"The Hundred Years' War. Volume IV. Damned Kings" tells of the destruction of France as a result of the madness of its king, the greed and cruelty of his relatives. At the beginning of the 15th century, France, the most powerful and populous state in Europe, experienced complete internal collapse. While warring parties within the country struggled for power in the kingdom under the dim gaze of the mad King Charles VI, the country found itself at the mercy of one of the most prominent rulers of the European Middle Ages: Henry V of England, who defeated the French army on the field of Agincourt in October 1415 and left most of the French there. commanding the dead.Jonathan Sumption recounts in extraordinary detail the rapid campaign of conquest that brought Henry V to the streets of Paris in just a few years. He died at the age of 36 in a French royal castle in 1422, just two months before he was to become king of France. Six centuries later, these extraordinary events were superimposed by the brilliant words of Shakespeare and the varied national myths of England and France. In The Hundred Years' War, Volume IV: Damned Kings, Jonathan Sumption peels back the layers to rediscover the personalities and events beneath them.