The Hundred Years War; Volume I: Trial by Battle

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. First Paperback Edition [stated], First Printing [Stated]. Trade paperback. Very good/No DJ issued. John Flower (Maps). xi, [1], 659, [1] pages. Maps. Abbreviations. References. Bibliography. Index. Minor edge soiling. Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption, Lord Sumption, OBE, PC, FSA, FRHistS (born 9 December 1948), is a medieval historian and former senior judge who sat on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom between 2012 and 2018. Sumption was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court on 11 January 2012, succeeding Baron Collins of Mapesbury. Exceptionally, he was appointed to the Supreme Court directly from the practicing Bar, without having been a full-time judge. He retired from the Supreme Court on 9 December 2018 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70. Sumption is well known for his role as a barrister in many legal cases. They include appearances in the Hutton Inquiry on HM Government's behalf, in the Three Rivers case, his representation of former Cabinet Minister Stephen Byers and the Department for Transport in the Railtrack private shareholders' action against the British Government in 2005, for defending HM Government in an appeal hearing brought by Binyam Mohamed, and for successfully defending Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in a private lawsuit brought by Boris Berezovsky. A former academic, Sumption was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2003 New Year Honours and is also known for writing a substantial narrative history of the Hundred Years' War, so far in five volumes. Sumption has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). A succession of catastrophes in the middle years of the fourteenth century brought France to the brink of destruction. The bankruptcy of the French state and a bitter civil war within the royal family were followed by the defeat and capture of the King of France by the Black Prince at Poitiers. A peasant revolt and a violent revolution in Paris completed the tragedy. In a humiliating treaty of partition France ceded more than a third of its territory to Edward III of England. Not for sixty years would the English again come so close to total victory. France's great cities, provincial towns and rural communities resisted where its leaders failed. They withstood the sustained savagery of the soldiers and the free companies of brigands to undo most of Edward III's work in the following generation. England's triumphs proved to be brittle and short-lived. There is a substantial chapter on War in Scotland, 1331-1335 (pages 123-151).