The Hundred Years' War between England and France began in 1337 over a constitutional question that had actually arisen nine years earlier. What was the question?
Charles IV of France died in February 1328 without a male heir, ending three centuries of Capetian male succession. The French magnates invoked the Salic Law to exclude Edward III of England (whose mother Isabella was Philip IV's only surviving daughter) and gave the throne to his more distant male-line cousin Philip of Valois. Edward initially accepted the decision and even paid homage to Philip for Aquitaine in 1329. He revoked his acceptance in 1337 after a sequence of subsequent diplomatic provocations. The other three answers all describe real disputes between the English and French crowns of the period, but the constitutional succession question is the spine of the war.
Read the full story →When the French king Charles IV died in February 1328 without a male heir, the French throne passed to his cousin Philip of Valois under a specific reading of the medieval Frankish *Salic Law*. The reading excluded the rival English claim of Edward III through his French-princess mother Isabella. Edward eventually decided he disagreed.
Related questions
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