M. Vysshaya shkola. 1985. 185 p.
In the field of medieval studies, research on the history of international relations, foreign policy, and wars is a rare phenomenon. In this regard, the work of the head of the Department of General History of the Moscow Historical and Archival Institute, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor N. I. Basovskaya, published in the form of a textbook in the series "Library of the Historian", is of interest. It is devoted to one of the largest and brightest events of Western European medieval history - the Hundred Years ' War, a plot that has not become the object of special research in either pre-revolutionary or modern Russian historiography.
The Hundred Years ' War marked a certain stage in the development of the international system on the European continent with its inherent contradictions and a relatively stable balance of power over a long period of time. The political acuteness of the topic chosen by the author is proved by the active interest in it abroad, as well as some new trends in English and French bourgeois historiography. Particularly interesting in this regard are the unwillingness of some historians to emphasize the seriousness of the confrontation between Britain and France and the desire to translate the Hundred Years ' War into a narrowly dynastic, rather than international, conflict. The polemical focus of the work gives it additional scientific interest. The book consists of three chapters, an introduction and a conclusion, and is provided with maps and battle diagrams.
Its main purpose was to analyze the causes, military history, and nature of the Anglo - French conflict. The author devotes a special chapter to its prehistory, beginning with the Viking age and the conquest of England by the Duke of Normandy in 1066. This event marked the beginning of the existence of a state with a territory divided by the English Channel, and a monarch who, along the line of continental possessions, was a vassal of the French king. The picture drawn in the book of the rivalry between the two states in the XII-XIII centuries, anticipating to a certain extent the situation of the XIV-XV centuries, makes it easier to understand the Hundred Years ' War.
Exploring its main stages and the evolution of its character, the author analyzes the issue of feudal expansion and territorial division of a number of states and political entities-France and England, England and Scotland, France and Flanders, Castile and Aragon. The book shows how this question grew for England into the problem of the formation of a universal state with ethnically different peoples; for France, into the problem of its existence as an independent state, which brought to the fore the liberation struggle of the broad masses of the people and changed the nature of the war.
The last chapter provides a detailed historiography of the topic. Not quite the usual work structure seems justified. The analysis of the Hundred Years ' War itself that precedes historiography should, in the author's opinion, specify the coverage of the main trends in the development of this topic. The attractive side of the work as a whole is the richness of its living factual material, based on a wide source base. N. I. Basovskaya used more than a dozen and a half English and French chronicles, as well as literary works of that time. The correctness and thoroughness of their analysis allowed her to determine the degree of reliability, completeness and national bias of the information contained in them. These sources, which convey the atmosphere of the era, are supplemented by a large number of documents (acts, contracts) and correspondence. Many materials were first introduced into scientific circulation with such completeness.
At the same time, the reviewed work is devoid of descriptive content. The author has developed a certain model of step-by-step characterization of the history of the Hundred Years ' War, which includes the following components: 1) diplomatic preparation of each of the stages of the conflict and allied relations in two groups of states-England with the German Empire, Flanders, Aragon and Portugal - on the one hand, France with Castile, Scotland and the Papacy-on the other; 2) goals and objectives of each stage, the situation in the main hotbeds of contradictions - Flanders, Gascony, the Iberian Peninsula and the Anglo-Scottish border; 3) military campaigns, the main battles at each stage; 4) The Hundred Years ' War and po-
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political struggle of feudal groups; 5) the role of the masses in the development of the conflict. Each of the components acts as a scientific problem, the development of which in the book is a significant contribution to the study of the history of the Hundred Years ' War and the main countries that participated in it.
In solving the topic, the author proceeded from the fact that this war was generated by the contradictions of feudal society. This allowed her to correlate this conflict with a certain stage in the development of feudalism and the formation of centralized monarchies. This approach is all the more convincing because the author has used a comparative method of presenting and analyzing the material of English and French history. This helped to identify common features in the development of these countries - that is, what is the imprint of the era and reflects the patterns of historical development. Considering dynastic claims to be a phenomenon of a tendency towards feudal expansion, N. I. Basovskaya convincingly showed how they nevertheless organized and gave a specific color to the conflict, which was based on territorial claims, mainly in Flanders and Gascony.
An analysis of the internal development of the countries that participated in the war, in turn, allowed us to take a fresh look at some problems of their state history - the position of classes and estates, the state of the army and tax policy, etc. In this regard, the analysis of the reactionary role of feudal separatism and the internal struggle of feudal groups for the fate of war and the formation of centralized states is noteworthy. The author shows the material interest of feudal lords, especially large ones, in the war, going to disrupt peace negotiations, trade in the interests of the country and betrayal, if this contributed to the strengthening of their power. The consequences of this were particularly obvious in France, where the struggle against feudal fragmentation merged with the movement for the liberation of the country from the British. The material presented in the book shows the insufficient degree of centralization of states at the stage of estate monarchy and new forms of feudal separatism, in particular, related to the use of the state administration apparatus. I would like to draw your attention to some of the most important aspects of our work. The history of the army itself and the military history of the XIV-XV centuries are of considerable interest in it. The work convincingly reveals, in particular, some features of the medieval war - its long and slow course, with armistice agreements that did not exclude unofficial war; the importance of vassal ties and dynastic claims, as well as moral and religious sentiments as its essential factors. It was also necessary to emphasize the predominantly defensive tactics of medieval warfare, designed to exhaust the enemy. Even in the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, it was she who brought victory to the British. Only since the end of the XV century. the active development and introduction of artillery will make military operations more mobile. This feature explains the natural development of the practice of self-defense and the government's calculation on it, which made war especially expensive and difficult not for the monarch, but for the broad masses.
A special plot of the book is the theme of broad popular resistance. The author traces its elements on the territory of France already at the first stage of the war, which began as an aggressive one for both sides. Born out of a natural desire to protect one's home, the people's struggle has gained mass momentum since the 1920s of the 15th century. At the same time, the author shows how the intensity of the popular movement influenced the position of the government, encouraging it to use this factor more actively, as well as to change the nature and outcome of the war. However, when explaining the nature of this phenomenon, it is unlikely that the author's attempts to link it only with the devastating tactics of the enemy or the high tasks of preserving statehood at the final stage of the war can be considered exhaustive. These fair explanations lie in the realm of political phenomena.
The question of the scale of the people's struggle and its role in the war should be solved first of all at the level of social analysis, considering it in the context of the stage of development of feudal society at which the conflict unfolded, in other words, taking into account the fact of the formation of estates, the growth of their political activity and the politicization of consciousness. If we take into account the existence of a deep social basis of popular resistance and patriotism-
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However, it becomes obvious that the peasantry, although undergoing the process of class formation, was not able to achieve the political organization that the urban class acquired. Cities also, according to the author, served as strong points of military success. However, all self-defense, in which the peasantry played a significant role due to the agrarian nature of society, as well as the government's attempts to organize it, was based on the practice and experience of communal or corporate forms of life. Recall that in England, the popular resistance to the French and Scottish invasions used hundreds of organizations.
In his analysis, the author constantly had both conflicting parties in mind, but the main attention is given to them in France. And this is natural, because the main military operations unfolded precisely on the territory of this country, for which the question of existence as an independent state was then being decided. Nevertheless, a tougher assessment of the French aggression is desirable, implemented against England independently and with the help of allies-Scotland and Castile in south-east and northern England. The material interest of the French feudal lords in the war and their aggressive plans for England (including after the peace of Bretigny and the change in the nature of the war for France) undoubtedly activated elements of national consciousness in England, as well as the fact of the country's humiliation on the occasion of military failures noted in the work. Attention to this side of the conflict opens up an opportunity for the author to further correlate such different phenomena as self-defense and the liberation movement itself, which, in turn, should deepen the development of the question of the latter's influence on changing the nature of war.
In this regard, I would like to emphasize not only the different outcome, but also the different consequences of the war for both countries. In England, the active, albeit gradual, involvement of large feudal lords in feudal expansion, who at first considered war a matter for the king, led to the weakening of royal power and the explosion of feudal separatism in the second half of the XV century. The French monarchy, on the other hand, was able, under extreme conditions and partly because of them, to solve the problems that were important for strengthening central power and ultimately for strengthening feudal rule - the creation of a permanent army and the introduction of permanent taxes. In this war, it brought feudal aggression and the struggle for the liberation of the country to the level of state policy. The latter circumstance, in its turn, does not exclude the question of the burden of war on the masses of the people, who have assumed not only the burden of the liberation struggle, but also taxes for the maintenance of the standing army.
The above considerations serve as another proof of the scientific significance of the peer-reviewed work. Conceived as a textbook, it is the first serious monographic study in Russian science, which, based on the material of medieval history, reveals the complex mechanism of interaction between war, the army and the state.
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