War of the Whiskers

This article is about the French and English conflict. For video game, see Tom and Jerry in War of the Whiskers.

The "War of the Whiskers" (c. 1152–1453) is a jocular term for the long conflict between medieval France and England, referring to the refusal of Louis VII of France to shave his newly acquired taste for a beard (i.e. "whiskers") he had grown while fighting during the Crusades. Eleanor of Aquitaine, his wife at the time, demanded that he change his facial hair and when he refused she annulled their marriage and married instead Henry II of England. This quarrel holistically led to a war between the two nations over English territory in France. The final disputes had not been resolved until the end of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), thus giving this pseudo war a time span of 301 years.

The English poet and historian, Charles Mackay, tells the story in his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

Towards the end of the eleventh century, it was decreed by the Pope, and zealously supported by the ecclesiastical authorities all over Europe, that such persons as wore long hair should be excommunicated while living, and not be prayed for when dead. ... In France, the thunders of the Vatican with regard to long curly hair were hardly more respected than in England. Louis VII, however, was more obedient than his brother-king, and cropped himself as closely as a monk, to the great sorrow of all the gallants of his court. His Queen, the gay, haughty, and pleasure-seeking Eleanor of Guienne, never admired him in this trim, and continually reproached him with imitating, not only the headdress, but the asceticism of the monks. From this cause, a coldness arose between them. The lady proving at last unfaithful to her shaven and indifferent lord, they were divorced, and the Kings of France lost the rich provinces of Guienne and Poitou, which were her dowry. She soon after bestowed her hand and her possessions upon Henry Duke of Normandy, afterwards Henry II of England, and thus gave the English sovereigns that strong footing in France which was for so many centuries the cause of such long and bloody wars between the nations.