A notable feature of the history of both France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is a marked increase in public participation in war. In each country, as events in the late 1350s in France and in the late 1440s in England amply demonstrated, the conflict and its many implications, social, political, and economic, provoked reactions of deep intensity, especially in France, where the element of civil war provoked deeper feelings than in England. Questions about the war, in particular regarding its human and financial commitment, were asked quite openly. Was the cost of the commitment worth it? What advantage did it bring? Who, the nation or merely individuals, benefited from it all? The commitment of Henry IV's four sons to the war is seen by the fact that three of them died in France in the service of the English crown. This was natural enough, since the war was regarded as a struggle between rival kings over the crown of France. According to the traditional view taken of their place in society, the nobility would have been expected to support their king in the furtherance of his claim. Yet in England noble support was not always whole-heartedly forthcoming. There is something of this in the reminder given by William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, to Henry VI in 1450, that his own father had died at the siege of Harfleur, his brother only a few weeks later at Agincourt, while two of his relatives had met their death at Jargeau in 1429.