June 23, 2014 • 27 mins
On Sept. 19, 1356, one of the decisive battles of the Hundred Years War took place in France. It was the first major battle after almost a decade of relative quiet, and it stacked a small English army against a French military three times its size.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today we
are gonna travel back quite a ways to the hundreds
(00:21):
because you don't alwa's get enough time to kind of
dig into that older history. It takes a little bit
of work because the records are not as clear as
some of the more modern stuff. So, but it's time.
So we're going to talk about one of the battles
of the Hundred Years War, which is the Battle of Poitier. Uh.
This happened on September nineteenth, thirteen fifty six, and it
was one of the decisive battles of the Hundred Years War,
(00:42):
and it took place in France. It was the first
major battle after almost a decade of relative quiet, and
we'll talk about why there was a decade of quiet.
And it actually pitted a small English army against a
French military that was three times its size. Uh. And
it features some interesting approaches to combat and some kind
of widely moves on the part of the English, and UH,
(01:05):
you'll see how it plays out. So, just to start off,
we're gonna do a quick and dirty intro on the
hundred years four in case anyone needs a quick catch up.
So when the last direct line Compecian king of France,
who was Charles the Fourth, died in Edward the third
of England made a move for the throne of France
because of his lineage as the grandson of Philip the
fourth of France, who had ruled a bit before Charles
(01:27):
the Fourth. Philip the fourth daughter Isabella, was Edward the
Third's mother, but instead of taking Edward the third as
their regent, Philip of Valois, who was the nephew of
Philip the fourth, was given rule of France. Nine years later,
in thirteen thirty seven, King Philip the sixth of France
confiscated Edward the Third's duchy of Aquitaine. This is a
(01:50):
fifetom which sat on what's now French soil. In response,
Edward the third once again challenged Philip the sixth right
to the throne, so Edward had closer blood ties to
fill up the fourth as grandson than Philip the sixth
did as a nephew, but because of the fact that
Edward's bloodline passed through his mother rather than a male relative,
(02:12):
and this was an issue of great contention. Yeah, the
the women being able to carry the royal line was
a big problem and had some echoes later on. There's
a reason there were no female rulers of France after
this whole thing got resolved, And that's part of it.
And this challenge of the king's validity as a ruler
(02:32):
is often pointed to you as the event that ignited
the Hundred Years War, but we should also mention that
there was already a very long history of tensions between
France and England which had really led up to it.
There were a lot of factors going in and even
though this is the one event that people point to,
there were many sort of smaller catalysts in play already
(02:52):
as well. Yeah. I feel like there should be one
of those single use websites where you just like, was
England at war with France and you just type in
a year and it says yes or no, and a
lot of the time it will be yes. Yes. The
Hundred Years War actually went on for more than a
hundred years. It ran from thirteen thirty seven to fourteen
fifty three. So in terms of the larger ongoing war,
(03:16):
the particular event that we're talking about today happened at
the end of the second decade. For his part, Edward
the Third was a really skillful strategist that he was
able to use his claim to the throne to win
over French royalty and nobles who weren't entirely on board
with Philip the sixth, and in particular the Flemings, the Monforts,
and the and Charles of Navarre were all sided with
(03:38):
Edward the Third. Yeah, Edward was able to use these
alliances with discontented French royals to really break up King
Philip's power, and he made it extremely difficult for the
French regent to govern huge portions of France. And this
also served Edward and that it fueled in fighting among
the French royalty and no nobility because they were all
(03:59):
arguing over whether this person or that should be sided
with England or whether they should be loyal to France,
and this overall weakened the country's ability to stand against
England as a united front. One of Edward the Third's
other tactics involved the mounting of Chavochet expeditions Chevachet is
French per Promenade, and that these military moves involved going
(04:20):
through an area and burning and pillaging territory that belonged
to the enemy. This broke down the economy and morale
of a region, rather than engaging in a direct military action,
so the intent, generally speaking, was either to force the
hand of the enemy and make them fight, or to
discredit their power and interest in the common good because
they weren't moving to defend the lower class subjects. And
(04:44):
ten years prior to the events we're talking about today
that happened in thirteen fifty six, uh Kressy Prince had
been soundly defeated by the English, who had had a
much smaller army, and as a consequence, the French position
kind of from the Battle of crescy On had really
been actually one of defense. In the time between the
two battles, there had been not a whole lot of
(05:05):
confrontation between the two countries because a much more pressing
issue took precedent, and that was the Black Death. So
from thirteen forty eight to thirteen fifty six, most of
the skirmishes and the disagreements between England and France were
kind of just skipped over, pushed aside as Europe dealt
with the loss of at least one third of its population,
(05:25):
and some estimates, depending on what you look at, will
actually put the death toll closer to sixty of the population,
but one third is generally accepted as a pretty solid guess,
and it could have been more. Uh. But even after
the first worst wave of the plague had passed, there
were these waves of smaller outbreaks to contend with, so
people were still dying, but in smaller numbers. But sometimes
(05:48):
those waves took the populations by surprise, so it's easy
to understand why fighting kind of took a back seat.
They were just like, we don't really have time to
work on this right now. We're kind of busy all
trying to survive and not catch the plague. So before
we go back to sort of how this conflict gets restarted,
do you want to take a moment for a word
from a sponsor. Let's do that. So to get back
(06:09):
to the story, Once the Black Death was fading into history,
Edward the third son, who was the Prince of Wales
Edward of Woodstock, was ready to mount a new effort
against the French. The Prince of Wales, who was nicknamed
the Black Prince in the historic record probably was not
ever called that during his lifetime. He made a name
for himself at the Battle of Crescy in thirty six,
(06:33):
under orders from his father, he started once again burning
and pillaging all through France. Yeah, and this was really
immensely successful. The Black Prince was really good at this,
and he was able to loot so much in these
raids in these Chevochet that his baggage train was often
overloaded with plundered treasures. On August four, the arraid was
mounted against the city of Bourgs, and while the usual
(06:56):
burning and pillaging were still used, this mission also incorporated
military force spreading the attack between boors in the city
of Oddly. It's estimated that somewhere between six thousand and
seven thousand men were part of the younger Edwards attack. Yes,
so he had gone into France with that number of men,
and that that becomes important later on when you compare
(07:17):
it to the numbers of men that the French had
at their disposal. Oddly was taken by the English Prince
in this effort, although Bourgs was not, and in the
course of the raid, Prince Edwards forces also defeated several
small bands of French Knights uh and they also captured
the French town of Ramarantin. By the time Ramarinen was taken,
the French monarch had mounted an army against the English,
(07:39):
and at this point the French were under the rule
of Philip the sixth, successor Jean the Second, also known
as John the Good or Jean le Bon. Jean's forces
were in pursuit of Edward and his men, with the
intent to intercept them before they could get back to
their base in Bordeaux. Learning that edwards forces were quite nearby,
(08:00):
King Jean released an estimated fifteen thousand and twenty thousand
of his lesser men. He dismissed them in an effort
to keep his army nimble. He wanted them to be
able to move quickly to cover what the English were doing,
so he could already let go of fifteen thousand and
twenty thousand men, So that gives you some sense of
sort of the numbers and people he had at his
(08:20):
at his Beckend call for military action. When he found
out about the French military's approach, Edward made his way
along the Loire River toward the west, and he eventually
landed at the city of Tour where he tried to
take the city's castle. That move did not work out
so well. The castle was a little too well fortified.
And that was really the strength of a lot of
French towns was that their their castles were fairly well
(08:42):
built and they were difficult to take uh. And the
efforts of Edward's men were pretty much for not. And
once they became aware it was just apparent they were
not gonna have a successful siege and tour. They were
not gonna be able to take over the town. Edward
commanded his troops instead to burn the surrounding area in
the standard chevochet style. Once the chevachet at tour was complete,
(09:06):
the English forces headed to Bordeaux. They were pursued by
the French and this whole cat and mouse game that
would go on for nearly two weeks before finally culminating
in a decisive action. Yeah, the they were sort of
chasing each other around and sometimes one would try to surge.
One part of an army would try to surge forward
around the other, and you're kind of just chasing each
(09:27):
other through the countryside at this point. But on Sunday,
September Uh, the English forces had passed through Poitier, and
they had settled several miles south of the city. And
throughout the day there were these efforts made to strike
a treaty between England and France. There were papal envoys
basically running back and forth between the two sides that
(09:48):
were attempting to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict
and avoid a battle happening. The Black Princess said to
have eventually offered to return all of the pillaged goods
in return for a seve a year truce. At this point,
his men were really weakened by weeks and weeks of travel,
and they were running short on provisions. King John the
Second was having none of it. He rejected the offer.
(10:10):
His army was significantly larger than Edwards, as we said earlier,
so exact numbers were unknown. But it's one of those
things where because we're looking so far back to the hundreds,
an exact count is difficult to get. You'll see estimates
that put it anywhere between fifteen thousand and sixty thousand men,
but according to most currently used estimates and most modern historians,
(10:34):
it's likely that it was somewhere between fifteen thousand and
twenty thousand, but in any case, his troops far outnumbered
those of his English rival, which at their greatest estimate
were around seven thousand men. His counter offer, which he
almost certainly made, expecting it to be rejected, was that
the Black Prints and his finest one Nights would surrender themselves.
(10:55):
So naturally this did not fly, and so with no
success that in a ord the next step would be battle.
And I feel like I should give a bit of
a caveat as we discussed the arrangement of the battle,
because there is some disagreement on the exact layout of
how the troops were positioned and where they were positioned. Uh,
it seems like about between two of the most popular ones,
(11:18):
so I kind of went with one. So if you
do additional research on this and you find descriptions of
the battle with slightly different placement details, that's why we're
going off, you know, elderly history recounted orally, and some
of it, some of the details just don't quite match up,
but they're pretty close. None of them really contradict each
other so much as they just aren't quite the same.
(11:39):
So Prince Edward at this point was working with the
knowledge that the woods in the area were almost impenetrable,
and so he kind of used that as he said
about strategizing the placement of his men. And at this
point there was some degree to which he was trapped
kind of up against some of these very dense woods,
so he was working from a defensive position. The English
(12:01):
troops at this pointer said to have been so desperate
for provisions that they actually gave their horses wine to
drink because they were out of water. Yeah, I guess, uh,
drunk horses will do a better job than dead horses,
so they were they were kind of uh coming up
with desperate solutions for their their lack of provisions. And
Prince Edward nestled his men into a position with the
(12:23):
woods of Saint Pierre to the left of them, in
the woods of Noai to the rear of them. And
the dense thicket of this area meant that both the
left flank and the rear could not be ambushed by
any sort of sneak attack. And he also used an
existing hedgerow to protect his front line. Uh. And there
was a bit of a dip in front of it,
almost like a ditch, so it would have been very
(12:43):
hard for the French to come up that that incline
and through the hedgerow, and there was also a trench
along the right side of his troops that offered some protection.
Infantry men stood in the front line and they were
commanded by the Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Warwick,
and Prince Edward commanded the cavalry and they rode in behind.
So then there was a group of archers armed with
(13:04):
longbows who stood to either side of the English troops.
To get at the English army, the French military would
have to scale the hedgerow and the ridge that it
stood on, and Jean the Second Army was organized a
bit differently. It was organized into three waves. So the
first group was led by the inexperienced Crown Prince Charles,
who was in That group was several thousand men strong,
(13:28):
and the division behind the Dauphinse was helmed by the
Duke of Orleans, and that consisted of about three thousand
to four thousand troops. And the last group led by
King Jean. The Second was sizeable. It was somewhere between
six thousand and seven thousand men, so it was close
to the number of the entire English army and Jehan
the second and almost two dozen of his knights dressed
(13:49):
identically for the battle so as to confuse English troops
that were, you know, their primary goal was in the
end going to be to capture the king. In addition
to these three groups of soldiers, two thousand crossbowmen from
Genoa fought for France. Their mission was to take out
the English archers so that the French could advance against
the Black Prince's forces. And there's actually a little bit
(14:12):
of debate about the first move that happened in the
early morning of September nineteenth, which kind of kicked off
the events of the battle. So the English troops led
by Warwick started to move to the south along an
old Roman road, but whether this was part of a
plan to begin the battle or attempt to retreat is
actually a little bit unclear. And it's also a possibility
(14:34):
that because the wagon full of loot who was in
that group, that they may have been just trying to
protect the stuff that they had been pillaging all this time.
But it did catalyze action. The French advanced on the
Warwick's moving left flank, and they also went for the
right flank, and this left their Genoese crossbowmen unprotected English longbowmen.
(14:54):
Their archers immediately began firing, and they were shooting off
as many as ten shots per minute per man By
some accounts, many of the mounted French troops were brought
down with their horses. They had actually been warned by
one of the the one of King John the Second
War Council, that the horses were going to be a problem.
If if the archers of England could take down the horses,
(15:16):
they were going to cause some panic and some mayhem
on the field. So those that survived this volley of
arrows struggled in an effort to move forward on this
field that was now becoming cluttered with down horses, and
horsemen who had been thrown from their mounts or able
to dismount when their horses were struck, were then at
this disadvantage because they were on foot in heavy armor. Meanwhile,
(15:39):
Warwick's division, that had been moving seemingly away from the battle,
had stopped their movement and they turned to fight the
oncoming attack, and this sort of confused and rapid initial
volley between the two ended up with the first wave
of French troops being quickly defeated the Dauphin moved his
(16:00):
and forward next, and he focused primarily on the English
right flank. This advance was made pretty clumsily because the
remaining men of the previous group, which had met with
such a huge failure. We're all trying to retreat across
the same ground at the same time. Yeah, not really
like moving like a Swiss clock. They were all kind
of causing each other to have some problems, uh, And
(16:22):
the French seemed to continually be uh their own worst
enemy to some degree. So the Dauphin's wave attempted to
breach the hedgerow and they ended up battling with the
English for more than two hours straight, which, as you
can imagine, was quite exhausting, and eventually the Dauphin ordered
a retreat. King John the Second sent his son, the Dauphin,
and some of his men away from the battlefield because
(16:45):
they were so exhausted. Because at this point this battle
had been going on to four to five hours, depending
on the account that you read. Some of the English
troops are said to have thought the battle was over
at this point. They couldn't actually see all the remaining
French fighters because of where they were placed and so
they started to tend to the wounded and assess the situation.
(17:05):
So this was theoretically the perfect time for King John
the Second to take control of the battle. So the
King's division started to move forward, but at the same time,
possibly because they were confused or panicked, the Duke of
Orleans took his troops over the field, following the front
the Prince, who had already you know, been on his
way away. This disrupted King John's move forward because he
(17:28):
was trying to move forward in the same place as
the men were running away in different directions. Yeah, it
really was like sort of if it weren't such a
tragic thing to be involved in battle. In my head,
this is like a Benny Hill moment where every time
like one French group of French troops tries to move forward,
the ones that had come before them are running either
at them or to the side and preventing their progression.
(17:51):
So they kind of wasted this opportunity that they had
where um, the Black Prince, Prince Edward of England, you know,
had his troops kind of they were breaking things down,
they were figuring out, you know, what their losses were,
but instead they did they lost that moment of advantage
when the English troops were not ready because they were
(18:12):
all trying to cross the battlefield in different directions at
the same time. So as the King's large division finally
made its way forward, the remaining English troops, now having
been obviously alerted to the fact that things were happening
still and the battle was going on, they consolidated all
their men except for one small group of somewhere between
a hundred and sixty and two hundred, and this little
(18:33):
cabal of English soldiers was able to quietly mount some horses,
some in state on foot, and they rode around the
right flank of the English army under cover of this
very dense thicket, and they circled behind the French forces.
So as the French were finally able to engage Edwards troops,
the small group that had snuck around the battle attacked
(18:53):
the French from the left flank and the rear. This
probably served the English more psychologically than in terms of
actual military force, because the French were completely thrown into chaos,
believing they were being attacked on three sides, even though
there was only a small number of English troops at
their rear and their left, and so in this sort
of moment of panic where they thought, possibly for a moment,
(19:15):
that they were either outnumbered or just outgunned, many of
the French fighters ran and those who stayed on in
battle kind of clustered in small groups to fight, but
they were basically just defeated pretty handily by reinvigorated English troops.
The disguise ruse of the king and his duplicately dressed
knights also worked right up until the king was the
(19:36):
only one of them left fighting. He eventually surrendered to
one of edwards knights. Yeah, it was actually a French
knight who was uh sided with Edwards. So I have
to wonder if that didn't sting a bit for the
French king to surrender to theoretically what should have been
one of his own countrymen. Uh. And before we go
on to talk about sort of the fallout of this battle, uh,
(19:58):
let's do a quick word from our response. So once
things had settled down and the dust had cleared, at
the end of the day, roughly two thousand, five hundred
French troops had been killed at the Battle of Poitier,
and another two thousand men were captured Edwards forces on
the other hand, lost very few men. The sort of
biggest estimate is just a few hundred, so in comparison,
(20:21):
they really did very well, even though they were much smaller.
King John the second was held by England for four
years while his ransom was decided in the terms of
a treaty were discussed. The number that was eventually decided
on for the ransom was three million crowns. In addition
to the ransom, Edward the third was given Aquitaine once again,
(20:42):
this time in a slightly larger version than the territory
France had actually confiscated and returned. Edward with would withdraw
his claim to the French crown. Yeah, that was all
laid out in the Treaty of brittany Um. And once
those terms were established, they let King John go and
instead of him, his son Louis of age you served
(21:04):
as captive. And that was so that Jean the second
could return to France to raise the money that was
now owed to England. But France had broken down considerably
in terms of economic stability. The Black Death and then
the raids and the Battle of Poitier had taken a
really significant toll. It was more difficult than expected to
raise this ransom money in the six months that had
(21:24):
been negotiated to do it, and so uh Louis. After that,
this is this one of the sons of King Jean
kind of grew tired of waiting on this payment. He
was stuck in England as the the surrogate prisoner for
his father, and after it just became apparent that this
money was not coming in, he attempted to negotiate his
(21:45):
own treaty in terms of release, but that didn't go
so well, so instead the dauphin Louis escaped in thirteen
sixty three. Mortified by his son's behavior, King Jehan the
second went back to England of his own accord, believing
that he must uphold the values of civilry and honor.
So unfortunately, while he was warmly greeted in England, he
(22:07):
got sick while he was there and he died in
thirteen sixty four. Yeah, apparently, King John the second was
a great guy and the English really liked having him around.
So when he came back, especially because he did come
back of his own volition to fulfill this agreement after
his son had escaped, he was like given a parade
and people cheered for him in the streets. Uh. And
(22:30):
what's really interesting is that the Battle of Poitier, along
with the Battle of Crescy and the Battle of Agincourts,
sort of stands as one of the three decisive events
of the Hundred Years War, But a lot of times
the Battle of Poitiers really gets a lot less attention
than the other two. One of the interesting things is
that the use of longbows during this time pretty significantly
changed warfare in Europe. Uh. And the Battle of Poitier
(22:52):
is often cited by historians as an example of the
English being more adaptive on the battlefield than the French.
Uh And in this sense, since that led to their success,
it kind of shifted this idea of like we will
line up in the two rows and we will do
the old school battle, and it had a little bit
more to do with strategy and kind of thinking on
your feet. So it's interesting and cool as much as
(23:14):
war can be cool, it's a cool to see how
things shifted during that time. So that is the Battle
of Poitier. Uh. And now I have two pieces of
listener mail. This email is from our listener Mary Rose,
and she says, hi, ladies, I've just finished listening to
your Conto Earthquake podcast and I have a question. You
mentioned that many of the buildings in the area were
(23:35):
vulnerable to quake damage as they were made of wood,
where the buildings you're referring to rickety or poorly constructed.
The reason I ask is that I live in a
very quake prone Wellington, New Zealand, and experienced teeth rattlingly
strong earthquakes all the time. I live in a wooden
house and feel safer when we have a quake because
wood is flexible and can move with the shake, rather
than inflexible concrete or brick, which tends to crack and crumble. Uh.
(23:58):
Any who love the podcast thanks to the great work
that you do. Um. Yeah, it wasn't just that it
was an issue of it being particularly vulnerable to the quake,
but the fires that came after really consumed all of
the wood buildings. So if I characterized that to be
exclusively that it was a quake issue, uh, my apologies
because that was not the intent. Japan at that point
(24:19):
was having quakes all the time. It wasn't like they
weren't used to them. Many of those buildings have been
around for quite a while. It really in that case
was the fire that just basically turned those to kindling
in seconds. So thank you for that question, Mary Rose,
and I love the term teeth rattling Lye Strong, I'm
gonna start using that one. And the next email comes
from our listener Nicole. She says, Hello, Holly and Tracy.
(24:40):
I'm a textile conservator that works at the museum at
f I T, which is a fashion based history museum
in New York City. Oh my goodness, Nicole, that sounds delightful. First,
she says, I would like to thank you ladies for
your podcast. I regularly listen to you guys while I
can serve and prepare museum objects for exhibition. As was
the case today, I wanted to respond to the question
posed by listener Allison at the end of the Red
(25:01):
Ghost and Camel Core podcast. We just finished installing an
exhibition on the history of lingerie, and if Allison is
anywhere near New York City, she might enjoy checking it out.
The show is called Exposed, and it displays a range
of garments from as early as the eighteenth century up
to present day. If New York is too much of
a trek for Allison or anyone else interested. There's also
an amazing catalog of all the objects shown in the exhibition,
(25:22):
and then she gives us a link to the exhibit
page and also another article that has a really good
slideshow of the pieces that are in it, and we'll
put those links in our show notes. She says, also
as an aside, I really enjoy listening to episodes that
you have done in the past about fashion. The Poire
episode from a long time ago, a spot on my
thesis was on him, and the Roseta episode was fantastic too,
And then she gives us a list of topics that
(25:44):
she feels are not so well known today but famous
in their day designers that would make great topics for
a show. Nicole, I am happy to tell you all
of those people were on my list already. I just
try to spread the fashion out because while it's one
of my very favorite things, you know, it cannot be
fashion talk. So that's the scoop. If you would like
to write to us and share your thoughts or any
cool exhibits you know about that could help educate us,
(26:06):
all you can do so at history podcast at how
stuffworks dot com. So, uh, just heads up in case
you missed it earlier. That is a little bit of
a change to our email address. We're kind of going
back to an old, old email address. You can also
connect to us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash
missed in History, on Twitter at misst in history, on
missed in History dot COMSA dot com, and at pictest
(26:27):
dot com slash missed in History. You can also visit
us at our website, which is surprised missed in History
dot com. UH. If you would like to learn a
little bit more about a topic that was related to
today's podcast, you can go to our parent website and
type in the word archery in the search bar, and
two of the articles will get our How crossbows work
and how bow hunting works, so both related to what
(26:48):
we talked about today, and you can research that and
almost anything else your mind can conjure at our parents site,
which is how Stuffworks dot com. From more on this
and thousands of other topics because it how stuff Works
dot com. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today we
are gonna travel back quite a ways to the hundreds
(00:21):
because you don't alwa's get enough time to kind of
dig into that older history. It takes a little bit
of work because the records are not as clear as
some of the more modern stuff. So, but it's time.
So we're going to talk about one of the battles
of the Hundred Years War, which is the Battle of Poitier. Uh.
This happened on September nineteenth, thirteen fifty six, and it
was one of the decisive battles of the Hundred Years War,
(00:42):
and it took place in France. It was the first
major battle after almost a decade of relative quiet, and
we'll talk about why there was a decade of quiet.
And it actually pitted a small English army against a
French military that was three times its size. Uh. And
it features some interesting approaches to combat and some kind
of widely moves on the part of the English, and UH,
(01:05):
you'll see how it plays out. So, just to start off,
we're gonna do a quick and dirty intro on the
hundred years four in case anyone needs a quick catch up.
So when the last direct line Compecian king of France,
who was Charles the Fourth, died in Edward the third
of England made a move for the throne of France
because of his lineage as the grandson of Philip the
fourth of France, who had ruled a bit before Charles
(01:27):
the Fourth. Philip the fourth daughter Isabella, was Edward the
Third's mother, but instead of taking Edward the third as
their regent, Philip of Valois, who was the nephew of
Philip the fourth, was given rule of France. Nine years later,
in thirteen thirty seven, King Philip the sixth of France
confiscated Edward the Third's duchy of Aquitaine. This is a
(01:50):
fifetom which sat on what's now French soil. In response,
Edward the third once again challenged Philip the sixth right
to the throne, so Edward had closer blood ties to
fill up the fourth as grandson than Philip the sixth
did as a nephew, but because of the fact that
Edward's bloodline passed through his mother rather than a male relative,
(02:12):
and this was an issue of great contention. Yeah, the
the women being able to carry the royal line was
a big problem and had some echoes later on. There's
a reason there were no female rulers of France after
this whole thing got resolved, And that's part of it.
And this challenge of the king's validity as a ruler
(02:32):
is often pointed to you as the event that ignited
the Hundred Years War, but we should also mention that
there was already a very long history of tensions between
France and England which had really led up to it.
There were a lot of factors going in and even
though this is the one event that people point to,
there were many sort of smaller catalysts in play already
(02:52):
as well. Yeah. I feel like there should be one
of those single use websites where you just like, was
England at war with France and you just type in
a year and it says yes or no, and a
lot of the time it will be yes. Yes. The
Hundred Years War actually went on for more than a
hundred years. It ran from thirteen thirty seven to fourteen
fifty three. So in terms of the larger ongoing war,
(03:16):
the particular event that we're talking about today happened at
the end of the second decade. For his part, Edward
the Third was a really skillful strategist that he was
able to use his claim to the throne to win
over French royalty and nobles who weren't entirely on board
with Philip the sixth, and in particular the Flemings, the Monforts,
and the and Charles of Navarre were all sided with
(03:38):
Edward the Third. Yeah, Edward was able to use these
alliances with discontented French royals to really break up King
Philip's power, and he made it extremely difficult for the
French regent to govern huge portions of France. And this
also served Edward and that it fueled in fighting among
the French royalty and no nobility because they were all
(03:59):
arguing over whether this person or that should be sided
with England or whether they should be loyal to France,
and this overall weakened the country's ability to stand against
England as a united front. One of Edward the Third's
other tactics involved the mounting of Chavochet expeditions Chevachet is
French per Promenade, and that these military moves involved going
(04:20):
through an area and burning and pillaging territory that belonged
to the enemy. This broke down the economy and morale
of a region, rather than engaging in a direct military action,
so the intent, generally speaking, was either to force the
hand of the enemy and make them fight, or to
discredit their power and interest in the common good because
they weren't moving to defend the lower class subjects. And
(04:44):
ten years prior to the events we're talking about today
that happened in thirteen fifty six, uh Kressy Prince had
been soundly defeated by the English, who had had a
much smaller army, and as a consequence, the French position
kind of from the Battle of crescy On had really
been actually one of defense. In the time between the
two battles, there had been not a whole lot of
(05:05):
confrontation between the two countries because a much more pressing
issue took precedent, and that was the Black Death. So
from thirteen forty eight to thirteen fifty six, most of
the skirmishes and the disagreements between England and France were
kind of just skipped over, pushed aside as Europe dealt
with the loss of at least one third of its population,
(05:25):
and some estimates, depending on what you look at, will
actually put the death toll closer to sixty of the population,
but one third is generally accepted as a pretty solid guess,
and it could have been more. Uh. But even after
the first worst wave of the plague had passed, there
were these waves of smaller outbreaks to contend with, so
people were still dying, but in smaller numbers. But sometimes
(05:48):
those waves took the populations by surprise, so it's easy
to understand why fighting kind of took a back seat.
They were just like, we don't really have time to
work on this right now. We're kind of busy all
trying to survive and not catch the plague. So before
we go back to sort of how this conflict gets restarted,
do you want to take a moment for a word
from a sponsor. Let's do that. So to get back
(06:09):
to the story, Once the Black Death was fading into history,
Edward the third son, who was the Prince of Wales
Edward of Woodstock, was ready to mount a new effort
against the French. The Prince of Wales, who was nicknamed
the Black Prince in the historic record probably was not
ever called that during his lifetime. He made a name
for himself at the Battle of Crescy in thirty six,
(06:33):
under orders from his father, he started once again burning
and pillaging all through France. Yeah, and this was really
immensely successful. The Black Prince was really good at this,
and he was able to loot so much in these
raids in these Chevochet that his baggage train was often
overloaded with plundered treasures. On August four, the arraid was
mounted against the city of Bourgs, and while the usual
(06:56):
burning and pillaging were still used, this mission also incorporated
military force spreading the attack between boors in the city
of Oddly. It's estimated that somewhere between six thousand and
seven thousand men were part of the younger Edwards attack. Yes,
so he had gone into France with that number of men,
and that that becomes important later on when you compare
(07:17):
it to the numbers of men that the French had
at their disposal. Oddly was taken by the English Prince
in this effort, although Bourgs was not, and in the
course of the raid, Prince Edwards forces also defeated several
small bands of French Knights uh and they also captured
the French town of Ramarantin. By the time Ramarinen was taken,
the French monarch had mounted an army against the English,
(07:39):
and at this point the French were under the rule
of Philip the sixth, successor Jean the Second, also known
as John the Good or Jean le Bon. Jean's forces
were in pursuit of Edward and his men, with the
intent to intercept them before they could get back to
their base in Bordeaux. Learning that edwards forces were quite nearby,
(08:00):
King Jean released an estimated fifteen thousand and twenty thousand
of his lesser men. He dismissed them in an effort
to keep his army nimble. He wanted them to be
able to move quickly to cover what the English were doing,
so he could already let go of fifteen thousand and
twenty thousand men, So that gives you some sense of
sort of the numbers and people he had at his
(08:20):
at his Beckend call for military action. When he found
out about the French military's approach, Edward made his way
along the Loire River toward the west, and he eventually
landed at the city of Tour where he tried to
take the city's castle. That move did not work out
so well. The castle was a little too well fortified.
And that was really the strength of a lot of
French towns was that their their castles were fairly well
(08:42):
built and they were difficult to take uh. And the
efforts of Edward's men were pretty much for not. And
once they became aware it was just apparent they were
not gonna have a successful siege and tour. They were
not gonna be able to take over the town. Edward
commanded his troops instead to burn the surrounding area in
the standard chevochet style. Once the chevachet at tour was complete,
(09:06):
the English forces headed to Bordeaux. They were pursued by
the French and this whole cat and mouse game that
would go on for nearly two weeks before finally culminating
in a decisive action. Yeah, the they were sort of
chasing each other around and sometimes one would try to surge.
One part of an army would try to surge forward
around the other, and you're kind of just chasing each
(09:27):
other through the countryside at this point. But on Sunday,
September Uh, the English forces had passed through Poitier, and
they had settled several miles south of the city. And
throughout the day there were these efforts made to strike
a treaty between England and France. There were papal envoys
basically running back and forth between the two sides that
(09:48):
were attempting to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict
and avoid a battle happening. The Black Princess said to
have eventually offered to return all of the pillaged goods
in return for a seve a year truce. At this point,
his men were really weakened by weeks and weeks of travel,
and they were running short on provisions. King John the
Second was having none of it. He rejected the offer.
(10:10):
His army was significantly larger than Edwards, as we said earlier,
so exact numbers were unknown. But it's one of those
things where because we're looking so far back to the hundreds,
an exact count is difficult to get. You'll see estimates
that put it anywhere between fifteen thousand and sixty thousand men,
but according to most currently used estimates and most modern historians,
(10:34):
it's likely that it was somewhere between fifteen thousand and
twenty thousand, but in any case, his troops far outnumbered
those of his English rival, which at their greatest estimate
were around seven thousand men. His counter offer, which he
almost certainly made, expecting it to be rejected, was that
the Black Prints and his finest one Nights would surrender themselves.
(10:55):
So naturally this did not fly, and so with no
success that in a ord the next step would be battle.
And I feel like I should give a bit of
a caveat as we discussed the arrangement of the battle,
because there is some disagreement on the exact layout of
how the troops were positioned and where they were positioned. Uh,
it seems like about between two of the most popular ones,
(11:18):
so I kind of went with one. So if you
do additional research on this and you find descriptions of
the battle with slightly different placement details, that's why we're
going off, you know, elderly history recounted orally, and some
of it, some of the details just don't quite match up,
but they're pretty close. None of them really contradict each
other so much as they just aren't quite the same.
(11:39):
So Prince Edward at this point was working with the
knowledge that the woods in the area were almost impenetrable,
and so he kind of used that as he said
about strategizing the placement of his men. And at this
point there was some degree to which he was trapped
kind of up against some of these very dense woods,
so he was working from a defensive position. The English
(12:01):
troops at this pointer said to have been so desperate
for provisions that they actually gave their horses wine to
drink because they were out of water. Yeah, I guess, uh,
drunk horses will do a better job than dead horses,
so they were they were kind of uh coming up
with desperate solutions for their their lack of provisions. And
Prince Edward nestled his men into a position with the
(12:23):
woods of Saint Pierre to the left of them, in
the woods of Noai to the rear of them. And
the dense thicket of this area meant that both the
left flank and the rear could not be ambushed by
any sort of sneak attack. And he also used an
existing hedgerow to protect his front line. Uh. And there
was a bit of a dip in front of it,
almost like a ditch, so it would have been very
(12:43):
hard for the French to come up that that incline
and through the hedgerow, and there was also a trench
along the right side of his troops that offered some protection.
Infantry men stood in the front line and they were
commanded by the Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Warwick,
and Prince Edward commanded the cavalry and they rode in behind.
So then there was a group of archers armed with
(13:04):
longbows who stood to either side of the English troops.
To get at the English army, the French military would
have to scale the hedgerow and the ridge that it
stood on, and Jean the Second Army was organized a
bit differently. It was organized into three waves. So the
first group was led by the inexperienced Crown Prince Charles,
who was in That group was several thousand men strong,
(13:28):
and the division behind the Dauphinse was helmed by the
Duke of Orleans, and that consisted of about three thousand
to four thousand troops. And the last group led by
King Jean. The Second was sizeable. It was somewhere between
six thousand and seven thousand men, so it was close
to the number of the entire English army and Jehan
the second and almost two dozen of his knights dressed
(13:49):
identically for the battle so as to confuse English troops
that were, you know, their primary goal was in the
end going to be to capture the king. In addition
to these three groups of soldiers, two thousand crossbowmen from
Genoa fought for France. Their mission was to take out
the English archers so that the French could advance against
the Black Prince's forces. And there's actually a little bit
(14:12):
of debate about the first move that happened in the
early morning of September nineteenth, which kind of kicked off
the events of the battle. So the English troops led
by Warwick started to move to the south along an
old Roman road, but whether this was part of a
plan to begin the battle or attempt to retreat is
actually a little bit unclear. And it's also a possibility
(14:34):
that because the wagon full of loot who was in
that group, that they may have been just trying to
protect the stuff that they had been pillaging all this time.
But it did catalyze action. The French advanced on the
Warwick's moving left flank, and they also went for the
right flank, and this left their Genoese crossbowmen unprotected English longbowmen.
(14:54):
Their archers immediately began firing, and they were shooting off
as many as ten shots per minute per man By
some accounts, many of the mounted French troops were brought
down with their horses. They had actually been warned by
one of the the one of King John the Second
War Council, that the horses were going to be a problem.
If if the archers of England could take down the horses,
(15:16):
they were going to cause some panic and some mayhem
on the field. So those that survived this volley of
arrows struggled in an effort to move forward on this
field that was now becoming cluttered with down horses, and
horsemen who had been thrown from their mounts or able
to dismount when their horses were struck, were then at
this disadvantage because they were on foot in heavy armor. Meanwhile,
(15:39):
Warwick's division, that had been moving seemingly away from the battle,
had stopped their movement and they turned to fight the
oncoming attack, and this sort of confused and rapid initial
volley between the two ended up with the first wave
of French troops being quickly defeated the Dauphin moved his
(16:00):
and forward next, and he focused primarily on the English
right flank. This advance was made pretty clumsily because the
remaining men of the previous group, which had met with
such a huge failure. We're all trying to retreat across
the same ground at the same time. Yeah, not really
like moving like a Swiss clock. They were all kind
of causing each other to have some problems, uh, And
(16:22):
the French seemed to continually be uh their own worst
enemy to some degree. So the Dauphin's wave attempted to
breach the hedgerow and they ended up battling with the
English for more than two hours straight, which, as you
can imagine, was quite exhausting, and eventually the Dauphin ordered
a retreat. King John the Second sent his son, the Dauphin,
and some of his men away from the battlefield because
(16:45):
they were so exhausted. Because at this point this battle
had been going on to four to five hours, depending
on the account that you read. Some of the English
troops are said to have thought the battle was over
at this point. They couldn't actually see all the remaining
French fighters because of where they were placed and so
they started to tend to the wounded and assess the situation.
(17:05):
So this was theoretically the perfect time for King John
the Second to take control of the battle. So the
King's division started to move forward, but at the same time,
possibly because they were confused or panicked, the Duke of
Orleans took his troops over the field, following the front
the Prince, who had already you know, been on his
way away. This disrupted King John's move forward because he
(17:28):
was trying to move forward in the same place as
the men were running away in different directions. Yeah, it
really was like sort of if it weren't such a
tragic thing to be involved in battle. In my head,
this is like a Benny Hill moment where every time
like one French group of French troops tries to move forward,
the ones that had come before them are running either
at them or to the side and preventing their progression.
(17:51):
So they kind of wasted this opportunity that they had
where um, the Black Prince, Prince Edward of England, you know,
had his troops kind of they were breaking things down,
they were figuring out, you know, what their losses were,
but instead they did they lost that moment of advantage
when the English troops were not ready because they were
(18:12):
all trying to cross the battlefield in different directions at
the same time. So as the King's large division finally
made its way forward, the remaining English troops, now having
been obviously alerted to the fact that things were happening
still and the battle was going on, they consolidated all
their men except for one small group of somewhere between
a hundred and sixty and two hundred, and this little
(18:33):
cabal of English soldiers was able to quietly mount some horses,
some in state on foot, and they rode around the
right flank of the English army under cover of this
very dense thicket, and they circled behind the French forces.
So as the French were finally able to engage Edwards troops,
the small group that had snuck around the battle attacked
(18:53):
the French from the left flank and the rear. This
probably served the English more psychologically than in terms of
actual military force, because the French were completely thrown into chaos,
believing they were being attacked on three sides, even though
there was only a small number of English troops at
their rear and their left, and so in this sort
of moment of panic where they thought, possibly for a moment,
(19:15):
that they were either outnumbered or just outgunned, many of
the French fighters ran and those who stayed on in
battle kind of clustered in small groups to fight, but
they were basically just defeated pretty handily by reinvigorated English troops.
The disguise ruse of the king and his duplicately dressed
knights also worked right up until the king was the
(19:36):
only one of them left fighting. He eventually surrendered to
one of edwards knights. Yeah, it was actually a French
knight who was uh sided with Edwards. So I have
to wonder if that didn't sting a bit for the
French king to surrender to theoretically what should have been
one of his own countrymen. Uh. And before we go
on to talk about sort of the fallout of this battle, uh,
(19:58):
let's do a quick word from our response. So once
things had settled down and the dust had cleared, at
the end of the day, roughly two thousand, five hundred
French troops had been killed at the Battle of Poitier,
and another two thousand men were captured Edwards forces on
the other hand, lost very few men. The sort of
biggest estimate is just a few hundred, so in comparison,
(20:21):
they really did very well, even though they were much smaller.
King John the second was held by England for four
years while his ransom was decided in the terms of
a treaty were discussed. The number that was eventually decided
on for the ransom was three million crowns. In addition
to the ransom, Edward the third was given Aquitaine once again,
(20:42):
this time in a slightly larger version than the territory
France had actually confiscated and returned. Edward with would withdraw
his claim to the French crown. Yeah, that was all
laid out in the Treaty of brittany Um. And once
those terms were established, they let King John go and
instead of him, his son Louis of age you served
(21:04):
as captive. And that was so that Jean the second
could return to France to raise the money that was
now owed to England. But France had broken down considerably
in terms of economic stability. The Black Death and then
the raids and the Battle of Poitier had taken a
really significant toll. It was more difficult than expected to
raise this ransom money in the six months that had
(21:24):
been negotiated to do it, and so uh Louis. After that,
this is this one of the sons of King Jean
kind of grew tired of waiting on this payment. He
was stuck in England as the the surrogate prisoner for
his father, and after it just became apparent that this
money was not coming in, he attempted to negotiate his
(21:45):
own treaty in terms of release, but that didn't go
so well, so instead the dauphin Louis escaped in thirteen
sixty three. Mortified by his son's behavior, King Jehan the
second went back to England of his own accord, believing
that he must uphold the values of civilry and honor.
So unfortunately, while he was warmly greeted in England, he
(22:07):
got sick while he was there and he died in
thirteen sixty four. Yeah, apparently, King John the second was
a great guy and the English really liked having him around.
So when he came back, especially because he did come
back of his own volition to fulfill this agreement after
his son had escaped, he was like given a parade
and people cheered for him in the streets. Uh. And
(22:30):
what's really interesting is that the Battle of Poitier, along
with the Battle of Crescy and the Battle of Agincourts,
sort of stands as one of the three decisive events
of the Hundred Years War, But a lot of times
the Battle of Poitiers really gets a lot less attention
than the other two. One of the interesting things is
that the use of longbows during this time pretty significantly
changed warfare in Europe. Uh. And the Battle of Poitier
(22:52):
is often cited by historians as an example of the
English being more adaptive on the battlefield than the French.
Uh And in this sense, since that led to their success,
it kind of shifted this idea of like we will
line up in the two rows and we will do
the old school battle, and it had a little bit
more to do with strategy and kind of thinking on
your feet. So it's interesting and cool as much as
(23:14):
war can be cool, it's a cool to see how
things shifted during that time. So that is the Battle
of Poitier. Uh. And now I have two pieces of
listener mail. This email is from our listener Mary Rose,
and she says, hi, ladies, I've just finished listening to
your Conto Earthquake podcast and I have a question. You
mentioned that many of the buildings in the area were
(23:35):
vulnerable to quake damage as they were made of wood,
where the buildings you're referring to rickety or poorly constructed.
The reason I ask is that I live in a
very quake prone Wellington, New Zealand, and experienced teeth rattlingly
strong earthquakes all the time. I live in a wooden
house and feel safer when we have a quake because
wood is flexible and can move with the shake, rather
than inflexible concrete or brick, which tends to crack and crumble. Uh.
(23:58):
Any who love the podcast thanks to the great work
that you do. Um. Yeah, it wasn't just that it
was an issue of it being particularly vulnerable to the quake,
but the fires that came after really consumed all of
the wood buildings. So if I characterized that to be
exclusively that it was a quake issue, uh, my apologies
because that was not the intent. Japan at that point
(24:19):
was having quakes all the time. It wasn't like they
weren't used to them. Many of those buildings have been
around for quite a while. It really in that case
was the fire that just basically turned those to kindling
in seconds. So thank you for that question, Mary Rose,
and I love the term teeth rattling Lye Strong, I'm
gonna start using that one. And the next email comes
from our listener Nicole. She says, Hello, Holly and Tracy.
(24:40):
I'm a textile conservator that works at the museum at
f I T, which is a fashion based history museum
in New York City. Oh my goodness, Nicole, that sounds delightful. First,
she says, I would like to thank you ladies for
your podcast. I regularly listen to you guys while I
can serve and prepare museum objects for exhibition. As was
the case today, I wanted to respond to the question
posed by listener Allison at the end of the Red
(25:01):
Ghost and Camel Core podcast. We just finished installing an
exhibition on the history of lingerie, and if Allison is
anywhere near New York City, she might enjoy checking it out.
The show is called Exposed, and it displays a range
of garments from as early as the eighteenth century up
to present day. If New York is too much of
a trek for Allison or anyone else interested. There's also
an amazing catalog of all the objects shown in the exhibition,
(25:22):
and then she gives us a link to the exhibit
page and also another article that has a really good
slideshow of the pieces that are in it, and we'll
put those links in our show notes. She says, also
as an aside, I really enjoy listening to episodes that
you have done in the past about fashion. The Poire
episode from a long time ago, a spot on my
thesis was on him, and the Roseta episode was fantastic too,
And then she gives us a list of topics that
(25:44):
she feels are not so well known today but famous
in their day designers that would make great topics for
a show. Nicole, I am happy to tell you all
of those people were on my list already. I just
try to spread the fashion out because while it's one
of my very favorite things, you know, it cannot be
fashion talk. So that's the scoop. If you would like
to write to us and share your thoughts or any
cool exhibits you know about that could help educate us,
(26:06):
all you can do so at history podcast at how
stuffworks dot com. So, uh, just heads up in case
you missed it earlier. That is a little bit of
a change to our email address. We're kind of going
back to an old, old email address. You can also
connect to us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash
missed in History, on Twitter at misst in history, on
missed in History dot COMSA dot com, and at pictest
(26:27):
dot com slash missed in History. You can also visit
us at our website, which is surprised missed in History
dot com. UH. If you would like to learn a
little bit more about a topic that was related to
today's podcast, you can go to our parent website and
type in the word archery in the search bar, and
two of the articles will get our How crossbows work
and how bow hunting works, so both related to what
(26:48):
we talked about today, and you can research that and
almost anything else your mind can conjure at our parents site,
which is how Stuffworks dot com. From more on this
and thousands of other topics because it how stuff Works
dot com. H
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Holly Frey
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