Livingstone Marilyn - The Black Prince and the capture of a king: Poitiers 1356

THE BLACK PRINCE AND THE CAPTURE OF A KING, POITIERS 1356

Morgen Witzel and Marilyn Livingstone

Published in Great Britain and the United States of America in 2018 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK

and

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, US

Copyright 2018 Morgen Witzel and Marilyn Livingstone

Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-451-8

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-452-5

Kindle Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-452-5

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Many people contributed to this book, and without them it would never have seen the light of day. We want first to thank our agents, Heather Adams and Mike Bryan of HMA Literary Agency, who believed in this project right from the start and made it happen. Thanks too to our many friends and followers on social media, who contributed their own helpful thoughts; especial thanks to Michael Jecks for so generously letting us use his photo of the monument at Poitiers. We still owe you that pint.

Our warmest thanks also to everyone at Casemate who worked with us. Clare Litt has been an extremely patient editor, and Isobel Nettleton has done a superb job of production. Thanks also to Julie Frederick for her meticulous copy-editing and for saving us from the worst of our errors. Needless to say, any mistakes which remain are entirely our own responsibility.

On the afternoon of 26 August 1346, a tired, footsore and hungry English army stood on a low ridge near the town of Crcy-en-Ponthieu in northwestern France, waiting for the French to attack. King Edward III, the English commander, had invaded Normandy six weeks earlier with about 15,000 men, but battle and the natural wastage of a campaign had thinned their ranks until only about 10,000 remained.

For the past two weeks the English had been retreating steadily, marching sometimes as much as 30 miles a day, driven north by a powerful French and allied force that outnumbered the English by five to one. Only two days earlier Edward and his army had narrowly escaped a French trap, fighting their way across a defended ford on the river Somme before making their way to the edge of the woodlands of the Fort de Crcy. There, on the hot, humid afternoon of the 26th, the retreat ended and the English turned to stand and fight.

The French, advancing to attack, were supremely confident. Their army included not only the cream of the nobility of France but many great and famous names from across Europe: the blind Jean of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia and one of the greatest war leaders of his day; his son Charles, King of the Romans, elected but not yet crowned Holy Roman Emperor; Jaume, King of Majorca; the Genoese mercenary captains Ottone Doria and Carlo Grimaldi who had brought 5,000 crossbowmen to swell the French ranks. As they rode to battle, Edwards adversary King Philippe VI ordered the royal standard of France, the Oriflamme, to be unfurled. This was to be a glorious day for French arms, the day when the upstart English king who had the impudence to claim the crown of France for himself would be finally crushed and England forced to sue for peace.

Six hours later, the English still stood on the ridge but the ground in front of their lines was thick with the bodies of French men and horses. Among the several thousand dead was Jean of Bohemia (also known as Jean of Luxembourg). The blind king had tied the reins of his horse to those of two of his companions so that they could guide him to the fighting, but all three men were shot down together by English archers before they could reach the enemy line. Among the many hundreds of wounded were King Philippe himself, shot some say twice as he advanced with his knights. The standard bearer who carried the Oriflamme was killed by the kings side. Philippes brother, the Comte dAlenon, lay dead on the field.

Shattered and bloodied, the French army retreated; and still it was not over. The following morning English horsemen and archers advanced through thick fog and fell on the remaining French detachments as they slept, killing many more and routing the rest. The Archbishop of Sens and the Grand Prior of the Knights of St John in France were killed, and Charles, King of the Romans very nearly went the way of his father. He was shot and wounded by an English archer while he and his followers fought their way clear of the wreckage of their army, and lived with the pain of that wound for years to come.

By any standards, Crcy was a stunning victory for King Edward. Almost overnight it became the stuff of myth myth, it should be added, which was very skilfully created and exploited by Edward and his propagandists. One star, King Jean of Bohemia, had fallen, but a new one was rising: the kings 16-year-old son Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, famous to later generations as the Black Prince.

Knighted at the beginning of the campaign in July, the prince was in nominal command of the vanguard division of the English army. It was his division which bore the brunt of the French attack at Crcy. At one point during the battle he was knocked to the ground by a French knight and saved only by the gallantry of his own standard bearer, who stood over the prostrate prince and defended him until help arrived. In one of the most famous events of the battle another event which English propagandists exploited to the full one of the princes knights, Sir Thomas Norwich, left his post and ran back to the king, standing at the head of his own division which was being held in reserve. Norwich pleaded for reinforcements, but the king refused. Laissi lenfant gaegnier ses esperons , he said (let the boy win his spurs).

Yet it could be argued that Crcy was not so much won by the English, as lost by the French. True, the English army was well led and well disciplined, and it had a tried and proven tactical system based around a powerful weapon which it had recently introduced into continental warfare: the longbow. The French had attempted to counter the English archers by hiring thousands of mercenary Genoese crossbowmen, but to no avail. At Crcy, assisted by the elevation and perhaps also by the weather, the English and Welsh archers had shredded the Genoese crossbowmen with massed volleys of arrows before the latter could make effective reply.

France 1356

Philippe and his commanders had failed to learn the lessons of earlier encounters in Brittany, at Morlaix in 1342 and St-Pol-de-Lon earlier in the summer of 1346, where the longbow had brought the English victory. The French also lacked the discipline of the English, and they failed to capitalise on their huge advantage of numbers. The French knights and nobles were glory-hungry and believed in their own invincibility.