The Treaty of Brétigny would not, as hoped, put an end to the conflict that would come to be called the hundred years war, but it did represent a significant change in the conflict. What is perhaps most interesting, however, is that the treaty did not result from a military victory by one side or the other. Rather, three weeks earlier, the course of European history had been changed by a hail storm.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.