The Battle of Crécy

The Battle of Crécy in 1346 saw an outnumbered English army under King Edward III win an unexpected and decisive victory that reshaped the Hundred Years’ War — and the future of Europe. But what if everything we thought we knew about the Battle of Crécy was wrong? Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Michael Livingston to peel back centuries of myth to uncover the real Crécy, the truth behind the battle’s location, its legendary longbowmen, and the five kings who played their part in this epic confrontation. More: The Battle of Agincourt > https://open.spotify.com/episode/3hp2D8T7XnGXumMpBHpopQ The Hundred Years War https://open.spotify.com/episode/3UQkEb0MTdJdwYmJB333RX Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and edited by Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Yarnagger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

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• 1:50Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 2:31Matt Lewis?

  Imagine the whinny of excited horses, the clank of armour being tested to make sure it's fixed on tightly, the air crackling with an odd combination of fear, anticipation, and testosterone. Add the saltpeter smell of the cannon being deployed by the English for the first time on a battlefield, and things are about to get unnaturally noisy. Some are on foreign soil, others are here to repel an invader. All know what is at stake. Lives will be lost. Winning matters, but surviving is everything. Some battles

• 3:13Matt Lewis?

  are landmark moments in history, around which the rest of the narratives of politics and people are often hinged. One of those battles is Cressy. Professor Michael Livingstone has appeared in some great documentaries for History Hit on the Cressy Campaign and on the Battle of Shrewsbury, and there's some new exciting stuff in the pipeline coming soon, too. Michael's book, Cressy: Battle of Five Kings, is out now in paperback, and that seemed like the perfect excuse to ask him to come along and talk to us about one of medieval Europe's pivotal battles. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Michael. It's fantastic to have you here.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me, man. This is awesome. Thank you.

• 4:00Matt Lewis?

  No problem. I can't wait to get stuck into the Battle of Cressy, from a safe distance, obviously. I probably could wait to get stuck in if I was in Cressy. Can you give us a sense to begin with of when Cressy takes place and when it is in the Hundred Years' War? Whereabouts are we in the Hundred Years' War?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the Battle of Cressy, or Cracy, is 1346. This is really the first major land battle that we get of the Hundred Years' War. So it's kind of on the front end of when most people define the Hundred Years' War. I kind of think that definition is wrong, but that's another whole thing. But yeah, as most people define the Hundred Years' War, this is really kind of the start of things moving in a positive direction for the English, right? Edward III has come along, made his claim against Philip of France, Philip of Alwa, as he likes to call him, because he's not the king, right? I'm the king, Edward thinks. And yeah, he invades in 1346, that summer.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  A massive army and engages in a campaign that goes horrendously wrong for Edward, but ends up going really well in this desperate fight that happens and it becomes one of the greatest victories in English history.

• 5:09Matt Lewis?

  We tend to be particularly bad, I think, in Britain of remembering the Hundred Years' War as a series of glorious English victories, picking our moments very carefully when we talk about it and we forget the times we lost and we forget that we lost the whole thing.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  You said it, I didn't, you said it. Hate mail goes to Matt.

• 5:24Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, we're awful for doing things like that. So there is obviously quite a lot going on around this time. So what leads to a battle at Cressy at that time? Why then? Why is the first big engagement there?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Well, the first big engagement happens there essentially because Edward gets caught. He's invaded in Normandy, actually, like just a few miles from the Normandy beaches in D-Day. That's where his invasion hits and he comes down the Cotonnes-ten peninsula, does very well, very well. The French did not expect him to land there. They knew he was coming, they just didn't think it was coming there. So that's really good. Things go well. He takes the city of Caen, kind of unexpectedly. He doesn't expect to take Caen the way he does. And at that point, he decides that he's going to march essentially to the Low Countries. He has allies there and he's going to just sort of show a force, march across the countryside, no big deal.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Unfortunately, Philippe VI has noticed this and stands in the way and prevents him from crossing the Seine and forces Edward to march all the way practically to the gates of Paris. It's really kind of an extraordinary move that Philippe makes here as he's gathering his army. He's like, fine, you know, you want to keep marching further and further towards like your doom at Paris? Go for it, you know? So Edward is forced to do that. He manages to cross the Seine under cover of night. And when he does that, it's a race and he just bolts north trying to get away. And he's ultimately caught somewhere around the forest of Craysee. And that's where we have this battle.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  In my book, I spent a lot of time talking about the campaign because it is a amazing campaign. And it really does help you understand how desperate this was for the English. I think because Craysee goes so well, and as you say, we sort of forget the, you know, the bad parts. Like he wasn't, he wasn't in the best shape. This wasn't what he was looking to do. By no means did he want to fight this fight. But when he's forced to do so, he absolutely does it perfectly. And it's really quite something. But yeah, there's this long race. He has to cross the Somme because Philippe does the same thing at the Somme. We have the amazing Battle of Blanche-Tac, which everybody would remember, except that the Battle of Craysee happened immediately afterwards.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  And that was so much bigger and more awesome there, but it forgets the earlier battle, which was also incredible. These last days are incredible for Edward, but it's fought there because he's caught. Philippe has just trapped him.

• 7:57Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And you mentioned it, you know, the campaign gets a fair bit of attention in the book because I think it's really good at giving context to why they're there. Because if you look at it on the surface, you think, oh, Battle of Craysee, English stormed it. Probably, you know, Edward's looking for a fight, beats the French. But there is so much more going on. And as you say, if anything, Edward did not want to fight. He's sort of making himself known and then almost like he's surprised when Philippe says, hang on, I'm not even marching across my kingdom. But, but there's, there's no sense that Edward wants that confrontation in the buildup.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, because he, he could have fought this at numerous points. I mean, you know, when he crosses the Seine, the French believe there's been messengers going back and forth. Because Edward's kind of trapped on the Seine and Philippe is like, well, let's do this. You want to fight? Let's do it. Let's, you know, name the time, name the place. And Philippe, in fact, thinks they have an agreement and that they're going to meet on a field of Antony, which is just the south of Paris. Philippe marches his army out there to get in position. All right, I'm ready. And that's when Edward decides that he's rebuilt the bridge over the Seine quietly and makes a bolt for it. I mean, you know, if he wanted to fight, he could have. He didn't. He ran and the whole time he's running, of course, he's, he's saying.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  You know, I'll fight you anywhere, anytime. Right. But he's not slowing down. He's not stopping. He's on the run and it always makes me kind of chuckle. You know, because people be like, oh, no, he wanted to fight because he kept saying he wanted to fight. Yeah, but he didn't fight. He kept going. Of course, he's going to say that. He's not going to tell his men he's running away. So, yeah, he, he keeps running. And, you know, the Battle of Blanche Tac, I mean, that is a desperate, desperate thing to try and get away. You know, you don't take an army across a river, through the river. Use bridges. Like, that's, that's the reason those are so important. But again, he's trapped at the Somme because Philippe, in his fury, of course, finally gets ahead of him again.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  Knocks down the bridges, traps him, and now he can't get over the river. So to put him to fight, put him to the sword. And Edward manages to cross a ford, a low tide ford, over the Somme. Has to fight his way through. It's utterly desperate and horrible. But makes it across. Of course, Philippe's like, are you, are you kidding? Like, I have to trap you again? And then that's when we get the Battle of Craysee. So, so, yeah, it is important to acknowledge that. And that's not, I'm not saying Edward's like a coward. He, he knows he's kind of out. I mean, there's not really guns. He's not outgunned, but he's like, he's, you know, the other side's stronger than I am. I don't want to, I don't want to fight under these conditions. Like, my, my men are weak or hungry.

• 10:40Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, you do get that constant sense of Edward III being like, we would definitely fight if this river wasn't between us. And Philippe's saying, okay, I'll cross the river. And Edward retreats past another river and goes, we would definitely, definitely fight if this river didn't keep appearing between us. He's like, hang on, Edward, you keep putting a river between us.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it. I, you know, but again, I, as I say, I think I say this at one point in the book. Edward doesn't want to fight a battle. They'd be perfectly happy to win one. Right? And that and that's this this sort of difference. We have a sort of a sense of masculinity that's caught up in this like, well, if you want to fight, you just want to fight period. Not like, not if you're a good commander. If you're a good commander, you want to win. That's it. And Edward is doing the best he can with the cards he has. He did not intend for this march to go up to Paris. None of that's what he planned. All of that is him on the defensive. And yeah, he ultimately fights a battle on the defensive, right? I mean, he does fight the battle. It's not a, boys, let's charge out and get them. It's hunker down and start taking the blows,

• 11:40Speaker 04

  you know, wins the battle, which is good, right? So, you know, in the end, I mean, I think he's a terrific commander. Just what that means in medieval terms isn't necessarily what everybody kind of wants it to mean, right?

• 11:52Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And and before we get sort of into the the meat of the battle, the book is subtitled The Battle of Five Kings. So I just thought, if could you give us a sense of who those five are in terms of what side they're on and why they're important?

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love that. This is such an international battle. It's so cool. And it's one of the things that's, this has all kinds of ramifications that it's a, that it's an international battle. Obviously, you have King Edward III on the English side. You have Philippe VI on the French side. But Philippe also has three more kings with him. He's got the King of Bohemia with him, the old Blind King John of Bohemia. He's probably not actually blind, but he's, our sources say he's chicken eyed, which I think means he can't see much beyond his immediate face. He's, he's a can't see long distance.

• 12:40Matt Lewis?

  I sympathize. I'm wearing contact lenses and I normally wear contact lenses, but I'm, I can't see a thing without my glasses or my contact lenses. So I completely sympathize with short sighted people in the medieval world.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  There you go. You and you and King John, man, you and King John. So you got, you got King John of Bohemia. His son is actually King of the Romans, will ultimately become Holy Roman Emperor, isn't yet. And of course, will follow his, his father to the kingship as well there. And then you have the King of Mallorca, of all places. The King of Mallorca is, has essentially had his throne taken away. And is really mad and has come to France like, you know, can you come help me? And then the English invade. And so he's like, I'll help you, oh, great French king. And then like afterwards, like you'll come help me, right? Kind of thing. So, so yeah,

• 13:29Speaker 04

  we technically have five kings on the field, but it's one V four. So yeah, this is, you know, outweighed on numerous occasions in this regard. The French have more men when we get to the fight, absolutely have more men. And they also are fighting on their territory, right? You know, which is, which is another huge advantage, right? How is it that after crossing the Seine, Edward is on headed north, Philippe's behind, but gets in front of him. Well, because they're on the main roads, the French are on the main roads. The English are having to take smaller roads and it slows you down. So the French are able to outpace them. There's a huge advantage to being on home turf. So

• 14:11Speaker 04

  yeah, it's, it's five kings and that international quality of it means that we also have an enormous number of sources for this fight that we wouldn't normally have. A lot of battles, as you well know, we've got like a handful and they might all be from one side. And I'm like, well, this is great. How can I really suss out what happened here? For the Battle of Craysee, I mean, we just have, well, I mean, when we edited, my colleague, Kelly DeVries and I edited the Battle of Craysee a casebook to put all the sources together. We cut it off at 1400. So from 1346 to 1400, there's 81 different sources. And we actually, we found a couple since then that we didn't know about. And they're

• 14:56Speaker 04

  international in scope, right? We've got sources from Bohemian medieval Czech. We've got all these Italian sources, obviously French, English sources, Welsh sources. It's an absolutely phenomenal battle for seeing.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  How everybody's viewing it and some of them aren't terribly involved, but are recording what happened there and and it really enables you to get a clearer picture of what truly happened than a lot of battles.

• 15:25Matt Lewis?

  And there's a sense as well that on both sides, there are also significant other players. So most famously, I guess Edward the Third's son and heir, the Black Prince is there. And that's quite a thing for the king and his heir to be on foreign soil on a campaign. You know, an English army will want to take as much of the nobility of England as it can. And the French will be gathering, you know, getting to bash the English on home turf when they're embarrassing you by marching across your countryside. Everyone wants a piece of Cressy, really, don't they?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  They do. Absolutely. Yeah, the Black Prince is there. He's not the Black Prince yet. He hasn't called that yet. But yeah, I just call him that in the book because like, you know, that's what we know him as.

• 16:03Matt Lewis?

  He needs another Edward.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, like an Edward, son of Edward, like this is getting messy. And the Black Prince is just a frigging cool title. So like, come on.

• 16:10Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's 16 years old. He is knighted upon landing in Normandy. So he is he's a knight now, but he's 16 years old. This is his first real action. He definitely becomes part of the legend of Cressy. And, you know, we could talk about that later on. And yeah, with them, obviously in the invading army, you have all these, you know, all the lords and everybody. And on the other side, yeah, we everybody wants to have a piece of, as you say, kind of putting a stop to this. And I actually have a map in the book of like, where all these guys are from on the French side. And I mean, it's everywhere. It's it really is amazing how many of them have shown up. And for good reason, you know, like this is, this is huge. This is really a big deal. And to have all these guys fighting

• 16:56Speaker 04

  on the field in the course of two days is, I mean, it's really, really almost unprecedented. I love this battle. It's too cool.

• 17:06Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to tease a little bit longer before we get to the real fighting, because one of the kind of revelations in the book is a new location for the battle. And I just wonder if you could talk us through and what the problems were with the old location and how the new one was discovered.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, so happy to do that. I first came across the Battle of Cracy going to the actual field. I'd heard about it a long before that, but going to the actual battlefield, we had gone to the Battle of Agincourt because I had a kind of theory about Agincourt that I wanted to check out. It took like five minutes on the field of Agincourt to realize that theory was bunk. So that was fun. So, but I was, I was there with a couple of colleagues and it was like, well, the Cracy is right here. Like, let's go, let's go see it. And so went down and you know, the traditional story of what happens at the battlefield and the battlefield, everybody kind of says, you know, and the signs and all that stuff, you know, and here's the, you know, tower where you can look out of the battlefield and all that. Like, it wasn't computing. Like, it didn't make any kind of military sense.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  This, there's no way the English took this position and the French did what you said they're doing. That doesn't, that doesn't work. There's topographical problems. There's tactical problems. It's, none of this fits with strategy. This just doesn't make sense. And actually, that night, I started going back and just starting to read the original accounts. And the original accounts were saying the battle happened between Abbeville and Cracy, Cracy-en-Pontu, the town of Cracy. Well, the traditional site is not there. It's beyond Cracy-en-Pontu, on the hillside above it. And I'm like, what? Funny. You know, the sources don't seem to be saying that the battle happened where people are

• 18:49Speaker 04

  saying it happened. Surely, there's some other thing happening that explains this. And that's when we kind of decided to do, my colleague Kelly De Vries and I decided to do the Battle of Cracy Casebook. Let's gather all the sources. Let's look at the menu, see what they say about anything in the battle, like, so we can figure out. And in the course of that project, like, again and again and again and again, like, our sources are not saying it happened where you're telling us it happened. They're saying something else, to the point that, like, people were... Mis-translating sources to try and make it square peg, round hole kind of thing to make it fit in the traditional site. And like, that's not even what it says. Like, and then, you know, the more you kind of did this, we're like, well, maybe there's, maybe it's not in

• 19:32Speaker 04

  the right spot. Do we have archaeology? Well, there's been archaeological surveys and digs. So University of Southampton did the most recent, didn't find anything. That's odd for a battle this size. So, you know, this isn't making any military sense. It's not checking out with the sources. It's not checking out with archaeology. You know, what other options do we have? And that's when I kind of turned to, well, let me just follow what the sources say. And, you know, let's start mapping, start doing kind of like what I do, which is, you know, battlefield reconstruction and conflict analysis and, and start from scratch, you know, with no preconceptions. What do our sources tell us? What do the maps tell us? What does the topography tell us?

• 20:14Speaker 04

  Where is this battle? And very, very quickly, that all kind of reduced down to one spot, which is next to the forest of Creasy. It's not like, you know, people like Livingston moved the battle. I didn't like move it to Amsterdam or something like it's, it's not, I didn't move it over the ocean or whatever. Like it's down the street from me here in South Carolina. So it's, it's a few miles south of the traditional location. And that's where then, you know, sort of hypothesis started, right? You know, the thesis is this is where it was. Does that check out with things, right? And then running back through all the materials to see if it

• 20:55Speaker 04

  worked. And it did. It worked very, very well. We don't have archaeology on that site yet, you know, so, which is the thing I think I get the most, other than just wrote hate mail, the question I get the most is like, you know, where's the archaeology? I'm not an archaeologist. You do not want me doing that. Archaeology is by sort of definition destructive. So it needs to be done with the most care possible. You do not want any old schmuck to go out there with a shovel. And the French are, there's a lot of red tape apparently about digging in France that doesn't apply, say, in the UK. Where it's a lot easier to gauge in stuff and France is not that easy. And all the archaeologists I know that have looked into it have said that the the government's not too keen on on

• 21:40Speaker 04

  on reopening, I guess, the crazy case. But yeah, so so that's it was kind of a process and it's an ongoing process. I've got a just finished through peer review. I will be coming out next, I think, next year. Another article that's, you know, provides even more evidence from the field itself, which will be which will be very exciting to get out. But yeah, I don't know that it happened on my site. Like, it's just an awful lot of smoke. And an awful lot of like the Venn diagram of every piece of evidence we got says there like, hmm. I feel pretty good about it.

• 22:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and it's not all that long ago since something similar happened with the site of the Battle of Bosworth. You know, these things do happen and the battles move around based on new discoveries and reassessments and all of that kind of thing. So I'm slightly bemused that anyone would give you flack for having an idea, which it seems absolutely crazy to me. So if anybody is doing that, please stop it. But, you know, there is nothing wrong with having a thought that it could be somewhere else and testing that theory, which is all it seems to me you're doing. You're not saying it's here and I you you can't disagree with me.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I mean, if if we found it somewhere else, like, cool, I get to write a second edition of the book like that's fun. You know, I think I think I get I get paid for that, so that's cool. Yeah, people do, they get really, they get really bothered by this stuff. Crazy, you know, Agincourt, Brunenburg, anytime I touch this stuff, people get people get really mad. I haven't had I had death threats over Brunenburg, but I haven't had that for for this. Which which on the one end is like, yeah, you're like, like, what is the matter with you? Like, what are you doing? And then there's this little voice, I'm not, please don't make death threats, but like, there's also that little voice where you're like, that's pretty cool that you're into history that much. I mean, you know, like, we have that in common.

• 23:22Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, but be into history that much without making death.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, but can we can we settle it down a little bit? Come on now.

• 23:27Matt Lewis?

  Just dial it down a little bit from there. Right, we probably ought to get stuck in to the battle now.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:35Matt Lewis?

  There are some famous things about crazy and I, you know, I'm interested in your take on some of those things. So I guess the things that lots of people might know about this battle. First time the English used cannon on the battlefield. Is that right?

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Is the first time we get artillery pieces used. Yeah, I wouldn't think of them as like cannon in any picture that we would have now. I mean, they're and they aren't, they're not mowing people down. They're really essentially noise makers. They're being used to disturb cavalry charges. The French are going to come with big cavalry charge. We're going to set these things off. They will not have seen anything like this. The noise, the flash, the smoke, it's going to freak out horses and knock out the charge. That's what it's doing. But yeah.

• 24:15Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and it's a really interesting tactic from Edward that no one's really done this before. And he's not, like you say, he's not thinking this is going to kill loads of French people. He's thinking this will spook their horses and disrupt what they're trying to do. And that seems like a really great idea.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  That's brilliant. Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, I mean, Edward's, like I said, Edward's, he's a smart guy. He's a smart dude. Yeah, so yes, his first artillery being used. Can, you know, like, don't get too overblown folks on what we're thinking of artillery. But, but yeah, it's, it would have been, it would have been unbelievable to see. If you'd never seen anything like that, right? You know, just what that would be like, that noise, the thunder and flash would just be extraordinary.

• 24:59Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like psychological warfare at that point, isn't it? You're really spooking people and making it impossible to do what they wanted to do.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 25:07Matt Lewis?

  And I guess one of the other famous things that people might know is the idea that the battle begins before the French are properly there. So the French are so keen, so convinced they're going to win, so desperate for the glory, that they attack before they're really ready.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. And that seems to be absolutely true. That is a bit of the story that that does hold up. And it doesn't, it doesn't hold, actually doesn't hold up terribly well with the traditional site. The way I've reconfigured everything, that absolutely makes sense for what's happening. The French aren't even arriving on the field by a single road. They're, they're arriving by multiple roads converging and they're converging right into where Edward has set up his position and he's taken absolutely the best position that he can take on that countryside. I mean, his scouts have done their work. We don't know who it was, like, he said, my lord, this is the place to do it. But whoever they were, they should have gotten a medal because they nailed it.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  I mean, as soon as he knows, I've been cut off. I can't, I count out run. I have to fight. I have to fight now. He takes the absolute best position. And when the French are coming into that position, they are disorganized. There's no question that there is certainly among the, the kind of lower ranks of noble. It's questionable whether or not Philippe himself is of this mind. But certainly basically everybody beneath him are like, yeah, I'm going to get the glory. I want to be the first one in. And it's a very disorganized battle. And that's more than anything what carries the day for Edward is Philippe's. In the military, we call this command and control. Edward has it. Philippe does not.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  And that absolutely shows through in this battle. It's a, it's a huge differential.

• 27:04Matt Lewis?

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• 30:09Matt Lewis?

  And what do you make of the role of the Genoese crossbowmen? So these are at the front of the French Army. My understanding was always that they engage first, and they sort of retreat, and they end up getting mowed down by their own cavalry, kind of thing. What was your take on the role of the crossbowmen?

• 30:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so what happens with the crossbowmen, and again, it's one of these things that just doesn't make sense on the traditional site, but makes sense where I'm putting things. Why on earth are the crossbowmen going in first? And going in without their pivaces, which are these huge shields? A crossbow is laborious on the field to load. And so you have a big shield that you kind of take out, and you set it on the ground, and you highbind it and do your crossbow, get out, shoot, highbind. They go in without those. They actually don't have all of their armor on. They're going, these guys are going to get mowed down. Of course, they don't know that the English position has all these hidden longbowmen. So these guys are going out there. They're all going to die. They don't know that.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  They think we're just going to go in, pop off some shots. Pull off the field in organization and right behind us will come charging the front line of the French cavalry, right? So we're going to soften up the English position, move aside, and they're going to get steamrolled. Yeah, instead, what happens is the Genoies going out, they're not prepared. Of course, you know, why are they even this close to the front? They shouldn't be. They're not in the vanguard. But if they've arrived by separate roads, they can be in the front of one of those roads. And when they go out and the English longbowmen, you know, this first crossbow shot, the longbowmen always hunker behind the wagons that they're hiding behind and behind trees, let all those crossbow bolts

• 31:47Speaker 04

  go through and then stand up and rain arrows on them. And there's no defense. So the Genoies just turn and run in a total panic, straight into the line of cavalry, which then makes that cavalry line, right, dissipate, cannons go off, dissipates even more. And now you have a mass of men that the longbowmen are like, well, that's an easy shot, right? And I'll just load up and go again. And they just start loosening into it. I mean, the carnage is enormous. And the French, rather than being in a position to sort of regroup, kind of double down, triple down, like, like, just start throwing men. And it and that's then that's how you get something that's lopsided. It's, it's again, that

• 32:29Speaker 04

  kind of loss of, of command and control, loss of, of almost the mental faculties on the field, which Edward does not experience.

• 32:36Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And how then does the rest of the battle play out? You mentioned that Edward has taken up the best position that he can. How does he make good use of that?

• 32:42Speaker 04

  He makes fantastic use of this. So what he does is he builds, he's taken high ground. It's, it's not, people think of high ground and they want to imagine like huge hilltops. It's not what we see on very rare battles. Usually it's relative high ground. You're taking percentage gains and he's taken high ground.

• 33:00Matt Lewis?

  I'm always thinking Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker when I hear taking high ground.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  I have the high ground. I have the high ground, Anakin. It's over.

• 33:06Matt Lewis?

  It's over.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Uh, I have the high ground, Philippe. It's over. Yeah. So he's taken high ground. And he's got forests on his flanks. So he cannot be outflanked. He then takes all of his wagons and builds. What we call Wagenberg. There's different names you can use for it. I use Wagenberg, which is a field fornication of wagons. You take your wagons, you circle the wagons, as we used to say in the old west here in the States. But what they typically do is actually turn the wagons over on their side. So it really is kind of like making a wall. So you've got high ground already. You make now a wooden wall sort of atop that, you know, a quick and dirty palisade. Some of our sources say that he did trench works and ditching. There is a ditch on the site that I've found, whether the ditches of sands

• 33:52Speaker 04

  now is definitely not kind of what would have been there, but it fits in the right spot for where that should have been, for what that's worth. And so you build all this, and then he's got archers in the woods tied their side, hidden. So he has this sort of these wings of archers to left and right, and a frontage of wagons. And then right in the middle of those wagons, he's got an opening. So it's almost like a horseshoe kind of thing of wagons, right? So he's got an opening. And that opening's like, you know, come and get me here. Hit me here. And across that opening out front is where he puts his dismounted vanguard. So all of their banners, all their finery, dismounted, like, come get us. And smack dab in the middle of the line is the Black Prince. So

• 34:36Speaker 04

  you can see like there's the Black Prince. Like, we get that kid. Like, we win this battle. We win the Hundred Years' War. They don't know it's a Hundred Years' War at this point, the Few Years' War. Like, this thing will be over. I mean, I, you know, this is bait, all right? This is bait. Come in here. And all these archers on the other side are going to just skewer you on your way. It'll be great. And that's in fact what sort of happens for the first stages of this battle, is this massacre, as the longbow is doing what longbows do. And everybody's trying to get to the Black Prince. And at some point...

• 35:15Speaker 04

  The Black Prince Piers leaves position and goes forward. He, he, he goes out. He does exactly what he was ordered probably not to do. I'm sure Edward told him, whatever you do, don't go forward. You stay here. Hopefully everybody will die in front of you and never get to you. But if there's any problems, whatever, like you retreat into the Wagenberg, right? You know, we have more men in here, but don't go forward because the moment you go forward, now the, the archers can't just loose in there, right? Because you, nobody wants to be the archer that shot the crown prince in the back of the head. Like that's, yo, no. So, uh, so yeah, but he, he appears does that because he is captured at this battle. Tegin is not, that's one of these things.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  It's not the myth, right? The, the myth is, you know, he could, he, people are worried that he's in trouble. And a messenger runs to the, to the king and, you know, says, my lord, your son is in danger. And, uh, and he, he says, well, let the boy earn his spurs, uh, the spurs of knighthood. Like let him just earn it, you know? Which of course would be, if, if he was really in trouble, that'd be like the most idiotic thing you could have said, like, oh, whatever, you know, I'll see what he does. But according to that story, which is a wonderful, it's a wonderful story. Don't get me wrong. They decide to run out and see if they can help him anyway, despite what the king said. And they find him lounging with piles of, of the French dead and are like, are you okay?

• 36:44Speaker 04

  And he's like, oh, I'm fine. I'm just resting for the next wave, which is a wonderful story. Brilliant story. But yeah, when you look across all the sources, all the sources, what you see is no, man, the guy, he, he went out, kid went out and got captured, was being pulled back to the French lines, had to be rescued. He had to be rescued. They had to go in and get him. He was very fortunate that the French started bickering and arguing over who was going to get the ransom, which would have been obviously. An enormous ransom, right? This is a, this is a family maker kinda, kinda ransom. And according to one of our stories, an Italian account, the, the French were actually killing each other over who's gonna, who's gonna get to have the ransom, which is sort of slapstick, but you could, but you actually could see it, you know, like, what's at stake here?

• 37:30Speaker 04

  And, and then at that point, Bishop of Durham has actually come charging in with a component of men and pulls him back. He'd gone too far out. He'd surrendered. He had, the Black Prince had surrendered on the field. He got surrounded. His bannerman laid his banner at his feet and the Black Prince went to his knees and, and surrendered himself, you know, to live. And, uh, yeah, he's, he is rescued, but it is, it's a, it's an absolutely desperate moment. And, uh, yeah, the, the king later publicly chides him for this and says, you know, didn't, did you enjoy that to go into battle? Like what fun that was kind of thing, you know, sort of chiding him, you, you idiot, what were you doing? Yeah, I mean,

• 38:11Matt Lewis?

  Also, I think it's slightly weird, you know, the, the whole taking him, you know, knighting him on the beaches of Normandy and all that sort of stuff. It's one thing having a, you know, take your kid to work day. Use your kid as bait on the battlefield. It's like next level. Seems reckless, but obviously, you know, the, the Black Prince plays his part in this because he's clearly given orders that he's bait, but he's not to engage. And he's presumably, he's thinking, I'm 16, I want to prove myself here, you know, maybe it's less about Edward, his dad thinking he should earn his spurs and more about him thinking, this is my chance. And it turns out, like many 16 year olds, bad choice and he gets himself into trouble.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, I did. I mean, I think that's exactly it, you know, I mean, we, you know, obviously I don't want to like, you know, armchair, psychologically profile the kid, but, but yeah, though in most 16 year olds and knowing the culture, right, that, that they're in, right? This chivalric culture, this, this idea of, yeah, like I want to be glorious, right? And you, and you see these, the opposing sides, right? These lords and all their banners and stuff going down in front of you. And like, like I'm just supposed to sit here? Like, no way. And so, yeah, and of course he went in, I'm, you know, it's the last thing you should have done, dude, but.

• 39:27Matt Lewis?

  But also, he's doing exactly what the French do in that there is glory there to be had, but you have to go and get it.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:33Matt Lewis?

  We're happy to believe the French are pouring forwards because they want to be the first to engage and to get all the glory. It's not hard to believe the Black Prince wanting to do the same thing, really.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, exactly right. Exactly right. It goes horribly wrong, but so did it went horribly wrong for the French too. Like, yeah, and we have incredible accounts of this, right? You know, there's an amazing poetic account that I think was actually written on the battlefield by a herald who's asked to try and identify the dead. A French herald who was in the fight, witnessed all this, and he talks about like what he has seen and, you know, talks at one point about, you know, witnessing, you know, a certain lord hurt, like mortally wounded, like crawling, trying to get to the Black Prince and holding the Black Prince's standard in his arms as he died. Like, I mean, like, dang, this is incredible. And it's, and it's just a story that's like that. I mean, it's not the myth that everybody has.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  To me, it's cooler, like, it's way cooler, like, the truth of what happened here.

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• 42:10Matt Lewis?

  And so we know, unlike probably everybody in the midst of all of this, we know that Edward will win the Battle of Cressy. How does it come to a close? How is it ended?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  It ends in like the worst, almost the worst way possible. This lack of command and control that Philippe has goes all the way to the end. Philippe is, it appears he fights very well at the Battle itself, but his, pretty quickly, like, this is not good, man. We got to get you out of here. And his men drag him away, but there is no indication that he ever called for a general retreat. So he leaves. He's pulled away from battlefield. And they run him north up the roads to a local castle for the night and just trying to keep him from getting killed or caught. But the men left behind are just sort of leaderless, trying to fight all the way into the night until nightfall ends the fighting.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  It doesn't end in a rout. You know, a lot of times, things will end in a rout, right? A side will turn and run. And that's where most of the deaths happen, right? Most deaths in medieval warfare are people getting in the back as they're running. That's not what happens here. It is just kind of this endless slog until nightfall. And the English are so, Edward's so concerned. He doesn't know what's really happened. And the sort of fog of war here, he's fully expecting to get hit again. He keeps his men on the field in their armor, like, ready to take another charge all night. And in the morning, fog has set in. He still doesn't know what's happened. Right now, there's fog. He's waiting for another army to come out of the fog.

• 43:49Speaker 04

  And he finally sends out riders to go try and see what's happened. And they start running into pockets of what's left of the army. The French army who've been sleeping in the fields who see these writers and they think they're French and so they call out, you know, in French, you know, what's happened? And the English then mow those guys down as lambs set to the wolves, as one of our sources rather nicely puts it. And then that day, that second day, another army does show up, another French army does show up that has apparently no idea what has happened and just blunders into the English position and get demolished. And that, at least according to some of our sources, more men die actually in that second day than on the first day.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  And the first day, of course, is the famous day, but the second day, more men may have died that day. It's a battle that that kind of has this weird, sort of petering out that you don't normally see in a battle. And then Edward, yes, spends a few days on the field. A sort of a truce is called, deal with the dead. And then as soon as that's, that's up, then he decides he's going to march to Calais and engage the siege in Calais, which will engage him for the next year, just under a year. And before we get the Burgers of Calais and all that, and Calais becomes English for a couple of centuries. So yeah, it's a, it's a pretty, pretty wild ending as well.

• 45:09Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, it is. And for all it's a famous battle, it's really interesting in the book, the way you portray that kind of real sense of, is it over? Who's won? What's going on? There is no kind of definitive, as you say, the enemy turn and run and you've won the battle and everybody cheers. It's kind of almost two days of just slogging away, not quite sure who's winning, who else is coming, what might happen next, and nobody really having a sense that it's definitely over now and we've won.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it is, it would make, on the one hand, it'd make a great movie, aside from that, right? I mean, you, because yeah, you, you expect at the end of the movie, you know, yeah, hurrah, we won, you know, we survived. And here it's like, so, yeah, I guess it's over? Is it? Yeah? No, it's, is it? No? Yeah? For, you know, hours and hours and hours until, yeah, a herald come and they get clarity that, okay, yeah, I guess it's over and we, and we can call a little truce here to deal with the dead. Yeah, it is a kind of anticlimactic in that sense, which is strange, given what's happened. By no means alone, right? You know, Agincourt has a kind of really strange ending as well. People don't kind of really think of that, but it does. So, so, yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  It is though certainly carnage the whole time. You know, it is not a, you know, saying sort of petered out. I don't, I don't want to indicate like that this wasn't like just horrific carnage because it was like thousands and thousands died there. Uh, it's, it's really awful.

• 46:42Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And I guess just to end up, I mean, I wanted to talk a tiny little bit about John of Bohemia because the guy we mentioned before, who was maybe not quite blind, but maybe a bit like me. He's famously found amongst the dead and we're, we're kind of given this scene in which the Black Prince recognizes his heroism and adopts the ostrich feathers of his badges as his own badge, and it's still the Prince of Wales badge today. And I kind of always feel sorry in that story for the two guys that John of Bohemia has had lash to him and forced them to ride into the battle, who were still tied to him dead on the floor next to him and they kind of never really get a mention. But that's, that's an interesting aspect, isn't it? This, this idea of respect for the enemy.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. The whole story about the crest being from John Bohemia is not true. You know, that, that was not King John Bohemia's crest. That's not where that came from. That's not where the saying came from, Ictane. And that's not where any of that stuff came from. It's again, a cool myth, but it's not where any of it came from. But it is true that King John Bohemia did die there. That is absolutely true. And yeah, his death, as you said, everybody kind of focuses on King John Bohemia. What happens there is it appears at the start of the battle, somebody describes, because you can't see far enough to see, somebody describes to King John Bohemia, who's kind of like a veteran, like leading, you know, living legend kind of guy. They say, this is what the position English should take it. And he says like, don't go in there.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  You go in there, we're all going to die. Like, that's a bad idea. And they're like, forget you, old man. We're gonna go get our glory. And they all go in and die. And towards the end, that he's told, all right, well, yeah. So it turns out basically everybody's dying and we gotta leave. And he says, I'm not one to go and have fled a fight and then die as an old man in bed. That's not how I'm going out, boys. I gotta, I gotta get into the fight. I'll, I'll die in battle. Thank you. Uh, and somebody points out to him, well, you know, my Lord, you probably can't get there because you can't see it. So yeah, his solution is they. Take the chains of his horse there and it attached to two other riders, two volunteers. Who's going to take me in?

• 48:47Matt Lewis?

  Are we air quoting volunteers there?

• 48:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, air quoting volunteers. I mean, we, you know, the stories, of course, they're like, I'm going in, my lord. And so these two knights, fallen told, maybe, I don't know, they sort of drag him in like, you know, he's tied to their two horses and they, it's almost like a chariot. And that's in fact, one of the poetic images we get from one of the witnesses is, you know, he was brought in like, like a chariot. Uh, so these two knights take him into where the fighting is the fiercest. And he does die there, as do they. Uh, one of our sources says that he kills more of his own men than of the enemy. Cause he can't see, he's just swinging his sword around, kills more of his own men than the other side.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  But he does die and, and is actually, his is pretty much the only, like, that's the only artifact we've got is his body. And I have, I describe it and we have pictures of it in the book, uh, cause his tomb was open and the remains were in there. And we're mummified enough and enough was still left that you can track most of the wounds. And, and he goes down, it's pretty nasty. It's pretty nasty. He, he, in a terrible irony, it appears that the coup de grace was somebody put a dagger through his eye, which is, uh, I, you know, I guess maybe he saw that. I don't know. So yeah, he, he dies there.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  But yeah, the, the story of kind of, you know, the prince finding his body and adopting his, his, uh, his crest and his motto is false. Unfortunately, because it would be a cool story. I like that. But yeah, he does, he does die there. It's, it's really, it's really nasty.

• 50:23Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And, and just to end on, I, I wonder what you considered to be the big legacy of Cressy. I mean, I guess it has short-term implications and much longer-term implications, not least in the fact that we will call this conflict. It almost begins there, the Hundred Years' War. So there, there is a long-term impact of Edward's victory. But is, is it more than just the, the prolonging of the war and a good start for England?

• 50:48Speaker 04

  It is more because it, you know, this puts England kind of on the map. I mean, you know, people, people knew where England was, but like it was, it was suddenly, you know, this is a force to be reckoned with, right? And again, this international quality that you suddenly have people talking about this great English victory all over Europe. And they're all talking about like, will you believe what these guys did? Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, it prolongs the war, gives a new credibility to the English cause. Obviously, in what Edward decides to do afterwards in besieging Calais, you know, after this, he, you know, he could have just gone back to the Low Countries like he was trying to do, but recognizing how weakened Philippe is, he's like, let's just try and

• 51:33Speaker 04

  get Calais. Obviously, it takes a long time to do that, but he's able to do that because the French kingdom is so kind of crushed by this. He's able to take Calais. And that, of course, had enormous benefits from economic benefits with the whole trade and, and obviously strategic benefits and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, setting the, the course for a war that's going to go on for generations, right? You know, nobody, nobody who saw the start of this war saw the end of it. And by the end, it's kind of not the same war was the start, but this, if this goes the other way, right, it, it ends here for those minutes that the Black Prince was in custody, uh, you know, that's, that was it.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  But it went the other way and, and that makes it a really pivotal moment in the whole story of, of the Hundred Years' War and of England itself, right? It creates a national myth.

• 52:27Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And I'm always struck by how much Henry V, you know, what are we, 60, 70 years later, will almost seem to be emulating Richard III. So he will try that march across France that Edward III does. He will forward at Blanche Tac, almost like he's copying him. He will, you know, fight the battle that he probably should have lost at Agincourt. We always have the same pattern there of these overconfident French, who don't seem to have learned the lesson of the last many, many decades. So, and it's almost as if Cressy sets a pattern for some of the big moments in the Hundred Years' War.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it absolutely does. I mean, in my, my book on the Battle of Agincourt, Agincourt, the Battle of Scarred King, which came out, uh, since Cressy came out. I mean, that's exactly what I argue, right? You know, this is Henry the Fifth is very deliberately like, I'm gonna do what Edward did. And it goes even worse, frankly, until the moment of this battle, which Henry has no intention of fighting there. He didn't set out to do this. But when he's cornered and he can't run away and he's, he's got to do it, he does it. Command and control wins again, and it's an extraordinary victory. And, and yeah, that's absolutely my, my take on, on Agincourt. And will continue to be, uh, you know, those, those two battles, you know, through the rest of the Hundred Years' War. I mean, you know, this is what all the,

• 53:45Speaker 04

  both sides are thinking about, right? They're, the French are scared to fight a pitched battle for quite some time because, and those don't go good for us. Like, like, we gotta change our way of warfare. And on the English side, of course, they're like, hey, this is how we do it. What was the setup we had for those battles? Just do that. So yeah, it, it has huge ramifications in military history, political history, economic history, you know, with, with what happens at Calais. It is one of the great, great, great battles in history, I think. And, uh, yeah, I just love it.

• 54:18Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And I thoroughly recommend the book as well for anyone who wants to get into a bit more, even more depth on this. But it's been absolutely fascinating to talk to you about this, Michael. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

• 54:34Matt Lewis?

  Michael's book, Cressy: Battle of Five Kings, is out now in paperback. And you can catch his documentaries on Cressy and Shrewsbury, as well as watching the forthcoming films as soon as they're released by subscribing to History Hit. If you enjoyed this episode, you might like an explainer we did a while ago on the Hundred Years' War that gives an overview of the whole conflict. And there's a series that runs through the Wars of the Roses too, if you haven't had enough of war. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

• 55:18Matt Lewis?

  You can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. As a special gift, you can also get 50% off your first three months when you use the code MEDIEVAL at checkout. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.

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