End of the Hundred Years' War — Battle of Castillon
The Battle of Castillon, fought on 17 July 1453 near Bordeaux in the Gascony region, is generally regarded as the final engagement of the Hundred Years' War. A French royal army equipped with a powerful artillery park under Jean Bureau defeated an English force under John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, who was killed in the battle. The defeat led to the fall of Bordeaux in October 1453 and ended three centuries of English rule in Gascony, leaving Calais as the last English possession in France. No formal treaty concluded the war — the conflict simply stopped, England being consumed by the Wars of the Roses from 1455. Castillon is often cited as the first major battle in which gunpowder artillery played a decisive role, marking the transition from medieval to early modern warfare. The Hundred Years' War, begun in 1337, had devastated the French countryside, killed an estimated 40% of the French population through war, famine, and plague, and produced the institutional French monarchy that would dominate early modern Europe.
- Year: 1453 CE
- Category: Military
