Today in History: The Battle of Crecy
On this day (August 26) in 1346, the English defeated the French at the Battle of Crecy early in the Hundred Years War. The battle came about because of tensions between France and England that resulted from the death of Charles IV of France without children. Edward III of England was his closest male relative, but the French crowned Philip VI instead. Edward reluctantly accepted this and did homage for his lands as Duke of Aquitaine but in 1337 Philip confiscated Aquitaine precipitating war between the two kingdoms.
Crecy occurred after Edward led a long plundering raid through France. Philip finally caught up to him with a significantly larger army but Edward chose his position well to lessen the effectiveness of Philip’s large cavalry. Edward also had brought a significant number of longbowmen and they were about to change the European battlefield. For his own ranged attacks, Philip depended on Genoese crossbowmen, but the crossbow was a slow and clunky weapon compared to the English longbow.
Against the advice of many of his senior nobles, Philip decided to attack late in the afternoon. A rainstorm burst over them and the English archers unstrung their bows and sheltered their bowstrings inside their shirts. The Genoese did not. Furthermore, they left their long shields behind with the baggage so they had no protection at all from the English archers and their crossbows were damaged from the rain shower. The Genoese were quickly sent running back to the rear of the French army.
This prompted the French cavalry to make the first of several charges uphill toward the English. Obstacles had been placed by the English on the slope which hampered the charges and the longbowmen proved their worth by shooting tens of thousands of arrows into the French ranks. King Philip had two horses shot out from under him and was hit by an arrow in the jaw. He finally withdrew the French forces from the field. Thousands of French nobles had been killed and many times more of their common soldiers. The English had very light casualties, perhaps as low as three hundred.
Crecy marked the beginning of a change in the way medieval armies conducted themselves, moving away from chivalry toward professional armies.
