France in the Later Middle Ages 1200-1500

The three centuries from 1200 to 1500, from the Albigensian Crusades, though the catastrophic defeats of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, to the beginnings of the Italian Wars, were crucial in the development of the identity of France as a kingdom and as an idea in the minds of its people. They saw sharp upheavals both in the material fortunes and in the cohesiveness of the country, with an initial period of consolidation under the later Capetian kings followedby political disintegration, war, …