coordination and discipline ahead of personal glory or the opportunity for booty. Yet
neither the nobility nor heavy cavalry was obsolescent in 1350, as some have claimed,
and we still await a convincing explanation of the reasons for their shortcomings in the
14th century.
Financial exigencies may have influenced the war in ways that have not received
adequate emphasis. For Edward III, it was cheaper to transport quantities of long-
bowmen across the Channel than to send an army made up exclusively of heavy cavalry.
For the French government in 1357–60, it was financially impossible to assemble a large
force and therefore desirable to avoid battle. The pitched battle had been the key to
English success. When Edward III, in his final invasion of France (1359–60), failed to
bring the French to battle, he had to conclude the Treaty of Brétigny, which gave him
possession of all of Aquitaine but was less favorable to him than earlier peace proposals.
The Edwardian war was nevertheless an English victory and a French defeat. When it
ended, France was plunged into even greater misery by the ravages of unemployed troops
(routiers). This scourge forced people to acquiesce to a much higher level of taxation for
military purposes than would have been conceivable a few years earlier. Just as important
was the crown’s rapprochement with the disaffected nobility of the north and west. This
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