Gone Medieval - The Black Prince

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Edward of Woodstock, famously known as the Black Prince, was held up as the epitomy of Medieval Chivalry. Matt Lewis is joined by the Black Prince's biographer, Michael Jones to discuss King Edward III's eldest son; how he took command of the English vanguard at the Battle of Crécy at just 16 years old, captured the French King at Poitiers, his potential as a king, and the enigmatic origins of his nickname.Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Joseph Knight. 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. We've gone medieval. There is a man who represents one of the greatest what-if moments in English medieval history. He was the oldest son of the mighty King Edward III. He became the first Duke of the first dukedom in English history when his father created him Duke of Cornwall. He was a founding member of the Order of the Garter, into which I'm still awaiting my invitation, by the way. He fought in the legendary victory at the Battle of Cressy and led the English army at Poitiers. He was born to be king, shaped and moulded by experiences second to none. Yet, he would never rule England. He was not King Edward IV. Instead, history remembers him by another epithet, the Black Prince, which sounds pretty cool. So who was this Chevalric

warrior? How did the events of the Hundred Years' War shape his life? And what kind of king mighty have been? To help us get to know him better, I'm delighted to welcome his biographer, Michael Jones, whose 2018 book, The Black Prince is the captivating story of an incredible life. Welcome to God Medieval, Mike. It's fantastic to have you with us. It's a big pleasure, Matt. I can't wait to get stuck into this figure. Again, it's going to be a name that everybody knows, but how much do you really know about the life and career of the Black Prince? So I wonder if you could start off, just to set the scene for us.

Who is the Black Prince? When is he born? Who is his parents? What situation is he born into? Yeah, he's born in 1330, and his parents are Edward III, and Edward's Queen, Philippa of Eno, he's born into a period of uncertainty, really, that the reign of his father, Edward II, was blighted by civil war. England had gone on to the defensive, both in terms of the war with Scotland and also its possessions in France. So he's born, I wouldn't say necessarily at a time of crisis, but a time of dislocation politically and militarily.

Edward III is quite young when the Black Prince is born as well, isn't he? And that seems later on to forge a sort of closeness between them that almost verges on brotherhood? Yeah, there is a kind of brotherhood between them. And symbolically, when the Black Prince was born, it marked an occasion where Edward III really established his own authority. He was 18 and broke away from the rule of his mother and also his mother's favorite Mortimer and established his rule in his own right.

And I mean, this is tempting to speculate, but the birth of his son seems to have been a galvanizing influence. And I think that a consequence of that, well, of course he was the oldest son and heir apparent, But a consequence, I think, psychologically, was that there was a sense of brotherhood in arms, really, and one sees that in the creation of the Order of the Garter around 1348, where the king and the black prince are co-creators of this extraordinary chivalrous order. Yeah, which I've repeatedly said, the only thing that I would really want in terms of honours in my life, if I could be a member of the Order of the Garter, that would be so cool. So I'm jealous of anyone who has been or is a member of the Order of the Garter. I think it's an incredible institution.

Well, that would have been music to the ears, both Edward III and the Black Prince. So they'd probably give you an honorary invitation, Matt. Oh, I'll keep waiting for that. I'm sure it's in the post somewhere. You know, it'll turn up eventually. And we're going to get into some detail about his life and his career. But I wonder if you could just give us a kind of quick overview

of why the Black Prince is a significant figure in English political history. Why is he important? In a way, he's very involved in the 100 Years' War, and we'll get onto this in terms of the narrative, but he's a powerful military figure, but also becomes an embodiment of, an embodiment really of chivalry belief system that was so powerful at this time in the Middle Ages.

And I think that I'm a great admirer of the Black Prince. I think that he's in a privileged position because his father has to be pragmatic in much of his dealing. But when you're a prince rather than the king, you have, if you like, leeway in terms of patronage, in terms of lifestyle, to really step into that chivalrous world. So the black prince is important in terms of his military prowess. He will become important because he will rule

the principality of Akitaine, that's later on in our story, in his own right. But I think the key thing is he becomes a focal point for, if you like, chivalrous sentiment, a kind of idealism about the way, certainly from point of view, the aristocracy, but in the broader realm as a whole of how ideal rules should be carried out. And when you're putting together a biography of the Black Prince, How much good historical source material do you have for his life? Is he well documented? Are there any problems with the sources that you had to deal with? We have a good variety of sources, bearing in mind it's the 14th century, not the 16th or 17th,

when there are a lot more personal sources, letters and diarons. But we have a life of the Black Prince by the Chandos Herald that was composed. the Child Dust Herald was on the Black Prince's campaign to Castile, and so the count there is very, very vivid. But in the early sections of the life, he's clearly talked to a lot of people close to the Black Prince. So it's a powerful and detailed source. Of course, it's very much in favor of the Black Prince. And with all source material, one has to sort of assess and measure it, we've got some good, chronicle material, there was more that one could unearth,

particularly some of the more obscure French chronicles, that do give very attractive vignettes about what the prince was like as a person. And there's a whole range of documentary evidence that what is known as the registers of the black prints, which are a mine of information that have been known for a very long time. But what motivated me when I wrote my book was to really troll the French archives, The prince spent a very large part of his career fighting and then ruling in France, in the southwest of France. And there are some very, very interesting archival documentary sources, some of them new that can be brought into the picture. And I guess lots of people who know the name the Black Prince will want to know why we call him that.

His name's Edward. how does he acquire the name Black Prince? Because I think I've seen several potential theories. So I don't know if you have a theory that you favour or any thoughts on the other theories. Well, the first thing to say, he was never called the Black Prince in his lifetime. So he and his contemporaries would have been quite mystified

by this way of describing him. And, I mean, I've said that Chanders Herald writes a life of the prince, which is now called a life of the Black Prince, but that's us. The first evidence of him being called the Black Prince is some 200 years or so after his birth when an antiquarian, John Layland,

who traveled around the country, you know, visiting places and jotting notes down. When you visited the Black Prince's tomb, a Canterbury Cathedral, and if you're interested in the Black Prince, you may know about his magnificent tomb already if you don't please come and visit it. And also the Cathedral 9, the crypt, has a brilliant display of the Black Prince's achievement. So it's well worth a visit.

I'm just putting that in there. But Leyland visiting Canterbury Cathedral and the tomb jotted down that this was the tomb of the Black Prince. So that was the first reference to it quite obscure. The first reference in print was in the chronicle of Richard Grafton in about. About 1572. So again, a long time after the Black Prince died. And it was really William Shakespeare, who popularised, Shakespeare used Grafton's Chronicle, and he popularised it.

So in Henry V, the French King, Charles VI, bemoaning how the English of afflicted French fortunes, looks back in time and mentions the terrible Prince of Wales, the Black Prince of legend. And once Shakespeare has mentioned something, it's enshrined in our consciousness. So that's the chronology of it. So we're kind of back projecting from a sobriquet, a nickname that was created several hundred years after his death. And there are, as you said, a variety of theories.

So all I can do is offer my own, which is that if we go back to the first reference, John Layland, he's visited Canterbury, Cathedral. cathedral and my own belief is that it was a nickname for the prince and the tomb from pilgrims. The tomb is placed very close to the shrine of Thomas de Beckett, so it's right on the M1, if you like, of pilgrimage routes. And the tomb itself is very striking because the badges that adorn the monuments of the black prince, the badges of peace with the ostrich feather, which are very imposing have a black backdrop. So I think it was a nickname that pilgrims used for the tomb and the prince. Yeah. And important to remember then that he was never called that in his lifetime.

No. I mean, it didn't really mean anything to him and it wasn't something that his contemporaries called him. No, they never did. If we could go back a little bit to Edward's upbringing, do we know much about how he was raised in terms of being heir to the English throne? What was his education have looked like? As far as we know, it was a conventional education. He was trained in the arts of war pretty early. I mean, normally an aristocrat or a prince would start martial training around the age of nine. The prince already was kitted out. He had his own sword, miniature armour and even his own tent by the age of seven. So he was expected to learn fast on the job. I think... No pressure or anything. No pressure at all. The thing is the thing. The thing is

that really strikes me is that he's surrounded in the broader ambiance of the court and culture of his father and mother, he's surrounded by a colossal sense of expectation that the idea that through acts of valor, the English would regain a sense of power, a sense of mission. And I think that's kind of incarcerated into his outlook. So he learns on the job. And I think he's profound. the influence by stories of what went well in previous history and military history and also what went wrong, I think there's a resolution to do better to somehow that England's reputation has been besmirched by the failures in the war against Scotland, the humiliation of terms imposed on them in terms of their rule over Gascany in southwest France.

And there's, I think, a huge expectation that wrongs will be righted, and England's martial reputation and standing in Europe will be restored. It seems like a lot to put on the shoulders of a child, but he also seems like someone who was willing to take that on. You know, he imbibed deeply of all of this sense that there was something that needed to be corrected. There was history that you could learn from. there were ways that you could do things better than they'd ever been done. So there was a lot of expectation on him,

but also he seems to have put a lot of expectation on himself, even as a child growing up. He's living this life and almost can't wait to be an adult and take part in it. Yeah, we have to remember far more than the prince was pious from an early age, and it's far more than conventional piety. And we get on to Cressy, I'm sure, and also the siege of Calais, on both occasions during the battle and then during the siege, the prince nearly dies. And I think came to believe that he was protected by God.

And if one sees oneself being protected by God, then there is a huge sense of mission. And this would come again in the way the prince saw the Battle of Poitia, his great victory against the French, that this was a battle that was going seriously wrong, but he was protected by God and given. divine strength. So I think this mission comes into play very early. And interestingly, in the will of Archbishop Stratford, who was on the governing council with the young prince, when the third was abroad, in his will, I mean to other people, including the king, their conventional gifts of silver spoons, this, that and the other. But to the black prince, Stratford, gives a silver resurrection depiction. And I think this was personal and insightful that Stratford was

recognising already that the prince saw himself and was perceived as a man of destiny, young man at the stage of destiny. Amidst all of this martial training and expectation, do we see much room for the influence of his mother, Philippa of Hainel? Yeah, one influence was spending. Edward III, Edward III was also overspending in the sense that he was embarking on a very ambitious foreign policy. But Philippa's household and lifestyle was quite extravagant, and I think the Black Prince followed that. Also, I mean, both Edward III and Philippa were capable of being enormously charming. And indeed, when the chronicler Jean Fras first visits the English court, I mean, he is enormously, charm. Now that charm will go sour, but I think one sees the influence of Philippa, and it's often

lost that sometimes I think the prince can be enormous a carb will cut out, a two-dimensional depiction of martial valor, but nothing much else. He had a very mischievous sense of humor. He understood the power of largesse, the power of gift-giving, and he had a natural ability. to win people over. And I certainly think that one sees this in Edward III as well, but I see it more strongly in Philadelphia. How then does Edward the Black Prince's military career begin? Is Cressy kind of his baptism of fire?

Yeah, it certainly is a baptism of fire because he's given command of the vanguard of the English Army that's on an ambitious campaign. It lands in Normandy and marches towards Paris to draw the French king into battle and then moves back to what I think was very likely to have been a prepared battle side at Cressee

and the prince was in the vanguard of the army on the march which was an honour position and he was clearly up for the fight he took prominent role in some of the fighting and he's only 16 at this point isn't he as well in charge of the front portion of the army at the age of 16 remember the future Henry

the fifth Prince Henry is around the same age during the Battle of Shrewsbury and plays a really important part in the battle as well. So I think that you did. I think one hastens to add here that the prince was surrounded by trusted experience advisors and both in terms of counsel, but in terms of actual fighting and commands. He has key men around him who are very experienced. So he's learning on the job, but I would also caution against seeing him merely as a figurehead, but he has that support in place. And why this vanguard position is very significant to Cressee is if we look at the topography of the likely battlefield site. I mean, the battlefield site has recently been questioned or is being debated,

but I still favor the traditional battle sites. And basically, Edward III was making the Black Prince himself and the vanguard a kind of bait to lure the French forward. So that in terms of the terrain, there was a, the English were on a hill and there was an embankment which would force the French cavalry because it was largely a cavalry on the French side against infantry on the English. The French would be funneled into the English position and if you like the stopper on that bottle was the Black Prince's division. So he would bear the brunt. His forces would bear the brunt

the fighting, which was both, I mean, this is tough love, 14th century style. It meant that if all went well, the prince would win his spurs, but if it went badly, he wouldn't be winning anything. And he did come very close to being killed. The French broke through not just the battle line, but broke into his own personal bodyguard. The standard was grabbed by the French and then grab back again. And according to some chronicers, the prince was concussed and knocked to the ground, but he picked himself up and carried on fighting. So he really does gain renown in this exceptional English victory in 1346. It feels like a really dangerous game for Edward III to have been playing with his oldest son and his heir. Yes, you want him to take on the military characteristics

that he might need as a king, but at 16 to throw him in front of a French army, Edward must have been, well, both Edwards, Edward III and Edward the Black Prince, must have been slightly terrified about what might have happened. I think that's quite a modern way of seeing things. And I suppose what I'd put into place here is that at Banachburn in 1314, and that Banachburn, this defeat of Edward II, Edward III's father, by the Scots. hangs over like a shroud, everything that follows, and the English cavalry are defeated.

And as a result, in the Hundred Years' War, they always fight on foot. It's like they don't want to go down that route again. And whatever else one says about Edward II, he was personally brave, but he was almost forced to flee from the battlefield for precisely the reason you've said. You know, it's gone terribly wrong,

but the last thing we want is for the French. to capture you. But this is a huge propaganda disaster. So although Edward II rides, Palmel and eventually escapes, it's so humiliating that I think from the point of view of Edward III and the Black Prince, they'd rather take the risk of being killed and be seen in that light. And I just think in terms of medieval kingship, because often Richard the Larnhart in the 12th century was seen as very foolhardy, there's a moment when he wants to ride to the rescue of a reconnaissance party that he's sent out that's surrounded by the French. And some of his advisors said, don't even think about it, that the risk is too great. And you want to be captured. You're the

king, after all. And Richard's reply is very simple. He says, those men are there, those men, are at risk because they have followed my command. And if I don't make an attempt to rescue, and I don't deserve to be wearing the crown. And I suspect that Edward III, and the black prince knew of that incident and certainly would have shared its sentiments. And so after Cressy, as you mentioned earlier,

they move on to the siege of Calais, and this is the point at which Calley will be taken by the English and held for just a shade over 200 years. What part does the Black Prince play in the siege of Calais? So again, it's very interesting. We know that the Black Prince gets knocked around at Kressy, but some new research I did showed that the Black Prince became very ill. Of course, in our program we are using this title of convenience, the Black Prince.

He became very ill, and I found a very interesting document that the Count of Flanders was in alliance with the English and a hospital under the patronage of the Count. of Flanders, was looking after the Black Prince. This is during the siege. So Edward has left the siege, you know, obviously experienced commanders are still carrying on with it to be by his son. And then as a grant of Thanksgiving that the prince's life has been saved, Edward the third promises to found a hospital in that area. So you have a double whammy of, you know, by the grace of God. So we do, the prince.

and the king go back to the siege and it's successfully concluded, but also from the prince's point of view, there is this emerging sense of destiny. Of kind of indestructibility that God wants him to survive all of these things because he's meant for something greater. Indeed, and this is going to create a lot of bathos later on when we look at not only what went wrong, but how the prince might have tried to understand or come to terms with why, it was going wrong.

Yeah, fascinating stuff. And one of the military tactics that will become closely associated with Edward, the Black Prince, is the Chevalche. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what those were, why they were useful, and why the Black Prince is keen on using them. Well, yeah, I mean, they're used by Edward III in the war against Scotland and also in France. Cheveshévichet literally means a riot.

The idea is both men at arms and archers. are moving in fast mobile columns, spanning out over quite a distance. And the idea of a Chevaisei is to damage the agrarian economy. For a number of reasons, first of all, by raiding, destroying, burning, it renders these lands incapable of paying taxes and supporting the French war effort. And that in itself is very important. And of course, France is economically more populous and more prosperous than England. So economically, these are important tactics.

But it's also more than that because I think if you launch a Chevaix, you might be forced to face a battle, a pitch battle, and you have to be confident that your army can regroup and fight. And both Edward III and the Black Prince are, so they're prepared in these Cheva Shevichet. to fight, and we'll learn about that in the Pratier campaign. And if the French, either the king himself or those magnates who are commanding the regions that are being raided, fail to put up a strong resistance, they're also being humiliated. So it's like you can't even defend your own

people. And when the Black Prince launches a big Chevalchet in 1355 across the south of France, really from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the French King's lieutenant is criticized. So there is an inquiry, and the inquiry doesn't attack the Black Prince. It doesn't say what an awful chap he is, although this was a very brutal raid. It says how appalling that the defences weren't properly maintained and he wasn't confronted in battle. So this is a big morale booster. So it has a propaganda element, particularly as the English for fighting this war, ultimately, it derives from Edward III claiming the throne of France. And it's very powerful to be able to say that if you had a king who God favoured and who has the rightful claim, he'd be putting up a much

better resistance. It seems like they have a bit of everything from a 21st century point of view, it seems like quite a brutal thing that it's essentially targeting the rural population, the civilian population, but it also serves so many purposes in a 14th century context in terms of denying resources to your enemy, but also, if you say, embarrassing them and causing those people in the rural communities to question, you know, why would I have that person as my lord who can't defend me when I could have this person who clearly has the military upper hand? So there's a lot of psychological stuff going on as well as the physical warfare. Exactly, and it's similar to the issue you were talking about before the conscious acceptance of risk in battle.

So in some respects in the Middle Ages, they see things differently from us. And if we get on to Poitiers then, so we're signed it 10 years after Cressie in 1356, does Poitiers-Be begin as a chevreche? Yes, it does. So it's a chevice but a chevicee with a broader military purpose. So the Black Prince's army is coming up from Gascany towards the Loire. And the plan is to have three armies, to have three English armies, one under a very competent nobleman, Henry of Grosmontein. Brittany, the king himself will land at Calais.

And the Black Prince will come up from Gascany, and this kind of combined movement will trap the French king, who is struggling, he's facing opposition from his own nobleman, and this is seen as a great plan. But it all goes wrong for a variety of reasons. So by the time the prince, after some delays, gets to the Loire, he finds out that Edward III isn't coming after all. And, you know, the force from Brittany is trying to reach him, but unable to reach him. The Loire was very heavily flooded that summer. And then the French, the king and his aristocrats, who'd been conducting a very lackluster campaign,

were suddenly galvanized by the thought, my good, we could actually pounce on the black prince and wipe him out. And at this point, the black prince is in serious trouble, and he's moving back towards Gascany with a, it needs to be emphasized an Anglo-Gascon army in the Gascons. It's often described as an English army, but the Gascons were reversed. very important part of that army and there were good troops, but they were heavily outnumbered and they were in big trouble. So how do they end up then being confronted by the French at the Battle of Patier? What role does the Black Prince play in kind of deciding the military tactics of that day? The broader question is how we understand warfare and medieval warfare, and of course we are

very fascinated by tactics. And up to a point, medieval commanders were too, that from a tactical point of view, the English will start in a traditional manner of dismounting, finding protection for their archers. So the long bow has the potential to be a battle-winning weapon if it's used correctly. But the French have wised up a bit since Cressy, when these tactics were used very effectively, and they're not making the same mistakes. So they have very strong cavalry forces, but also their main body will advance on foot. So it's a different tactical mix. And the other thing is that the French have got so many more troops.

So at the crisis point of the battle, when the Black Prince's army has conducted itself very well and beaten off the first French advance than the king's own force, his own division, is larger than the... entire Anglo-Gascone army, which is knackard, to be honest. And one soldier just goes, kind of bloody hell, I'm out of here. And although the prince rounds on him and says, you know, you knave, no battle is lost while

I'm still in command, it doesn't quite, people are going, yeah. But the prince, since his close entourage, this is where the Chandos Herald, I mentioned, who did this life of the black prince, he catches this moment. talk to people who clearly were around the black prince. What happens is quite remarkable. If you imagine this huge French force advancing towards the prince's position, the prince stops and prays out loud. So there's this little, the eye of calm in the storm. He prays, and his entourage around you must have been absolutely quiet. And when he finishes praying, suddenly there's an idea from some of his military advisors,

why don't we try this? And it involves sending a cavalry force behind outflanking to come up from the rear. And then the extraordinary thing, and this is really dreamt up on the spur of the moment, is not some deep tactical blueprint in the map room. The whole English force, I mean English and Gascon force, is given orders to mount up.

So they reverse the tactics, on the spur of the moment, and the signal is given, and the force riding behind comes into the French position, and they all charge the entire Prince's army towards where the king is with such force that they knock the king's own bodyguard and the men around him right out of the battle line and into a neighboring bed. If we use the funeral oration in Canterbury, but it comes from clearly a conversation from the prince himself. They're still at this point outnumbered about 10 to 1, but you can imagine they're totally adrenalized.

You know, the arches are mounted up and come after them, and the French just don't know what's going on. So it's very hard to rationally explain that. And the prince, particularly in his chantry chapel in Canterbury, he sees it as the story of Samson and the lion, the lion being subdued by God-given strength. And one chronicler, Jeffrey LeBaker, again, clearly talked to a lot of veterans of that battle,

describing the prince being heroically fighting everywhere, again, this idea of God-given strength. And so I think it was seen by the prince and his entourage as a miraculous victory, and of course had a miraculous result, because not only were the French defeated, but their king, Jean the second, was captured. And that must have been a real high point for the black prince

to think that he could go back to his father and present him with the king of France who's been captured on the battlefield in a war to try and take control of France. That must have felt like a real high water mark. It was a high water mark, and I think a bittersweet moment for the king, or perhaps, you know, over time,

because in some respects his son is starting to surpass him in martial endeavor and achievement. But yes, a very powerful moment. And it leads, it's a huge bargaining counter. And after another campaign in 1359 to 60, the Rats campaign, the treaty of Brittany is signed. And this treaty gives the English the principality of Accutain, a much enlarged Gascony. And unlike their predecessors, they hold this in sovereignty, they no longer, like Henry II and Richard Delarnhart and their successors, they no longer have to render homage for it. And when Edward III makes his son, Prince of Accutain, he specifically, and the grant says, and quite vividly, this is, you know, a reward for the sweat

and toil of you and your army on that campaign. I quite like the idea of Edward III saying that's really nice son, kind of through gritted teeth, because actually this little version of himself that he's created is beginning to surpass him. And that must have been, as you said, a bittersweet feeling that he's being eclipsed by his own son. Edward, the Black Prince, will go on to acquire a huge chivalric reputation. After Poitier, he gets involved in tournaments and things like that. Does that help to craft his chivalric reputation? and I also wondered whether you could talk a little bit about

whether there are any blots on that. I think famously the massacre at Limoges in 1370 has sort of been laid at his feet as a black mark against him. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about his kind of chivalric reputation, please. He was involved in tournaments from the off

spectator while he was still a child and then in combat in his teens along with many of his closest friends and advisors. And in a way, you can imagine that an aspect of the order of the garter is two tournament teams on either side won the King's team or won the Black Prince's team. So being skilled in tournament was a part of the Black Prince's life. In terms of broader chivalrous reputation, I mean, there are many factors. There's a tournament.

There's Lajette. There are so many aspects of chivalry. But where things start to go wrong, you know, we'll get to Limoges, but the prince intervenes in Spain in support of the deposed king of Castile, who had the wonderful name of Pedro the Cruel. And the prince also has to seek the support because this unsavory person held the roots over the Pyreneers of Charles the Bad. And so cruel and bad, and the whole campaign, although the prince wins, that he wins this great battle at Nakhira in 1367. My own view is that the prince

sees this as where subsequently is seeing this as where things go wrong because Pedro the cruel is an excommunicans and I think this is where the prince starts seeing over the next few years that he's lost that divine protection and the English cause has lost the protection and favour of God. And why this is important to Le Mouge, the new King of France, Charles V, reopens the war in 1369. And why this idea of losing God's favour is so important is that the prince, who's now suffering from illness, will talk about his illness, perhaps in a while, both his personal illness and the reversal of fortunes. The king broke as an agreement with his father,

in which towns that have sworn allegiance to the Prince and to Edward III, if they go over to the French because of force majeure, there aren't enough troops to look after them, they should not be penalized. Because in the traditional account of LaMoge, which was loyal to the Prince, and then part of the town then goes over to the forces of Charles V, It's seen that the prince orchestrates this terrible punishment for oath-breaking, where

3,000 innocent civilians begging for mercy and nevertheless slain in cold blood. This is the product of Jean Frassard, and in my book, I use a variety of chronicle and documentary evidence, some of it knew to show this is very unlikely to happen, and in fact, the reverse seems to happen, so that the French garrison when some of the town, the prince had very good relations with Lemosge, actually let the prince's army in, then the garrison turn on the inhabitants. And I think those in the book itself, the end notes, the appendix, this is discussed in detail. But the one thing I would say here is that when the prince dies in 1376, the French, this is

absolutely extraordinary. Have a solemn day of morning. This is a man who's beaten and in a battle conducted these brutal raids and they hold a recrean mass for him. And a French chronicler, court chronicler, says this may come across as rather strange that we're holding this for our mortal enemy. But what he represented transcended that and was a kind of emblem of how chivalry should be conducted. Now, I don't think that recrium mass would have been. held for someone who slayed 3,000 innocent French civilians. So there we go. One more reason to go and read the book, I guess. I wonder if we could just talk a tiny little a bit more about that Castilian civil war. And you mentioned that the Black Prince becomes

embroiled in that party to do with access over the Pyrenees and things like that. But it also seems to, it comes with the victory at Nehara, which I think, again, is another high point for him on an otherwise difficult campaign. But it also comes at the detriment to his health. Was it that campaign that ultimately made him ill? That is often said. This was a very tough, grueling campaign, and in its aftermath, many of the soldiers were afflicted by dysentery. Amoeic dysentery, if we believe that is what finished Henry Vist off, it did so very quickly. And the Prince's illness goes on for years and years and years, and dysentery kills people in weeks or months. So certainly his soldiers

were affected, but when the prince comes back to Gascony, he's very active in government and administration for about a year. So the dysentery outbreak is in the summer of 1367. The first evidence of the prince becoming seriously ill is in the autumn, late autumn of 1368. So it's commonly said, but I don't think it was the case. My own view is that what the prince becomes afflicted with is rectal cancer, and that's because a surgeon who wrote a treatise on rectal cancer, John of Arden, and he brought this out on the year of the prince's death, I think that's a kind of telling coincidence,

but we will never know for sure. Whatever it was, it was a terrible wasting sickness that really becomes evident in that last phase of the war. and ultimately forces the prince to leave Akitaine and come back to England. Which from the prince's point of view must have reinforced that idea that God had, for some reason, withdrawn his favour. This is a man who had considered himself invincible and meant for some greater purpose, and now all of a sudden he's finding himself wasting away and struggling. He must have felt like he'd done something to lose God's favour. And maybe, as you said, the fact that Pedro the cruel was excommunicated,

might have played into that, but he must have felt like something had gone horribly wrong for him. Yeah, absolutely. I think this was the medieval idea of the wheel of fortune, that when you're at the highest point of your career, when everything is going brilliantly, and if you think the prince, he's won at Opratier, he's married, very beautiful, Joan of Kant, he's married for love, he has this magnificent court in Akitaine, and then it all goes wrong very, very quickly. and one thing is that when we visit the prince's tomb, it's very, very close deliberately.

His son Richard the second actually disobeyed the will of his father in this one instance so that the tomb would be as close as possible. It was going to be in the crypt, but the tomb would be as close as possible to the shrine with Thomas the Beckett. But if the prince dedicated his victory to God and Thomas the Beckett, but he was supporting someone not only an exhumicant, but the last thing he did before he reached the prince was he murdered on consecrated ground, the Archbishop of Santiago de Campostela, the other great pilgrimage route. So I think two and two pretty quickly equaled four in the prince's own mind, and this was indeed the tragedy of his life. And you mentioned he will effectively govern in Aquitaine sort of in his own right.

as Prince there. Do we get, amidst his growing illness, do we get enough of a view of him ruling in Aquitaine to get a sense of what kind of ruler he might have been? Can it give us a glimpse of what kind of King of England he might have ever made? Yeah, and it's far more than just having big tournaments and swanky banquets. The prince, and there is an element of risk in this, he developed a way of ruling that was chivalrous, that was based on an honour code. if you had some tough local lord who was oppressing the local population, a pragmatic view would be, what he might be a tough old bastard, but he's a useful guy to have on our side, and we don't him defecting to the Valois king, Charles V, but the Black Prince took the view that if someone

was oppressing the population and was not behaving in a bad way, he should be removed. And that won him a lot of loyalty, but it made in some very dangerous. enemies as well. And I guess goes against the idea of that man at Lamoge who is, you know, punishing a community because he's willing to stand up to rulers who are behaving badly. So there's maybe a bit of an indicator again there that maybe he wasn't behind a kind of massacre at Limoge. I think absolutely, absolutely. So could you just bring us towards the close? When does the Black Prince die? You've mentioned what you think may have been the illness that afflicted him, but when does he die? And how significant, how consistent?

consequential is his death? So he dies in 1376, a year before his father. So his father outlives him. And he, in a way, his illness protects his reputation because it takes him out of the firing line of criticism as the government because, I mean, he has brief periods of recovery, but he's not at the center of his father's administration. So it protects him. And in the good parliament of the year of the prince's death, he's seen as a kind of ideal champion of England's fortunes. So there is this element of idealism,

whether he would have been able, if fit and well, to reverse the decline in English fortunes in the war. And indeed, in government generally is, of course, a big question. I guess he ends up in that position of not living long enough to fail and people can hang all of those hopes around him and obviously he leaves us with Richard the second, a young boy who will become a king and we'll remember that as a reign that will end badly. But as you mentioned, the Black Prince is sort of removed from any kind of blame for the things that have gone wrong by his early death and you can hold him up as this great chivalric figure who might have done

so much more. I wonder if you had an idea from your research about him, from writing the biography. Do you think he would have made a good king of England? Yes, I do. I think that he would have needed to have tempered his high principles with a measure of pragmatism. And I think that he would have needed to have kept a closer check on his spending. But in the broader sense, he had the huge gift of, binding the aristocracy, binding the governing past, and also reaching out to ordinary people,

which his son, who had become Richard II, sadly lacked. And this was a huge contrast, that Richard's uneasy relationship with most of his aristocracy, which became a hallmark of not only his reign, but also the civil war and ultimately his deposition. In that sense, he was the opposite of his father. So I do think on balance, if he had been fit and well, the prince would have been a great king. Potentially would have had time to make a better king out of his son as well, maybe. Yes. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Mike. It's been amazing to get a little bit closer to the Black Prince. I'm definitely going to add Canterbury Cathedral and visiting his team to the list of things I really, really need to get on and do because I haven't ever been to Canterbury Cathedral, which is a terrible thing for me to admit. I'd thoroughly recommend the book, and I will be hoping to go and visit the tomb at Canterbury. Thank you so much for bringing us a little bit closer to The Black Prince. It's been a pleasure. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can grab Mike's book, The Black Prince, to find out even more. You can also find episodes in our back catalogue on Edward III, his wife and his mistress, with Gemma Holman, and on the end of the Hundred Years' War with Jonathan Sumpchin.

There are a new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and to get all of History Hits podcasts ad free. Sign up now at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.