This volume, the first of a two-volume set, is the work of fourteen European and American scholars and focuses on the wider aspects of the Hundred Years. These essays range far afield from the traditional heartlands of Hundred Years War studies to investigate the influence of the conflict on Italy, the Low Countries, and Spain and on such topics as urban history, and the actualities of weapon use on the battlefield. A number of the essays in this collection seek to re-examine old but thorny questions long associated with the conflict, including the real immediate impact of gunpowder technology on siege warfare during the fourteenth century and the ''purposeful'' strategy of Henry V in staging and bringing about the battle of Agincourt in 1415.