School of War - Ep 52: Dr. Michael Livingston on the battle of Crécy

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Dr. Michael Livingston , Professor at The Citadel and author of Crécy: Battle of Five Kings, joins the show to discuss the Hundred Years War, medieval warfare, and the English victory at the battle of Crécy. ▪️ Times  • 01:53 Introduction • 02:33 Why Crécy • 05:53 The Hundred Years War • 10:29 The French-Scottish connection  • 14:08 Why invade France at all? • 20:51 Strengths/Weaknesses • 26:00 Medieval command and control • 34:01 Crécy the legend • 38:24 French losses • 39:17 Crécy the reality • 44:29 Costly French decisions • 51:11 The King of Bohemia’s last ride • 57:52 Hundred Years War ends

As anyone who has served in combat knows, myth-making starts the moment the shooting stops, arguably even before that moment, given the tricks that memory, pride, and shame can play upon the minds of men. So when engaged in the craft of historical research and writing concerning war, the further back one goes, the more difficult the problem becomes. Fewer sources and less information make establishing the facts of any given case more of a challenge. And then there's the complication that the legends the moment. themselves are of interest, whether or not they're true.

Today we are going to talk about the Hundred Years' War, and specifically the Battle of Craycee, the Battle of Five Kings, and we'll focus on what happened, what was long thought to have happened, and the difficulties inherent in untangling facts and legends. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of the way. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to and in a stable. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We have people who are not these buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the

streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. Delighted to be joined today by Dr. Michael Livingston. Michael teaches at the Citadel down in South Carolina. He is the author of numerous books, most recently. Crazy. Battle of of five kings. Of course, crazy is a battle that occurred during the hundred years war. And Michael, my first question for you is, you know, you teach at the Citadel. You teach folks who are going to be future officers for the most part. Many of them, I guess they go to all services out of the Citadel. Is that right? That's, that's correct. Yeah, it's like VMI or school where people can go over the place. About about half of them go into the service in any given year.

I tee up with the question here that I, you know, for a scholar of military history like yourself, I hope you appreciate it. They're going to go into a profession of arms in the 21st century. You know, we got cyber. We got space. We have aviation. We have all sorts of stuff that didn't even exist in the 14th century. And, of course, we also have infantry and things like that, too, but it's pretty different.

So what's the, you know, why the 100 years war? Why is your scholarship focused on this? Why would it behoove future officers, the Citadel or current officers or anyone interested in a war for that matter to pay attention to something that happened in, you know, 1346? you know, warfare, despite our movement towards cyber and this kind of stuff, it remains fought on basic principles. One of the things that happens in the crazy campaign, for instance, is the importance of wet-cap crossings. The French are using rivers to control the English and prevent them from moving in the directions they want to. And actually, I had this conversation with a fellow medievalist, I won't name names, who said at one point, well, I think the

rivers didn't matter. And I thought, you know, no, yeah, yeah, they did. It's kind of important logistics. And then, you know, literally the next week was watching, you know, the news coming in from Ukraine of how the Ukrainians were using, you know, rivers, wet gap crossings to prevent, you know, the Russian forces from moving freely. Yeah, this stuff matters. And though, yeah, now we're dealing with tanks, now we're dealing with this other stuff. It's still the same issues of topography, you know, terrain, logistics getting them around. And in some respects, I find talking about these things in the 14th century, in the case of Cray Csie, is actually a kind of clean vacuum in which to discuss this stuff.

It's free of politics or, you know, well, I've got a family here, family there. You know, it's kind of in a vacuum. It doesn't, nobody's really got a dog in the fight right now, you know. So we can sort of just talk about it on a really basic level of, you know, the principles of war and seeing them in action and in seeing them take place from a safe distance. You know, so it is, it's kind of, yeah, there is no cyber in crazy, but there is plenty of propaganda. You know, they were still dealing with it. So it's all kind of there. It's just out of, out of remove from today.

That sounds all very smart to me. though I was, I lived in the UK for a few years, and I was actually struck by, you know, if there's a natural resentment to another country in the United States, is by far and away, France. I mean, France is absolutely at the top of the chart of countries that my English classmates were sort of knee-jerk and habitually despising of. Oh, yeah, yeah. I kind of worry, I joke about this. I'm sure it'll never happen.

But, you know, I worry. I got to go over to England for a lot of my research. And, you know, at some point, I'm like, man, are they going to let me back into the country? I don't, you know, they're going to be like, I don't know, you're being too friendly to those French over there. I don't know if that's going to be a problem. Your book is kind of iconoclastic in certain ways, and we'll get to that. What I'd like to do, you know, I will confess, I'm not a medievalist. I'm kind of curious about how you ended up in that time frame of specialization.

But I expect that probably a lot of our listeners, you know, don't know much about the 100 years war besides the fact that it was a really long war between England and France. So I thought we would start really big picture if you could give some sort of political and strategic context overall. Your book actually more or less starts at 1066, but we'll move a little briskly. But tell us what we need to know about the big picture. And then we'll zoom into the battle. And I want to hear about the sort of methodological questions that you address in the book. And then we'll get to the sort of what actually happened.

But so the 100 years war, what's going on? Why are England and France fighting? like any conflict there's lots of reasons you know there's economics there's all kinds of things happening but you know when you boil it all down the the straw that broke the camel's back here is that edward the third has a claim he's the king of england he has a claim to the throne of france that he believes is better than the claim of the current king of france the current king of france shockingly does not agree with edward in this regard no you cannot have my job And the French, by and large, are not terribly excited about the idea of having an English king over them.

So Edward decides to press this claim, decides to press it militarily, and it ignites, you know, the 100 years war, which lasts more than 100 years. I mean, it lasts at least 113. Some people are of the mind that like it's still going on, you know, like that we'll get them in the fourth quarter kind of thing. But yeah, it's it is a conflict though that changes over time. Cracy is towards the to the front of it. So we don't have to deal with too much of this. But just so people kind of are aware, a war that lasts that long, it's generational. Nobody who was there at the beginning was there at the end. And so why it's being fought towards the later stages is very different from why it's being

taught at the start. I mean, just, you know, like a cancer, metastises. And so it gets religious, it gets sociological, it gets, it gets very, very fascinating, frankly. But yeah, this is towards the early part of it. People would know like Jonah Bark, that's towards the end of the Hundred Years War, Henry V, Agencore, that's 1415. We're actually recording this on St. Crispin's Day. It's the anniversary of Agincourt. So, yeah, that stuff is kind of things that people will be familiar with later. Crasy is the first big land battle of the year's war in 1346.

And in terms of literature that touches on this, obviously you mentioned Harry the 5th. So Shakespeare, Henry 4th and 5th cover periods later in the war. And then, you know, I don't think you reference it in the book. You have more discipline than I would have had. But of course, the Mel Gibson movie, Braveheart, treats of a number of characters who are significant at the early stage of the war, right? The king and Braveheart is Edward the first, first, right? And then his son, Edward II, figures, figures into our tale.

As does the tale of the adultery of a French, of a French queen, right? This plays a role here. So, well, yeah, so in that, in Braveheart. Yeah. Super historical, super historical, I'm sure, factual account. God, don't get me started. We'll be here all day. The son of Edward I first there is Edward II.

And his wife then in that movie, Mel Gibson's William Wallace has an affair with. That probably didn't happen because she was, I think, nine at the time. So that was kind of and was actually still in France. So no, that didn't happen. But yeah, it's the son of Edward II and that French princess after she actually grew up. That's Edward III. And it's through her, through that French princess,

that that's the claim that he's got to the throne. And the French don't think that, or at least they're saying they don't think this. This is a good excuse. The claim to the throne of France cannot pass through a woman. And Edwards' claim is through his mother, so it doesn't really count. Whether or not that seems to be basically just a way of getting around this problem of Edwards' claim. It doesn't seem to really be something that they were really all that concerned about otherwise. But yeah, it does it does relate to loosely, Braveheart-ish stuff.

Sorry, sorry, I feel like I should apologize for asking that question, but I can't help but when I see the names, I picture the characters. Yeah, that movie. Yeah, it's something. We can move by. This is clearly a sort of subject. Perhaps we'll do another episode, another time on the shortcomings of Braveheart. The Scottish dimension, so I take your point that, in a way, going back to the 14th century,

it allows you to study these kind of military issues without arousing the same. you know, passions that when you study, you know, 20th century history for sure, right, you can arouse. On the other day, I was struck by, you know, in your account, what we're going to talk about today, you know, the through lines, the through lines to more recent military history. You know, the battles are being fought in the same places as the campaigns of the 20th century, World War I or World War II, you know, and then on the political dimension, you know, the French, the old alliance, the French Scottish alliance is something, of course, that say significant becomes central, you know, what, in the 17th, 18th centuries, and then even to

today, honestly, when you look at British politics and the notion of Scottish independence and, you know, there's contacts between the French and the Scottish and the EU are going to take care of the Scottish. It's the same basic geostrategic, it seems crazy, but it's the same basic geostrategic logic. It is. It is, absolutely. And, you know, I didn't get, I kind of mentioned this a few times here and there in the book, you know, that, well, Edward, Edward the third lands for the crazy campaign, just a few miles up

the shoreline from Utah Beach, you know, and, you know, Well, you know, why is that? Well, it's because of the Cotan Peninsula, what that affords. What it afforded in World War II is the same thing it afforded for Edward in 1346. So, yeah, there's definitely these aspects of it. And when we get into foreign policies in Europe, yeah, I mean, obviously kind of self-serving or whatever, but I'm like, you know, y'all got to have a medievalist in the room. Like everybody there is still like, in a sense, fighting the Middle Ages, right?

It's like, you know, when we deal with, you know, foreign policies, you know, towards the Middle East, you know, look, if you don't have somebody in that room understands like the Crusades, like, you got a problem. Because it's because it's still going on in a lot of people's minds. And I think as Americans, we're largely kind of ignorant of that. We kind of think, and I don't know if it's a separation of the oceans. You know, we're like, well, that fight is done. That, you know, moving on. And that's not the way necessarily everybody in the world views it. So, yeah.

I suppose the big difference, though, I'm not sure how confident I am in this claim. I'm curious to know your view. But ultimately, at the political end of this conflict, you know, this is a dynastic struggle. This is a war of succession in some ways. And that used to be common, you know, kind of a common form of warfare, maybe even dominant. You would know better than me in terms of the fundamental causes of large-scale conflicts. And today, of course, really the last several hundred years, you know, we have wars of nations, you know, you have wars of nations against non-national entities, right?

You have civil wars. And in a way, these dynastic struggles can be kind of like civil wars, but not really in the sense that, you know, Thucydides would have talked about a civil war within a single community. And they're definitely not nationalist conflicts, at least not at the start of the period you're covering, though. Maybe later it becomes more like that. But it's a different flavor. these dynastic struggles and we don't we don't really see that much of them in the 21st century

as a source of major conflict yeah i think that's generally true it is one of the things we have to kind of check at the door when we when we go back is our modern conceptions of nationhood and nationalism and everything that kind of flows from that because they they didn't necessarily have you know we're we're fighting for france like what the hell is france like that you know that That didn't have a sort of definitional quality that it has for us today, right? You know, it's those are the borders. Like, so that's France. You know, it was much more nebulous.

And so that changes the dynamics of how warfare is fought for sure. So let's bring it up to the 14th century and on the approach into the year in question here, 1346. So you're the English king. You're looking across the channel. There's a series of invasions in this period, including the one that we're going to on today. Talk a little bit about sort of overall objectives of such an English, why, why, why invade France specifically, you know, in addition to just winning the war, like how are we going to win the war by invading France? What does the military geography look like from the English

vantage point? Why, for example, in 1346 landed Normandy versus somewhere else? Yeah, the main reason that he lands in Normandy in 1346 that we can tell is that this is relatively undefended because most of the fighting at that point is in the south of France. So, so the situation on the ground is that the English held, going back to Eleanor of Aquitaine and a whole bunch of things in the past, the English held a significant chunk of what we would now think of as kind of the lower left corner of France. It was an area called, called Aquitaine or Gascany, Guienne, and certain parts of history. That area, the French wanted the English out. And in 1346 of the French army had gone in and is pushing back against the English holdings now. The English, there's a particular

castle. I don't want to get too far in the weeds here, but they're holding back the French army via this one, this one castle. And I've called for reinforcements, like send in, send in the troops on the English side. And Edward has raised. this massive army and I everybody is assuming I think there's no secret that the army's coming you can't hide something this this large it's you know 10,000 15,000 men plus you know all the other accruments of war that are going to go along and you can't hide 15,000 men and all their stuff are on the way the French thought it was coming to the south of France they thought it was coming down to help relieve the siege and push back against the French down there.

So there was really kind of no defense on the Normandy coast. When he lands there, there's nobody to really stop him from landing, which is pretty terrific. Now, exactly what he planned to do is tremendously difficult to understand. And the problem we have is our sources are almost all. written after the fact. And the English sources are very keen to say that what we did is what we planned to do. Right. You know, I meant to do that, as we used to say on the playground, right? You know, I tripped. I meant to do that, right? It looks cooler if I meant to do it. So they want to say that

what we ended up happening in the campaign is exactly what we planned. Well, that's ridiculous. It's not true. That kind of go through the campaign and show why that's not the case. So we know that that's not what the plan was. So what was the plan? Well, unfortunately, we don't kind of have that. We have to extrapolate that way to triangulate what that is.

I think that he's creating a beachhead and is hoping to, you know, to provoke a response that will end up in a kind of mono-imono fight with the king of France, King Philippe. And the result of that, hopefully, would be Philippe dead. And I, and I'm king. Like, voila. You know, that said, And I talk about this in the book.

You know, you didn't want to fight a battle just to fight a battle because battles are, are controlled chaos, right? They are not, there's always the chance something can go wrong. And that's not a risk you want to take, just kind of like for the, you know, for the fun of it. Like this is something that is an absolutely terrifying endeavor. So you wanted to fight a battle in the best. situation possible for your side. You would, you would, of course, talk about, you know, I'll fight you anywhere,

anytime, you know, like, we're doing this, you know. I mean, it really kind of, I don't know about other people's childhood, but I keep kind of projecting back to my childhood days, you know, and, well, there's going to be a fight, you know, and everybody's like getting amped up for it. But like, neither one of those guys really wants to fight, right? I just want the other got to back down, you know, and, well, where is it going to be fought? How is it going to be, like, like, there's kind of an arranged.

dance to all this, which is everybody trying to get, get the upper hand without having to do anything. And that's really the same as it was that. You know, Edward is like sending letters. I'm, you know, I'm going to fight you right now, man, right now. You're such a coward. Why don't you fight me right now? But at the same time, he's, you know, neither of them is, is anxious to make it happen on, you know, at any given time. So, so, yeah, he hits where, where it's least expected and has tremendous success.

right away, which puts the French in a bind. And I was struck just to linger on the moment about these formal challenges. I was struck by that in your account. It's not something I'm familiar with in either earlier or later history. It's maybe because I haven't spent much time reading about the middle ages, essentially. I mean, it had that sort of courtly flavor to it. But of course, as you point out, there's a propaganda element here that's more complicated.

It's not just as straightforward as I want to fight you, so let's go fight. There's more going on than that. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's spin, right? You're when you're sending out that challenge, you know, you're challenging the other person, but the almost the more important thing is you're telling all of your people that you're doing it. Right. You know, this is like, hey, I've challenged him.

Look at what a big man I am. They really, it gets quickly kind of caught up and, you know, what we might, you know, kind of in a modern sense today, talk about like, I don't know, like toxic masculinity or someone. You know, it's just like this amped up thing of trying to prove that I'm a man and he's not a man and and all the kind of related chest puffing of that whole thing. But it is, you know, obviously I'm hundreds of years removed from it. I mean, it's kind of funny at times. You know, like, you know, wow, you guys are really, you know, you're talking a big game, you know, talking a big game. What are you actually doing, right?

You know, to make that happen. And again, usually it's, you know, we're talking this big game to make the other side look bad, to make us look good and, you know, to keep our spirits up and all that kind of stuff. But really what's going on is more of a chess game of finding the right position, right? You know, putting the other person to disadvantage. It's much more cerebral in what's actually happening. But the front of it looks like this just bravado. Give an assessment, if you would, of Edward and. Philippe, the two sovereigns and ultimate commanders.

What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses going into this campaign? Edward's biggest weakness, the King of France, his biggest weakness is almost broke. He's desperate. He's taken out huge loans from the Italian banks to fund all this. And he's had basically no success. So he's very desperate to have something, anything he can point to, to say, look, I have accomplished something.

And, you know, this is, it's a good investment in May. The King of England. The King of England. Yeah. The King of England is desperate for this. And this is one of the kind of, weirdly thankfully, I don't know the right word. Because of this Italian investment, we actually have a bunch of accounts of what happened from Italy because they were watching their investments so closely.

I keep track. Yeah. Where's my money going? Which is tremendously advantageous because, you know, yeah, they have a dog in the fight because they're, you know, financially supporting Edward, the English, but they're also, you know, if it's not going well, we need to know, you know, what the details are. So, so yeah, he's, he's desperate for something that he can, like, claim as a victory, some that's going to look good for PR.

The French, Philippe has a terrible, terrible reputation in history because of crazy. And I've kind of argued this is, this is not wholly without merit. I mean, at the battle, he makes some serious mistakes. But by and large, what he's doing is really good. I mean, he's very smart what he's doing. He faced with the fact that the English Army has landed completely unexpectedly in the north. He has to raise a second army on the fly, which is no easy task. Most of the army, he's had to raise and all the kind.

They're all gone. They're in the south of France. He has to raise one on the fly, does it? And does it while trying to take actions such as he can against this huge army that's landed in his in his lands. And does it by deciding on a Fabian strategy, you know, which is sort of, I'm going to let you kind of do what you want a little bit in these lands. But like you're going to starve there. You don't have the food to keep going. Edward needed to kind of keep taking more land to feed his army.

I'm not going to let you do that. I'm going to like block you down and force you to move where I want you to move. And it works. It works tremendously well. And in fact, post-crazy, you know, the ultimate sort of, you know, victories that France has are by continuing with this kind of strategy. It's very smart. It's very smart. Yeah, it's not this kind of, you know, chest thumping kind of thing, right?

And I mean, we can hear this, you know, even today with people being like, you know, well, we're just not being, you know, shaking our fist enough at the other side. Well, sometimes the smarter strategy is, you know, is a containment strategy. And certainly is the case here. Really, really brilliant that Philippe does this and does it so effectively is phenomenal. So they each have weaknesses and strengths, you know, in the actual battle when we get to it. you know, and I don't, we don't know enough granular detail to know what's kind of gone wrong at certain points. But Edwards' ability to have what we would in modern terms call command and control over his force on the field of battle is way Philip has.

I suspect a big chunk of this is because the way Philippe has had to gather his army. You know, he just he just doesn't have this, this kind of organizational quality to it that Edward, arrived with and then over the course the campaign has has furthered the other chains of command and everything working so in the you know in the end philippe is really really done poorly by the fact that he does not have this this same thing you know i know from an english perspective people would be like well that's because that's because edwards i mean he's edward he's he's the king and he's a true king and a true leader and obviously philippe is not because he's french or something like that I mean, there's lots of mitigating factors in the way that these armies were raised and how on the fly it was for the French.

So, so yeah, they have benefits. I mean, you know, the French are fighting at home. That makes logistics a hell a lot easier. You know, if you're fighting on home turf, you know the roads. That's a huge advantage. Edwards, big problem is like, you know, I've got to make something happen, you know, because I'm going to run out of food. I'm running out of money. something's got to happen, and I need it to happen soon.

He's desperate. And when you talk about command and control at this period of history, you know, we're not even the modern day, we're not even in the 19th century where you have, you know, divisions traveling down different routes with some level of coordination between them. I'm imagining these armies are largely together most of the time. I mean, how does command and control actually work?

How are you using, as it were, different parts of your army differently, are, you know, are knights officers and then you have, you know, serfs as soldiers? Or how's this thing organized and has it actually function? So we do have different divisions. And one of the first things you do when you show up on campaign is, is create the divisions. And there is a hierarchical structure to that. The people on top, generally, almost entirely speaking, are of noble birth, right? So there is a kind of your governing structure at home is your governing structure here.

and these men were raised for the army often through those same structures, right? You know, you as Lord of such and such a place are going to provide this many men with this much, you know, kind of armor, that kind of stuff. Show up on this date. Let's go. And that's a bit of a pyramid structure to how that works. You know, there is a fair amount of, you know, dissemination of authority. Inevalued with this, right? You know, when you've got, you know, as Edward is marching through France, he's laying waste to, you know, you can draw kind of like the line.

This is the main road that they're on, but it's either side of it's like 20 miles of destruction. As you're sending riders out just to destroy to destroy, but also to gather material supplies to keep the army moving. Well, well, that's not all coming down from the king, right? That's coming down from individual units being sent out at a much low. lower level. But, but yeah, the the command of control very different from ours in that, you know, when you get to the field of battle, how are, you know, how our messages being delivered between the lines, right? How are we knowing when we're supposed to go? We know that there's a lot of trumpets. They use a lot of musical instruments to try and like, you know,

when you hear this many, many sounds on this kind of instrument, that means to do this, to do that. we have painfully little written down of that. We kind of know that it's happening, but we don't have, at least that I've ever seen. Somebody listened to this nose of one. My God, send it to me. You know, an account where somebody wrote down,

you know, in this, in this battle, when you hear this, that means this, when you hear this, that means this. They didn't write that kind of stuff down, unfortunately. They didn't think it was important. Whereas I'd love to know how many trumpet blasts was it that meant to retreat.

but but they were kind of using these these auditory mechanisms to get those messages around but obviously at an individual level you you had the freedom you know the unit level to act as you needed to act in that moment right this isn't this isn't the Macedonian phalanx where you know look if if a unit does its own thing like we're screwed it depends we all have to act as one this is this is much more you know, we all are trying to do this. But if as an individual unit, you need to do something else like, then that's, you make the best call.

So over the course of the summer, Everett is marching, you know, roughly east and the north. He goes towards Paris. He does actually go to Paris. And he's, I guess he's seeking battle. But then it says he is. Okay, well, this is. So the question is at some point, though, he's actually seeking to depart, right?

Yes. He's been around for a while. Yes. The Philippe's Fabian strategy is starting to pay off. People are getting hungry. And so those are the conditions under which battle is actually finally met, correct? Correct. Yeah.

So the Fabian strategy, Edward appears to from, he takes the city of Khan, which is a big get. He gets a lot of money that he sends home and sends with that messages that to have a fleet meet him at place, basically at the mouse of the psalm. So he thinks he's going to march to the Psalm. Well, the Fabian strategy, Philippe is on the other side of the saying, the major river the same, and has destroyed or garrisoned, you know, blocked via manpower, every bridge over the river. So Edward can't march the way he wants to and ends up having to march up the same, trying to find a way across.

But of course, this is the worst direction to go. It's towards Paris. bad idea, but he has no other choice. He's burned and pillaged everything behind him. And Philippe just is marching along the other bank, sort of waving, you know, like, yeah, it sucks over there, doesn't it? You know, like, I'll see you up against the walls of Paris, right? You know, you think you're in trouble now. Wait until then. And Edward has actually forced almost all the way to Paris, a place called Poise. He hunkers down and the bridge had been destroyed there, but the stone kind of supports across the river were all still there. And that enabled Edward to rebuild that bridge

and cross it under cover of night. It looks like the French king had agreed that they would fight a battle on the south side of the saint at a place called Antony and believed that Edward had agreed to this. Like, you know, we're going to do this, this arranged field. We're going to go do it. And this is what you've been saying you want, Edward, let's do it. And he actually, the French king moves his army to the south side of the saying to go to this. Edward doesn't show up because in the middle of the night, Edward has crossed this bridge he's built to the north side of the saying and just books it, high tails it, runs away. The English don't like me saying that. But I don't know what the hell to call that other than running away.

You were supposed to be there to fight and you didn't. And we can recreate his march. He's moving at like double speed. He's flying. Now, the whole time, of course, he's again throwing off. messages behind him, I'll fight you whenever, right? But he's not slowing down. He's still, he's still cooking. He gets cut off again at the at the sum because Philippe manages to get men, riders on faster roads ahead of him. And they do the same thing. Cut the bridges, man them,

so he can't cross. And the whole time, yeah, Edward is getting, he's hungry, he's tired, you know, running out of all supplies. And in, you know, potentially being trapped and forced to do battle in a situation he doesn't not want to, right? He's weakened and this isn't battleground by any means of his choosing. And it's then that he crosses the psalm in a thing called the Battle Blanchtack. It crosses out of Ford that they managed to find a title Ford. It's an incredible event that should be better remembered, you know, because it's a wet gap crossing at a Ford, like under fire, essentially. Like there's French on the other side and they have to fight through the river and fight up the bank and make a beachhead and push through.

It's amazing. It's an absolutely, it's one of those things that that is a really, really dumb move. You don't ever do that unless it's the only choice you got, right? This is the best of all bad choices. And so it works. And then that brings us to Cray C. Because at that point, you know, Philippe, though Edwards crossed the river, good job. Philippe doesn't have much trouble at all getting around the roads in front of him and stopping his march there.

And it's just simply a matter where they're going to fight. Yeah. So, you know, again, we do have some English and British listeners to this show. So I'm sure that they're going to be upset by the conversation that follows some of them. But, you know, I imagine a lot of folks listening, you know, candidly me before taking a look at your book, don't really know the sort of tale of crazy, which is important in English. history in particular. Give us, as it were, the traditional account of what happens. And then we can take another stab about what your research has revealed to you. Yeah. So the traditional account is that Edward goes to a hillside north of the town of Cresillon Ponte. And he takes position on this hillside.

the the French march up to the other side of there's a little kind of valley next to the hill and another opposing ridge line they all line up and the first thing it goes in are the genoese crossbowmen there's a contingent of mercenary genoese crossbum and they're sent in they get a single shot off and are trying to reload and they've been sent in without any of their armor. And the English longbowmen, of whom there are plenty, start shooting arrows at them, and the Genoese crosswoman run away. And in so doing, the French, according to the traditional story, the French say these people

are cowards, run them down. And so the French cavalry goes forward, runs down these cowardly Genoese crosswoman, killing them, and then charged up at the English lines, get mowed down. And this happens for hours, just French line after French line going down into this valley, going uphill and dying. Just a blanket of dead. And you get as kind of corollary to this stories like the Black Prince, whose name is also Edward, we just call him the Black Prince. He wasn't called that at that time, but makes it easier. So this is the Crown Prince of England.

He's 16 years old. And he's sent out with the Vanguard. the front line of the English. And as the story goes, he is, other men are concerned that he's hard pressed, that he might be in trouble. And so they run to a windmill where Edward is watching all this battle and say, you know, sire, your son is hard pressed. We need to go help him.

And he says, no, no, no, let the boy earn his spurs. The spurs being the sign of knighthood, true knighthood. And they go out to find him the prince anyway, even though he's told him not to do that. I'm like, well, we just need to check on him. And they find him lounging on the field sort of surrounded by corpses. And he's like, no, I'm just, man, I'm just resting like for the next wave, man, just keeping limber. You know, like no problems here. I'm good. I'm good.

And yeah, it just goes on to just terrorize the French. And at the end of everything, at the end of the day, the blind King John of Bohemia, who's fighting on the French side, recognizing that the battle's lost, asks to be led into the fight so that he can die with a sword in his hand and not at home in bed. And they ride him in and he dies. And the Black Prince finds his corpse and is moved by this and has all kinds of chivalric. What a man. What a great man for doing this.

Supposedly takes elements of his crest and makes them his personal crest. So the three-fingered crest of the black prince becomes the three-feathered crest of the Prince of Wales even today. Yeah, and so it's just victory from like beginning to end is the way they tell it. And gosh, these French are so stupid to just go up line after line to die. But what are you going to do there, French? It's kind of been the read of this battle. And the Five Kings, you make reference to junior title,

So you have Edward, Philippe, the black prince, future king, king of bohemia, and who's the fifth? And there's the king of Romans. And actually, I don't count the black prince in that. Oh, excuse me? Yeah, he never gets to be king. Oh, I misspoke. Yeah, his father lives too long. The other is the king of Majorca of all things.

Ah, okay, got it. The king of Majorca was in Paris trying to get the king of France to help him with some stuff when this all happens. And so he kind of goes along with the fight to sort of prove what a good guy he is to help out, right? Understood. Okay. So that's the traditional account. And indeed, it is an English victory. And indeed, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but it is an actual, I mean, a part of the traditional account, which perhaps inflated is, but is nevertheless somewhat true. Is that you do have a significant loss of life, right? And French life and French nobility. Yes. Huge loss. Huge loss of life. It is one of the biggest losses, one day losses that you get in the 100, 100 years war. It is massive. And because of the array of nobles who are lost, obviously any death is a tragedy.

But in terms of kind of political structures, it's a huge blow to lose this many lords as are lost here. Because it's a lot, a lot of knights go down. How many are ultimately killed? We don't know because our sources are so kind of written by and for the ruling class. So they'll say, well, we lost this many nights, and then a bunch of others, right? Yeah, we didn't count the others. Like, who cares? They don't count, which is kind of horrifying.

But that's the way it is, I guess. And now what have you learned in your research, which involves a fair amount of textual work, but also, you know, archaeological work, work at the site that adjusts your view of the battle? So I never, I never anticipated working on the battle at crazy. see. The story I kind of just told is the story I was told. And I, like, that's what I was taught, right? That's what the books all said. And crazy is such a famous fight. There can't be anything wrong with that account. We've been telling the same story for generations. That's got to be what it is. So, you know, I've been to the battle site. The issue was, was actually going to the battle site

and looking at it and thinking, you know, there's no way this is right. I, you know, I went to with two colleagues of mine, Kelly DeVries and Robert Wisdom Savage. And Kelly had concerns about the site that the way that people believed that the lines ran. He thought, that just doesn't, he's an incredible military story. And he thought, well, this just doesn't make sense tactically, right? The way these lines are being matched, that doesn't work for me. And so we went to the site to try and figure out if you could reconfigure the lines. and and yeah if you kind of rotate them a certain way it made more sense

but I left that day thinking you know this just doesn't this just really doesn't make sense I don't even if we move the lines I don't really see how this works you know there's it relies too much on the French just being stupid it like the idea of the original site depends upon the French wanting to go die where they need to die like it's this kind of weirdly you well, this will work if they go to die over there. Well, why the hell would they go to die over there? Well, because that's where we need them to die.

That's not a good reason. Like, why would they do that? So I actually went back to the hotel room that night and just started pulling up accounts, the original primary source materials of what, you know, what our earliest sources said about the battle. And they were right away, it was clear. They were not saying it was where it was. They said very consistently that it was fought between the towns of Abbeville

and Crecyon Puntu, whereas traditional locations north of Cresaum Puntu. So it's on the wrong side of this of this triangulation. And so it's like, well, we're on the wrong side of town. We're on the wrong side of a river, the River May, which passes that the Crescent Poutu. We're on the wrong side of that. Nobody says that that was crossed. Nobody says that the town of Cresium Pantu was captured, which it would have had to have been for the English Army to be on a hillside just north of it.

So nothing was really out of it. up and and they gathered all the sources just like like what information can we can we get like what are the sources what can we extrapolate and thought that would be a really easy process it turned out there were dozens of sources you had looked at and by the time you got through with that it it was I mean to me it's like a clear the battle was not on that traditional site there's no way it has somewhere else. And then it was a question of like where clues point to what I go through in a battle flag is my most recent examination of that material that takes account, you know, again, all the forces as we know of them and, you know, basics of, and, you know, kind of other

non-textual fields, you know, put it together with, with LiDAR and, you know, the kind of modern technologies that I have access to. Yeah, thank God I live now as opposed to to previous generations. Have all to set my fingertips. And given all that, what can we reconstruct? What looks like the likely site? Does that that work? And that's what's kind of happened now.

Create an alternative site that I think now makes sense. And he's an idiot. Everybody's making the right move. Edward makes the best moves. but Felipe is doing from what he knew were basically good decisions, right? He was from what knowledge he had. And it explains all of the little bits of detail. You know, why were the Genoese crossbone really run down?

Why was that? Why happened? And so doing, finding out of the Black Prince captured in this battle. That was the thing of him out. is that's PR, that's spin, those trying to cover the fact that the dude got captured. Three years of war almost ended that day. It would have been captured and taken from the field.

I think that would have been it for the, for the hundred years of war. So that's changed. So we have a few minutes here. Put a little meat on the bones of what you just said, if you would. So what are the critical decisions of the battle as it actually happened in your view? It's not a series of mad French charges.

at the lines, what is the decision making on the French side and how does it go awry? So the first tremendous thing that's made is Edwards. He finds a position or a scout probably found a position that is its high ground and it has forest, the forest of crazy on one side and a smaller forest on its up, which covers his flanks completely. And he's able to, the gap between these to cover with the wagon creates what's called a wagonberg, a field fortification. of turning his wagon sideways

and basically making a wooden wall to further this advantage that he's got of high ground. So he's taken a terrifically good position. His wings of archers that he's got to either side of his force are mostly hidden in these woods so they can't be seen well,

which is great. So you have an element of surprise there. And he leaves a gap in the front of this Wagenberg, this field fortification that in the middle of which opening, this is vanguard, dismounted, so including the Black Prince. So you would have had all these kind of banners there, including the Crown Prince of

of Prince of England, as essentially, I think, baked, like, here, come to black Prince, knowing that you flanked these long, try and charge this, you're going to get, become a pincushion. So that's the English that made a terrific plan. It's a great plan. On the French side, Philippe has kind of trying to sweep. around in front of the English march to force them to make a stand somewhere. And that has now happen. The French now, as I can reconstruct it, using the medieval roads where they've been, stream to the battle via two roads. They're all kind of coalescing at this point. They know where the

English are. So they're all coming together. And what Philippe does is send in these crossbowmen first he doesn't know that thousands of longbowmen shoot them the reason they don't have their armor because of merging on these roads in the back line and he doesn't think it's necessary they can go forward to shoot and pull aside and then friends can charge up so it's not a french cavalry charged to genoese crossbellon it is a wave attack right we're going to hit the english line with crossbow shot, soften it up, that's going to roll aside, and now here comes the charge of the cavalry. Unfortunately, the position that Edward has taken and where tack is a depression in the landscape front of the English lines. So all the French would have seen is they would have seen the Genoese crossbowman

and kind of march out of sight. They would have dropped out of sight right before they were getting ready to hit the English. They drop out of sight. And of course, now send in the cavalry, right? You would have kind of screaming. And I think the French thought, yeah, those English are getting it now, right? And so this is going to work great. And now when the cavalry come over, what in fact has happened is that the Genoese were all getting killed.

And the Genoese are retreating away from the lines, which is directly into now the cavalry charge. And so it's not a purposeful running over of the Genoese. It's mistaken causes chaos because horse and man going in different directions does not mix well. So you get utter chaos, which makes for a bigger target for the English to shoot into. And all of this is happening as more charges are, you know, the, this were command and control. It's the fault. Not getting enough information to know that the next wave shouldn't go in. And by the time that becomes clear,

Philippe then attempts to charge across all of the lines. And the battle then hinges on the fact that the black prince, the vanguard advances, which I have to think is a mistake. This is, you know, your bait, stay where you are. When they advance into melee, the longbow cannot just shoot kind of willy-nilly into the crowd because you might, like, you don't want to be the dude that shot the Black Prince in them back of the head. That's not good. So they have this sort of panic, and that's when the Black Prince is captured.

They have to go out and save him. We have this in multiple, multiple accounts that talk about his capture, his need to be saved, them dragging him back into the lines to safety. And in fact, the King, instead of like haughtily, you know, a let a boy owner spurs, he actually does ride out. He takes a contingent out and rides through to try and, help save, rescue his son, because he wasn't an idiot. He knew what the problems would be if he was captured.

It's a son. It's a son. Yeah. I mean, it's insane, this idea that, oh, let him be. I can't even fathom it. And the battle had started at around 3 p.m. So by the time all this starts kind of happening, it's starting to get late. And the big death now is awesome command and control because full breeds.

apparently without sound general retreat. He is from the field. His lords are like, like this is not happening. And they grab him because he was fighting in the actual waves. He had several horses killed underneath him. And they're like, no, we can't lose you. And they take him from the field right all night to a castle. And apparently there's no general retreat called because the killing lasts all the way

of the night. And in fact, there's a second day of the battle that I, I, and everybody I knew thought it was just one day. It's actually two days. The next day, another late coming division of the French shows up and gets, and gets mauled. They don't know that the battle has happened. They don't know that the French have lost so horribly. They've no idea. And so they kind of just walk in, you know, straight into the slaughter. And one of our sources says, that Mormon die that day than die on the previous day. We have no really way of knowing if that's true or not. But yeah, that last moment where he, that is Philly, the King of France,

retreats without apparently making the general call the retreat. I mean, that's, like I said, I excuse the French for a lot of things they've been blamed for, but that, like, there's no excuse for that. That is insane. Does the amazing story of the King of Bohemia's death and then his discovery by the Black Prince, does any of that survive your revision of the account? He dies there? There's no question.

He absolutely dies there. He died. It looks like with his sword in his hand, well done. If that was your goal, good job. We have his corpse. It's in Luxembourg. That tomb was open. I actually show pictures of what's left of him.

And it's clear that he was pulled down from his men. out from the wounds that he had. We see, I think it's five, there were five strokes attempted to take his right hand off his body, probably because that's the hand that was holding his sword. So his sword was probably still in his hand. He was essentially blind. Our sources make clear that this whole lead me into the battle thing, he had two nights in front of him, and they used kind of the tracers from their harness to tie to his reins.

to sort of pull him forward almost like a, like a chariot. He has two horses and a chariot. So you had one horse kind of being pulled by two horses in the battle. And when you look at the accounts of like the eyewitnesses and stuff who were there, he probably killed more of his own men than he killed the enemy, as he was just kind of wildly swinging his sword around and hoping to hit flesh in his last minutes, probably killed a lot of his own buddies. But he did die there.

He did. you know, that's what he wanted to do. So mission accomplished nothing by doing that. The, the, suppose the three feathers that become the crest, no, that's not true. That was not the, that was not the crest that he had. So that was not taken by the black prints on the, on the battlefield. That was ridiculous. What you end up with is, is this clear perspective that after the battle,

the English are dedicated, telling, you know, sanitized propaganda kind of story. And look, they won. They won big. And that victory gives them the opportunity to march up to Calais, besiege it, and a year later, take Calais, which is an enormous thing to have done, right? And that plays a role for stories, the taking of Calais. So it's, I mean, it's a huge event.

There's no question about it. but that they also had this interest in telling a even better than it was kind of account. You know, we didn't lose a single man, they sometimes say, yeah, no, that's not. We know that there were men lost. We know that, you know, men were captured. Like, we have all that. But that's not the story they wanted told. They wanted this, you know, the black prince was amazing.

He's such a man. We all can't wait for him to be king because he's so amazing. Of course, he dies before he can become king, but they didn't know that yet. And the siege of Calais, this is, of course, that wonderful Rodan sculpture. There's a cast of it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York that I've seen many times. But this is part, this is connected to this siege, correct? Correct, correct. Breers of Calais is my first statue in the entire world.

I love that statue. It's amazing. And, yeah, the story there is after besieging Calais, when Calais, finally says, yeah, we're, we're done for. You know, you, you, you, you, you can have it. Edward is so furious that it held out this long. He's so mad. They says, well, send out these burgers, these, you know, rich, well-connected citizens, send them out in their, in their undergarments, essentially, with nooses around their necks, because I'm going to hang them all. And if, if you'll do that, then, you know, then maybe I'll spare the rest of

you. And these men kind of volunteer, you know, say, I'll be, I'll be one of them. I'll be one of them. And they do march out. He's got the scaffolding all up. He's going to do this. Supposedly it's his wife is there. The queen is watching. She's so moved by this that she begs him, begs him publicly. Please don't do this. Please don't do this. And finally, he relents and does not do it. But yeah, that scene that Rodan is capturing is, you know, what would it have looked like as these men are walking out, believing they're walking to their deaths? And, of course, each of each of those men has kind of a different look on his face, you know, of stoic acceptance and anger and, you know, the different emotions. Yeah, I love that. I love that piece.

He did a bunch of studies for it that you can see if you're in Paris, which is amazing to see. for some reason I have it in the back of my mind, and maybe I'm making this up, that there's some sort of connection between the story of the Burgess Calais and specifically the nooses and the French forregei, which we wear, I wore when I was a member of the six Marines, you know, it's the shoulder cord that you wear with your dressier uniforms. My father wore this whole career because he was in the third infantry division in the war, and I believe the third infantry division was decorated by the French government during the war. So if you're in the unit when it earns the awards, you wear the award the rest of your career, whereas if you just, otherwise, you just wear it while you're in the unit. There's that, the foresje, that shoulder port has some sort of connection to the idea of a news, correct? I don't know if that's related to Calais or not. I don't.

And now I'm like, well, I guess what I know I'm doing after I get off this call. To be continued then. We'll figure it. I don't know that it has an exact tie to Calais itself. It seems, I, it's, the, the reference is. something along the lines of it's at some point there was a unit that was going to be executed, right? And, and then it becomes this ironic, you know, they later distinguish themselves. And so, you know, the noose becomes the sign of their valor. Nice. But then perhaps I'm conflating things with

Kelly. You know, one of the things with crazy, Calais, you know, we ultimately see the same thing with Agincourt. You know, these, they become like magnets, right? And stuff gets like sucked into it and attached to it that isn't, that isn't reality, but almost like we want it to be reality, right? That it makes for such a cool story that it would be that way. And then we become entrenched in that and become protective of that, you know, that myth or whatever it is because it's important to us now. And it becomes, you know, identity.

And people don't like when their identity is tacked as I find in my research. final question for you. Yeah. I want to be respectful of your time here. So what happens in the 100 years war? And is there a through line from the crazy campaign to the conclusion of the war or is just the passage of time so long and the ups and downs thereafter so, you know, tumultuous that, you know, there's really no, no causal effect from crazy through to the end?

You know, there is a through line in the sense of like, you know, this causes Calais and that causes X and Y. You know, the book I'm writing right now is Akshan Ashinkor. And it's Henry, you know, I since then certainly, Henry the Fifth is looking at the crazy campaign. Like, that's his plan. I'm going to do, I'm going to do what Edward did. Like, he's trying to recreate that without any of the warts to this like perfection of glory. So it's like, it's the model glory.

This is the thing that you want. And so that's what Henry is going to try and get for himself to the point that he's, to the point that He tries to march across that same ford that Edward used, right? He's like, I'm going to march literally in his footsteps. Amazingly, ends up winning a huge battle, just like Edward had. He wins at Agincourt. Well, he probably won, but for the sorts of reasons, which are cool. Yeah, it, crazy has memory that lasts and continues to inspire all the way through the

hundred years, war. and on both sides, right? That the men of France are like, you know, remember Cray C, where we got our butts kicked. We need vengeance, but also we need to learn from that mistake. And so in that respect, yeah, it has a long life. It has this important value. But it also, you know, the Hundred Years' War does, as I said, it metastises. And one thing that, you know, again, I'm probably not making you friends by saying this,

but it's true. You know, the English lose the 100 years war. Like that tends to get, I think, I think lost in a lot of, a lot of perspectives of this. You know, it's like, crazy, Agincourt, huzzah, 100 years of war. Yeah, they speak French in northwest France. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You're like, yeah, at the end of all this, you know, you all lost. And the real killer to you was a young woman. own and remember having an argument not an argument discussion with a colleague that was saying you know well the french are just when i said well the it would have been stupid for the french to do this or do that at this battle and it's well but the french are stupid and i was like well they won the war so what does that make you like i don't like i don't know where i don't know where you're hoping to accomplish there because now you're saying that you got beat by by these by these fools i don't i don't know what that logic's good because yeah they ultimately win as you said you go to calais

that's that's french they they win the war and and that you know them winning the war ultimately sends england straight into the wars the roses that's you know that is a direct outcome of the hundred years of war and of course that's hugely important you know wars the roses one one last comment before we close here which is i just thought it was cool that you have a forward to your book by bernard cornwell who i grew up on the sharps novels i know he's written any number of other series, but those are the ones I've read. I think I've read every one of them between the ages of, you know, 12 and 14 or something like that.

They're magnificent. So that was. Bernard's, Bernard's a cool dude. But as the previous to this one, about never, he, he had asked me to, he'd said, you need to write this book on Battle of Brunabur, because he has another series that's the Saxon series. It's the Last Kingdom series. And it culminates with the Battle of Brunberg.

And he'd been using my research for that. So we were at lunch. And he was like, you know, you were. really should just do a popular book on that. He was like, and I can all write the forward for it. And I was like, well, I think that guarantees me some sales. So hell yeah. And but I was supposed to work on a book on the book on C. And, you know, I told him, he said, well, I'll write you forward for that one too. Oh, okay, Bernard. Okay. Thank you, sir. Yeah, he's a, he's a good man. He's tremendously kind. And what he says about about me and my work was, is awesome. He's,

yeah. Michael Livingstone, author of Cracey, Battle of Five Kings. It's been a fascinating conversation, no doubt, a controversial one for our English listeners, and I'm grateful to you for joining today. Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.