Well, I think it’s a pretty good movie, nothing much of substance really but a fun little romantic comedy dressed up with knights and swordfights and such. The real reason to watch it is Paul Bettany’s depiction of Geoffrey Chaucer as a penniless gambling-addict con artist with a silver tongue.
“How could there have been something called “The Hundred Years War””
Well, it was really a series of wars, but since they were all between England and France, and all over basically the same thing, the historians just lump them all together.
Why they lasted so long? Well, I think it came down to the difficulty of either side winning a decisive victory. They couldn’t just march their armies on the enemy capital, they had to ferry them across the Channel, take a foothold, then to supply their armies they had to pillage the countryside and unfortified towns. Only then could they hope to mount sieges deeper into enemy territory, and by that time, the enemy could have rallied their nobles and hired mercenaries to raise an army to beat them back. The engagements tended to go on for a few years like that until the armies met in a large battle, then they would sign a treaty after that granting some concessions to the victor, but the whole process would repeat again soon enough because the underlying cause for the wars (the King of England having a legitimate claim to the throne of France) was not resolved.