Gone Medieval - The Battle of Crécy

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

The Battle of Crécy in 1346 saw an outnumbered English army under King Edward III win an unexpected and decisive victory that reshaped the Hundred Years’ War — and the future of Europe. But what if everything we thought we knew about the Battle of Crécy was wrong?Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Michael Livingston to peel back centuries of myth to uncover the real Crécy, the truth behind the battle’s location, its legendary longbowmen, and the five kings who played their part in this epic confrontation.More:The Battle of Agincourt >https://open.spotify.com/episode/3hp2D8T7XnGXumMpBHpopQThe Hundred Years Warhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/3UQkEb0MTdJdwYmJB333RXGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with gone medieval. Imagine the whinny of excited horses, the clank of

armour being tested to make sure it's fixed on tightly. The air crackling with an odd combination of fear, anticipation and testosterone. Add the saltpeter smell of the cannon being deployed by the English for the first time on a battlefield, and things are about to get unnaturally noisy. Some are on foreign soil. Others are here to repel an invader. All know what is at stake. Lives will be lost. Winning matters, but surviving is everything. Some battles are landmark moments in history, around which the rest of the narratives of politics and people are often hinged. One of those battles is Cressy.

Professor Michael Livingston has appeared in some great documentaries for history hit on the Cressey campaign and on the Battle of Shrewsbury and there's some new exciting stuff in the pipeline coming soon too. Michael's book, Cressy, Battle of Five Kings, is out now in paperback

and that seemed like the perfect excuse to ask him to come along and talk to us about one of medieval Europe's pivotal battles. Welcome to God Medieval, Michael. It's fantastic to. have you here. Thanks for having me, man. This is awesome. Thank you. No problem. I can't wait to get stuck into the Battle of Cressy from a safe distance, obviously. I probably could wait to get stuck in if I was in Cressy. Can you give us a sense to begin with of when Cressy takes place and when it is in the

100 years war? Whereabouts are we in the 100 years war? Yeah, so the Battle of Cressey or Cressey is 1346. This is really the first major land battle that we get of the 100 years of war. So it's kind of on the front end of when most people define the 100 years war. I kind of think that definition is wrong, but that's another whole thing. But, yeah, as most people define the hundred years of war, this is really kind of the start of things moving in a positive direction for the English, right? Edward III has come along, made his claim against Philip of France, Philip of Al-Wa, as he likes to call him because he's not the king, right?

I'm the king, Edward, thanks. And, yeah, yeah, he invades in 1346 that summer. a massive army and engages in a campaign that goes horrendously wrong for Edward, but ends up going really well in this desperate fight that happens, and it becomes one of the greatest victories in English history. We tend to be particularly bad, I think, in Britain, of remembering the Hundred Years' War as a series of glorious English victories, picking our moments very carefully when we talk about it,

and we forget the times we lost, and we forget that we lost the whole thing. You said it, I didn't. You said it. Hate mail goes to Matt. Yeah, we're awful for doing things like that. though, there is obviously quite a lot going on around this time. So what leads to a battle at Cressy at that time? Why then? Why is the first big engagement there?

Well, the first big engagement happens there essentially because Edward gets caught. He's invaded in Normandy, actually, like just a few miles from the Normandy beaches in D-Day. That's where his invasion hits. And he comes down the Cotentan Peninsula, does very well, very well. The French did not expect him to land there. They knew he was coming. They just didn't think he was coming there. So that's really good.

Things go well. He takes the city of Khan, kind of unexpectedly. He doesn't expect to take Khan the way he does. And at that point, he decides that he's going to march essentially to the low countries. He has allies there, and he's going to just sort of show a force march across the countryside. No big deal. Unfortunately, Philippa VI has noticed. this and stands in the way and prevents him from crossing the seine and forces Edward to march

all the way practically to the gates of Paris. It's really kind of an extraordinary move that Philippe makes here. As he's gathering his army, he's like, fine. You know, you want to keep marching further and further towards like your doom at Paris? Go for it, you know? So Edward is forced to do that. He manages to cross the seine under cover of night. And when he does that, it's a race. And he just bolts north, trying to get away. And he's ultimately caught somewhere around the forest of Krasi. And that's where we have this battle. In my book, I spent a lot of time talking about the campaign because it is an amazing campaign.

And it really does help you understand how desperate this was for the English. I think because Krasi goes so well, and as you say, we sort of forget the bad parts. Like he wasn't in the best shape. This wasn't what he was looking to do. By no means did he want to fight this fight. But when he's forced to do so, he absolutely does it perfectly. And it's really quite something. But yeah, there's this long race.

He has to cross the Somme because Philippe does the same thing at the Somme. We have the amazing Battle of Blanche Tack, which everybody would remember, except that the Battle of Cracy happened immediately afterwards. And that was so much bigger and more awesome. There was a bit of the earlier battle, which was also incredible. These last days are incredible for Edward. but it's fought there because he's caught. Philippa just trapped him. Yeah.

And you mentioned it, you know, the campaign gets a fair bit of attention in the book because I think it's really good at giving context to why they're there. Because if you look at it on the surface, you think, oh, Battle of Cressy, English stormed it,

probably, you know, Edward's looking for a fight, beats the French. But there is so much more going on. And as you say, if anything, Edward did not want to fight. He's sort of making himself known and then almost like he's surprised when Philippe says,

hang on, I'm not having you marching across my kingdom. but there's no sense that Edward wants that confrontation in the buildup. Yeah, I mean, because he could have fought this numerous points. I mean, you know, when he crosses the saying, the French believe there's been messengers going back and forth because Edward's kind of trapped on the saying. And Philippe is like, well, let's do this. You want to fight? Let's do it.

Let's name the time, name the place. And Philippe, in fact, thinks they have an agreement and that they're going to meet on a field of Antony, which is just the south of Paris. Philippe marches his army out there to get in position. All right, I'm ready. And that's when Edward decides that he's rebuilt the bridge over the saying quietly and makes a bolt for it. I mean, you know, if he wanted to fight, he could have. He didn't.

He ran. And the whole time he's running, of course, he's saying, you know, I'll fight you anywhere anytime, right? But he's not slowing down. He's not stopping. He's on the run. And it always makes me kind of chuckle, you know, because people would be like, oh, no, he wanted to fight because he kept saying he wanted to fight. Yeah, but he didn't fight.

He kept going. Of course he's going to say that. He's not going to tell as many he's running away. So, yeah, he keeps running. And, you know, the Battle Blanche tack, I mean, that is a desperate, desperate thing to try and get away. You know, you don't take an army across a river through the river. Use bridges. Like, that's the reason.

and those are so important. But again, he's trapped at the psalm because Philippe, in his fury, of course, finally gets ahead of him again, knocks down the bridges, traps him, and now he can't get over the river. So put him to fight, put him to the sword. And Edward manages to cross a ford, a low-tide ford over the psalm, has to fight his way through. It's utterly desperate and horrible.

It makes it across. Of course, Philippe's like, are you kidding? Like, I have to trap you again. and then that's when we get the Battle of C. So, yeah, it is important to acknowledge that. And that's not, I'm not saying Edwards, like a coward. He knows he's kind of out. I mean, there's not really gun.

He's not outgunned, but he's, you know, the other side's stronger than I am. I don't want to fight under these conditions. Like, my men are weak, we're hungry. Yeah, you do get that constant sense of Edward III being, like, we would definitely fight if the river wasn't between us. And Philippe's saying, okay, I'll cross the river. and Edward retreats past another river and goes, we would definitely, definitely fight if this river didn't keep appearing between us.

It's like, hang on, Edward, you keep putting a river between us. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. But again, as I say, I think I said this at one point in the book, Edward doesn't want to fight a battle. It'd be perfectly happy to win one, right? And that's this sort of difference. We have a sort of a sense of masculinity that's caught up in this like, well, if you want to fight, you just want to fight, period.

Like, not if you're a good commander. If you're a good commander, you want to win. That's it. And Edward's doing the best he can with the cards he has. He did not intend for this march to go up to Paris. None of that's what he planned. All of that is him on the defensive. And yeah, he ultimately fights a battle on the defensive.

I mean, we does fight the battle. It's not a, boys, let's charge out and get him. It's hunker down and start taking the blows, you know, wins the battle, which is good. Right. So, in the end of me, I think he's a terrific. commander. Just what that means in medieval terms isn't necessarily what everybody kind of wants it to mean, right? Yeah. Yeah. And before we get sort of into the meat of the battle, the book is subtitled the Battle of Five Kings. So I just thought, could you give us a sense of who those five

are in terms of what side they're on and why they're important? Yeah. I love that this is such an international battle. It's so cool. And it's one of the things that's, this has all kinds of ramifications that it's an international battle. Obviously, you have King of the Third on the English side. You have Philippe the 6th on the French side. But Philippe also has three more kings with him. He's got the king of Bohemia with him, the old Blind King John of Bohemia.

He's probably not actually blind, but our sources say he's chicken-eyed, which I think means he can't see much beyond his immediate face. He can't see long distance. I sympathize. I'm wearing contact lenses, and I normally wear contact lenses, but I can't see a thing without my glasses or my contact lenses.

So I completely sympathize with short-sighted people in the medieval world. There you go. You and King John, man. You and King John. So you got King John of Bohemia. His son is actually King of the Romans. Will ultimately become Holy Roman Emperor. Isn't yet.

And of course, we'll follow his father to the kingship as well there. And then you have the King of Majorca, all places. The King of Majorca is essentially had his throne taken away. and is really mad and has come to France, like, you know, can you come help me? And then the English invade. And so he's like, I'll help you, oh, great French king. And then, like, afterwards, like, you'll come help me, right? Kind of thing.

So, so, yeah, we technically have five kings on the field. But it's one V4. So, yeah, this is, you know, outweighed on numerous occasions in this regard. The French have more men when we get to the five. absolutely have more men. And they also are fighting on their territory, right? You know, which is another huge advantage, right? How is it that after crossing the saying, Edward is on headed north, Philippe's behind, but gets in front of them.

Well, because they're on the main roads. The French are on the main roads. The English are having to take smaller roads, and it slows you down. So the French are able to outpace them. There's a huge advantage to being on home turf. So yeah, it's five kings, and that international quality of it means that we also have an enormous number of sources for this fight that we wouldn't normally have. A lot of battles, as you well know, we've got like a handful, and they might all be from

one side. And I'm like, well, this is great. How can I really suss out what happened here? For the Battle of C, I mean, we just have, well, I mean, when we edited my colleague Kelly DeVries and I edited the Battle of Crazier Casebook to put all the sources together. We cut it off at 1400. So from 1346 to 1400, there's 81 different sources. And we actually found a couple since then that we didn't know about.

And they're international in scope, right? We've got sources from Bohemian, medieval Czech. We've got all these Italian sources. Obviously French, English sources, Welsh sources. It's an absolutely phenomenal battle. for seeing how everybody's viewing it. And some of them aren't terribly involved, but are recording what happened there.

And it really enables you to get a clearer picture of what truly happened than a lot of battles. Yeah, and there's a sense as well that on both sides, there are also significant other players. So most famously, I guess, Edward III, sun and air, the Black Prince is there. And that's quite a thing for the king and his heir to be on foreign soil, a campaign, you know, an English army will want to take as much of the nobility of England as it can,

and the French will be gathering, you know, getting to bash the English on home turf when they're embarrassing you by marching across your countryside. Everyone wants a piece of Cressy, really, don't they? They do, absolutely. Yeah, the Black Prince is there. He's not the Black Prince yet. He hasn't called that yet, but yeah, I just call him that in the book because, like, you know, that's what we know I'm as. He needs another Edward. Yeah, who needs, yeah, well, like, I don't Edward, son of Edward. Like, this is getting messy. And the Black Prince is just a frigging cool title. So, like, come lot. Yeah. Yeah, he's 16 years old. He is knighted upon landing in Normandy. So he is, he's a night now, but he's 16 years old. This is his first real action. He definitely becomes part of the

legend of crazy. And we could talk about that later on. And yeah, with them, obviously in the invading army, you have all these, all the lords and everybody. And on the other side, yeah, we, everybody wants to have a piece of, like you said, kind of putting a stop to this. and I actually have a map in the book of like where all these guys are from on the French side. And it, I mean, it's everywhere. It's, it really is amazing. How many of them have shown up? And for good reason, you know, like, this is, this is huge.

This is really a big deal. And to have all these guys fighting on the field in the course of two days is, I mean, it's really, really almost unprecedented. I love this battle. It's too cool. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to tease a little bit longer before we get to the real fighting, because one of the kind of revelations in the book is a new location for the battle. And I just wonder if you could talk us through kind of what the problems were with the old location and how the new one was discovered.

Yeah. So happy to do that. I first came across the Battle of Crazy going to the actual field. I heard about a long before that. But going to the actual battlefield, we had gone to the Battle of Agincourt because I had a kind of theory about Agincourt that I wanted to check out. It took like five minutes on the field of Agincord to realize that theory was bunk. So that was fun. But I was there with a couple of colleagues.

And it was like, well, the crazy is right here. Like, let's go, let's go see it. And so went down. And, you know, the traditional story of what happens at the battlefield. And the battlefield, everybody kind of says, you know, and the signs and all that stuff, you know, and here's the power where you can look out over the battlefield and all that. Like, it wasn't computing. Like, it didn't make any kind of military sense.

There's no way the English took this position and the French did what you said they're doing. That doesn't work. There's topographical problems. There's tactical problems. None of this fits with strategy. This just doesn't make sense. And actually that night, I started going back and just starting to read the original accounts. And the original accounts were saying the battle happened between Abbeville and Cracey.

Cracy on Pontoon, the town of Cracy. Well, the traditional site is not there. It's beyond crazy on Punta. On the hillside above it. And I'm like, well, that's funny. You know, the sources don't seem to be saying that the battle happened where people are saying it happened. Surely there's some other thing happening that explains this. And that's when we kind of decided to do, my colleague Kelly DeVries and I decided to do the Battle of Gracia casebook.

Let's gather all the sources. Let's look at the menu, see what they say about anything in the battle. like so we can figure out. And in the course of that project, like again and again and again and again, like our sources are not saying it happened where you're telling us it happened. They're saying something else to the point that like people were mistranslating sources to try and make it square peg round hole kind of thing to make it fit in the traditional site.

And like, that's not even what it says. Like, and the more you kind of did this, when you're like, well, maybe there's a maybe it's not in the right spot. Do we have archaeology? Well, there's been archaeology. And, and digs, the University of Southampton did the most recent, didn't find anything. That's odd for battle this size. So, you know, this isn't making any military sense.

It's not checking out with the sources. It's not checking out with archaeology. You know, what other options do we have? And that's when I kind of turn to, well, let me just follow what the sources say. And, you know, let's start mapping, start doing kind of like what I do, which is, you know, battlefield reconstruction and conflict analysis and start from scratch. You know, with no preconceptions. What do our sources tell us?

What do the maps tell us? What does the topography tell us? Where is this battle? And very, very quickly, that all kind of reduced down to one spot, which is next to the forest of crazy. It's not like, you know, people I call Livingston move the battle. I didn't like move it to Amsterdam or something. Like, it's not, I didn't move it over the ocean or whatever.

It's down the street from me here in South Carolina. So it's a few miles south of the traditional location. And that's where then, you know, sort of hypothesis started, right? You know, the thesis is this is where it was. Does that check out with things, right? And then running back through all the materials to see if it worked. And it did. It worked very, very well.

We don't have archaeology on that site yet. You know, so, which is the thing I think I get the most, other than just wrote hate mail, the question I get the most is like, you know, where's the archaeology? I'm not an archaeologist. You do not want me doing that. Archaeology is by sort of definition destructive. So it needs to be done with the most care possible. You do not want any old schmach to go out there with a shovel. And the French are, there's a lot of red tape, apparently about digging in France that doesn't apply, say, in the UK, where it's a lot easier to gauge and stuff. And France, it's not that easy. And all the archaeologists I know that have looked into it have said that the government's not too keen on reopening, I guess, the crazy case. But yeah, so that's, it was kind of a process, and it's an ongoing process. I've got a, it just finished through peer review. I'll be coming out next, I think next year.

Another article that provides even more evidence from the field itself, which will be very exciting to get out. But yeah, I don't know that it happened on my site. Like, it's just an awful lot of smoke and an awful lot of, like, the Venn diagram of every piece of evidence we got says there. Like, I feel pretty good about it. Yeah. And it's not all that long ago since something similar happened with the site of the Battle of Bosworth. You know, these things do happen and the battles move around based on new discoveries and reassessments and all of that kind of thing.

So I'm slightly bemused that anyone would give you flack for having an idea. which seems absolutely crazy to me. So if anybody is doing that, please stop it. But, you know, there is nothing wrong with having a thought that it could be somewhere else and testing that theory, which is all, it seems to me, you're doing. You're not saying it's here and I, you can't disagree with me. Yeah, no, I mean, if we found it somewhere else, like, cool, I get to write a second edition of the book.

Like, that's fun. And, you know, I think I get paid for that. So that's cool. Yeah, people do. They get really, they get really bothered by this stuff. Crazy, you know, Agincourt, Bruner, any time I touch this stuff, people get, people who are really mad. I haven't had, I had death threats over Brunenberg, but I haven't had that for this, which on the one end is like, yeah, you're like, what is the matter with you? Like,

what are you doing? And there's this little voice, I'm not, please don't make death threats, but like, there's also that little voice where you're like, that's pretty cool that you're into history that much. I mean, you know, like, we have that in common. Yeah, history. But be into history that much without making death threats. Yeah, but can we, can we settle it down a little bit. Come on now. Just dial it down a little bit from there. Right, we probably ought to get stuck in to the battle now. Oh yeah. There are some famous things about crazy and I'm interested in in your take on some of those things. So I guess the things that lots of people might know about this battle, first time the English used cannon on the battlefield. Is that right? Is the first time

we get artillery pieces used? Yeah. I wouldn't think of them as like canon in any picture that we would have now. I mean, they're, and they aren't, they're not mowing people down. They're really essentially noise makers. They're being used to disturb what cavalry charges. The French are going to come with a big cavalry charge. We're going to set these things off. They will not have seen anything like this. The noise, the flash, the smoke, it's going to freak out horses and knock out the charge. That's what it's doing. But yeah. Yeah. And it's a really interesting tactic from Edward that no one's really done this before. And he's not, like you say, he's not thinking this is going to kill loads of French people, he's thinking this will spook their horses and disrupt what they're trying to do.

And that seems like a really great idea. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, I mean, Edwards, like I said, Edwards, he's a smart guy. He's a smart dude. Yeah. So, yes, his first artillery being used. Kim, you know, like, don't get too overblown folks on what we're thinking of artillery.

But, yeah, it would have been, it would have been unbelievable to see if you'd never seen anything like that, right? You know, just what that would be like, that noise, the thunder and flash would just be extraordinary. Yeah, yeah. It's like psychological warfare at that point, isn't it? You're really spooking people and making it impossible to do what they wanted to do. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I guess one of the other famous things that people might know is the idea that the battle begins before the French are properly there. So the French are so keen, so convinced they're going to win, so desperate for the glory that they attack before they're really ready.

Yes, yes. And that seems to be absolutely true. That is a bit of the story that does hold up. And it doesn't hold, actually doesn't hold up terribly well with the traditional site. The way I've reconfigured everything, that absolutely makes sense for what's happening. The French aren't even arriving on the field by a single road. They're arriving by multiple roads converging, and they're converging right into where Edward has set up his position. And he's taken absolutely the best position that he can take on that.

countryside. I mean, his scouts have done their work. We don't know who was like he said, my lord, this is the place to do it, but whoever they were, they should have gotten a medal because they nailed it. I mean, as soon as he knows, I've been cut off. I can't, I count outrun. I have to fight. I have to fight now. He takes the absolute best position. And when the French are coming into that position, they are disorganized. There's no question that there is certainly among the kind of lower ranks of noble. It's questionable whether or not Philippe himself is of this mind. But certainly basically everybody beneath him are like, yeah, I'm going to get the glory. I want to be the first one in. And it's a very disorganized battle. And that's more than anything, what carries the day

for Edward is Philippe's, in the military, we call this command and control. Edward has it. Philippe does not. And that absolutely shows through in this battle. It's a, it's a, huge differential. And what do you make of the role of the Genoese crossbowmen? So these are at the front of the French army, my understanding was always they engaged first and they sort of retreat and they end up getting mowed down by their own cavalry kind of thing. What was your take on the role of the crossbowman? Yeah. So what happens with the crossbowman? Again, it's one of these things that just doesn't make sense on the traditional site, but makes sense where I'm putting things. Why on earth are the crossbowmen going in first? And going in without,

their pavises, which are these huge shields. Crossbow is laborious on the field to load. And so you have a big shield that you kind of take out and you set on the ground and you high bind it and do your crossbow, get out, shoot, highbine. They go in without those. They actually don't have all of their armor on. These guys are going to get mowed down.

Of course, they don't know that the English position has all these hidden longbowmen. So these guys are going out there. They're all going to die. They don't know that. They think we're just going to go in, pop off some shots, pull off the field in organization, and right behind us will come charging the front line of the French cavalry rights. We're going to soften up the English position, move it aside, and they're going to get steamrolled.

Yeah, instead, what happens is the Genoese going out there not prepared. Of course, you know, why are they even this close to the front? They shouldn't be. They're not in the vanguard, but if they've arrived by separate roads, they can be in the front of one of those roads. and when they go out and the English longbowman, you know, this first crossbow shot, the longbowl's hunker behind the wagons that they're hiding behind and behind trees, let all those crossbow bolts go through and then stand up and rain arrows on them,

and there's no defense. So the Genoese just turn and run in a total panic straight into the line of cavalry, which then makes that cavalry line, right, dissipate, cannons go off, dissipates even more. And now you have a mass of men that the longbowman, and are like, well, that's an easy shot, right? You know, just load up and go again, and they just start loosing into it. I mean, the carnage is enormous. And the French, rather than being in a position to sort of regroup, kind of double down,

triple down, like just start throwing men. And that's how you get something that's lopsided. It's, again, that kind of loss of command and control loss of almost mental faculties on the field, which Edward does not experience. Yeah. And how then does the rest of the battle play out? You mentioned that Edward has taken up the best position that he can. How does he makes good use of that? He makes fantastic use of this. So what he does is he builds, he's taken high ground. It's not people think of high ground and they want to imagine like huge hilltops. It's not what we see on very rare battles. Usually it's relative high ground. You're taking percentage gains. And he's taking high ground. I'm always thinking Obi-Wan, Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker when I hear taking high ground. I have a high ground. I have a high ground edict. it's over. It's over. I have the high ground, Philipp. It's over. Yeah, so he's taken high ground, and he's got forests

on his flanks. So he cannot be outflanked. He then takes all of his wagons and builds what we call Wagonberg. There's different names you can use for it. I use Wagonberg, which is a field fortication of wagons. You take your wagons, you circle the wagons, as we used to say on the Old West here in the States. But what they typically do is actually turn the wagons over on their side. So it really is kind of like making a wall. So you've got high ground already. You make now a wooden wall sort of at that,

a quick and dirty palisade. Some of our sources say that he did trench works and ditching. There is a ditch on the site that I've found, whether the ditches of sands now is definitely not kind of what would have been there, but it fits in the right spot for where that should have been, for what that's worth. And so you build all this, and then he's got archers in the woods to either side, hidden. So he has this sort of these wings of archers to left and right and a frontage of wagons. And then right in the middle of those wagons, he's got an opening. So it's almost like a horseshoe kind of thing at wagons, right? So he's got an opening. And that opening's like, you know, come and get me here. Like hit me here. And across that opening out front is where he puts his

dismounted vanguard. So all of their banners, all their finery dismounted, like come and get us and smack down in the middle of line is the black prince. So you can see, like, there's the black print. Like, we get that kid. Like, we win this battle. We win the 100 years, well, they don't know it's 100, you know, at this point, the few years war. Like, this thing will be over.

I mean, I, you know, this is bait, all right? This is bait. Come in here. And all these archers on other side are going to just skewer you on your way. It'll be great. And that's, in fact, what sort of happens. for the first stages of this battle is this massacre as the Longbow is doing what Longbows do. And everybody's trying to get to the Black Prince.

And at some point, the Black Prince appears, leaves position and goes forward. He goes out. He does exactly what he was ordered probably not to do. I'm sure Edward told him, whatever you do, don't go forward. You stay here. Hopefully everybody will die in front of you and never get to you. But if there's any problems or whatever, like you retreat into the Wagenberg, right? You know, we have more men in here.

But don't go forward because the moment you go forward, now the archers can't just loose in there, right? Because nobody wants to be the archer that shot the crown prince of the back of the head. Like that's, you know, no. So, so yeah, but he appears does that because he is captured at this battle. Which again is not that's one of these things. It's not the myth, right? The myth is, you know, people are worried that he's in trouble. And a messenger runs to the king and, you know, says, my lord, your son is in danger.

And he says, well, let the boy earn his spurs, the spurs of knighthood. Like, let him just earn it, you know, which, of course, would be, if he was really in trouble, that would be like the most idiotic thing you could have said. Like, oh, whatever, you know, I'll see what he does. But according to that story, which is a wonderful statement. It's a wonderful story. Don't get you wrong. They decide to run out and see if they can help him anyway, despite what the king said.

And they find him lounging mid piles of the French dead and are like, are you okay? And he's like, oh, I'm fine. I'm just resting for the next wave, which is a wonderful story. Brilliant story. But yeah, when you look across all the sources, all the sources, what you see is, no, man, the guy, he went out, kid went out and got captured, was being pulled back to the French lines. had to be rescued. He had to be rescued. They had to go in and get him. He was very fortunate that the French started bickering and arguing over who was going to get the ransom, which would have been obviously an enormous ransom, right? This is a family maker kind of kind of ransom.

And according to one of our stories, an Italian account, the French were actually killing each other over who's going to get down to the ransom, which is sort of slapstick, but you could, but you actually could see it, you know, like what's a stake here? And, and, and, and, And then at that point, Bishop of Durham has actually come charging in with a component of men and pulls him back. He'd gone too far out. He'd surrendered. He had the Black Prince had surrendered on the field. He got surrounded.

His bannerman laid his banner at his feet. And the Black Prince went to his knees and surrendered himself, you know, to live. And, yeah, he is rescued. But it is, it's an absolutely desperate moment. And, yeah, that the king later publicly chides him for this. and says, you know, did you enjoy that to go into battle? Like what fun that was kind of thing, you know, sort of chiding him, you idiot, what were you doing?

But yeah, I mean, Chris is. I think it's slightly weird, you know, the whole taking him, you know, nighting him on the beaches of Normandy and all that sort of stuff. It's one thing having to, you know, take your kid to work day. Use your kid as bait on the battlefield. It's like next level seems reckless. But obviously, you know, the Black Prince plays his part in this because he's clearly given orders that he's bait but he's not to engage. And he's, presumably, he's thinking, I'm 16,

I want to prove myself here. You know, maybe it's less about Edward's, his dad thinking he should earn his spurs and more about him thinking, this is my chance. And it turns out, like many 16-year-olds, bad choice, and he gets himself into trouble. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. You know, I mean, we, you know, obviously, I don't want to like, you know, armchair, uh, psychologically profile the kid but but yeah, the one most 16 year olds. I know in the culture, right, that they're in,

right, this chivalric culture, this idea of, yeah, like, I want to be glorious, right? And you, and you see these, the opposing sides,

right? These lords and all their banners and stuff going down in front of you. And like, like, I'm just supposed to sit here. Like, no way. And so, yeah,

kind of course he went in. I'm, you know, it's the last thing you should have done, dude, but, But also he's doing exactly what the French do in that there is glory there to be had, but you have to go and get it.

We're happy to believe the French are pouring forwards because they want to be the first to engage and to get all the glory. It's not hard to believe the Black Prince wanting to do the same thing, really. Yeah, no, exactly right. Exactly right. It goes horribly wrong, but so went horribly wrong for the French too. Yeah, and we have incredible accounts of this, right? You know, there's an amazing poetic account that I think was actually written on the battlefield

field by a herald who's asked to try and identify the dead, a French herald, who was in the fight, witnessed all this. And he talks about, like, what he is seen. And, you know, talks at one point about, you know, witnessing, you know, a certain lord, hurt, like, mortally wounded, like, crawling, trying to get to the black prince and holding the black prince's standard in his arms as he died. Like, I mean, like, dang, this is incredible. And it's just a story that's like that. I mean, it's not the myth that everybody has. To me, it's cooler. It's way cooler, like the truth of what happened here. And so we know, unlike probably everybody in the midst of all of this, we know that Edward will win the Battle of Cressy. How does it come to a close? How is it ended?

It ends in like the worst, almost the worst way possible. This lack of command and control that Philippe has goes all the way to the end. Philippe is, is, it's, it's, it's, you know, It appears he fights very well at the battle itself, but his pretty quickly, like, this is not good, man, we got to get you out of here. And his men drag him away. But there is no indication that he ever called for a general retreat. So he leaves. He's pulled away from the battlefield. And they run him north up the roads to a local castle for the night.

And just trying to keep him from getting killed or caught. But the men left behind are just sort of leaderless trying to. fight all the way into the night until nightfall ends the fighting it doesn't end in a route you know a lot of times things will end in a route right a side will turn and run and that's where most of the deaths happen right most deaths in medieval warfare people getting it in the back as they're running that's not what happens here it is just kind of this endless slog until nightfall and the english are so edward's so concerned he doesn't know what's really happened in the sort of fog of war here he's fully expecting to get hit again. He keeps his men on the field in their armor, like, ready to

take another charge all night. And in the morning, fog has set in. He still doesn't know what's happened. Right now there's fog. He's waiting for another army to come out of the fog. And he finally sends out riders to go try and see what's happened. And they start running into pockets of what's left of the army, of the French army, who have been sleeping in the fields, who see these writers and they think they're French and so they call out you know in French you know what's happened and the English then mow those guys down as lambs as set to the wolves as one of our sources rather nicely puts it and then that day that second day another army does show up another French army does show up that has apparently no idea what has happened and just blunders into the English position

and get demolished and that at least according to some of our sources Mormon die actually in that second day And then on the first day, of course, is the famous day. But the second day, Mormon may have died that day. It's a battle that kind of has this weird sort of petering out that you don't normally see in a battle. And then Edward, yes, spends a few days on the field. There's sort of a truce is called, deal with the dead. And then as soon as that's up, then he decides he's going to march to Calais and engage the siege in Calais, which will engage him for the next year, or just under a year.

and before we get the burgers of Calais and all that, and Calais becomes English for a couple centuries. So, yeah, it's a pretty wild ending as well. Yeah, yeah, it is. And for all, it's a famous battle. It's really interesting in the book, the way you portray that kind of real sense of, is it over, who's won, what's going on? There is no kind of definitive, as you say,

the enemy turn and running, you've won the battle and everybody cheers. Yeah. It's kind of almost two days of just slogging. in a way, not quite sure who's winning, who else is coming, what might happen next, and nobody really having a sense that it's definitely over now and we've won. Yeah, it's, it is, it would make, on the one hand, to make a great movie, aside from that, right? I mean, you know, because, yeah, you expect at the end of the movie, you know, yeah, hurrah, we won,

you know, we survived. And here it's like, so, yeah, I guess it's over. Is it, yeah? No, is it up, no, yeah? For, you know, hours and hours and hours until. Yeah, a herald come and they get clarity that, okay, yeah, I guess it's over. And we can call a little truce here to deal with the dead. Yeah, it is a kind of anticlimactic in that sense, which is strange, given what's happened.

By no means alone, right? You know, Agincourt has a kind of really strange ending as well. People don't kind of really think of that, but it does. So, yeah, it is, though certainly carnage the whole time. You know, it is not a, you know, saying sort of petered out. I don't want to indicate like that this wasn't like just horrific carnage because it was. Like thousands and thousands died there. It's really awful.

Yeah. And I guess just to end up, I mean, I wanted to talk a tiny little bit about John of Bohemia because the guy who mentioned before who was maybe not quite blind, but maybe a bit like me. He's famously found amongst the dead and we're kind of given this scene in which the black prince recognizes his heroism and adopts the ostrich feathers of his badge as his own badge, and it's still the Prince of Wales badge today. And I kind of always feel sorry in that story for the two guys that John of Bohemia has had lashed to him and forced them to ride into the battle, who were still tied to him dead on the floor next to him,

and they kind of never really get a mention. But that's an interesting aspect, isn't it? This idea of respect for the enemy? Yeah. The whole story about the crest being from John of Bohemia is not true. You know, that was not King of John of Bohemius' crest. That's not where that came from. That's not where the saying came from.

That's not where that stuff came from. It's, again, a cool myth, but it's not where any of it came from. But it is true that King John of Bohemia did die there. That is absolutely true. And yeah, his death, as you said, everybody kind of focuses on King John of Bohemia. What happens there is, it appears at the start of the battle, somebody describes, because you can't see far enough to see. somebody describes to King John Bohemies, who's kind of like a veteran, like living legend kind of guy.

They say, this is what they position in English should take it. And he says, like, don't go in there. You go in there, we're all going to die. Like, that's a bad idea. And they're like, forget you, old man. We're going to go get our glory. And they all go in and die. And towards the end, he's told, all right, well, yeah, so it turns out, basically everybody's dying.

And we got to leave. And he says, I'm not one to go and have fled a fight and then die as an old man in bed. That's not how I'm going out, boys. I got to get into the fight. I'll die in battle, thank you. And somebody points out to him, well, you know, my lord, you probably can't get there because you can't see it. So yeah, his solution is they take the sort of chains of his horse there.

And it attached to two other riders, two volunteers. Who's going to take me in the battle? Are we air quoting volunteers there? Yeah, air quoting volunteers. I mean, you know, the stories, of course, they're like, I'm going in, my lord. And so these two knights, fallen told maybe, I don't know, they sort of drag him in. Like, you know, he's tied to their two horses and it's almost like a chariot. And that's, in fact, one of the poetic images we get from one of the witnesses is, you know, he was brought in like a chariot.

So these two knights take him into where the fighting is the fiercest. And he does die there, as do they. One of our sources says that he kills more of his own men than of the enemy because he can't see. He's just swinging his sword around. It kills more of his own men than the other side. But he does die. And is actually his is pretty much the only, like, that's the only artifact we've got is his body. And I have, I describe it and we have pictures of it in the book because his tomb was open and the remains were in there and were mummified enough and enough of it still left that you can track most of the wounds.

And he goes down, it's pretty nasty. It's pretty nasty. see, in a terrible irony, it appears that the coup de grace was somebody put a dagger through his eye, which is, you know, I guess maybe he saw that. I don't know. So, yeah, he dies there. But, yeah, the story of kind of, you know, the prince finding his body and adopting his, his crest and his motto, is false, unfortunately, because it would be a cool story.

I like that. But, yeah, he does die there. It's really, it's really nasty. Yeah. And just to end on, I wonder what you considered to be the big legacy of Cressy. I mean, I guess it has short-term implications and much longer-term implications, not least in the fact that we will call this conflict it almost begins there, the 100 years war. So there is a long-term impact of Edward's victory. But is it more than just the prolonging of the war and a good start for England?

It is more because it, you know, this puts England kind of on the map. I mean, you know, people knew where England was, but like, it was suddenly, you know, this is a force to be reckoned with, right? And again, this international quality that you suddenly have people talking about this great English victory all over Europe. And they're all talking about, like, will you believe what these guys did? Oh, my gosh. And so, yeah, it prolongs the war, gives a new credibility to the English cause. obviously in what Edward decides to do afterwards in besieging Calais you know after this he could have just gone back to the low countries like he was trying to do but recognizing how

weakened Philippe is he's like let's just try and get Calais obviously it takes a long time to do that but he's able to do that because the French kingdom is so kind of crushed by this he's able to take Calais and that of course had some enormous benefits from economic benefits with the wool trade and and obviously strategic benefits and all that kind of stuff and yeah setting the the course for a war that's going to go on for generations right you know nobody nobody who saw the start of this war saw the end of it and by the end it's kind of not the same war was the start but this if this goes the other way right it it ends here for those minutes that the black prince was in custody uh you know that's that was it but it wouldn't

the other way. And that makes it a really pivotal moment in the whole story of the 100 Years of Warne of England itself, right? It creates a national myth. Yeah. And I'm always struck by how much Henry V, you know, what are we 60, 70 years later, will almost seem to be emulating Richard the 3rd. So he will try that march across France that Edward III does. He will forward at Blanche Tack, almost like he's copying him. He will, you know, fight the battle that he probably should have lost at Agincourt. We always have the same pattern there of these overconfident French. You don't seem to have learnt the lesson of the last many, many decades.

So it's almost as if Cressy sets a pattern for some of the big moments in the Hundred Years' War. Yeah, no, it absolutely does. I mean, in my book on the Battle of Agincourt, Agincourt, The Battle of Scard King, which came out since Cresi came out. I mean, that's exactly what I argue, right? You know, this is, Henry VIII is very deliberately, like, I'm going to do what Edward did. And it goes even worse, frankly, until the moment of this battle, which Henry has no intention

of fighting there. He didn't set out to do this. But when he's cornered and he can't run away and he's got to do it, he does it, command and control wins again, and it's an extraordinary victory. And yeah, that's absolutely my take on Aschen Corps. And we'll continue to be, you know, those two battles, you know, through the rest of the hundred years of war. I mean, you know, this is what all the, both sides are thinking about, right? They're, the French are scared to fight a pitched battle for quite some time because, and those

don't go good for us. Like, like, we've got to change our way of warfare. And on the English side, of course, they're like, hey, this is how we do it. What was the setup we had for those battles? Just do that. So, yeah, it has huge ramification in military history, political history, economic history, you know, with what happens at Calais. It is one of the great, great, great battles in history, I think. And yeah, I just love it. Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And I thoroughly recommend the book as well for anyone who wants to get into a bit more, even more depth from this. But it's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you about this, Michael. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.

Michael's book, Cressy, Battle of Five Kings, is out now in paperback. And you can catch his documentaries on Cressie and Shrewsbury, as well as watching the forthcoming films as soon as they're released by subscribing to history hit. If you enjoyed this episode, you might like an explainer we did a while ago on the Hundred Years' War that gives an overview of the whole conflict. And there's a series that runs through the Wars of the Roses too, if you haven't had enough of war. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back

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I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval. with history hits.