Chronicles

Froissart’s Chronicles is a 14th-century historical narrative modern historians consider an important primary source for medieval Europe, meaning it provides a contemporary or near-contemporary view of the author’s times. It covers the period from 1322 to 1400. This guide uses Geoffrey Brereton’s annotated version of Chronicles (Penguin, 1978), which primarily discusses events occurring in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Froissart discusses a wide range of subjects from a revolt in Flanders to English relations with the Irish, but the focus of the Chronicles is on the first part of the Hundred Years War between France and England.

Summary

Book One of the Chronicles begins with King Edward II being overthrown and killed by his wife Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer. After Edward II’s son and successor Edward III comes to the throne, he seized power for himself, imprisoning his mother and having Mortimer executed. Because he inherited a strong claim to the French throne through his mother, Edward III declared himself the rightful king of France and began what would become known to historians as the Hundred Years War. Thanks in no small part to their archers, the English win a decisive and devastating victory over the French at the Battle of Crécy.