On 27 July 1361, King Jean II of France wrote of the toll that had been suffered on both sides of the conflict with England that had begun in 1337:

It is a picture of absolute devastation, a reality in which, he goes on to say, “justice en est faillie” [justice has failed]. Indeed, the impact of his country's war with England was so deep a wound across the countryside — on its people, its prosperity, and even its physical landscape — that he confesses how his mind quakes to see it in its totality: “tant d'autres mals et orribles faix s'en sont ensuyvis, que il ne pourroient estre diz, numbrez ne excriptz” [so many other evils and horrible things have followed from these wars that they cannot be spoken, numbered, or written down]. By signing of the Treaty of Brétigny with England the previous year, Jean le Bon [the Good], as the French king would become known, surely thought peace was at hand. For all the blood, for all the battle, for all the burning of the past twenty-three years, peace had come at last.

Jean died in English hands in 1364. Thus he did not live to see how very wrong he was: the conflict continued, hot and cold, until 1453. None who saw its beginning could have seen its end: the Hundred Years War, as these 116 years of conflict are collectively known, was a generational war.

Those long years of struggle gave to history great figures — like Joan of Arc, Henry V, and the Black Prince — and great moments — like the sieges of Orléans, Rouen, and Calais, or the battles of Castillon, Agincourt, and Poitiers.