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 CHAPTER XXVII THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR In the present chapter we continue to follow the history of Vance and England, considering them together in connec- tion with the so-called "Hundred Years War" The period between them, and comparing the development Hundred of the royal power and national assemblies in the Years War two countries. There is also a certain convenient coinci- dence in the dates and duration of reigns in the two lands at this time. During the fifty-year reign of Edward III of England there were three French kings, Philip VI, John II, and Charles V. Then the situation was reversed, and during the long reign of Charles VI in France there were three nglish monarchs, Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. inally, the reigns of Charles VII of France and Henry VI of England, which close the Hundred Years War, covered exactly the same years, 1422 to 1461. 1 In considering the time of the Hundred Years War, we pass beyond the prime of medieval civilization and enter the later Middle Ages. 'We pass, as it were, out of the light and truth of the thir- teenth century, that wonderful, if troublous, seedtime of rinciples and realities, into the gorgeous, chivalrous, un- eal, selfish, oppressive, and unprincipled fourteenth." The Hundred Years War itself, however, is a rather mis- eading phrase. War between the kings of France and England had been chronic since the Norman conquest, and
 * his so-called Hundred Years War made no important
 * hange in the relations between the two lands until its close,

vhen England lost its possessions on the Continent and urned subsequently to the upbuilding of a sea power. We night, therefore, better speak of a four hundred years war rom the Norman conquest to the close of the Middle Ages. 1 The reigns of the next two kings, Louis XI and Edward IV (1461-1483) bo coincide, but do not come within the scope of the present chapter.