Historians have inevitably concentrated on the large-scale 'national' conflicts of this period; above all on the so-called Hundred Years War between England and France ( 13371453). In some senses the conflict was part of a more protracted rivalry between the two kingdoms which began in the Norman and Angevin period as a result of the tenure of continental lands by the kings of England. By 1259 Henry III in effect held only the duchy of Aquitaine within the realm of France and in that year the situation was formalized by the treaty of Paris in which he became a vassal of the French king, to whom liege homage was due. It was an acknowledgement that the Angevin Empire--Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine--was now a very truncated version of its twelfth-century precursor and it has been argued that these terms could lead only to war. How could a ruler who was a king in his own right act as the vassal of another king in his continental lands? The problem was not, however, insoluble by peaceful means and more or less successful attempts were made by both sides to prevent the outbreak of war. Despite the shortterm conflicts of 1294-8 and 1324-5, Anglo-French relations had developed a modus vivendi which depended upon marriage alliances between the ruling dynasties, a readiness to seek judicial and diplomatic means to resolve disputes, and a willingness in the Capetian kings of France to compromise over the precise form of the English king's homage for his southwestern French domains. Some of the Capetians were very accommodating over these questions and even Philip the Fair, who had gone to war with Edward I of England in 1294 over Gascon and maritime issues, agreed in 1303 to a reconciliation between the two powers, sealed by a marriage. War could be ruinously expensive, as both sides discovered to their cost between 1294 and 1303, especially when the theatre of operations widened to include Flanders as well as Aquitaine.

The loss of Normandy by King John in 1204 was perhaps the beginning of a process whereby the claims of the French crown to sovereignty over its kingdom were gradually translated from theory into reality. The Plantagenet dominions on the Continent became more Anglo-centric as the centre of

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