Strategy & Tactics

Field

The Hundred Years War

The intermittent war between England and France over the succession and over lands on the continent, 1337–1453 — and the period in which the longbow, dismounted combat and standing armies changed how battles were fought.

1 casePeriod: 1415

The Hundred Years War is told as the period when the weapons changed. What the case in this field shows is that what worked was not the weapon but the width of the field. Numerical superiority is not superiority when there is no frontage in which to deploy it.

Patterns found in this field

  1. 06
    A design of frontage

    Limit the ground to dimensions in which his numbers cannot deploy — and get him to walk into it.

    Agincourt — the design that gave numbers no room →

A pattern is not a template to apply but a tool for checking conditions. The conditions under which each one fails are set out on the patterns page. The thirteen patterns

A fifteenth-century illumination of armoured men fighting at close quarters with archers drawing bows
Agincourt — the design that gave numbers no room

What won it was not the penetrating power of the longbow but a design that limited the field to a width in which numbers could not deploy, and made the enemy walk into it.

Pattern: a design of frontage
Decisive English victory Read →

Other fields

Napoleonic Wars Second Punic War The Pacific War The Eastern Front The American Civil War Japan's Warring States period The Western Front, 1940–45 The Vietnam War The Western Front, 1914–18