the Parlement de Paris. This recourse, first used immediately after the treaty’s
ratification, opened the way for increasing French royal intervention into Gascon affairs.
Henry III can be credited with two changes that strengthened his and his successors’
control over Gascony. First, he began the development of a more efficient administration
within the county. Second, when Henry gave control of this land to his heir, Edward, he
did so with the stipulation that it never be separated from the crown.
Penelope Adair
[See also: GASCONY; LOUIS IX]
Clanchy, Michael T. England and Its Rulers 1066–1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
Labarge, Margaret W. Gascony, England’s First Colony 1204–1453. London: Hamish Hamilton,
1980.
LePatourel, John. “The Plantagenet Dominions.” History: The Quarterly Journal of the Historical
Association (London) 50 (1965):289–308.
Powicke, F.M. King Henry III and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the
Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1947.
HENRY V
(1387–1422). During his ten years as king of England (1413–22), Henry made himself a
major force in French politics. He abandoned the traditional Plantagenêt goal of simply
guarding English possessions on the Continent and seriously attempted the conquest of
France. The sources of this ambitious policy are found in the conjunction of his personal
sense of his rights and his shrewd opportunism, when both Burgundians and Armagnacs
invited his intervention in France. Henry astutely negotiated with both sides while
preparing the invasion of 1415, which destroyed the illusion that he would merely be a
tool of either faction. His brilliant campaign marked the military highpoint of the
Hundred Years’ War for the English. The capture of Harfleur and subsequent victory at
Agincourt left France defenseless, the Armagnacs leaderless, and Henry persuaded that
he could become king of France with Burgundian support.
Henry returned to France in 1417 with an army of conquest prepared for a war of
sieges and organized to remain and garrison captured territories. In January 1419, the
capture of Rouen secured Normandy, and by summer the English threatened Paris itself.
Henry’s combined strategy of warfare and diplomacy triumphed in the Treaty of Troyes
(1420), which arranged his marriage to Catherine of France, designated him as regent for
the unfortunate Charles VI, and proclaimed him heir to the throne. There after, Henry
consolidated his hold on Normandy, sought taxes to make the French war self-financing,
and pressed to the south in the fruitless search for a decisive victory over the troublesome
forces of the dauphin, Charles. Despite the birth in 1421 of an heir to the dual monarchy,
the future Henry VI, the Lancastrian edifice proved unstable, for it was built on French
divisions that precluded a timely reconciliation. Henry remained dependent on the duke
of Burgundy, and his army in Normandy came to be viewed as an occupying force
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