In Our Time - The Battle of Crécy

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the town of Crécy in northern France. Although the French, led by Philip VI, massively outnumbered the English, under the command of Edward III, the English won the battle, and French casualties were huge. The English victory is often attributed to the success of their longbowmen against the heavy cavalry of the French. The Battle of Crécy was the result of years of simmering tension between Edward III and Philip VI, and it led to decades of further conflict between England and France, a conflict that came to be known as the Hundred Years War. WithAnne Curry Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton Andrew Ayton Senior Research Fellow in History at Keele Universityand Erika Graham-Goering Lecturer in Late Medieval History at Durham UniversityProducer Luke Mulhall

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, on the 26th of August 1346, two armies met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the village of Cresci in northern France. The French, led by Philip the 6th,

far outnumbered the English, under the command of Edward III. However, the English won the battle. A feat often put down to their use of longbowmen against the French heavy cavalry. French casualties were huge. The Battle of Crescia was the result of years of simmering tension between Edward III and Philip the 6th, and it led to decades of further conflict between England and France,

a conflict that came to be known as the Hundred Years' War. With me to discuss the Battle of Crescia are Andrew Aiton, Senior Research Fellow in History at Keel University, Eric Graham Garing, a lecturer in late medieval history at Durham University, and Anne Currie, Emeritus Professor of medieval history at the University of Southampton. Anne Currie, can you tell us something about Edward III? He reigned for 50 years. When did he first come to the throne?

He came to the throne in January 1327 under really quite unusual circumstances because his father, Edward II, had been deposed essentially by his wife, Isabella, and Roger Mortimer, her lover. So Edward was only 14 when he became king. And I think at that point he's very much under the tutelage of his mother and mortuary. It doesn't really cease control till 1330. And this is a bad time. Relations with the French are not good.

They'd had to come to a treaty soon after he became king, actually, that gave the French a lot of what they wanted out of the war that had happened over the previous three years. And then even worse, in March of 1328, they had to come to a humiliate. treaty with the Scots as well. So Edward really begins his reign in a very bad position vis-à-vis English ambitions against the French and against the Scots. Of course, the reason why they've been fighting the French isn't anything to do at this stage with a claim to the Crown, but it's about the territories that English kings had had in France since the 12th century, particularly the Duchy of Aquitaine, based on its capital at Bordeaux, and also an area around

the Somme, known as the County. of Pontier that had been inherited through the wife of Edward I, Eleanor of Castile. Now those were good lands to have, but they weren't held in absolute sovereignty. Edward was Duke of Aquitaine and essentially held the county of Pontier. So he owed homage for those to the French king and that's really a difficult situation. Been going on for a long time and then it went on for the 100 years war after that, so it was a rather pivotal point here. It had indeed. Of course, one thing was that in 1204, King John.

John had lost Normandy because previously the kings of England had held Normandy given that it was England to be conquered by William the Conquer back in 1066. If they dropped something on the pavement out of a hole in their pocket. That's an interesting thought. I think the loss of Normandy was more significant than that because we had a cross-channel nobility, some with lands in England and in Normandy. And of course, after 12 or 4 they had to choose, were they going to become French or were they going to become English?

And that was seismic in England. Definitely. It's a real turning point. and the Normans and the French just love to celebrate that victory too. And so he's faced with this, he's quite young. Is he being well advised? Does he know which side is on? I think for the first three years of his reign, he doesn't really know what to do.

But when he sees his power, he starts to become much more interventionist. He's particularly ambitious against the Scots. That's where we see him first active in the early 1330s. And it's in Scotland that Edward really serves. his apprenticeship, winning a battle at Hallidan Hill in 1333, that very much sets the tone for the use of archers later on. Thank you very much. Erica, Graham Garang, when the French King Louis X died in 1316, there was a succession crisis. I mean, that century is just full of succession crisis, so let's place up to it. What was the nature of that crisis?

So this particular crisis, indeed one of many, happens when, as you say, Louis the 10th dies, and he leaves only a young daughter and a posthumously born son who is king for all of five days of his life. And it's unprecedented because of what's often called the Capitian miracle. Since this dynasty had taken the French throne back in 987, they'd had over 300 years of uninterrupted father-to-son transmission of the throne. And that is just biologically unlikely. It comes as a real shock to the political community

when all of a sudden there's no longer that son. girl pops out. Exactly. And the problem is there are no rules in place. You'll hear people say, oh, well, there's the Salic law. It forbids women coming to the throne. But that's actually not something the French were aware of at the time. Instead, we have a series of older uncles, the brothers of the last king, being adult males competing with young daughters. They are just more practical leaders to put in place. So you get Philip V, take the throne from Louis's daughter, then Charles the fourth taking the throne from Philip's daughters, and then it escalates. We run out of brothers.

What was Edward III's claim on the French throne? Did he have a real claim on the French throne and did he pursue it? When in 1328 we run out of those brothers, we can either climb back up the Capitian family tree and jump over to a cousin, Philip Valois, or we can consider Edward the third's claim because even though we've come to develop an idea that women don't themselves come to the throne, the question reigns, can they transmit their inheritance to a male relative? Well, Edward, we've already mentioned his mother, Isabella, she is the sister of all those Capitian brothers who succeed to the throne in turn.

So if she can't be queen in her own right, can Edward through her become king? What happens is that Philip the Six, he's a grown-up, whereas Edward at this time is only a teen, he's already embedded in the French political community. So a group of the elites, the magnates, choose him as king. Thank you very much. Andrew. In 1337, Philip the Sixth confiscated the Dutch of Aquitaine and the county of Pontier from Edward. Why did he do that and how did Edward respond? Well, he did that because, of course, he'd been drawn into the Scottish.

problem as well. The old alliance dating from the mid-90s had meant that the French were free and indeed willing to support the Scots in their efforts against the King of England. By the 1330s, we see Philip V. 6th actively intervening in Scotland. He harbours the Boy King, David II. He's planning a big military operation, a twin one in Scotland in the Channel. So tension is simmering between England and France already. Add to that a number of other circumstances which encouraged Philip to, as it were, gopher grabbing the territories that Edward held in France, the cancellation of the crusade that was one of his pet projects by Benedict X12, the Pope, who saw that the crusade was simply impractical, given the circumstances. That meant that the fleet that was being

based in the Mediterranean was moved to the channel, which created further cross-channel tensions between England and France. But the trigger for the confiscation of Aquitaine and Pontier in May 1337 was the fact that Robert Artois enters the scene. He's been at Edward III's court for several years. He had fallen out badly with Philip the 6th. He is the trigger. He's the justification for Philip to confiscate Aquitaine in May 1337. Thank you. Anne Currie. So his French lands are confiscated. That's where we are at the moment, Edward's French lands.

So he looks around for allies and looks in the low countries. It is like Bruges and Ipré and Ghent. Why were these cities important to him? What did they offer? Yeah, Edward really isn't in a position to launch a full frontal attack on France himself. He needs allies. And then what he does essentially is to buy military help. He spends a huge amount of money on this.

But why specifically those in the low countries, we would call it modern-day Belgium or the sort of areas around Luxembourg, that kind of thing? Well, because they're on the borders of France. And one of them that he really needs to get is the allegiance of the Flemish, because they're actually in France. The Count of Flanders is like himself, a vassal of the King of France.

So he can't get the Count of Flanders at this point. He's loyal to Philip the Six. but what he can get is the Duke of Brabant and he can also get the Count of Hainaut and also he can get the alliance with the Emperor, the Emperor Ludwig the 4th of Bavaria because the French and the Germans already hated each other and so what better than to get the Emperor

to declare Edward Vicar General of the Empire and allow him to attack that little bit of France around Combay that was actually in the Empire and that's really what Edward was planning. to do. Thank you. Erica, in 1340, we're slowly getting to the Battle of Crecy. In 1340, Edward declared himself King of France. Why did he do that then? The reason that he does it, he's got immediate reasons and long-term reasons. Immediately, it's those allies that Anne was just talking about. He's trying to convince the Flemish to rebel against the King of France, effectively. So if he says,

hey, I'm King of France, that gives them the excuse to say, well, we're actually supporting the rightful king. But longer term, it's really a way of cutting the Gordian knot of Akeeton. If he is tired of having his duchies and counties taken away from him, because he's, in theory, subject to the French king, wouldn't it be nice if he was the French king and no longer had to be subject to anyone else? Oh, good. Well, so he sat there thinking, wouldn't it be nice if I were a French king? Good. Who hasn't thought that? Andrew. Andrew Aiton. In 1341, there was a success and we'll get to the battle.

In 1341 there's a succession dispute in Brittany after the death of Duke John III. How did Edward and Philip get involved and what's going on there? There's an underlying and very important strategic factor from Edward III's point of view, the sea route from England to Aquitaine, and Bordeaux and Bayonne, the centre of the wine trade exports to England.

So it's partly about commerce, and it's partly about communications with the Duchy of Aquitaine. Now, the opportunity arises when Duke John III dies in April 1341. There are two candidates. His half-brother, John Montfort, and his niece, Jean de Pontiev and her husband, Charles de Bois. Philip backs the latter, Jean-de-Pontadiev,

and Jean-de-Montév turns to Edward III for assistance. There's a battle. at Morley in late September between a small English army and the forces of Charles de Bois, which shows a sort of miniature crese with archers and dismounted men at arms

in a defensive position, easily defeating heavy cavalry from the French. And so we come to the summer of 1346. Where Edward raised an army said to be the biggest army that had sailed from England, it sailed to France. What did you want

to achieve to you, Erica? What did he want to achieve? There's actually been some debate about this. You know, is he here just to wreak as much destruction as he can? Or is he here with a real targeted purpose of drawing Philip out to battle? Because we haven't had, in all these years of war, we haven't had a direct confrontation on land with the French king. I think it's actually a bit of both because you use the destruction to lure out the king.

The destruction being, when he took his army over, they rampaged through normally, and they laid waste to it as much as they could. they created havoc, took a lot of loot, and we're basically taunting the king of France, say, are you going to defend your people or not? Exactly. It's a technique called the Chevoche. And the reason to target Normandy specifically is that it is one of the wealthiest areas of France. It's an eighth of the kingdom in size, but it produces a quarter of the income. And it also politically has a very interesting relationship with the French king.

Ever since it was captured from the English in the 13th century, Normandy has a very strong independent spirit. It gets its privileges confirmed. It is a powerful political entity. So the king needs to keep up good relations with them and needs to be seen as to be acting as their proper leader. But that campaign, as Eric has said, is really quite astonishing. I mean, I think it's a sort of 14th century equivalent to Blitzkrieg.

He moves extremely quickly through Norman territory. He gets to Kai, he besieges it briefly. It falls to him and he lutes it. but the most straight on No, no. It's not a campaign of conquest. No, he's not acting as Duke. He's not here to say I'm reclaiming this for myself. He's saying

come protect your people if you if you dare. Can we just give me a bit more detail, Andrew, about the army that Edward would talk with him and how he'd raised it. Yeah, as you say, it's the biggest army that has taken to France during the hundred years of war. It's an army to fight a battle,

I think. The sheer scale of it, the number of archers involved, the key missile. About 8,000, out of about 14,000 in the army itself. 8,000 long women? Yeah. Some of them raised in retinues by noblemian alongside men-at-arms. Some of them raised in the counties, the shires of England and the Welsh lordships.

So, for example, a county like Dorset might be asked for 100. So you have an army with 8,000 archers, about 3,000 men-at-arms, and then other Welsh foot soldiers making up the balance. balance between archers to provide... And you mentioned cavalry? Yes, the men at arms could serve on horseback in a battle if they chose, but the English tended to fight on foot in this period. And the mounted archers that were raised in retinues with the men at arms,

they also dismounted in order to use their longbows in battle. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the army is the technical backup and the logistical achievement. A fleet of over 700 ships was required to carry... half a million arrows, 15,000 horses. The fleet had 15,000 mariners, more mariners took the army army that was in the army. They also had engineers. They had to prepare to rebuild the bridges that they knew the King of France would break

across Normandy during the campaign. And they had to be supplied, as I've said, with arrows and all the other paraphran. And also with food and stuff. Yes, to a certain extent for the beginning of the campaign. But as Anna said, the ravaging of Normandy, was also about gaining supplies for your army as well as depriving your opponent of them and looting town. The looting of French towns in Normandy was quite extraordinary, something that hadn't been experienced in the Hundred Years War. Can you particularise that?

Well, Con was attacked on the 26th of July. It was a bit of a mess from the point of view of the assault because the English army got out of hand, according to the sources. But the town was stripped. of its valuables. Many of the town dwellers were killed. The wealthier ones were ransomed and sent back to England, along with a handful of French nobleman

who had also been taken prisoner and sent back for ransom in England. What's interesting here is how controlled all of this was. Edward III was in charge of it, and it's the time when we have the first evidence of some military ordinances for the army. As Andrews said, pillaging was encouraged, but there were also orders not to attack churches,

not to attack women. Now, whether these were all maintained, of course, we don't know, but I think Edward was quite keen, for instance, to allocate a certain mileage on either side of the army to take food. It's a control thing because he wants to get through the territory as quickly as he possibly can. I was fascinating about what you said about the organisation and more mariners than soldiers. Over 80 ports supplied ships for the fleet, which was essentially a requisition merchant fleet. There was a tiny little core Royal Navy. of king's ships, but the vast majority of the over 700 ships were supplied by merchants and shipowners in England, requisitioned into service. Now, some of them stayed with the army after they'd landed and proceeded along the Norman coast, attacking small Norman ports after each other, and again, looting and burning and sending the booty back to England.

So they didn't care what the French thought of them then, didn't they? Well, well, they did care. They wanted the French to be frightened of them. Yes, indeed. And as Anne says, and as Erica was saying, you know, we're really talking here about probably provoking the King of France into accepting battle. And no better way of doing it than to completely devastate Normandy, which, as Erica says, provides quarter of the revenue of the kingdom. So that's going on, but battle hasn't commenced, but we're moving towards the fighting bit. And Philip must have known that this was going on. Word must have got back fairly quickly, very quickly.

What was his response? His response is, I think, of some shock. I think it takes him a while to decide what to do. But he does start to get an army together, and it's clear that Edward is provoking him. Edward, astonishingly, moves nearly up to Paris. He gets up to Poissie just outside Paris. And I think Philip, sitting in Paris,

is hoping that he can fight a battle near Paris, because that would have brought out all the Parisian militias, all of the troops that he's been able to pull together. but Edward is crafty. Edward doesn't want to fight on bad terms like that, so what he does is draw Philip away from Paris and he moves along to the Somme estuary and he crosses, a very famous crossing here at a place called Blanchetac. One of the most difficult things from medieval army, particularly the sort that Andrews described, is getting them across a big river estuary and the Chronicles celebrate that as one of Edward's great achievements. Why does he cross the the Somme, because he wants to get into the county of Pontier, that area that the English kings had held, the area they'd inherited from Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I. And astonishingly, too, Edward III has actually been to Cressy before. He was there in 1329. Now, I don't think in 1329, you thought that's going to be a nice place for a battle.

But even so, I think it's helpful for him to call Philip into territory that he's. claimed. So he gets to Cressy. Philip has followed him to Amiens, Abville, and Edward White's there between Cresci and Wadi Cour for Philip to come. So Philip walks into the trap.

Definitely. Erica, let's talk about the French organisation and how did they get prepared. They were in a hurry but what did they do that made them a big organised force which they were? We're told they're bigger than the British force. Many nobles on horseback, 12,000 and so on. It's often

described as a feudal army because what Philip does is he uses a tool called the Bon the Ban the Ban to summon up the people who owe him military service in exchange for the lands that they've done homage. And this actually means that we're not talking about a French army per se. It's people who are loyal to the king, but they are Normans, they are Burgundians, they are pickards, they're being called from all these other territories around the kingdom. And then on top of that, Philip can also use what's called the arreire, bondiards. the rear band to call up town militias. This is where Paris would have been useful,

to basically summon everyone in the kingdom who can to fight. Plus he has allies, the king of Bohemia, the Count of Flanders again coming in, so there are allied princes as well. And this feudal army is then supplemented by paid troops, most notably a large corps of Genoese crossbow men who are going to play a big role in the battle, worth flagging them up now.

They're organized into battalions, each under the leadership of one of the great princes who brought them there. And this has some pros and cons. The advantage, as you said, it's a big army. Conservative estimates have it at about, I think, 26,000 on the low end. And they have a really strong cavalry. The French knights are known as the flower of European knighthood in this period. So they are just known as an elite fighting force.

But on the other hand, trying to get an army this way is a slow process. there are people who are summoned like the Counts of Savoy who don't make it there till the next day, which makes planning of it difficult. And you get mixed quality. If you're summoning everyone who can fight, I mean, can is a loose word. And then on top of that, there are problems

with how do you deploy them most effectively? Where do you put the crossbow men? Where do you put the cavalry? And in effect, in this particular organization, Philip puts the crossbow men up front, cavalry behind, and that's going to play out in some unexpected ways when they, finally get onto the field.

Andrew, so there they go. 26th of August. Why at that place, this place was chosen by Edward, Edward III. Why did he choose this particular place? What were its advantages? I think Anne has put a finger on it, absolutely. It's Pontier.

We know he was going there from halfway through the campaign because he sent a letter back to England saying, you know, send reinforcements to Cotwa, which is on the north bank of the Somme. We know he was going there. It's symbolic. It's his d'Intyre.

heretage, it's something that he inherited from his forebears as a provocation to Philip the 6th to challenge the French king on land that you've paid homage for. That's the key thing. Also, Pontiour was known to quite

a few members of his army. One of his senior lieutenants, but Follot-Mu-Burgh should have been seneschal of Pontier in the mid-1330s. So there was that, but... And the point is that he, they would have known the ground. They would have known about the Blanche Tack Ford that Anne mentioned

earlier. It's a major crossing of the song, the only crossing of the song below at Ville. But what was it like? Was it a hill? Was it a valley? What was it? Well, the ground that was marched towards, not looked for, but marched towards which suggests that they did know

that it was going to be useful to them, is essentially a valley on the edge of the town of Cressy. On the western side, where the English deploy in a classic defensive formation, they will sit and wait. displaying the quartered arms of England and France as provocation to the King of France

when the advance guard of the French army arrives. The advance guard will arrive at the base of the valley. They won't be able to cross from the east because there's a steep bank there, so they'll be channeled through a narrow bottom neck into the area beyond where they can deploy. But coming up behind them constantly will be more and more horsemen,

more infantrymen, pushing them into this confined space. and in front of them the extreme provocation of the Prince of Wales with his courted arms and lilies of France. 16-year-old Prince of Wales, the Black Prince. It's quite a thought, isn't it? At the centre of the main battle. On the main plank, yeah. Absolutely. Surrounded, of course, by bodyguards.

Never mind, it's 16. And remember that Philip the 6th had been provoked endlessly during the Normandy campaign, the desolation of Normandy. He'd been tricked outside Paris as he'd seen it. You know, the man's blood was up. Now, some would say that he lost control of the French army and that there were so many noblemen in the French army who just wanted to go for it

after so many years of standoffs where the two armies simply hadn't fought. Others say that Philip lost his cool. I'm just going to add in a further thing about what Andrews said. We think that Philip was advised by some of his nobleman not to fight. So I think they realized that he was. walking into a trap. And indeed he was.

If we can imagine that Edward, who has a very good vantage point, he draws up his army, essentially with a hill and woodland behind there. He can see what is happening. Absolutely. It reminds me of the way the Romans

really finished off the Celts. They had exactly that formation in front of a wood. Anyway, never mind. Absolutely. And I think what you do is you deploy your troops in the most effective way,

possibly. He's got a smaller army. Smaller armies always stay put and adopt a defensive position. There's some suggestion he even had like a wagon camp either around or at the back or at the sides. But what he does, he has his men at arms in groups there and he has archers on the flanks

and I think probably archers in some sort of formation between the men at arms as well. So he's protecting his men at arms. They're going to be the ones, the men at arms who will be the hand-to-hand fighting against their fellow men at arms on the French side. But Edward's plan is, to cause as much damage to the French

before they can even get to fight with the military arms. Which brings us to the longbowmen, which are both effective and romantic, aren't they really? Well, they like that longbowmen. I think it's great. Take the longbowmen turn it and do the business. It's an interesting thought. And not all of them were Robin Hoods, you know. Not all that were crack shots. It didn't

matter if you had eight thousand. A few of them had little peccadillos, but on the whole, they were stout, sturdy Englishmen and could shoot a longbowl and half a mile of it over. And they were very disciplined. They were either in retinues or county groups and that sort of thing, they would have been told when to shoot. Front rank shoot now, second rank shoot now.

It's sporadic shooting of the arrows there. But in fact, they sit there all day and nothing happens. That's what's intriguing about Cressy. Philip is seen to appear with such a huge army. It's going to take him a long time to get into the field. And as Andrew has said, it's sort of funneling in. There's not enough space. The French do decide, he does decide to give

battle, Philip, even though not all his men are there, and that's probably very foolish. And he sends the Genoese crossbowmen in first, and that's fine, because you might have said, well, they will counteract to the English archers, except for two things. One is you can only fire one crossbow bolt for about every three arrows, and also you need to protect yourself while you're reloading, and the crossbowman had these tall shields, and they were still back in the baggage train. So he sent them in, naked if you like to the fight. The crossbowmen really end up taking the brunt of that initial long bow attack

there. It's not something that they've ever seen before and what are they supposed to be able to do about it. They actually get blamed for the defeat a lot. They're said to have been cowardly and to have left the field, but that's really not fair on them. They're getting mowed down by these arrows. What else are they really supposed to do?

No, I have to confess to me half French but that's the... Yeah, but it is said that Philip had of them left, killed after the battle. Whether that's true or not. But then it's a problem of organization because they are out in front. And so the charge, the cavalry charge that's then supposed to close with them can't get past this massacre that's already happened,

though it is worth noting that contrary to some belief that studies have shown, the knights do close. It's not that they never get there. There is hand-to-hand fighting afterwards. So do they close and then get off their horses and go for hand-to-hand fighting? or do they fight from their horses you under? It's clear that the Count of Blois did dismount with his retinue and advanced on foot.

He could see that the horses were being mown down. I mean, those are the principal targets of the archers, of course, and you bring the horses down and you cause carnage. There's a French chronicler that says rather vividly, on this day, men were killed by their horses. So the Count of Bois dismounts, marches forward with his retinue, and this is probably where the hand-to-hand fighting comes in. that Erica mentions.

We know there was a real melee around the Prince of Wales as standard. It falls at one point. We know that because the man who raised it again, Sir Thomas Daniel, is given an annuity subsequently by the Black Prince. But it was clearly, for a moment at least, a nearer-on thing.

Some of the French chronicles say that the Prince of Wales has taken prisoner for a while. It may or may not be so. And it goes on for hours as well. I mean, it may not have started until about 4 o'clock, but it said it goes on until it becomes dark. Well, getting dark

is quite late on the 26th of August. But I think what's interesting here, we've often concentrated on whether arrows can pierce armour. What they're most effective against in this battle are horses. You can imagine arrows hitting horses, they rear up, their rider falls off,

is just absolute chaos. The horse is not armed. Not at this point. You couldn't really fully arm a moving horse, I think, like that. But they're at 12,000 horses were exposed as targets. Definitely, yes. And I think it's quite interesting

because the French chronicles in particular don't say that much about fighting on foot. They do concentrate on the horses. Are they blaming the horses, right? They're blaming the Genoese crossbowman. When did Philip King of France decide that it had enough and when and how did he retreat? Well, as the night follows day,

he was pulled off the field by Jean de Beaumont. We're having to interpret chronicles here, and some, of course, will say that he carried on fighting whilst their mobility were running away. Others say that he was wounded and had to be taken off to fill for that reason. But what is clear, that he left quite late in the battle. He was probably already aware that his close friend, John, the King of Bohemia, had been killed. And probably his brother, Count of Aloncant, he'd been killed as well. The Count of Flanders, the Count of Blois. He died.

A whole crowd of French nobility were killed. And so when Philip leaves the battlefield and then goes to Amiens afterwards, not Paris, that wouldn't be a good idea at the stage. Well, because, I mean, his reception would have been appalling. Because he's a loser. Well, yes, a loser. And the problem he was going to have in the next few months

is raising a new army. All of these casualties we've mentioned, I mean, we're talking probably 2,000 noblemen, knights and esquires, including a staggering list of senior nobleman. I've mentioned several already, the Duke of Lorraine. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And these are the hubs in the recruiting networks of all medieval polities,

but in France they would find it very difficult for some months to raise a new army. Fortunately, he's got the army that John of Normandy is bringing up from Aquitaine as a starting point. And so by July 1347, he is able to bring an army to try at least to release. the siege of Calais. Well, we're going before our horse to market. I'm still on the battlefield. He's leaving the battlefield. And so he goes, do the English pursue him? What happens? Do they just stand and cheer?

What happens? It's got dark and they don't pursue him. And in any case, if he's gone towards Le Bois, he's gone up the length of the valley, up to the north-east. Most of the French army is still, the French army is still there, probably spread out around the countryside after dark.

The following day, further French contingents appear, including, I mentioned him earlier, of Lorraine. These are summarily massacred by the English who come out and catch them exposed and some chroniclers said that more casualties are inflicted on day two of the battle than on the first

day, certainly amongst the common soldiers of France. What about the English casualties? Some say like 48. We're in Agingold territory here and I think we can never know the exact number, but they're very, very low compared with it. I mean, no leading nobles really die on

on this occasion. So it's such an asymmetrical battle. But I think we've got to remember that Edward could win the battle. That didn't mean to say he won the war, because a classic problem in medieval times was, if you were so badly defeated, as Philip VI was, you weren't going to come to the negotiating table. So Edward had to do something else, and that's what's, I think, so fascinating.

He moves off pretty quickly because by the 4th of September, he is laying siege to Calais. Well, just before we go to Calais, what reasons do you give for the English victory at such a level on that battlefield? I would blame the French, personally. I mean, I know the English longbowmen

are very important, and they fulfil Edward's objective of fighting as much of the battle as possible at a distance, but I think essentially it is French folly. The French could have withdrawn, maybe earlier, I suppose we could say that's courage, that persuades them not to, maybe the courage of Philip himself.

They should not have fought on that day. They could have waited until the following day, and they could have thought a little bit more about how they were going to face the archers. But, of course, it's an unknown quantity. They couldn't train against arrow shot in that kind of way. So it's a very interesting problem that the French have got. What do you think?

I think that Anne is right, but in a way you can turn it around and say that Edward had engineered a situation where the French made a dreadful mistake and Philip will always be held responsible for it. This is a disorganised army. A French chronicer says, by hastiness and disarray, were they undone?

And I think that that's probably true. But this is a situation that was engineered and Edward had selected grounds that exploited his tactical deployment perfectly. In what way could Edward be said to have been in charge of what was going on when the battle, after the battle commence as it were. There's a lot of shouting

and yelling on an awful lot of people. I think he was. I think he's I mean, there's a suggestion that he was up a windmill viewing it. And I think also, we must remember that there's a great sort of a lot of discussion in advance between him and his leading commanders

and these English armies are well trained. They've been together for a long time. That march across Normandy's important, so they've trusted each other. They all knew what they needed to do. And shows of personal bravery like that of the Black Prince

really do stimulate bravery in others. So to come back, despite the fact that he had bodyguards and so on, the 16-year-old till did show personal bravery. Yeah, he did, and there's a lovely story where people come to Edward and say, your son is in danger, and he says, oh, let

him win his spurs. Now, whether it's true or not, but I suppose we could say, you know, he's got other sons, but I don't think he was as careless as that. I think that he knew that his son supported by his retinue would win. There are a surprising number of heroic teenagers over the course of the 100 years. You just have to go and do it. Well, with the consequences for Philip, so he's lost and he's retreated.

And then what? This is a participatory warrior nobility in France, just as it is in England. And if you lose them on the battlefield, you've lost the politicians as well as, and administrators, as well as the soldiers in your country, the senior ones. So it's very difficult, and it takes him until the following summer to raise an army. And then when he has the opportunity to face Edward outside Calais, he decides not to. He doesn't dare fight another battle. Is that smart?

I think it is on his part. I mean, I suppose we could say what would have happened after that. Maybe they were all lucky that the black death hit, and their war was suspended for a few years. But that siege of Calais is remarkable. It's one of the greatest sieges in history. So let's just get right for listeners. Edward, instead of going for Paris, which you'd have seen in inverted con was obvious.

He swung around and he made for Calais, this great fortress port. It's still rather, it is rather a mystery to many people, why he didn't push for the French crown after such a victory at Crecy. Well, this raises questions about what he actually wanted in the first place. Is he claiming the French crown because he actually thinks he's going to become King of France, or because he wants to use it as a bargaining tool to ultimately gain the concessions in Aitaine and his other lands, and possibly a bit more if he can.

And this has been hugely debated among historians. And it is worth noting that on occasions when he is triumphant, here and again after the Battle of Puechie in 1356, when he captures the French king, we at no point end up with a treaty where he's saying, no, you have to give me the French count. And it's always, I will give up my claim to the French crown, if. So there are definite indications that he might be more interested. He might even have doubts

whether he realistically could become King of France. Could he even be accepted? Could he hold the territory? Too many questions, but it's a great political piece. It is indeed. And in 1356, he adopts the title Duke of Normandy. So maybe his ambitions are now extending beyond Aquitaine. But at the end of the day, in 1360, in the treaty, he's settled. for a much bigger Aquitaine and Pontia and Calais, but to be held in full sovereignty, i.e. will never pay homage again. And we can see this in the change of his title. He's been Duke of Aquitaine.

He changes his title to Lord of Aquitaine, paralleling the Lord of Ireland, the other title that he has, and he creates the black prince, prince of Aquitaine. So clearly he thinks he's created a new polity, essentially part of the English crown, but all those lands in France. Finally, do you think this battle set the scene and set the method which the battles between France and England were to continue?

I think it did, but I think the English had no choice. The English had an archer-rich army all the time. They didn't have enough men at arms, and therefore if they were going to face the French with a large enough force, they had to recruit archers. They'd already done it at Halladon Hill against the Scots. That's an archer-rich army. well, but it is an amazing weapon. It's a kind of medieval equivalent, if you like, of the

machine gun, because it's causing so much damage at a distance. And also, it's very easy to get archers, although Edward started to panic a bit about that in the 1360s and forced everybody to practice on a Sunday with the longbow, but essentially it was easy to recruit such people. When the king campaigns in person, he wants a big army, he's got to have these archers. with him. Remember the half a million arrows at the beginning. You can't be too sort of extravagant in arrow storms. And yes, it's true that you want to kill as many of your opponents at a distance as possible, but you can't waste too many. So there's going to be a lot of precision aimed shooting at much closer distances. We know that before the Battle of Cresley, Edward had already

asked for more supplies of arrows. So he was already running perhaps a bit low before he'd even reach con when he'd reach con. Cressie, we don't know how many arrows he had, but he needed to use them clinically. Take out the Genoese crossbowmen first and then just allow the heavy cavalry to come in and

take them relatively close. We think that the archers were allocated 24 each. That was the basic allowance. So they're not shooting them all the time. They are controlled shooting. There are lessons for the French as well in this that will shape future battles. For instance, the disaster

at Puachi, 10 years later, does the French king get captured because the whole running away from the field last time didn't look so good. King John, the successor to Philip, found an order of chivalry based on the principle we don't retreat from the field. That goes very badly multiple times. So there are not great lessons, but there are lessons. And then the other lesson is, of course, they do quite well when they don't fight. France is a big kingdom. It's a rich kingdom. It can in many ways afford to wait the English out. So, so, A lot of the 100 years war is then spent hunkering down, waging a war of attrition, which is not fun for the French population.

In the 1440s, Charles Xerun starts to develop his own long bowman, and maybe that's how he wins at the end. We're always taught as school early on history that the French are so rich, they can always recover in a year or two and come back here compared with English. Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you, Andrea Eton, Anne Currie and Erica Graham Garring, and to our studio engineer, Jackie Marjoram. Next week, the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linares,

who developed new systems for naming and classifying species. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Thank you very much. Great. So what would you like to have said you didn't say? I have one thing, actually, because we think about the consequences

sort of at the heart of French politics. we think about, what does this do to Philip? What does it do to the army? What does it do to politics in Paris? But the impact of this, you know, we have a battle where we're not taking prisoners that no quarter has been given on both sides. And so we wipe out, you know, a generation of the French aristocracy, but they are the people who administer the localities. They keep order across the kingdom. They have their own networks. A lot of the decisions among the Normans, for instance, about whether they're going to side with the English or side for the French have to do with local rivalries and the ties. And the ties among them. So the fact that you just

create chaos in these previously established networks, I think the impact must have been felt not just at the centre. It's really going to be felt a long ways away. I think that the losses that the French sustained have never really been fully researched, have they?

They really need to. They really do. It's a project that should be undertaken. I'd agree. I mean, actually the losses are much greater than they are at Azoncourt in 1415, although we make much emphasis on that. We can only really trace definitely about 350 dead, possibly 500

I think there are many fewer. Adjinkort also is a much more regional battle it's drawing troops only from really Normandy and Piccadie one or two additional areas but the French are in civil war at the time and therefore they're not able to recruit

as nationally and it's quite incredible the distances some of the troops have come in and indeed from the Allies I mean the counter Savoy was on his way and a drive too late and had to bypass the battle and take control of Montreoy to the northeast. You really can't understand the hundred. It's not France versus England. It's England. And then the kingdom of France, which is made up of, it's a patchwork. It is all these pieces. And the whole

story is about whether those pieces are getting along. Plus, plus allies like John King of Bohemia. And his contingent of 500 sort of Czech and other Luxembourg and all sorts of other knights. I feel we should also just mention that he himself, the King of Bohemia. is blind and he still fights. And they studied his skeleton. And he got into hand-to-hand combat of being led by his men even though he was... I think the issue that there are hardly any prisoners taken in the French army

is something that's worth mentioning again, comparing with Azoncourtier. And Poitet, particularly 10 years later, where the King of France and a whole host of French noblemen were taken prisoner. And we know about this because they've left a big imprint in the records. But they're worth a lot of money. I mean, that's what night's fight for, right? It's partly about honour and it's partly about well, you get really rich if you capture people.

It's like winning the lottery. You can scour the records after Cresty and find practically nothing. I think one has been found recently. A French squire who claims to have been taken prisoner and ransomed after the battle. But I know of no others. Named.

And one or two of the chronicles mentioned... Well, why is that then? Ah, well, that's a really interesting question, is it? Is it about the archery? Is it about the horses again? I think it's said that both sides sort of said no water. It's rather like bottles of the wars and the roses. They raise the battle standards.

The French ari-flam and the English standard of the dragon says, no, we're going to go all out. And it's partly a disciplinary thing. Because if the knights are busy trying to, you know, turn a profit, it becomes much more individualized. So the attempt to suppress that can be about sort of keeping some order. At least this argument has been made. I wonder if the cavalry truce.

charge makes a difference as well because of course at Adjancourt they're fighting on foot and Guadier largely on foot as well and whether they're more likely to be killed as Andrew said by their horses you know that it's a much more dangerous thing to do because you've got lots of horses

sort of riderless and it's just be absolutely chaotic you can't actually get through to the English men at arms to start fighting with them what I find really striking though is the results of this we have descriptions from the heralds have to go around and identify all the bodies afterwards.

And they're clearly quite traumatized by it. You know, it's harrowing, trying to find these bodies that have been hacked apart, trying to identify these symbols of the heraldry that have been destroyed. And so they actually get quite wrong who's died. I think Edward sends a report that's 50% wrong in terms of the names he says have died. Some of it's optimism, but some of it's just, well, there's a lot of misinformation because the result of not taking prisoners is a really exceptional. level of carnage. This is not the norm

for medieval warfare. I was going to say something about the resource disparity of England and France, which makes it even more extraordinary that this was achieved within 10 years of the war. A third of the population, a much smaller economy. But it's a kingdom, England,

that's more tightly administered. And they have certain advantages, taxation systems that are more national and more controlled from the centre. They also, of course, have sheep. because you could argue you could argue that Battle of Cressy was won on the backs of

probably be 10 million sheep in England and Wales because the wool trade which eventually goes through Calais that's another reason why capturing Calais is rather good as a hub for the wool trade yielded at least half of the tax revenues per year but it's also what won the Flemish over in 1340 when Edward was accepted by the people of Ghent, Brugénie as king of France, it was, we have the document there, the trade treaty, if you like,

and they were going to be given a kind of 100% access to that world trade from England. So all with the basic factors here, but France was three times bigger than three times greater population, yes. And proportionately richer? Yes, it must be, you know, except that the English crown at this point had, better access to its wealth via taxation. It's a hundred years war because it takes the French government apparatus

a long time to ramp up to really be getting efficiency out of what it does have. I think it's also thought that the English were able to borrow money more easily. But you need a cash flow because your armies have got to be paid quite a lot of money given in advance and that kind of thing.

So if you've got access to good financial arrangements, think the French are slower because they think they don't need it also. There's always an advantage with the aggressor. The aggressor attacks. The French can't really do much. They can't raise men. They can't raise taxes until the English are actually in the

country. So they start off really. That's actually a principle of the time is that you're only allowed to raise taxes when there is an immediate cause. So you have to wait for the war to arrive and then you can't necessarily convince the places that aren't currently being invaded to help pay taxes to defend the rest

of it. It doesn't have this idea that sending resources to the centre is in their best interest. So it's a lot of a PR. I think Cressy would be more famous than Adjincourt had Shakespeare written a better play about it. Henry V is so much better than Edward III, where they're very confused as to what the battle is and who is there. Well, thank you very much. That's great.

I think the producer is going to come and ask you a leading question. Oh, dear. Like a cup of tea? Oh, yes. Have a herbal tea, please. Ordinary tea. I'll go on the ordinary tea, put that mugging.

Just tea with milk. From BBC Radio 4, this is Breaking Mississippi, the explosive inside story of one man's war against racial segregation in 1960s America. I knew the state of Mississippi

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