valuable tactical lessons from such early campaigns, leading them to perfect a formation -- dismounted men-at-arms flanked by longbowmen -- soon deployed to devastating effect on such French battlefields as Crécy and Poitiers.

By the 1440s, this English system was outmatched by a reformed French army funded by direct state taxation, itself a consequence of the persistent strife that enhanced royal power by reducing regional differences. French taxes paid for the powerful artillery that breached English-held fortresses and mowed down England's last expeditionary force, at Castillon, Gascony, in July 1453.

Whatever its actual length, there is no doubting the war's traumatic impact upon France, where swaths of countryside were depopulated for decades, or the grievous toll upon combatants and civilians alike. The earl of Arundel's tomb expresses the grim realities beneath the era's facade of chivalry: Above, he is depicted resplendent in full armor; below, as a gaunt cadaver.

--Mr. Brumwell is the author of "White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery and Vengeance in Colonial America."

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February 11, 2026 06:30 ET (11:30 GMT)

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