"It was Joan of Arc who persuaded the French that they could win"

Jonathan Sumption speaks to Rob Attar about the final volume in his epic history of the Hundred Years' War, which reveals how the French turned the tide against the English monarchy

- By Jonathan Sumption

Rob Attar: Your book is titled Triumph and Illusion. Whose was the triumph, and what was the illusion?

Jonathan Sumption: It’s deliberately ambiguous. The English were on top at the beginning of the period [1422], but they quickly declined and lost everything they’d gained over the previous decade. They then deceived themselves into thinking that there was some way in which they could conserve at least part of what they’d conquered.

There were triumphs and illusions on the other side, too. Eventually, the French did triumph: they excluded England from every part of France except Calais. But they had their own illusions. They felt that the English had no support in France except from traitors, but the striking thing is that the English had a lot of support in the areas that they occupied until they started losing, particularly in Normandy.

This was a very early example of a military occupation, and the English absolutely grasped the fact that they had to win the hearts and minds of the subjects in order to survive. They did that, initially, simply by providing an effective government and a working system of law. This had been completely missing in previous decades because France was in the middle of a civil war, and neither party to that war could supply that effective government.

As you alluded to there, when we’re talking about the Hundred Years’ War, France was not united, was it?