With the probable exception of the battle of Agincourt, no English military action of the fifteenth century attracted so much contemporary comment as the siege of Calais by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in the summer of 1436. At a time when Henry V's conquest of Normandy and the heady days of the treaty of Troyes were fast becoming a distant memory, the siege saw a national response unprecedented during the latter years of the Hundred Years War. Its aftermath witnessed the composition of a stream of popular and elite verse, the recording of the events by chroniclers and the appropriation of the siege and its significance by various groups within the English polity. The Burgundian siege of 1436 was an event of central significance to the military history of England in the later Middle Ages for a number of reasons. First, it reveals much about the practice of war: the mobilisation of the political community in a national war effort; the logistics of organising an expeditionary force at short notice; and the effectiveness of English armies on the continent. Second, it shows just how important Calais had become to the English, not only as a centre of trade, but also as a symbol of Edward III's conquests and of English military prowess in general. Finally, the response to the defeat of the Burgundians tells us much about the central role that war and military service played in the formation of national identity, the development of personal and political reputations, and the way in which war, like nothing else, captured the popular imagination at the end of the Middle Ages.