Here is another argument that British people won’t like :-) The 100 years wae was in fact a war between two dynasties , the Plantagenet and the Valois. The aim was to be King of France.

If the Plantagenet had succeed they woul have settled as King of France and England would have been a small part of the kingdom.

At that time in terms of population and wealth France was may be 5 times bigger than England. So French would have been the official language.

But as in continental France most of inhabitant were not speaking French but also Occitan, basque, flemish,…. this would have been the same in England.

Many things could have occured in that alternative History, but the French was generalised in France only in the beginning of the XX century.

The statement that English aristocrats stopped using French in the 15th Century is incorrect; Anglo-Norman/English nobles continued to speak French as their first language until the 17th Century. To this day, the Queen opens Parliament in Norman.

The so-called Anglo-French wars were really a conflict directed by warring noble cousins, one branch of which had invaded England that became their stronghold over three centuries. The ensuing battles were because the Anglo-Normands considered that they had residual royal claims in continental Europe.

In some ways, we are speaking a language that is descended from Norman (a related dialect to old French) in that Modern English vocabulary is about 40%+ Norman/Latin in origin, and the grammar and syntax of Modern English and Modern French both also descend from Norman/Old French.

No. Maybe the importance of French in Britain would be greater than today (for ex. it might be mandatory at schools) but the “resurgence” of the English language has no direct ties with the 100 years war. In fact, that was more related to the Black Plague, that killed many in England in the 1360′s. The survivors sought better “work conditions”, if I may use that expression. Consequently, nobility improved work conditions (It needed them in agriculture and military) and they gradually accepted and formalised colloquial English that had absorbed French/Norman influence. Thus, the Pleading in English Act was passed in 1362, and in 1399, Henry IV was the first “Normand” king of England to swear his oath in English.

First of all its contentious that France did win the 100 years war - it just kind of petered out with France having regained most, but not all, territory and England no longer much bothered. Secondly, English had become the official language of the court in 1275 and it was the subsequent 100 years war and hatred of all things French that accelerated the decline of French as a language in England

The 100 years war is usually given as 1337 - 1453 but 1453 was the start of the War of the Roses. The 100 years war had gone badly for the English and they began to in-fight over who was best King to carry on the conflict against the French. This was not the end of the 100 years war for the English just a hiatus whilst they argued. Unfortunately the argument went on to 1485 decimating the royal family and aristocracy. The world had moved on by 1485 and England was no longer interested in its ancient claims to French land and crown. Henry VII was more concerned with defending his tenuous claim to the English throne; Henry VIII did call himself King of France and remade some of the old claims of the 100 Years War - he invaded France and had a few victories such as the Battle of the Spurs before accepting a huge bribe from the French king to abandon his claims in France, other than the Pas de Calais and Channel Islands. He needed the cash far more than reviving some old historic claims everyone in England had long forgotten about

I doubt it very much. First the French (Fraançoys) spoken by the elite in France during the Renaissance had little to do with todays French. It probably included some patois and dialects plus thousands of Italian words. But the ordinary people specially in the countryside spoke all kinds of dialects very different from French. Also latin was the language of the Church and tribunals. It took centuries for Modern French to develop and be adopted by most French. I don’t believe England would have tried to impose French within its own borders, French was trendy , not popular.

Probably not.

It was not the English leaving the 100 years war behind that caused the switch, it was Henry V’s need to recruit, command and control an army of English speakers to prosecute his part of the war.

A fine history of the the English language was made by the BBC and is available on YouTube. It is six episodes. I think you want episode three but here is episode one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihoYL-dUK1g This will answer any questions you may have.

Prepare for a shock, it's often forgotten when discussing this subject, that England actually kind of did win the Hundred Years War in the year 1420.

When Henry V defeated the French against all odds at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415, and his English army continued to kick around the French forces, capturing important Castles, and fortified Cities, controlling almost half of France.

French King Charles VI had a choice, he could either keep losing and eventually have his crown, family estates and the established French nobility utterly wiped from existence, or he could admit defeat, marry his daughter to Henry V, thus preserving his family line and their position, while acknowledging King Henry V and his heirs as the rightful rulers of what remained of France.

King Charles VI proposed The Treaty of Troyes, which Henry V and King Charles VI, along with the prominent French nobility all signed.

%3E The Treaty of Troyes was an agreement that King Henry V of England [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_V_of_England ] and his heirs would inherit the French crown upon the death of King Charles VI of France, It was formally signed in the French city of Troyes on 21 May 1420 in the aftermath of Henry's successful military campaign in France. Henry V had won the hundred years war, Henry V King of England directly controlled approximately half of France and was recognised by French law as the heir to the French throne.

Henry V the warrior king then married Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI. Catherine and Henry grew to love one another, and she would bear Henry V a son and heir - Henry VI.

Catherine and Henry V had actually been engaged to marry many times, but negotiations for their marriage had repeatedly collapsed. Henry V finally invaded France in 1415, precisely because mad King Charles VI had declined their marriage again.

Sadly, Henry V died young on 31 August 1422, aged just 35-year-old. King Charles VI died 21 October 1422, just 51 days after Henry V.

Henry V the warrior king, had to live just 51 days longer and he would have been crowned King of both England & France, uniting the two great Medieval Kingdoms of Western Europe.

With the combined might of medieval England & France at his disposal King Henry V along with his and Catherine's heirs, would have changed the course of world history.

Naturally, the never ending cycle of war between England and France, which had raged for far longer than just one hundred years, having more accurately began around 1109 and not ceased until 1815, would predictably reignite once again, when the legally binding Treaty of Troyes, which had been sealed by the joining of these two great families in marriage, and had produced a son and heir to the two thrones, was torn up by the French nobility.

Had Henry V not died so young, he would have ended the 300 years of warfare and bloodshed between these two great kingdoms, but instead the wars would continue for another 400 years.

The Hundred Years War is false, it was actually The Seven Hundred Years War.

Yes and no. It’s complicated! There you have it!

What? You do not find that answer satisfactory? OK, then let’s start with the beginning:

Vikings:

Vikings were not an ethnicity, they were not a civilisation or a culture, viking was a profession of sorts! If you were to translate it to modern English you would use the words raider or pirate. A Dane peasant was not a viking, a Norvegian blacksmith was not a viking, a Swedish Huskarl was not a viking, by definition!

Some guy down on his luck, either because he’s a second or third born son that couldn’t inherit his father’s land, because he was on the losing side of the previous political upheaval, or in debt, taking to the sea and pillaging mostly defenseless settlements, churches and monasteries was a viking!

Why am I focusing on this point? Simply so that you can understand that when Rollo became lord of Normandy in 911 (the title of duke came later,) he was not the leader of an invading force, nor of a migrating people, he was the kingpin of a couple of thousands of vikings at most. And those vikings were not exactly considered marriage material back home so they were mostly single men and married locally, so that within a generation or two they converted to Catholicism and spoke almost exclusively the local dialect of Langue d’Oïl which is very close to old French.

Let’s not forget that Normandy was already populated and had been for thousands of years. This population would have been comprised of a Gallo-Roman majority, of a Frankish upper-class (probably already quite mixed at this point in time) and possibly of a soupçon of Saxons (deported thereabouts by Charlemagne back in the late 700s.) So that the arrival of the Vikings did change the political landscape as it created a new polity (Normandy) but it didn’t change much if at all the cultural and genetic make-up of it.

Feudalism:

Understanding the nature of feudalism is also very important in order to understand the nature of the conflicts that occured after 1066.

Feudalism is all about local power: most of the big fiefdoms had their own laws, own taxation system and own currency. They were in fact so autonomous that they could almost be considered independant if it weren’t for their link as vassals to the king, the reality of which could ebb and flow depending on the time period and the monarch himself.

So William the Bastard was perfectly in his right to pursue his own foreign policy and covet the throne of England. The king of the Franks (the title king of France came in the XIII century) couldn’t stop him on a legal basis nor had the means then to pressure him militarily. But it set up the subsequent conflicts as a king had to pay homage as vassal to another king and couldn’t reasonably ditch his French lands as Normandy yielded more tax revenue that the whole kingdom of England.

When the Plantagenêt dynasty, which was Angevin and not Norman, sat on the Iron th … English throne in 1154, bringing more and more French lands under the fold there was a real chance for them to break their vassalage through sheer force. But they failed as the king of France, Philippe the second (more famously known as Philippe Auguste,) managed to get back all the lands north of the Loire River by 1214. Keep in mind though that those lands never ceased to be part of the kingdom of France, through his conquests he just transferred the lordship of those lands from the duke of Normandy, the counts of Berry, Anjou, Maine and Touraine (also known as king of England, same guy, lots of hats) to himself. From local to direct rule if you will.

England vs France:

For all intents and purposes the Plantagenêt conflicts were feudal wars, you could almost call them civil wars. It is anachronistic to frame them as England vs France wars. They were about nobles, which were ethnically and culturally French on either side (Richard Lionheart famously spent only six months in England in his entire life and spoke a Langue d’Oc dialect), vying for power. Did any of these people feel French? No! Then again nobody did back then. The Normans felt Norman, the Angevin felt Angevin, the Aquitains felt Aquitain, the Champenois felt Champenois and the king of France himself would have called himself Frank in the XI and XII centuries.

Conclusion:

The Normans related first and foremost to their local identity as pretty much everybody else in Europe did at that time. They enjoyed a great degree of political, legal and economic autonomy that often put them at odds with the king of the Franks, as was the case with pretty much every other great fiefdom in the kingdom. But culturally and even ethnically they were rather similar to any Langue d’Oïl group in northern France. They were as French as one could be at a time when the kingdom didn’t call itself France yet.

Edit: I’ve been asked to clarify what Langue d’Oil and Langue d’Oc are. It would have been too cumbersome and difficult to explain it in the main body of the answer so I’ve decided to do it in the form of a footnote and to go in depth while I’m at it.

France has been for most of its history divided in many linguistic zones (nine of them within the modern metropolitan boundaries of the country) and it is really only in the XX century that standard French managed to become the native language of most of its inhabitants. And by linguistic zones I do mean different languages which were themselves divided in dialects.

The nine languages are:

* Flemish * Langue d’Oil * Breton * Langue d’Oc * Basque * Corsican * Arpitan (also known as Franco-Provençal) * Low Alemanic Of all those languages two dominate: the Oil language (Langue d’Oil) and the Oc language (also called Occitan,) which got their name from the way you say “yes.” Both words come from the affirmative latin phrase Hoc ille + verb which can be roughly translated by that he is/ that he did depending on the verb chosen. Occitan focused on Hoc and dropped the H, thus Oc, while the Oil language kept both words but dropped the H and C, thus getting O ille, then O il and finally Oil.

The Oil language is spoken in the northern part of the country. Standard French and Norman French both belong to this category. Whereas Occitan is spoken in the south. Languedocien and Provençal are both part of it. Catalan is traditionally considered to be Occitan but I do not know how the modern independists in Spain feel about it.

That being said, in the early Middle Ages the map shown above would have been a bit different as the Occitan language went farther north to include what is known as Saintonge (modern day Charente basically,) Poitou and the Bourbonnais, which is why you can find typical Languedocian place names there, such as Cognac, Jarnac (anything ending in -ac really betrays an Occitan name … yes even Cadillac … but not Pontiac) as their shift towards Langue d’Oil started around the XIV century.

Which explains why Richard Lionheart, brought up around Angoulême, spoke a Langue d’Oc dialect even though the place is considered nowadays part of the Langue d’Oil zone.

The reason the French language became dominant is really a combination of several factors. The cultural aspect is the primary catalyst but the military and economic strength combined with strategic location can not be discounted. Unfortunately the real answer to this question just can't be explained in this forum. To do it justice, one would have to take a college-level class.

The spread of its language not just in the courts of Europe but worldwide is synonymous with the rise of French culture after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. France became the major hub of European power in the center of that power was Paris. The fuel that drove this power was the arts.

France was a great superpower in the modern sense of the word. It was the first to make the arts a centerpiece or focus of their society. Their goal was to be more artistically impressive than the rest of Europe.

This desire wasn't just for painting and sculpture. It's spread to every aspect of French life. This is shown in all of the crafts. From manufacturing of weapons to dinnerware. The French were the first to codify food and how to prepare it correctly. They were the first to consider this an art. I could go on about this for a while.

It also has to be mentioned that they were willing to invest a lot of capital into education. For several hundred years all of their educational institutions were considered the finest in history. All the statements I've made are very generalized. If one wants to find One generalized topic to master, you have picked the perfect one.

I love this kind of questions because it gives me the opportunity to developp a shocking theory: you would be all speaking French!

I know, it's an old joke...

England would never have had the means to keep France under her control. Maintaining a permanent army was frightfully expensive to the crown and for lack of subsidies, the Burgundian and Bretons allies would eventually let go les Godons (no disrespect intended, it’s just the name we gave you in old times)...

That being said, the weight of France was such that a United Kingdom of England and France would soon have been dominated by the French in terms of wealth and culture and the Kings of England being of French origin (Plantagenêts) and having personal possessions in France, would have tended to reside in this country as did Richard the Lionheart (who did not speak English). In these conditions the French language would have becomed that of the aristocracy and lawyers with a future all drawn in front of it ...