The Kingdom of England and its allies dominated this phase of the war, and Edward's sovereignty over Aquitaine was confirmed in the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), although he renounced his claim to the French throne.

Then war continued, and the English were victorious at the Battle of Poitiers (1356) where the French king, John II, was captured and held for ransom.

This was in part caused by Black Monday (1360), a freak hailstorm that devastated the English army and forced Edward III into peace talks.

The establishment of a legal succession to the French crown was central to the war and Edward III and succeeding generations of English monarchs laid claim to it.

In November 1336, Philip issued an ultimatum to the seneschal of Gascony threatening that if Robert of Artois was not extradited to France then great peril and dissension would follow.

[5][6] When Philip confiscated the English king's lands in Gascony and the county of Ponthieu the following year, he laid emphasis on the case of Robert of Artois as one of the contributing causes.

It was unlikely that the English parliament could raise the requisite sums quickly, so, in the summer of 1337, a plan was developed to make virtually all of the nation's wool stock available to help finance the war.

[9] To pay the fees promised to his allies, Edward was also forced to borrow heavily from the great banking houses of Bardi and Peruzzi.

[10] Late in 1338, when he had exhausted the funds from the banking houses, William de la Pole, a wealthy merchant, came to the king's rescue by advancing him £110,000.

Edward also borrowed money from merchants in the Low Countries, who charged extortionate rates of interest and demanded more solid guarantees of repayment.

However, the Kent levies were waiting for them in force along the coast so the fleet continued onto Rye where they landed some men and proceeded to raid the area.

In August the French naval campaign came to an abrupt end when, after quarrelling over pay the Genoese crews mutinied and taking over their galleys they returned to Italy.

[19] Apart from a few notable exceptions, such as unwalled Hastings, which was burnt to the ground, the English coastal defenses had been fairly successful against the French raiding.

[21] The Flemish ruler had remained loyal to the French king, consequently, Edward placed an embargo on all English goods to Flanders.

[14] The Truce of Espléchin marked the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War and resulted in a cessation of hostilities on all fronts for nine months.

The contemporary Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani suggested that the banks of Bardi and Peruzzi failed because Edward III defaulted on the loans.

[10][28] Further, at the same time Florence was going through a period of internal disputes and the third largest financial company, the Acciaiuoli, also went bankrupt, and they did not lend any money to Edward.

The French-speaking magnates and bishops refused to recognize John of Montfort although the minor clergy, the knights and the Breton peasantry did, the result was a civil war.

Meanwhile, Philip VI sent a large army to Brittany in support of Charles of Blois and by November they had trapped John of Montfort in Nantes.

The English forces with contingents commanded by Richard de Artois defeated a French army under Charles of Blois near Morlaix on 30 September 1342.

No major campaigns were fought, between February 1343 and June 1345 but he failed to restore the civil peace and he went about himself with an escort of forty men at arms, his predecessor only had half that number.

[36] When there was a treaty or truce in place it left many a soldier unemployed, so rather than go back to a life of poverty they would band together in free companies or routiers.

Philip gathered a large army to oppose him, and Edward chose to march northward toward the Low Countries, pillaging as he went, rather than attempt to take and hold territory.

They equipped their ships, lying at Sluys, with all kinds of weapons and powerful artillery, and engaged all the mercenaries, archers and crossbowmen who were willing to serve them for pay.

The battle lasted until dusk and was a small-scale repeat of Sluys, with the archers slaughtering the Spanish seamen before the men-at-arms boarded their vessels.

At the point when the English archers were running out of arrows and many were wounded or exhausted, the French king deployed his reserves, an elite force of men.

The hostages included two of his sons, several princes and nobles, four inhabitants of Paris, and two citizens from each of the nineteen principal towns of France.

Also, under the terms of the treaty England gained possession of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Maine and all the coastline from Flanders to Spain, thus restoring the former Angevin Empire.

It was caused by the deprivations suffered by the country people during the war and their treatment at the hands of the free companies and the French nobility, in particular, after the Battle of Poitiers.

At Chartres, disaster struck when a freak hailstorm devastated Edward's army, killing an estimated 1,000 English soldiers and 6,000 horses.