The hundred years war: Battle of Crecy

After winning the battle at Sluys and Brittany Edward was confident and he was going to march towards Flanders.

Now he still has too many debts and now no banking house was willing to give him any money, even the parliament refused him.

So, to prove that he could win the forthcoming battles he did what a person would do at a desperate moment in life...break his piggy bank and take all the money left and raise an army and reach Normandy. His initial plan was to march to Flanders and then meet with the Flemish army and fight against the French.

But before he could reach Flanders he had to pass the river Somme which took quite some time and he was stuck for some days. But eventually, he passed and he reached Flanders, but to his dismay, the Flemish army wasn't coming and the English were left alone. Any sensible ruler would abandon all hope and return to ENGLAND but as we have seen before with Edward III he isn't the person who will back off so easily.

He and his army went to a place called 'Çrecy' and decided to fight the French. It was him and his son "Edward of Woodstock" (who we shall call the Black Prince as to avoid confusion) who led the left-wing of the army.

On 26th of August, 1346 Philip VI reached Crecy. He laughed at the puny army of the English. The French had 30,000 warriors who were skilled, trained, chivalric and stood in all their glory to fight against the British.

On the other hand, we have the English army with a mere 15,000 soldiers, mostly peasants on foot. But what the french lacked was strategic military planning and a weapon known as the "LONGBOW". The English had also placed stakes and made trenches in front of their archers and soldiers so that they could slow the French down.

What is the longbow you ask? Well, the longbow was a 6-foot archery weapon that required immense training from childhood to use. Lucky the English had trained fathers and sons to use this weapon in their country. It could fire about 6 arrows in a minute.

Whereas the French only had the "CROSSBOW" which was shorter and a small archery weapon which did not require immense training and could be used by most of the soldiers.

Philip underestimating the English ordered an attack! First, the crossbowmen came but before they could even fire, the English longbowmen had already started firing their arrows and killing plenty of the French crossbowmen, soldiers on horse and more. Another disadvantage was that the French due to the hurriedness of the war left behind their shields in the baggage train.

While the crossbowmen of the French were retreating, the French cavalry started to move forward and in the rush and danger of the war even started killing their crossbowmen to move faster and reach the English...YIKES!

But the cavalry was also defeated by the time they reached the English and at the end, a few French troops managed to reach the English but were defeated brutally as well.

The remaining soldiers fled and the English had won the battle.

Short story:

A cafe in France.

A local farmer comes running in the cafe and screams: "The French army has been defeated!"

People turn their heads and someone asks "By whom"

"The English peasants with longbows and on foot."

Somebody faints, the others bang their fists, another spits his coffee out and someone thinks to himself-"We got defeated by a bunch of peasants... Qu'est-ce que l'enfer!

(Which according to google translate in French means 'What the hell!"- please feel free to correct me if I am wrong)

BACK TO THE WAR:

Philp asked the Scottish king, David II for help after the war. David invaded England but was defeated at 'Neville's cross' and David was captured.

After this Edward moved to besiege and capture 'Calais'. He succeeded in doing so and gained a crucial foothold due on the continent for the next 2 centuries.

And of course, after capturing 'Calais' they partied and drank wine, danced and celebrated but little did they know that another problem had arrived at their footsteps, a deadly disease which would be known to the world as "THE BLACK DEATH".