Black Monday brought to a head all the faults of the six months’ campaign—the vulnerability of the English army, the foiling of decisive battle, the incapacity to take a major walled town or capital city, the vaguely perceived knowledge, of which Lancaster had a glimmer, that France could not be conquered by pillage, nor by siege, town by town, fortress by fortress. In the long run, this was what would condemn the war to drag on for a hundred years—the fact that, short of a fluke like the capture of a king at Poitiers, medieval armies had no means of achieving a decisive result, much less
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