Battle of Crécy

Background

Edward III claimed the throne of France through his mother, and in July 1346 he landed in Normandy with an army of perhaps 12,000 to 15,000 men. He sacked Caen and marched toward the Seine and Paris, burning the country as he went, then turned north with the much larger army of Philip VI following him. On 24 August the English forced the crossing of the Somme at the ford of Blanchetaque, and two days later Edward chose to stand and fight on a ridge between the villages of Crécy-en-Ponthieu and Wadicourt, with a wood on one flank and the river Maye on the other.

The Battle

Edward dismounted his men-at-arms and formed them in three divisions, the vanguard under his sixteen-year-old son Edward, the Black Prince, with archers on the flanks and a wagon park behind. The French army, perhaps twice as large, arrived piecemeal and late in the afternoon of 26 August, tired from the march. Philip sent forward his Genoese mercenary crossbowmen, several thousand strong. Their large pavise shields had been left with the baggage, and the chroniclers say a rain shower had soaked their strings. The English archers, shooting three or four arrows for every crossbow bolt, drove them back in disorder. The French men-at-arms, impatient behind them, rode down the retreating Genoese and charged up the slope. They were met by a storm of arrows that killed and maddened the horses, and those who reached the English line were fought on foot by the dismounted men-at-arms. At least fifteen charges went in, the last after dark. The blind King John of Bohemia had himself led into the fighting, tied to his knights, and was killed; Philip was wounded and led from the field. English chroniclers claimed that small cannon were also fired, which would make Crécy one of the first European field battles to see them, although the evidence is debated.

Weapons

Crécy made the English Longbow famous: a war bow of yew shooting a heavy arrow, handled by archers who could loose ten or twelve arrows a minute, outranging and outshooting the Crossbow in the open field. It worked together with the dismounted men-at-arms, in Mail Hauberk, plate reinforcements and the Bascinet, who held the line the archers could not have held alone. The French knights charged with the Knight's Lance as they had always done.

Aftermath

The heralds counted more than 1,500 French knights and men-at-arms dead, including the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Flanders and the King's brother, the Count of Alençon; the losses among ordinary soldiers are unknown. English losses were light. Edward marched on and besieged Calais, which fell in August 1347 and remained English for two centuries. The same combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms won at Poitiers in 1356 and again at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.