Question one

The first question for my Joan of Arc project is "What was France like during this period of time?"

Joan of Arc was famous for her role in the Hundred Year's War, so I'm going to begin by researching the war. http://www.middle-ages.org.uk and Wikipedia say that the Hundred Years War was actually a series of conflicts fought almost entirely in France, between England and France (with Burgundy later becoming an entity of its own). It lasted from 1337 to 1453 (117 years), but was not continuous fighting, instead a series of wars, punctuated by a number of unsuccessful peace treaties. To understand why the war began, it is important to note the relationship England and France had in the centuries before. After the invasion of England in 1066, William I of England (also known as William the Conqueror, William, Duke of Normandy, and William the Bastard." meant that the king of England was a French duke who had to pledge allegience to the king of France. A king doing such to another king was considered quite embarrassing and humiliating. For a while, since the kings of England were also tied to the Duke of Normandy, there was a period where the king(s) of England owned more land in France than the king of France did, despite the English king still pledging allegiance to a French king with less power in France.

The next post will show what sparked off the Hundred Year's war in the early 14th century.