The end of the Hundred Years' War, 1453
Commentary
The end of the Hundred Years' War, 1453
- The results within western Europe were scarcely less epoch-making: by the same year, 1453, the French royal siege train of Charles VII had reduced the English possessions in France to a single bridgehead at Calais, thus finally bringing the Hundred Years' War to a close.
The image above -- depicting a major turning point in that conflict: the unsuccessful English siege of Orléans in 1428-9 -- is the earliest Western image of a cannon in the midst of a battle. The smaller cannon on a gun carriage in the background is clearly of a later date: the images dates from at least half a century after the siege itself.