Truce of Calais
Plague pressures produce a renewed Anglo-French truce
View full image ↗ How was this image made?
The creative brief sent to the image model. These are instructions, not a record of what actually happened.
Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗France had approved roughly three million livres tournois for war. Plague reached Paris around 20 August 1348, before the government could collect it all.
1 September 1348
A new truce between England, France and their allies is dated to 1 September 1348 in the New Cambridge Medieval History. The Black Death had reached Paris around 20 August and prevented full collection of France's newly approved war tax, about 3,000,000 livres tournois.
The agreement being renewed had technically lapsed weeks earlier: the original Truce of Calais ran from 28 September 1347 to 7 July 1348.
Not an unspoken pause
This was a continuation of a formal instrument, not merely a de facto halt. The Truce of Calais had been signed in September 1347 and was repeatedly prolonged until it collapsed in 1355.
Negotiations and formal instruments continued after 1 September. A commonly cited extension is dated 13 November 1348 and ran to 1 September 1349.
Where the fighting carried on
The truce stopped major Anglo-French field campaigns. It did not eliminate warfare: sporadic fighting continued in Brittany, the Calais Pale and Gascony.
Philip VI's government had prepared a renewed war effort, and plague disrupted the taxation and mobilisation behind it.
Representatives of the two crowns prolonged a legal truce while each retained its territorial position.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
Date corrected. The research places this at 1348-09-01.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The 1 September date marks the agreement reported by the New Cambridge Medieval History. Negotiations and formal instruments continued afterward; a commonly cited formal extension is dated 13 November 1348 and ran to 1 September 1349.