The Hundred Years' War Effectively Ended
On this day · 19 October 1453
When Bordeaux opened its gates in October 1453, three centuries of English rule in Gascony quietly collapsed and the longest medieval war fizzled out.
The conflict historians call the Hundred Years’ War had ground on between England and France since 1337. Its final act came not with a treaty but with a surrender. After the French crushed the last English field army at the Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453 killing the veteran commander John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury the road to Bordeaux lay open.
Bordeaux had been English for three hundred years, ever since Eleanor of Aquitaine brought the duchy of Gascony to Henry II in 1152. Besieged through the autumn and cut off from any relief, the city negotiated terms and surrendered on 19 October 1453, when the troops of King Charles VII entered after the English garrison marched out.
No peace was ever signed only the silence of a war that simply stopped.
With Gascony lost, only Calais remained in English hands. Though no formal treaty closed the conflict, that quiet capitulation is taken as the war’s effective end, and it tipped England toward the civil strife of the Wars of the Roses.
Sources & references
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