How Long Did the Hundred Years’ War Actually Last?

By the conventional dates the Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years, from Edward III’s confiscation crisis of 1337 to the French victory at Castillon in 1453. It was never one continuous war: historians divide it into an Edwardian phase (1337–1360), a Caroline phase (1369–1389) and a Lancastrian phase (1415–1453), separated by truces and the Treaty of Brétigny. No peace treaty ever ended it, and the name itself was adopted by nineteenth-century historians.

The dates, and why they are conventional

The war is usually dated from 24 May 1337, when Philip VI of France declared Edward III’s duchy of Guyenne confiscated, to 19 October 1453, when the last English field army in the south-west was destroyed at Castillon. That is 116 years and a few months. But the bookends are choices made afterwards: the underlying quarrel over Gascony was older, and after 1453 England still held Calais, which it kept until 1558.

Nobody at the time called it the Hundred Years’ War. The label was adopted by later historians, and it stuck because it captures a single dynastic dispute running through several generations.

Three wars, not one

The conventional division is into three phases named for the kings who dominated them. The Edwardian war (1337–1360) brought the great English victories at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), where King John II of France was captured, and ended with the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. The Caroline war (1369–1389), under Charles V of France, clawed most of those gains back and ended in the Truce of Leulinghem in 1389. The Lancastrian war (1415–1453) opened with Henry V’s victory at Agincourt (1415) and the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which made Henry heir to the French throne, and closed with the French reconquest of Normandy and Gascony.

Between those phases there were years, sometimes decades, of formal truce. Counted only by campaigning, the “hundred years” shrink considerably.

What it was about

Two disputes drove it. When Charles IV of France died in 1328 without a son, Edward III of England, his nephew through Isabella of France, had a claim to the throne; the French magnates preferred Philip of Valois and held that a claim could not pass through a woman. Underneath lay Gascony: the English king held it as a vassal of the French king, so French courts could hear appeals against him in his own duchy — an arrangement no English monarch could accept indefinitely.

The outcome was a decisive French victory. England lost every continental possession except Calais, and the Valois monarchy emerged with a standing army and the taxation to pay for it.

What most scholars accept, and what stays contested

Accepted: Conventional dates 1337–1453; three phases (Edwardian 1337–1360, Caroline 1369–1389, Lancastrian 1415–1453); Crécy 1346, Poitiers 1356, Agincourt 1415, Castillon 1453; the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) and the Treaty of Troyes (1420); England kept Calais until 1558; no formal peace treaty ended the war.
Mainstream: A single dynastic and feudal quarrel fought in separated bursts, ending in French victory and the loss of England’s continental holdings; the name is a later historians’ convenience.
Contested: Where the war really begins — 1337, or the earlier Gascon disputes — and whether a conflict with such long truces should be counted as one war at all.

Frequently asked questions

Was the Hundred Years’ War really a hundred years long?

By the conventional dates it was 116 years, 1337 to 1453. Fighting was not continuous: three phases were separated by long truces, so the years of actual campaigning were far fewer.

Who won the Hundred Years’ War?

France. After Castillon in 1453 England held nothing on the continent except Calais, which it lost in 1558.

What ended the Hundred Years’ War?

The French victory at Castillon on 19 October 1453 and the fall of Bordeaux that followed. No peace treaty was ever signed; the war simply stopped being fought.

Why is it called the Hundred Years’ War?

The name was adopted by historians in the nineteenth century as a label for the whole Anglo-French conflict of 1337–1453; nobody used it at the time.

Sources and further reading

Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, Volume I: Trial by Battle (Faber, 1990)
Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War, 1337–1453 (Osprey, 2002)
Christopher Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War c.1300–c.1450 (Cambridge University Press, 1988; rev. 2001)
Wikipedia, “Hundred Years’ War” (checked 3 September 2026)