Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, fascinating historical conversations from BBC History Magazine and BBC History revealed.

In the last few days, one of the great narrative history projects of recent years has come to an end.

The fifth and final volume of Jonathan Sumpchens' Magisterial Chronicle of the Hundred Years' War has just been published.

Taking the story from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the eventual French victory 31 years later.

In today's episode, the medieval historian and former Supreme Court judge speaks to Robata about how the battle swung decisively against England.

An enormous impact of Franz's teenage heroine, Joan of Arc.

Your book is subtitled Triumph and Illusion. So I'd like to begin by asking, who's was the triumph and what was the illusion?

Well, it was deliberately ambiguous. The English were on top at the beginning of the period covered by this volume.

And they quickly declined and lost everything that they'd gained over the previous decade.

They then deceived themselves into thinking that there was some way in which they could conserve at least part of what they'd conquered.

But there were triumphs and illusions on the other side too. Eventually, the French did triumph. They excluded England from every part of France except Calais.

But there were illusions that they had also. They felt that the English had no support in France except from traitors.

And actually, the odd thing is that the English did have a lot of support from the French in areas that they ruled particularly Normandy.

It faded away, but it was quite powerful when the English were succeeding.

Basically, this was a very early example of a military occupation.

But the English absolutely grasped the fact that they had to win the hearts and minds of the subjects and their occupied territories in order to survive.

And they did that initially by simply providing an effective government and a working system of law, something which in the previous decade had been completely missing because France was in the middle of a civil war.

And neither part of that civil war was really capable of supplying effective government.

So the English came in and they did supply it. One of the great sages on the French side once observed that if people got good and honest government, they would follow it even if it were run by Muslims.

And that tells you something about why so many French people did support the English until the tables turned and they started losing out.

And they ceased to be able to control even their own troops, let alone protect their subjects from incursions by their enemies.

So once they ceased to be able to protect their subjects, everything went pear-shaped.

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