Landing in Normandy, Henry first laid siege to the town of Harfleur, which took over a month to capture Henry lost about half his men during the siege Henry then decided to march over land to Calais Henry left his siege equipment behind so he could move fast The French set out in pursuit of Henry with an army of 30,000 men Although Henry was moving fast, even in the rain, he had trouble finding a crossing to get across the Somme River, which allowed the French to get ahead of him They chose the area near the castle of Agincourt to try to stop Henry While the sides tried to negotiate a settlement, neither side was interested in budging from its position On October 25, 1415, the two sides fought the Battle of Agincourt The French commander had originally wanted to fight a defensive battle since the English were short on supplies, but the French nobles convinced him to attack since they had a numerical superiority The English took up a position with forests on either side of them They had about 5,000 archers and only 800 men at arms The archers placed sharpened stakes in the ground in front of them as protection from the mounted French knights The ground between the two armies was wet and freshly plowed, which made it hard to move across The French nobles were unwilling to wait for the English to attack and eventually convinced the French commander to order an attack With the wet, plowed ground slowing them down, the French took terrible losses from the English archers Approximately a third of the French troops were in the initial attack and most were either killed or captured The next two attacks by the French were also thrown back by the English, although they did not meet the same fate as the first attack since they withdrew before being destroyed Exact French losses are not known for sure, but estimates put their losses at 6,000–8,000 men There is also no exact record of English losses, but they were few compared to the French Henry’s next campaign started in 1417 and went until 1419 This time he completed the conquest of the Normandy region The Burgundians, still English allies, were able to gain the upper hand in their civil war and capture Paris In May 1420 the Treaty of Troyes was signed; it declared Henry to be Charles VI’s heir and required him to continue to support the Burgundians in their civil war against the Orléanists, who were now supporting the dauphin Henry died in 1422 and his nine-month-old son became the new king of England Even with Henry’s death, the English continued their war against the Orléanists Charles VI died two months after Henry V With Charles’s death, Henry VI was crowned king of France Hundred Years’ War 187 JOAN OF ARC The war took a sudden change for the better for the French with the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429 She led an army to victory against the English, laying siege to the town of Orléans in May 1429 This was the first of many victories that led to the coronation of the dauphin as Charles VII Joan was captured and turned over to the English in May 1430 The English had her put on trial for witchcraft, convicted, and burned at the stake The English had hoped to strike a blow against the French morale but only succeeded in inspiring them In September 1435 the French civil war was ended and with it the alliance between the Burgundians and the English The French continued to retake territory from the English, including Paris, which fell in April 1436 Both sides agreed to a truce in 1444, which lasted for five years The French used the truce to reorganize their army, so that when the truce ended in 1449 they were ready to end the war Starting with an invasion for Normandy in 1449 that was completed by 1450, they pushed the English out of France over the next several years The conquest of Aquitaine would take longer The initial invasion began in 1451 but was slowed in 1452 when the English sent troops there in an effort to stop the French While the English were successful in slowing the French, the French were able to defeat the English army in July 1453 and by October 1453, with the fall of Bordeaux, they completed their conquest of Aquita ine and ended the Hundred Years’ War The only French soil still controlled by the English was Calais, which they controlled until 1558 See also Frankish tribe; Wales, English conquest of Further reading: Curry, Anne The Hundred Years’ War New York: Routledge, 2003 Curry, Anne The Hundred Years’ War New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993; Dupuy, R Ernest, and Trevor N Dupuy The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, From 3500 b.c to the Present New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993; Fraioli, Deborah A Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years’ War Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005; Harvey, John The Black Prince and His Age Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976; Neillands, Robin The Hundred Years’ War London: Routledge, 2002; Sumption, Jonathan The Hundred Years’ War Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999; Vale, Malcolm The Origins of the Hundred Years’ War, The Angevin Legacy 1250–1340 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996 Dallace W Unger, Jr