The Plague's Effects on the War

The Black Death, the greatest catastrophe in European History, had surprisingly little impact on the Hundred Years War in the short term. It only seems to have delayed the war a few years, while the national govenrments tried to suppress rising discontent and reduced the overall size of the armies that would campaign afterwards.

There were several reasons for this. There were no French or English armies in the field when the plague struck. Had there been one or both might have suffered the same fate as that of a Scottish army at Selkirk. Separated from the plague by a winter's immmunity, the Scots had gathered to attack the "southrons". With spring the plague came to the Scottish army. Within a few days half the troops had died or were dying. The survivors fled and took the epidemic with them to the countryside. For the French and English there was no such calamaity. The Pest did not selectively impact one army or the other nor did it have an opportunity to direct itself against a military assemblage in either country. Consequently the loss in military men was roughly proportional to the population and aproximately the same, proportionally, in each country. Had either country lost its military in a manner similar to the Scots, the disaster of the loss of trained personnel --especially in France due to its dependence on men at arms and the losses at Crecy-- would have been a death blow. Had the Franch lost the remnants of their army in this manner, it is unlikely that they would have been able to recruit and train sufficient new military forces in time to to resist a renewed English invasion, especially as they seemed devoted to the old tactics. Had the English lost their army, they might have been compelled to settle for what they had already gained or might possibly have lost all, including Aquitaine (Guyenne and Gascony), much earlier.

In 1350, after the last of the dead had been buried, the military situation had not changed significantly. Both sides possessed the same advantages and disadvantages. While the armies that would clash over the next century were smaller, their sizes relative to one another remained the same. The elements of the formula that had allowed England to achieve the upper hand --better leadership, better access to resources, better tactics-- remained. In France, the inept Philip VI died and was replaced by the even more inept John the Good, continuing the tradition of Valois incapcaity and inability to learn from the failures of Crecy and Calais. France was, as it had been in the summer of 1347, in turmoil and unable for the next half century to do anything to stop the systematic plunder of the country.

The Battle of Poitiers in 1356 saw the French king captured (and his army smashed). The war for the next dozen years revolved around the English trying to collect the French king's ransom, while the rest of the Franch learned how to cope with English armies. Eventually, the greater French resources prevailed, leading to the peace of Bretigny in 1368, a temporary pause in the war..

The major long term effect of the plague was to hasten social change in France and make an efficient central government possible. The feudal system was loosened up and a more democratic (by the standards of the times) system developed. The France that finally drove the English out in 1453 was not the same France that suffered humiliating defeats over a century earlier. Without the Black Death, the Hundred Years War would not have turned out as it did.

The Church, which had bound Europe together, was at first materially strengthened by the benefices left her by the plague victims. But survivors of the plague could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. While the ways of God were always mysterious the scourge of the Plague had been too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of this magnitude was a mere wanton act of God with no discernible purpose then reliance on God's goodness was no longer an absolute. Once people envisioned the possibility of change in the fixed order, the age of unquestioned submission was over. Minds opened to admit these questions could never be shut again. The Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man. Certainly the Church lost prestige and with it much of her power. Attacks on the clergy increased --and for good reason as many had been hastily ordained in an attempt to fill the gaps left by the great death of the parish priests. Most were incompetent, uneducated, and immoral,\ leading to an increase in clerical abuses . This in turn lead to the spread of anticlericalism. When Henry II had spoken hasty words in 1170 that lead to the death of Thomas a' Becket, the power of the Church and the peasants' loyalty to it was sufficient to force the King of England to submit to penance by flagellation at the hands of the canons of Canterbury Cathedral. By contrast in 1381, Simon Sudbury, Becket's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, was beheaded in the middle of a crowd of peasants who cheered, applauded, and made ribald comments as the executioner's ax fell, while the Church could do little more than protest.