The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 6, Issue 1, Winter 2017 | Page 13

plus years. Although monarchs ruled both systems, like most of Europe, the two
systems of monarchy and government were already heading in different directions.
By the end of the Hundred Years’ War with the French victorious, France moved
to a system of absolute monarchy. The English already had a different approach
prior to the war with Magna Carta. However, Henry IV’s regicide had different
repercussions. For the French, it meant the English were in sense barbarians with a
usurper who committed regicide, a crime against God. However, Henry’s act
served notice that this was an acceptable way to replace the English monarch, and
gave the French Crown reason to be nervous about an ambitious French knight.
Repercussions of Henry IV’s act of seizing the crown by the death of Richard II
would help fuel the War of the Roses. Not only did Henry IV have to fear for his
crown, but before Henry V’s 1415 campaign, a cabal of English nobles under
French pay plotted to assassinate Henry the V.
With the disastrous diplomatic decisions of Henry VI, the English Crown
lost its remaining lands in 1451. The subsequent loss of a revenue stream to the
crown and to the lords who had lost their estates in France, as well as rising
unemployment among the professional military class, built resentment. It is easy to
see the nexus that if one king could be replaced, then another could as well. In the
present day, the horrible decision of Paul Bremer to disband the Iraqi Army in
2003 helped spin Iraq into civil war, much like England post-1451. However,
never was the Hundred Years’ War like the line from Mrs. Miniver “a war of the
people.” 12 This war was strictly power politics between the Crowns of France and
England.
The Sins of Their Fathers - the long-term aspects of The Hundred Years’ War
The Hundred Years’ War ensured long-term enmity between France and
England. The two kingdoms fought a series of proxy frontier wars in the American
colonies until Colonel George Washington attacked a French scouting party in
Western Pennsylvania, which ignited the French and Indian War in America, or the
Seven Years’ War in Europe. This war spanned the globe from Canada to Europe
and India. Later, Britain often served as the driving force against Napoleon in the
various anti-French coalitions. Even in the immediate period before World War
One, these two powers nearly came to blows over the Fasho Crisis in 1898. In the
mad scramble for colonies, a French expedition to Fashoda tried to seize control of
the upper Nile, which would have rendered Britain’s position in the Sudan
meaningless. In the opening phases of World War One in France, the French were
certain that after the initial defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in August
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