Conquest
The English Kingdom of France 1417-1450
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Author of the best-selling AGINCOURT, Juliet Barker now tells the equally remarkable, but largely forgotten, story of the dramatic years when England ruled France at the point of a sword.
Henry V's second invasion of France in 1417 launched a campaign that would put the crown of France on an English head. Only the miraculous appearance of a visionary peasant girl - Joan of Arc - would halt the English advance. Yet despite her victories, her influence was short-lived: Henry VI had his coronation in Paris six months after her death and his kingdom endured for another twenty years. When he came of age he was not the leader his father had been. It was the dauphin, whom Joan had crowned Charles VII, who would finally drive the English out of France.
Supremely evocative and brilliantly told, this is narrative history at its most colourful and compelling - the true story of those who fought for an English kingdom of France.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
England's little-studied conquest of France during the Hundred Years War is absorbingly recounted by Barker. In 1417, Henry V invaded France to annex Normandy, which he believed to be his rightful inheritance. The fallout of this invasion played out over the next 30 years, as Henry conquered Normandy, and France's weak, fitfully mad Charles VI conceded in giving his daughter Katherine to wed Henry, who became regent of France. The next few years saw the deaths of both Henry and Charles, England's attempt to extend its rule beyond Normandy, and, in 1424, the rise of a peasant girl named Jehanne d'Arc, who led a group of disaffected French against the English at Orl ans and crowned Charles VII king of France. Although Henry V's son, Henry VI, again tried marriage to Margaret of Anjou to protect his French kingdom, he actually gave up lands, strengthening the hand of Charles VII, who in just 12 months swept the English away. With her crisp storytelling and meticulous historical research, Barker (Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England) vividly narrates a tale of political intrigue and military strategy that reveals power-hungry English kings and the fierce defense of France by one of its most famous heroines. 3 maps.
