Crécy - to seize a crown
The battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346 was the first major land battle of the Hundred Years War when the upstart English King Edward III took a few thousand men to seize the French crown. It was an ambitious and audacious attack against the French and the greatest army in Christendom. If the English were beaten then they would become vassals of the French – an outcome Edward dare not contemplate.
But could his overstretched troops fight their way across northern France against such an enemy – and win? For combatants to willingly fling themselves into the chaos of brutal, close-quarter-battle, whose violence is almost unimaginable to us today, demanded unyielding loyalty. After an arduous campaign that had started on 18 July King Edward chose the ground to make his final stand, south of Calais on the fields of Crécy. Edward’s exhausted troops finally took position north of the shallow valley of the River Maye which was on the edge of a rolling plain. He chose the high ground that looked down on the Vallée des Clercs 35 metres below. What Edward could not know until that fateful day was that the gathering French army numbered thirty thousand, outnumbering his own three to one.
In the late afternoon of the 25th, King Philip VI raised the French battle standard that told the English no quarter would be given. With nowhere to turn Edward’s leadership came to the fore. He rode among his men, urged them never to yield and to take no prisoners. The French sent their mercenary Genoese crossbowmen forward but they were exposed because their pavises were still on the baggage train at the rear. They stood no chance against the archers’ longbows and when the Genoese turned and fled from the thousands of lethal yard-long arrow storms, the French knightly class thought them cowardly and charged the English lines.
The 16-year-old Prince of Wales, as yet untested battle, commanded the vanguard guided by the Marshal of the Army, the Norman traitor, Godfrey de Harcourt. On each side of the vanguard the English and Welsh archers held their position in a sawtooth formation between the ranks of the men-at-arms who fought on foot. A brief rainstorm had made the incline slippery and the English archers had dug pits to bring down their enemy’s horses. Time and again the French cavalry were stopped by the longbowmen and the dead and dying horses caused further havoc in the French attack. Fifteen charges went against the Prince of Wales division and only one managed to briefly break through the lines – and that was led by the blind King John of Bohemia who was slain in his attempt.
In the debilitating August heat terror and violence ensued and the greatest army in Europe was vanquished.
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