A Great and Glorious Adventure

A Great and Glorious Adventure tells the military and political story of the Hundred Years’ War from the dynastic claims that opened the conflict in 1337 to the final loss of most English possessions in France. Corrigan moves through the great campaigns and personalities of the war—Edward III, the Black Prince, Henry V and Joan of Arc—while explaining how armies were raised, supplied and used across more than a century of intermittent fighting.

The book argues that the war’s importance lies not only in celebrated victories such as Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt but in the changes it encouraged in military professionalism, royal finance and national identity. England could win extraordinary battles without possessing the population or resources to hold France indefinitely, and the eventual failure of conquest helped reshape both kingdoms on the threshold of the early modern age.