Hundred Years' · War Crimes & Atrocities
The Hundred Years' War produced atrocities across its 116 years that ranged from calculated military policy to individual war crimes. The chevauchée — systematic devastation of civilian infrastructure — was official English strategy, not aberration. The execution of French prisoners at Agincourt violated the laws of chivalry as contemporaries understood them. The Sack of Limoges stands as a monument to a great warrior's cruelty. And the trial and execution of Joan of Arc was a judicial murder designed to serve English political interests. The war was also shaped by the lawlessness of Free Companies between major campaigns, whose depredations of French civilians rivaled the military operations themselves.
3,000+
deaths
Victims: Civilian population of Limoges, France(Medieval chronicles report 3,000 killed, though modern historians estimate the actual death toll may have been several hundred; the figure of 3,000 may include inhabitants who fled)
100,000+
deaths
Victims: French civilian population across Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Languedoc, and Gascony(No reliable aggregate figure exists; the chevauchées caused famine and displacement affecting hundreds of thousands; deaths from starvation, exposure, and disease likely exceeded direct killings)
2,000+
deaths
Victims: French prisoners of war, Agincourt(Contemporary estimates range widely; most historians accept that several hundred to over a thousand prisoners were killed, though some sources suggest as many as 2,000)
1+
deaths
Victims: Joan of Arc, aged approximately 19(One person executed; the spiritual and political significance far exceeds the physical death toll)
50,000+
deaths
Victims: French civilian population of central and southern France(No reliable figure; deaths from violence, famine caused by plunder, and disease displacement likely numbered in the tens of thousands over decades)