I don't mean to butcher your arguments - they are interesting and challenging. Nonetheless, these statements are questionable assertions. I don't know what is so unique about Scotland or Flanders, that makes their struggle quasi-nationalistic whereas France towards the end of the Hundred Years War was not. Because a king was claiming some divine right or obscure dynastic connection to the throne to justify his military conquest ? how many agressions throughout history have been on that basis ? English monarchs used that against Scotland and vice versa.
The difference was that, in the case of Scotland and Flanders, the conflict represented an attempt by one monarch to subjugate a formerly sovereign territory by a more powerful ruler, while in France the attempt was simply to replace one monarch with another. A conquered Scotland would have been ruled from London, but a conquered France would still have been ruled from Paris (and, in fact, it may well have been England that ended up ruled from Paris!).
Because the practice of total war makes it something of a people's war, and it has been noted by historians that the Hundred Years War set precedents in this direction, by the standard of the late middle ages. The Black Prince employed it as a deliberate strategy to bankrupt and destabilize enemy held lands, and the targets were peasants and townspeople. It worked for awhile too, creating serious unrest under the French crown, but eventually that resentment turned against the English lords. Even before Edward died, much of SW France was lost to his grip, and this is only the first 30 years of the conflict.
Similar were the Hussite wars, Flemish wars you mentioned, and Scottish wars of the last century.
That only suggests that the common people developed sentiments towards certain factions, not necessarily towards any nation or another. Similar tactics have been used in civil wars (
other civil wars, one might say), with similar results, but that doesn't mean that, say, the English Parliamentarians disliked the Royalists because they considered them foreign.
Why do I have to demonstrate the fact that she did choose the Dauphin. Her own words convey her sense of injustice at the hands of the English (yes she called them that ) - and her belief that France needed a strong monarch to unite the country again.
"King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the kingdom of France...settle your debt to the king of Heaven; return to the Maiden, who is envoy of the king of Heaven, the keys to all the good towns you took and violated in France."
She was making that claim on the part of France, she invokes the king of heaven because they had no king of their own. Yet this was the beginning of the end for English rule in France, 'cept Calais. Her success in liberating many towns can be attributed to their willingness to leave Anglo-Burgundian control once they thought they had a winning chance. I think the fundamental difference we have, is that I can accept even in a war between ruling houses with feudal armies, that one side can still represent the aspirations and well being of its people, even if they were uneducated and had no voice in the decisions. But this one in particular quickly involved the people at all levels who suffered to a greater or lesser extent from invading* forces, without calling it modern nationalism.
The problem here is that you're assuming a modern nationalist reading of "France" is appropriate, when in fact you have no reason to assume that it meant anything other than the political entity. That's not to say that "France" was not viewed as a sovereign entity with legitimate dominion over certain territories, which is indeed how the people of the era viewed a sovereign kingdom, but that these territories were defined by feudal law and not by popular identity. To the extent that popular identity did exist, it was largely shaped by language rather than political boundaries, as suggested by the division by the Knights Hospitaller of their French knights into three "tongues", sub-order divisions based on language: "France" for the d'Oil-speakers, "Auvergne" for the Occitanians, and "Provence" for the Franco-Provençal. (And, additionally, Catalan and Basque Knights from within the Kingdom would join the tongue of "Aragon", Ligurians and Corsicans would join "Italy", and Alsatians and Franconians would join "Germany".)
And, certainly, referring to the King of England by his title doesn't mean very much- after all, I could refer to Prince Charles as the "Prince of Wales", but I'm not sure that serve as indisputable proof that he was a Welshman.
Yes, but despite all the petty divisions in Scotland that were exploited by English kings, they had a long history of collective action against agressors. Robert the Bruce's campaign of independence is considered a nationalistic guerilla movement, not a feudal war by any stretch.
That owes far more to later romanticism than to historical fact, though. You're conflating contemporary political loyalties with nationalism. (And if we're going with that logic, then Orcadians and Lewisers were both Norwegian!
)
which Henry, the Vth ? He can consider himself whatever he wants - doesn't mean anybody outside his temporal domain gave a damn. He managed to squeeze a treaty out of a weak French monarch afflicted with bouts of insanity, that made him heir to the throne. Seems his successors had some trouble enforcing that claim.
Granted but the fact is that, within Plantagenet territory, Henry was not the "King of England" but the "King of France", and even outside of that territory would have been noted as a pretender to that title, rather than simply being a marauding Englishman.
The official title of Scottish monarchs was, afaik, since 9th century, "king of the Scots", not "king of Scotland". (It was the same in England, but not in France, btw.)
That owes more to tradition than to contemporary national identity- the Scottish kingdom sprang out of the quasi-tribal kingships of the Early Middle Ages, and so retained some of their popular styles. Arguably, it still had some relevance in the Highlands, were the king was seen as a "chief of chiefs", rather than a monarch in the continental sense, but to the Lowlanders it was a stylistic relic.
The fact that "national identity" before 18th-19th century was almost always secondary/tertiary to religious/regional/class identities does not mean it was absent altogether, or that people of the time did not understand the concept of "nation" - something which a few people are very quick to dismiss with their "nationalism is a 19th century invention!" hyperboles.
Arguably so, but this would have taken the form of a largely abstract political allegiance, rather than a personal identity, and probably would only have extend to the nobles and town-dwellers. Scotland was still divided heavily between Highlander and Lowlander, both of which defined themselves in opposition to each other, and as part of their relevant ethno-linguistic continuum- the Highlanders were in effect "Scottish Irishmen" and the Lowlands "Scottish Englishmen". It's no coincidence that Scotland didn't really get a firm grasp of itself as a nation until after the Clearances, when the Lowlands absorbed a very large population of Gaels, creating a sort of hybrid-ethnicity.
I am not too comfortable arguing with a native Scot over this (
), but consider, for instance, the use of national symbols, such as the Saltire. What were they supposed to represent then, if not the state/nation of Scotland - as opposed to a particular clan or dynasty?
Well, the saltire didn't really come into use as a national symbol in the modern sense until maybe the 16th century- before that, it had been an invocation of St. Andrew, the Kingdom's patron saint. Similarly, the other famous national symbols, the lion rampant and the thistle, were both specifically associated with the monarch and with Clan Stewart, respectively, rather than with any abstract idea of nationhood, and only later became symbols for the nation-in-abstract.
ehm, we're trying to find out why this crazy peasant girl was accepted by the french army.
well, you and i dont believe in divine providence, but the french army did, so there's your explanation.
Fair enough, but Civ King was suggesting that Divine Providence in itself was the reason why she got away with this stuff.
this goes well with your avatar warpus
