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RR 2007/157 Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War John A. Wagner Greenwood Press Westport, CT and London 2006 lv + 374 pp. ISBN 978 0 313 32736 0 £71/$125
Keywords Encyclopedias, England, France, History, War
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120710738409
To read the Encyclopedia of the Hundred Years War is to be convinced that the era of chivalry, as depicted in brilliant colours by Hollywood, was no such thing for ordinary people. Chivalry applied only to gentlemen worth a ransom (from which many of their fellow gendemen made handsome profits). Chroniclers did not even bother to count the common soldiers killed in the war's notably destructive battles. In between these, English armies ravaged the French countryside as a deliberate strategy, and huge bands of discharged soldiery did likewise for the sake of plunder; the more sophisticated leaders organised large-scale protection rackets. In both countries there were peasant revolts, mad kings, and epidemics of plague that killed a third of the population. It is no wonder that many contemporaries...