Kalliope’s Reviews > Edward III: The Perfect King > Status Update

It was through the Nájera campaign that the prince precipitated the next stage of the 100 Years war.

Nájera was a stunning military victory, but the prince had terribly miscalculated. Nájera is one of the clearest examples in medieval history of a tactical victory which proved to be a strategic defeat.

On 3 April 1367, at Nájera, the (Black) prince and his Gascon army inflicted a crushing defeat on Enrique de Trastámara, who almost alone escaped the carnage and arrest of his army. Du Guesclin himself was captured, as well as Marshal Audrehem, whom the prince had previously captured and ransomed once already, at Poitiers.

In 1365, aged 33, she (Edward's daughter - Isabella) finally chose Enguerrand de Coucy, a lord in England as a hostage for the fulfilment of the Treaty of Brétigny.

This Enguerrand is Barbara Tuchman's hero in her Distant Mirror:

Duke of Lancaster - it was probably his garters which had resulted in the emblem being adopted by Edward's chivalric order.

The first phase of the war was essentially a war of rival between Edward III and Philip de Valois, in which Edward's claim wa a means to an end, not an end in itself (unlike later stages of the conflict).

Bue Edward did believe in the connection between God's will and the weather, six thousand dead horses and up to one thousand dead men in a hailstorm was a clear indication that God was not pleased.

1357. Great tournament at Smithfield... The 17 year old Geoffrey Chaucer was very probably one of the many thousands who watched the tournament, as the future poet had become a page in the household of Elizabeth of Burgh, wife of the king's son Lionel.

Jean II, le Bon. Captured.

Battle of Poitiers, Froissart. 1356