The reader has before him, perhaps, the best book about the Hundred Years' War - a large-scale military clash between two monarchies of the mature Middle Ages - France and England. The Hundred Years' War is an unusually complex and multi-layered event: beginning with the claims to the French throne of two relatives of the last king of France, Philip of Valois and Edward Plantagenet, the Hundred Years' War gradually degenerated into a national clash between two powers, two peoples; it is no coincidence that the emergence of national identity is associated with this war . After the first and inexplicable, as it seemed then, defeats of the French knighthood on the battlefields of Crecy and Poitiers, the tactics and strategy of the war changed: chivalry gave way to the desire to achieve the final result - victory over the enemy at any cost. At the last stage of the Hundred Years' War, the first standing army arose in France. Jean Favier outlines in detail the development of military operations, gives colorful and vivid descriptions of large and small battles, and explores the role of the evolution of weapons. The war had a huge impact not only on the field of military art and was not limited to the battlefields. Jean Favier managed to brilliantly show how the nobles, clergy, townspeople and peasants perceived this war, felt its approach, and what role they played in it. The author entered the history of the war into the broad canvas of the political, economic, social and cultural life of medieval Europe. Among other things, some chapters of the book are devoted to the life and death of people in this era, the Black Plague epidemic, the crisis of the seigneurial system, the reform of the Church, etc.