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Did the Longbow End the Age of Chivalry at Crécy? - The Reality of Edward III's Victory in 1346 | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

• 0:04
  Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. The popular
• 0:13
  memory of the Battle of Crecy is simple. English
• 0:16
  longbowmen stood on a hill and shot down charging
• 0:19
  French knights, proving that a single superior
• 0:23
  weapon had changed warfare forever. But that
• 0:26
  image is wrong in almost every particular. In
• 0:30
  the summer of 1346, An exhausted English army
• 0:34
  turned to fight a larger French force, not because
• 0:37
  of a miracle weapon, but because they had run
• 0:40
  out of room to maneuver. This episode examines
• 0:44
  the real reasons for the English victory at Crecy
• 0:47
  -en -Pontieu. It explores how Edward III selected
• 0:51
  and prepared a defensive position, how dismounted
• 0:55
  men -at -arms formed the core of a combined armed
• 0:58
  system, and how the French army defeated itself
• 1:01
  through piecemeal attacks, poor coordination,
• 1:05
  and the chaotic arrival of troops along a congested
• 1:08
  road. We also look at the strategic aftermath
• 1:12
  of the battle, including the siege of Calais,
• 1:15
  and why the longbow did not instantly end the
• 1:18
  age of mounted knights. I wanted to understand
• 1:22
  why a historical event so famous in English memory
• 1:25
  is so widely misunderstood. Some questions sound
• 1:30
  simple until you try to answer them, and separating
• 1:33
  the reality of medieval warfare from later national
• 1:36
  myths reveals a far more interesting story about
• 1:39
  logistics, terrain, and the difficulty of commanding
• 1:43
  a medieval army. On a shallow ridge near a village
• 1:49
  in Piccarie, an exhausted English army stopped
• 1:53
  running, turned around, and prepared to face
• 1:56
  a French force that outnumbered it by perhaps
• 1:58
  two to one. In doing so, they fought a battle
• 2:02
  that would be misremembered for centuries. In
• 2:05
  the summer of 1346, an English army of perhaps
• 2:09
  12 ,000 men was marching through northern France.
• 2:13
  They burned towns, destroyed crops, and tried
• 2:17
  to stay ahead of a much larger force that was
• 2:20
  hunting them down. They were tired, far from
• 2:23
  home, and running out of room to maneuver. On
• 2:27
  the evening of August 25, After a desperate forced
• 2:31
  crossing of the River Somme, their king turned
• 2:34
  to his commanders and made a decision that would
• 2:36
  be remembered for centuries. They would stop
• 2:39
  running. They would choose their ground near
• 2:42
  a small village called Crecy -en -Pontieu, and
• 2:46
  they would fight. What happened the next afternoon
• 2:50
  has become one of the most famous battles in
• 2:52
  English memory. But the memory is not entirely
• 2:56
  accurate. The popular image is simple. English
• 3:01
  longbowmen stood on a hill and shot down charging
• 3:04
  French knights. This proved, in the popular telling,
• 3:09
  that the age of chivalry was over and that a
• 3:11
  single superior weapon had changed warfare forever.
• 3:15
  That image is wrong in almost every particular.
• 3:18
  The battle was more interesting than that. The
• 3:23
  real reasons for the English victory tell us
• 3:25
  far more about how medieval armies actually worked.
• 3:29
  To understand what happened at Crecy, we need
• 3:33
  to begin with the campaign that brought the two
• 3:36
  armies there. The Hundred Years' War between
• 3:39
  England and France had already been running for
• 3:42
  nearly a decade when Edward III landed in Normandy
• 3:46
  in July 1346. The war was fundamentally a dynastic
• 3:51
  dispute. Edward claimed the French throne through
• 3:55
  his mother, Isabella, daughter of a French king.
• 3:59
  Philip VI held the throne through a different
• 4:02
  line of succession. But beneath this legal quarrel
• 4:06
  lay a struggle for territory, revenue, and power.
• 4:10
  That struggle would shape the history of both
• 4:13
  kingdoms for generations. Edward's 1346 expedition
• 4:18
  was what medieval commanders called a chevauchée.
• 4:22
  It was a large -scale mounted raid designed to
• 4:25
  devastate enemy territory, undermine the enemy
• 4:28
  king's authority, and force him to either fight
• 4:31
  on unfavorable terms or make political concessions.
• 4:35
  The English army landed on the Cotentin Peninsula
• 4:39
  in western Normandy, then moved eastward through
• 4:42
  the province, burning and looting as they went.
• 4:45
  They crossed the Seine near Paris, then turned
• 4:49
  north and pressed toward the Somme. These rivers
• 4:53
  ran roughly east -west across the northern French
• 4:56
  landscape. Each one was a potential barrier,
• 5:00
  a place where a pursuing army could trap a retreating
• 5:04
  force against the water. Philip VI gathered a
• 5:07
  French army to intercept them. For two weeks,
• 5:11
  the English marched along the northern bank of
• 5:14
  the Somme, looking for a ford or bridge that
• 5:17
  would let them escape southward before the French
• 5:20
  could pin them against the river and the coast.
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  They found their crossing at Blanchetac on August
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  24th. The French had blocked it with a detachment
• 5:30
  of Genoese crossbowmen, but the English forced
• 5:33
  their way across in a sharp engagement. The crossing
• 5:36
  saved the army from immediate destruction, but
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  it was costly in energy and time. The English
• 5:42
  were exhausted. They had marched hundreds of
• 5:46
  miles, fought at least one serious action, and
• 5:49
  was still deep in enemy territory with a pursuing
• 5:52
  force that outnumbered them significantly. Edward
• 5:55
  needed to rest his men. He also needed to fight
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  before his army disintegrated from exhaustion,
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  disease, or desertion. This is the first crucial
• 6:06
  point that the popular story of Crecy tends to
• 6:09
  miss. The English were not confidently advancing
• 6:13
  to battle. They were a tired, outnumbered force
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  that had been running for weeks, and was now
• 6:19
  turning to fight because it had no better option.
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  The decision to stand at Crecy was not a gamble
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  on a wonder weapon. It was a calculated defensive
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  choice made by a commander who understood that
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  his army's best chance lay in choosing the ground
• 6:35
  and forcing the French to attack him. The ground
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  Edward chose was a shallow ridge near the village
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  of Crecy -en -Pontieu, about 10 miles inland
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  from the coast of Picardy. Imagine approaching
• 6:49
  from the south, as the French would. You would
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  see a low rise in the land, barely noticeable
• 6:55
  from a distance, covered with standing grain
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  or recently harvested fields. The ridge ran roughly
• 7:03
  east -west. As you came closer, you would see
• 7:07
  that the southern face sloped gently upward,
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  just enough to tire horses and slow a charge.
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  Across that slope ran a sunken road or trackway.
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  a natural ditch worn deep by carts and rain.
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  It created a hidden obstacle that would break
• 7:24
  the stride of any formation trying to cross it.
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  To the flanks, patches of woodland and hedgerow
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  narrowed the front, channeling attackers toward
• 7:34
  the center. The village itself sat behind the
• 7:38
  ridge. Somewhere on the higher ground a windmill
• 7:42
  turned, though whether it was still standing
• 7:44
  on that particular August afternoon We do not
• 7:47
  know for certain. The English did not simply
• 7:50
  line up on a convenient hill. They selected,
• 7:54
  prepared and organized a defensive position designed
• 7:58
  to channel attackers into killing zones and to
• 8:01
  protect their own forces from the full weight
• 8:03
  of a French charge. Edward divided his army into
• 8:08
  three divisions or battles. The largest was commanded
• 8:12
  by his 16 -year -old son, Edward of Woodstock.
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  who would later be known as the Black Prince.
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  The prince's command was largely nominal. He
• 8:23
  was surrounded by experienced military advisors,
• 8:25
  and placing him in the vanguard was as much a
• 8:28
  political and dynastic statement as a military
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  decision. The prince's division stood in the
• 8:34
  center of the line. The king's own division stood
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  to the left. A third division under the earls
• 8:42
  of Northampton and Arundel stood to the right.
• 8:45
  The exact positioning is uncertain, but the general
• 8:49
  arrangement placed dismounted men -at -arms in
• 8:51
  the center of each division. Archers were deployed
• 8:55
  on the flanks and in forward wedges between the
• 8:58
  divisions. This was not an archer army with a
• 9:01
  few men -at -arms in support. It was a combined
• 9:05
  arms defensive system. Dismounted heavy infantry
• 9:09
  formed the solid core, and archers provided the
• 9:12
  flanking fire that made direct assaults dangerous.
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  The men -at -arms were the elite soldiers of
• 9:18
  the medieval world. They were fully armored warriors,
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  many of them knights or esquires, equipped with
• 9:26
  plate armor, helmets, shields, and heavy weapons.
• 9:30
  At Crecy, they fought on foot, not on horseback.
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  This was a deliberate tactical choice that English
• 9:38
  commanders had been developing for decades. Dismounted
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  men -at -arms could hold a defensive position
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  with far greater stability. than cavalry they
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  presented a wall of armored bodies and weapons
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  that was extremely difficult to break the archers
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  meanwhile were positioned where they could shoot
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  into the flanks of any attack this forced attackers
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  to advance to a storm of arrows while also facing
• 10:04
  the men -at -arms in front of them the longbow
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  itself deserves careful description because popular
• 10:11
  understanding has distorted it almost beyond
• 10:14
  recognition It was a self -bow of yew or other
• 10:18
  woods, roughly six feet long, drawn with the
• 10:22
  fingers rather than with a mechanical trigger.
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  Drawing a war bow of this power required years
• 10:28
  of training and considerable physical strength.
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  The bow's advantage was not some magical armor
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  -piercing property. It was a combination of range,
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  rate of fire, and the ability to shoot in massed
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  volleys that could disrupt and disorder an attacking
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  force. A trained English archer could lose perhaps
• 10:49
  six to ten arrows per minute compared to one
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  or two bolts from a crossbow. In a sustained
• 10:56
  engagement, this rate of fire could saturate
• 10:59
  an area with arrows wound horses' disorder formations
• 11:02
  and force attackers to close with the men at
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  arms while already disrupted and demoralized.
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  But the longbow was not a weapon of instant,
• 11:12
  automatic victory. Its arrows lost energy at
• 11:16
  longer ranges and could not reliably penetrate
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  the best plate armor at oblique angles or at
• 11:23
  distance. The bow's effectiveness depended on
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  mass, training, tactical positioning and the
• 11:29
  conditions of the engagement. At Crecy, the archers
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  were positioned where they could shoot downhill,
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  across the front of the men -at -arms, into the
• 11:39
  flanks of attackers who were already channeled
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  by terrain and obstacles. The bow was one component
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  of a system, not the system itself. The French
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  army that approached Crecy on the afternoon of
• 11:52
  August 26 was significantly larger than the English
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  force. It may have numbered 20 ,000 to 30 ,000
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  men against the English 12 ,000 to 15 ,000, but
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  size was not the advantage it appeared to be.
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  The French had been pursuing the English for
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  weeks, and their army was strung out along the
• 12:12
  road from Abbeville, several miles to the south.
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  Picture the difference in physical terms. The
• 12:20
  English army fit within a single prepared position
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  on a low ridge, compact and mutually supporting.
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  The French column stretched for miles along the
• 12:30
  coastal road, with contingents arriving piecemeal
• 12:33
  and gaps between them. They reached the battlefield
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  in the late afternoon, with perhaps four or five
• 12:40
  hours of daylight remaining. They were already
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  tired from marching and in no condition to fight
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  a set -piece battle against a repaired position.
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  Pilate VI faced a difficult decision. His commanders
• 12:53
  were divided. Some urged him to halt for the
• 12:56
  night, rest the army, and attack in the morning
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  when they could be properly arrayed and coordinated.
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  Others, reportedly including some of the more
• 13:06
  hot -headed French nobles, pressed for immediate
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  attack. the French king chose to attack. This
• 13:14
  decision has been criticized by historians for
• 13:17
  centuries and with reason. But we should understand
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  the pressures on Philip. His army was large and
• 13:24
  heterogeneous. It contained not only French men
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  -at -arms, but also Genoese mercenary crossbowmen,
• 13:31
  allied contingents, and troops whose loyalty
• 13:34
  and discipline varied widely. Delay risked desertion,
• 13:38
  disorder, and the escape of the English army
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  that he had been pursuing for weeks. The decision
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  to attack was not simply foolish. It was a gamble
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  that failed catastrophically because of conditions
• 13:50
  that Philip either did not fully appreciate or
• 13:53
  could not control. The first French troops to
• 13:56
  reach the battlefield were the Genoese crossbowmen
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  under their commander Otto Ndoria. These were
• 14:02
  professional mercenaries hired for their skill
• 14:05
  with the crossbow. The crossbow was a powerful
• 14:08
  mechanical weapon that could shoot a heavy bolt
• 14:10
  with considerable force and accuracy at shorter
• 14:13
  ranges. The Genoese advanced toward the English
• 14:17
  position, but they were already in difficulty.
• 14:19
  They had marched hard to reach the battlefield.
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  Some sources suggest that their large protective
• 14:26
  shields, called pavises, had been left behind
• 14:29
  with the baggage train. More significantly, a
• 14:33
  rain shower just before the battle had wet their
• 14:36
  bowstrings. The English archers had been able
• 14:40
  to keep their bowstrings dry under their helmets
• 14:42
  or in pouches. The crossbow's slower rate of
• 14:46
  fire meant that any delay in reloading was magnified.
• 14:50
  Picture the exchange that followed. A Genoese
• 14:54
  crossbowman would plant his foot in the stirrup
• 14:57
  at the front of his weapon, bend to span the
• 15:00
  bow with a crank or lever, Place a bolt in the
• 15:04
  groove. Raise the stop to his shoulder, aim,
• 15:07
  and fire. The whole process might take 30 seconds
• 15:11
  to a minute. In that same minute, an English
• 15:15
  archer could draw, loose, and reach for his next
• 15:18
  arrow six to ten times. The Genoese loosed their
• 15:22
  bolts. The heavy projectiles fell short or struck
• 15:26
  the prepared position. Then they began to reload.
• 15:31
  The English archers, positioned on the flanks
• 15:34
  and in the forward wedges, responded with massed
• 15:37
  volleys. The arrows came in sheets, rising from
• 15:41
  the slope and falling among the crossbowmen.
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  Within minutes, the Genoese were being outshot,
• 15:48
  disordered, and forced back through the mud and
• 15:51
  their own dead. Their retreat was not yet a rout,
• 15:55
  but it was a failure, and here occurred one of
• 15:59
  the most brutal moments of the battle. The French
• 16:02
  men at arms, arriving behind the crossbowmen
• 16:05
  and impatient to attack, rode forward through
• 16:08
  their own mercenaries. Some accounts say they
• 16:11
  deliberately rode the Genoese down. Others suggest
• 16:15
  merely that the mounted charge overwhelmed the
• 16:18
  retreating foot soldiers in the confusion. Either
• 16:22
  way, the French vanguard destroyed its own missile
• 16:25
  troops before ever reaching the English lines.
• 16:28
  This episode reveals something essential about
• 16:31
  medieval warfare that the romanticized image
• 16:34
  of Crecy obscures. Armies were not unified, disciplined
• 16:39
  machines. They were collections of contingents
• 16:43
  with different loyalties, languages, and command
• 16:46
  structures. The French army at Crecy contained
• 16:50
  French nobles, their household troops, urban
• 16:54
  militias, and Italian mercenaries. All of them
• 16:58
  operated under a command structure that depended
• 17:00
  heavily on personal relationships and individual
• 17:03
  initiative. Coordinating such a force was difficult
• 17:07
  even in favorable conditions. At Crecy, in the
• 17:11
  late afternoon, against a prepared position,
• 17:14
  with troops arriving piecemeal along a congested
• 17:17
  road, coordination broke down almost immediately.
• 17:21
  The first French mounted charge, led by elements
• 17:25
  of the vanguard. went in against the English
• 17:28
  position without proper reconnaissance, without
• 17:31
  support from the rest of the army, and without
• 17:33
  any clear plan for how multiple charges might
• 17:36
  be coordinated. The attackers rode uphill, across
• 17:41
  the sunken road or other obstacles, into the
• 17:44
  teeth of archery and against dismounted men -at
• 17:47
  -arms who stood firm in their divisions. Imagine
• 17:51
  the physical reality. Horses labored up the slope.
• 17:56
  The riders were already tired from the ride from
• 17:59
  Abbeville. The first arrows struck from the flanks
• 18:02
  before they could see their targets clearly.
• 18:06
  Wounded horses fell, blocking those behind. The
• 18:10
  sunken road broke the charge's momentum, turning
• 18:14
  a mounted formation into a struggling mass of
• 18:16
  individual riders. Then the arrows found the
• 18:20
  gaps in armor. The horses reared or collapsed.
• 18:25
  The survivors who reached the English line met
• 18:28
  a wall of dismounted men -at -arms, braced and
• 18:31
  waiting with poleaxes and swords. The charge
• 18:34
  failed. The French nobility, heavily armored
• 18:38
  and heavily committed, suffered severe casualties.
• 18:42
  But the battle was not over, because the rest
• 18:45
  of the French army was still arriving. What followed
• 18:49
  was not a single battle, but a series of disjointed
• 18:52
  attacks. like waves breaking on a shore we must
• 18:57
  remember that the ways were not doomed by the
• 18:59
  position alone they were doomed by the command
• 19:02
  failures and fatigue that sent them in one after
• 19:06
  another without coordination contingents of french
• 19:10
  men -at -arms reached the field saw their comrades
• 19:13
  engaged and charged in without waiting for orders
• 19:17
  or for support some historians have described
• 19:21
  this as a kind of aristocratic impetuosity a
• 19:24
  chivalric culture that valued individual bravery
• 19:27
  over collective discipline. There is some truth
• 19:30
  in this, but it's not the whole explanation.
• 19:34
  The real problem was structural. Medieval command
• 19:38
  and control depended on visual signals, messengers,
• 19:41
  and personal presence. Once an engagement began,
• 19:45
  especially in the failing light of late afternoon.
• 19:48
  It was extremely difficult for a commander to
• 19:51
  impose order on troops who were not yet fully
• 19:54
  arrived and who could see their comrades already
• 19:57
  fighting. The repeated French charges were not
• 20:01
  simply brave but futile gestures. Some accounts
• 20:04
  describe perhaps as many as 15 or 16 distinct
• 20:08
  attacks, though the exact number is uncertain.
• 20:11
  They were the product of an army that could not
• 20:13
  stop itself from attacking, that lacked the mechanisms
• 20:16
  to coordinate its forces. and that was facing
• 20:20
  a defensive position specifically designed to
• 20:23
  defeat exactly this kind of uncoordinated assault.
• 20:27
  Each charge added to the carnage without seriously
• 20:31
  threatening the English line. By nightfall, the
• 20:34
  field before the English position was littered
• 20:37
  with dead and wounded men and horses. The French
• 20:41
  army was effectively defeated. Among the dead
• 20:45
  was one of the most famous figures of the battle.
• 20:48
  John of Bohemia, a king allied to Philip VI,
• 20:53
  who had been blind for the last decade of his
• 20:56
  life. The story of John at Crassie has become
• 20:59
  one of the most celebrated episodes of medieval
• 21:01
  chivalry. According to the chronicler Jean Froissart,
• 21:05
  writing several decades later, the blind king
• 21:08
  asked his companions to guide him into the battle
• 21:11
  so that he might strike at least one blow for
• 21:14
  honor. His men tied their horses together with
• 21:17
  their reins. placed John between them, and rode
• 21:20
  forward into the English lines where all were
• 21:22
  killed. The Black Prince, Edward's son, reportedly
• 21:27
  adopted John's ostrich feather badge and his
• 21:30
  motto, I serve, in tribute to his bravery. This
• 21:37
  is a powerful story, and it may contain some
• 21:39
  kernel of truth, but we must be careful. Froissart
• 21:44
  wrote his chronicle in the 1370s and 1380s, decades
• 21:49
  after the battle, and he shaped his narratives
• 21:52
  to fit the chivalric ideals of his time. The
• 21:56
  exact circumstances of John's death are uncertain.
• 22:00
  Other sources do not mention the tied horses
• 22:03
  or the guided charge in the same detail. The
• 22:07
  story may be essentially accurate, or it may
• 22:09
  be a later elaboration that grew in the telling.
• 22:12
  What we can say with confidence is that John
• 22:15
  of Bohemia died at Cracy. that his death was
• 22:19
  noted by contemporaries, and that it became a
• 22:22
  symbol of aristocratic courage in the face of
• 22:24
  defeat. Whether it happened exactly as Forsard
• 22:28
  described, we do not know. Another element of
• 22:32
  the battle that requires careful treatment is
• 22:34
  the reported presence of early gunpowder weapons.
• 22:38
  Several sources mention that the English used
• 22:40
  cannon or ribald twins at Crecy. Ribald quins
• 22:44
  were multi -barreled anti -personnel guns. These
• 22:48
  reports are intriguing because they would place
• 22:50
  gunpowder weapons on a European battlefield earlier
• 22:54
  than their generally accepted development. But
• 22:57
  the evidence is problematic. The sources that
• 23:01
  mention guns at Crecy were written years or decades
• 23:03
  after the battle, and they may be projecting
• 23:06
  later knowledge backward. No definitive archaeological
• 23:10
  evidence of gunpowder weapons has been found
• 23:13
  on the Crecy battlefield. though the site has
• 23:15
  not been extensively excavated. Some modern historians
• 23:19
  accept the presence of early guns, others are
• 23:23
  skeptical. What we can say is that if guns were
• 23:27
  present, they played a minor and probably psychological
• 23:30
  role rather than a decisive one. The battle was
• 23:35
  won by archers, men -at -arms, terrain, and French
• 23:38
  disorganization, not by gunpowder. By nightfall
• 23:44
  on August 26th, the French attack had spent itself.
• 23:47
  Philip VI, who had been wounded in the fighting,
• 23:51
  was persuaded to withdraw. The English remained
• 23:54
  on their position through the night, expecting
• 23:57
  a renewed attack that never came. In the morning,
• 24:01
  they found the field before them covered with
• 24:04
  dead. The French army had dispersed. The exact
• 24:08
  casualties are unknown and probably unknowable.
• 24:12
  Chronicle figures are wildly inflated. Some claim
• 24:16
  30 ,000 French dead, which is certainly impossible
• 24:20
  given the size of the army. Modern estimates
• 24:24
  suggest that the French may have lost several
• 24:26
  thousand men, including a significant portion
• 24:29
  of their nobility. The English casualties were
• 24:32
  relatively light, perhaps in the low hundreds.
• 24:35
  But these figures are approximations, not established
• 24:39
  facts. The battle was over. But the campaign
• 24:43
  was not. Edward III did not attempt to exploit
• 24:47
  his victory by pursuing Philip VI or marching
• 24:51
  on Paris. His army was too tired, too reduced,
• 24:55
  and too far from secure supply lines. Instead,
• 25:00
  he turned northward toward the port city of Calais,
• 25:03
  which he proceeded to besiege. Calais was a fortified
• 25:07
  town surrounded by marshes and water, difficult
• 25:10
  to assault directly. The English established
• 25:13
  a blockade by land and sea, cutting off supplies
• 25:17
  and reinforcements. They built a temporary settlement
• 25:21
  outside the walls called Nioulay or Newtown to
• 25:25
  sustain the besiegers through the winter. The
• 25:28
  French made several attempts to relieve the city,
• 25:31
  but each failed. The English victory at Crecy
• 25:35
  had shattered the French field army's confidence
• 25:38
  and capacity. Inside the walls, the defenders
• 25:42
  held out for months, but by the summer of 1347
• 25:45
  they were starving. In August, nearly a year
• 25:49
  after the siege began, Calais surrendered. The
• 25:53
  English expelled much of the French population
• 25:55
  and established a permanent garrison. When Calais
• 26:00
  finally fell, it gave England a continental foothold
• 26:03
  that would remain in English hands for two centuries.
• 26:07
  It was a fortified port that served as the main
• 26:10
  embarkation point for English armies in France.
• 26:13
  The strategic consequence is the true significance
• 26:17
  of Crecy. The battle itself was important, but
• 26:21
  it was not decisive in the larger war. It did
• 26:24
  not end French resistance, destroy Philip VI's
• 26:27
  kingdom, or prove that English armies were invincible.
• 26:31
  What it did was create the conditions for the
• 26:34
  capture of Calais. That capture in turn gave
• 26:38
  England the secure base for future operations.
• 26:41
  The long -term importance of Crecy was logistical
• 26:45
  and strategic, not technological or civilizational.
• 26:49
  The popular memory of the battle, however, took
• 26:53
  a different path. In later English chronicles
• 26:56
  and national tradition, Crecy became a founding
• 26:59
  myth of English military superiority. It became
• 27:03
  a demonstration that English yeoman archers could
• 27:06
  defeat the flower of French chivalry. The longbow
• 27:09
  was elevated from one component of a tactical
• 27:12
  system to a wonder weapon that had changed the
• 27:15
  course of history. This myth served political
• 27:18
  and cultural purposes in later centuries, but
• 27:22
  it obscures the real nature of the battle. What
• 27:25
  a military historians have largely corrected
• 27:27
  this picture. The work of scholars like Andrew
• 27:31
  Ayton. Kerford Rogers and Kelly de Vries has
• 27:34
  established a more nuanced understanding. Crecy
• 27:38
  was won by an organized combined defense. Dismounted
• 27:42
  men -at -arms held a prepared position. Archers
• 27:46
  were positioned to disrupt attacks with massed
• 27:48
  shooting. Terrain channeled and exhausted the
• 27:52
  attackers. Command maintained discipline and
• 27:56
  coordination throughout. The French lost because
• 27:59
  their army was too large to control. arrived
• 28:02
  too late in the day, attacked in piecemeal fashion
• 28:05
  without coordination, and could not adapt to
• 28:08
  the defensive position they faced. The longbow
• 28:11
  mattered, but it mattered as part of this system,
• 28:14
  not as a single decisive factor. We should also
• 28:19
  resist the temptation to see Crecy as a turning
• 28:21
  point that ended the age of knights or made mounted
• 28:25
  warfare obsolete. It did not. French men -at
• 28:29
  -arms continued to fight on horseback for centuries
• 28:32
  after Crecy. The Battle of Poitiers in 1356,
• 28:37
  ten years later, saw French knights defeated
• 28:40
  again by English defensive tactics, but it did
• 28:44
  not stop them from fighting as cavalry. The full
• 28:48
  transformation of European warfare, with the
• 28:51
  gradual decline of the mounted knight and the
• 28:53
  rise of infantry and gunpowder weapons. was a
• 28:57
  slow process that took place over generations.
• 29:00
  Creasy was one data point in that longer story,
• 29:04
  not its decisive moment. What remains uncertain
• 29:08
  about the battle is considerable. The exact size
• 29:12
  of the two armies, the precise layout of the
• 29:15
  English position, the number and sequence of
• 29:18
  French attacks, the role of gunpowder weapons,
• 29:21
  and the true circumstances of John of Bohemia's
• 29:24
  death. All of these are debated among historians,
• 29:27
  and probably always will be. The sources are
• 29:31
  incomplete, contradictory, and shaped by the
• 29:34
  perspectives and purposes of their authors. We
• 29:37
  know that a major battle took place near Crecy
• 29:41
  and Pontieu on August 26, 1346. We know that
• 29:46
  the English won a defensive victory. We know
• 29:50
  that the French suffered heavy casualties and
• 29:52
  failed attacks. Beyond that, much as reconstruction,
• 29:56
  interpretation, and informed judgment. The value
• 30:00
  of studying Crecy lies not in confirming a simple
• 30:04
  story of English superiority or technological
• 30:06
  revolution. It lies in understanding how medieval
• 30:10
  warfare actually functioned. It shows us the
• 30:13
  importance of logistics and marching, the difficulty
• 30:17
  of commanding large heterogeneous armies, the
• 30:20
  role of terrain and preparation. the combination
• 30:23
  of different weapon systems, and the gap between
• 30:27
  battlefield events and their later interpretation.
• 30:30
  Edward III's victory was real and significant,
• 30:33
  but it was significant for what it actually was,
• 30:37
  a well -commanded defensive success with strategic
• 30:40
  consequences, not for what later myth -makers
• 30:43
  made it. When we return to that exhausted English
• 30:47
  army on the ridge near Crecy, We see not a band
• 30:51
  of archers with a miracle weapon. We see a disciplined
• 30:55
  force that had marched hard, chosen its ground
• 30:58
  carefully, prepared its position methodically,
• 31:01
  and maintained its formation against repeated
• 31:04
  assaults. We see a French army that was larger
• 31:07
  on paper, but unable to bring its numbers to
• 31:10
  bear, fragmented by rival, exhausted by approach,
• 31:14
  and defeated by its own disorganization as much
• 31:18
  as by enemy action. And we see a battle whose
• 31:22
  true importance was not the end of chivalry.
• 31:24
  It was the beginning of a two -century English
• 31:28
  presence at Calais. It was a demonstration that
• 31:31
  in medieval warfare, as in so much else, preparation,
• 31:35
  discipline, and coordination often mattered more
• 31:37
  than simple numerical superiority or supposed
• 31:40
  technological magic.