section_path: Late Middle Ages/State resurgence
section_name: State resurgence
paragraph_text: State resurgence
  
  Although the growth of central governments continued, more than 500 autonomous polities existed at the end of the period. Successful dynasties reigned over several states (primarily in close cooperation with local elites), but could not freely redistribute resources throughout their realms. Fiscal and military matters were regularly discussed with representatives of elite groups—primarily the nobility, prelates, and burghers —at legislative assemblies known as parliament, diet, cortes, or Landtag. Legal procedures improved as discretionary justice, previously dispensed by kings and their retainers, was delegated to professional lawyers.
  
  In Germany, elected emperors were no more than supreme arbiters even if they had a significant power base in their hereditary lands. Imperial authority was even more limited in Italy, where Florence, Milan, and Venice exploited the power vacuum to expand. The centuries-old rivalry between England and France escalated into the Hundred Years' War when Edward III (r. 1327–77) laid claim to the French throne in 1337. The English won the battles of Crécy and Poitiers, captured the city of Calais, and took control of an expanded Gascony by 1360. Aristocratic feuds escalated into a civil war, allowing Henry V of England (r. 1413–22) to seize much of France. The unconquered French regions put up a strong resistance, boosted by the visions of peasant girl Joan of Arc (d. 1431). By 1453, Charles VII of France (r. 1422–61) expelled the English from the country except for Calais. England fought a long civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which ended after Richard III (r. 1483–85) died fighting at Bosworth and his opponent, Henry Tudor, consolidated power as Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). The wars prevented the English from expanding in the British Isles, but royal power remained weak in Scotland and much of Ireland was ruled by feuding local lords.
  
  Succession trouble was not uncommon in the Iberian kingdoms; intermarriages between royal houses created conflicting claims to thrones, and royal bastards could successfully claim their paternal inheritance. Portugal opened a new theater of anti-Muslim warfare in Morocco by seizing Ceuta in 1415. Aragon and Castile were divided by conflicts between magnate factions or about the limits of royal government, but the Castilian Isabella I (r. 1474–1504) and her Aragonese husband Ferdinand II (r. 1479–1516) reinforced royal power. They completed the Reconquista, conquering Granada in 1492.
  
  The idea of elective kingship revived in the central European and Scandinavian monarchies for a variety of reasons, including aristocratic aversion to foreign influence. Royal power was restored in Poland early in the 14th century, during a period when the Teutonic Knights' expansion intensified. The Knights primarily targeted Lithuania, a loose confederation of mainly-pagan Lithuanian chieftains and Orthodox Rus' principalities. The common enemy prompted a Polish–Lithuanian union sealed by the marriage of Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila (r. 1377–1434) and the Polish queen Jadwiga (r. 1384–99), and the Lithuanian conversion to Catholicism. In Scandinavia, Margaret I of Denmark (r. 1387–1412) consolidated Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the 1397 Union of Kalmar, but only the Danish–Norwegian union was lasting.
  
  After Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian invasions, and succession crises undermined the Golden Horde's power in the 14th century, the princes of Muscovy began annexing the Rus' principalities (often in competition with Lithuania). Under Grand Prince Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), the conquest of the great trading cities of Novgorod and Tver completed Muscovy's dominance in the northeast. In southeastern Europe, the small Vlach principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia emerged; their rulers primarily accepted the suzerainty of Hungarian or Polish kings.