The late medieval period saw the rise of “national” monarchies in France, the British Isles, and the Iberian Peninsula. Struggles between kings and members of the nobility led in the long run to accrual of more power at the level of the central government. One force making for national monarchy was the long and bloody war between England and France and their allies, known as the Hundred Years’ War, which lasted intermittently from 1337 to 1453. Fighting this war necessitated the organization of national armies. The feudal levies of the Middle Ages became increasingly obsolete as the paid professional soldier and artillerist came to the fore. The heroes of the war—most prominently King Henry V of England and Jeanne d’Arc of France—became the subject of patriotic legends into the twenty-first century. France’s victory, with the expulsion of England from all France except for the city of Calais, was a victory for the ideal of a united country free of any foreign presence.