4
1355: The Grande Chevauchée
As in 1346, it was an appeal for military assistance that led to an English expedition in France. In January 1355, members of the Gascon nobility, including the captal de Buch and the Lords of Lesparre and Mussidan, present at the birth of Edward III’s son, Thomas, expressed their concern at the attacks of the count of Armagnac whose lands became the principal target of the first raid. Armagnac had been appointed King Jean’s lieutenant in Languedoc in November 1352. Two months later he began hostilities with the siege of Saint-Antonin, and by the end of May 1354 Armagnac was only 27 leagues from Bordeaux on the banks of the River Lot.1 The resumption of Anglo-French hostilities had, in spite of this, become very likely after the failure of the French to ratify the treaty of Guînes and the breakdown of negotiations at Avignon.2
The prince and his father agreed an indenture specifying his conditions of service and appointment as the king’s lieutenant on 10 June 1355, which post-dated many of the preparations for the campaign. These included the purveyance of hurdles (used for separating horses when onboard ship) to be sent to Plymouth, by the sheriff of Devon, from Wales. On 27 May, Thomas Hoggeshawe, lieutenant of John Beauchamp, the admiral of the fleet west of the Thames, had been appointed acting admiral of the prince’s fleet, and John Deyncourt, sub-admiral of the northern fleet, was also involved. General orders were sent out in April;3 Henry Keverell was paid for the purchase of gear for the prince’s ship, items were delivered to John le Clerk and his fellows, the keepers of theChristophre, and on 16 July, ships from Bayonne were ‘arrested’ in various ports,4 having been previously used to transport Lancaster’s troops to Normandy.5 Safe conducts were issued to the prince’s men between 8 June and 6 September. It seems that preparations were undertaken with the intention that the expeditionary force should arrive in France very soon after the expiration of the truce on 24 June. In the event, contrary winds and perhaps delays in securing sufficient numbers of ships prevented their departure until 9 September. During the delay at Plymouth, the prince stayed at Plympton priory and concerned himself with affairs concerning the duchy of Cornwall. Advance groups were sent over prior to the arrival of the prince and the main fleet. On 1 July 1355, Tiderick van Dale, usher of the prince’s chamber, was paid £20 on going abroad with Bartholomew Burghersh, the younger. He received a tun of wine and ten quarters of wheat at Plymouth prior to the muster.6 Stephen Cosington and William the Chaplain were also sent to prepare the archbishop’s palace at Bordeaux for the arrival of the prince who stayed there, whilst not on campaign, until his return to England in 1357. The main fleet sailed on 8/9 September and arrived in Bordeaux eight days later at the height of the vendage. The earls of Warwick, Suffolk and their retinues embarked and sailed from Southampton. On 21 September, the prince spoke before the citizens of Bordeaux; his appointment as the king’s lieutenant in Gascony was pronounced and his father’s letters read out before the leading figures of the duchy in the cathedral of St Andrew.7
As in 1346, the campaign was preceded by an attempt to divide French forces. Lancaster was again involved, raiding from Gascony as he had in 1345, and on this occasion he attacked Normandy with Charles of Navarre, while the prince rode from Gascony, leading an expeditionary force of 800 men-at-arms and 1,400 archers. Among his commanding officers were the earls of Suffolk, Oxford and Warwick, Sir John Chandos, Sir Reginald Cobham and Sir James Audley. The advance cost of the expedition, war wages and regards was some £19,500, with shipping another £3,300. In the year from September 1355, over £55,000 was spent on the prince’s military operation in Gascony.8
No attempts at secrecy preceded the attack which the prince led in 1355. Hostilities had already broken out between Armagnac and the Gascons, and the raid from Bordeaux was to be merely one element in a wider operation. French forces would be divided if they tried to deal with the prince, Lancaster and the king simultaneously.
The army left Bordeaux by 5 October, its strength augmented by the forces of the Gascon nobility, at least a further 4,000 men, bringing the total number to between 6,000 and 8,000 troops.9 It marched south and a little east before heading almost due east on reaching Plaissance, thereafter the raid continued to the Mediterranean coast and Narbonne. The return to Bordeaux followed a not dissimilar path, widening the band of destruction to encompass Limoux, Boulbonne and Gimont.
Near Arouille, following usual practice, the army divided into three columns in order to march on a broad front. Anglo-Gascon casualties were low throughout 1355, John Lord Lisle being a notable exception, falling at Estang. Lisle had first seen service in 1339 and had served in Gascony in the early 1340s in addition to serving with Derby and at Crécy. A founder member of the Order of the Garter, he was also involved at Winchelsea and such service may have aided in his appointment as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and governor of Cambridge castle.10
Promotions were a regular feature of the 1355 campaign, although there was no ceremony comparable to that held at La Hougue in 1346. Richard Stafford was made a banneret at Bassoues on 19 October and a number of new knights were dubbed including William Stratton, the prince’s tailor, and Tideric van Dale, usher of the prince’s chamber, on 12 November. After marching south for a hundred miles, the army swung east, crossed the River Gers, which marked Armagnac’s eastern border, and approached the count’s headquarters at Toulouse. At this stage, the larger towns tended to be avoided and those less well defended were pillaged and burned. This was not a siege train but a swiftly moving raid of devastation. The army forded the Garonne to the south and then the Ariège. This was a highly audacious move, indeed
an unthinkable idea to those who knew the area, and one which does not seem to have occurred to Armagnac … [who] … was confident that the Anglo-Gascons would not be able to penetrate into Languedoc beyond Toulouse.11
Armagnac was not drawn out and the army arrived at Carcassonne on 2 November. The city attempted to bribe the prince with 250,000 gold écus. It was not accepted and the bourg (the outer town) was burned, although no attempt was made on the heavily defendedcité (the fortified, administrative centre). Narbonne, which they reached on 8 November, provided even less resistance, and although the citadel similarly held out, the town was virtually uninhabited and undefended when the prince arrived. Edward stayed in the Carmelite convent while the rest of the town was looted, albeit while suffering attack and bombardment from the cité. They withdrew on 10 November, pursued by furious troops and townsmen.12
Two French armies began to converge on the prince at this point from Toulouse and Limoges, led by Armagnac and Jacques de Bourbon respectively. The Marshal Clermont also brought troops from north of the Dordogne and further support was expected from the Dauphin until he was diverted to Picardy. The prince marched north crossing the Aude at Aubian and when approached, the French fell back. Armagnac’s policy was that of Philip VI’s before Crécy, and with better reason, because of Crécy. He aimed therefore to defend the principal river crossings, towns and fortified sites. Prior to leaving Narbonne, the prince received letters from the pope who was fearful of the intentions of an army not far from Avignon. The messengers were not received courteously, and after a considerable wait were told to address their concerns to the king.
The march back was determined by the proximity of Armagnac and Bourbon, and the prince’s motivation is uncertain. Was he seeking battle or seeking to avoid it? Edward rode towards Béziers before turning west, perhaps in the face of French reinforcements, towards Armagnac. The prince was certainly expecting a battle even if not trying to engineer one, but Armagnac continued to withdraw. The prince followed him as far as Carcassonne and then headed towards the comparative safety of the lands of the count of Foix. 15 November marked an iconic moment in the raid and indeed the whole chevauchée strategy; Edward and his commanders spent the day at the Dominican house at Prouille, it being Sunday, while the rest of the army burned four towns in twelve hours.
The prince met Gaston Fébus, count of Foix, on 17 November at Boulbonne, and some agreement was reached. Gaston’s lands were to be spared any attack and some of his troops were involved in the campaign the following year. The route back to Gascony was difficult and treacherous, taken perhaps in an attempt to avoid Armagnac, although if the count tried to engage Edward it was not until he crossed the Ariège. There was some fierce but limited skirmishing and the army re-entered the duchy on 28 November and reached La Réole on 2 December.13
The chevauchées of 1355–6, like those that preceded the encounter at Crécy, struck at the military and personal reputation of the French monarch and nobility and seriously affected royal tax revenue. It was deliberately destructive, extremely brutal, yet also methodical and sophisticated. After the conclusion of the first raid, Sir John Wingfield, the prince’s business manager, wrote to the bishop of Winchester. His letter, often quoted, shows great concern with determining the exact value to the French crown of the areas overrun in 1355 and thus the extent of the economic damage they had caused.14
For the countryside and towns which have been destroyed in this raid produced more revenue for the king of France in aid of his wars than half his kingdom; as I could prove from authentic documents found in various towns in the tax collectors’ houses.15
The experiences of 1346 were to be highly influential in the campaigns that followed. The 1355 expedition was an archetypal chevauchée and proved to be a remarkable tactical and logistical achievement. The prince marched from Bordeaux to the Mediterranean coast and back, fighting only a few minor skirmishes and causing a vast amount of damage. French defensive preparations were generally ineffective and over 500 villages were burned, it was ‘une catastrophe sans précedent’.16 The only exceptions to the destruction were to be religious buildings and the lands of the count of Foix. While officially neutral, Gaston Fébus assisted the prince: ‘non seulement il assura son ravitaillement, mais encore il permit aux Béarnais de s’engager dans le corps expeditionnaire.’17
Armagnac’s failure to respond to the prince’s army is very peculiar considering the extent of the destruction and the possible prizes should he win a battle. Hewitt argues that ‘It is most probable that he had a secret understanding with the English’,18 but there seems to be little evidence to support this view and far more to suggest he was a loyal Valois subject. In any case, pitched battles were often avoided. The association of the prince with the count of Foix must have given Armagnac pause for thought. Furthermore, there are no accurate figures concerning the forces that he had at his disposal and he may have been greatly outnumbered.19
During the winter of 1355–6, the troops were billeted along the northern march. Warwick remained at La Réole, Salisbury went to Saint-Foy, Suffolk to Saint-Emilion. The prince, with Chandos and Audley, marched to Libourne. Three weeks passed before any further action was taken.20
As with many campaigns during the war, regular communications were sent back to England for purposes of propaganda and public consumption at a variety of levels. Personal letters also exist. The 1355–6 expedition was no different, and such documents are extremely valuable, providing a great deal of information about the period between the grande chevauchée and the raid that would lead to a battlefield outside Poitiers.21 The church tended to be the conduit for news, and prior to departure in 1355 the prince had visited Westminster to pray for success in the forthcoming expedition. Two letters were later written at Bordeaux on 23 and 25 December 1355 to William Edington, bishop of Winchester, from the prince and John Wingfield.22 Edington was the head of the prince’s council in England, and communications sent initially to the prince’s officials might then be more widely circulated. Richard Stafford and William Burton carried them to England. Requests for prayers were also made regularly. The Friars Preachers, Friars Minor, Carmelites and Austin friars, the city of London and its bishop, were contacted with this demand. In this vein, on his return from Poitiers, the prince gave thanks for his victory at Canterbury. Wingfield wrote at Libourne on 22 January, probably to Stafford, who had returned to England for reinforcements and supplies, and related what had taken place after his departure.23 Three letters recounted the events of the second raid and the battle of Poitiers. That of 25 June 1356, sent to the bishop of Hereford, was brief and requested prayers and masses. On 20 October, Roger Cotesford, one of the prince’s bachelors, took another letter to the bishop of Worcester. The most important missive was carried by Nigel Loryng to the mayor, aldermen and commonality of London and was probably also intended for distribution outside the capital.24 Other members of the retinue who wrote home also passed information. Bartholomew Burghersh penned communications to John Beauchamp, and Henry Peverel corresponded with the prior of Winchester. The prince also wrote to the prior naming all those killed or captured at Poitiers. News was also passed by papal envoys, via the wine trade, and the sub-admirals Deyncourt and Hoggeshawe who returned with some of the ships that had taken the army to Gascony.25
These letters do not, however, provide a great deal of evidence concerning military activity in Gascony during the spring of 1356 after Wingfield’s letter of 22 January. The policy was clearly, to harass the enemy, possibly whilst waiting for reinforcements, or a further English invasion, or perhaps simply until the weather improved. The prince also had a number of administrative matters to deal with, such as an appeal of the commonality of Bayonne against the count of Albret, and diplomatic contacts had to be maintained with the count of Foix.26
The frontiers of Gascony were fortified in this period, a task simplified by the support, won and bought, of a number of Gascon nobles who had not participated in the earlier campaign, including Jean de Galard, Bertrand de Durfort and the lords of Caumont and Chalais. The army was deployed along the frontier and, under the command of some of the key figures in the military retinue, made a number of small-scale raids. The distribution of forces along the borders was a useful defensive measure against counter-attacks, also serving to enlarge the Anglo-Gascon ‘Pale’, and it may have reduced any tensions that existed within the army. Despite this, the French retook over thirty towns and castles.27 The difficulties of defending the borders of Gascony would be multiplied many times over when the Black Prince attempted to maintain the political integrity of the much larger principality of Aquitaine.
The raids had begun around Christmas. In Saintonge, the front probably lay along the River Charente, from Rochefort (threatening La Rochelle) to Taillebourg and as far as Cognac, where Burghersh was stationed. From there, he raided northward into Poitou and perhaps beyond. The captal de Buch was particularly successful, recapturing a number of castles in the east of Saintonge before invading Poitou in January and turning south toward Périgeux which he took and handed over to the lord of Mussidan. In the Dordogne, the operational headquarters were at Libourne, with reserves at St Emilion. The earls of Oxford, Salisbury and Suffolk, with Elie de Pommiers and the lord of Mussidan, commanded 1,000 men and raided across the valley of the Dordogne towards Rocamadour. They took Souillac and Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. The Garonne formed another boundary, although the French had some garrisons west of the river. Warwick probably crossed somewhere near Port Sainte Marie, which was captured by a detachment under the command of Chandos and Audley in January 1356. Warwick then swung northwards along the right-hand bank of the Garonne. Clairac was also taken before he marched on and captured Tonneins. At the time of Wingfield’s letter, he was near Marmande. Chandos and Audley were in the Agenais. They took Castelsagrat after crossing the Garonne and raided towards Agen.28 Baldwin Botetourt (master of the prince’s great horses) was based at Brassac. The first six weeks of 1356 was scarcely less damaging to French royal interests in the south than the grande chevauchée itself and perhaps in strategic terms they were more significant. Territorial gains were modest but important due to their concentration in the north-west march, and the new-found, if unreliable, Plantagenet allies brought further territorial control. Durfort controlled some thirty walled towns, Caumont a further six ,and Galard and Albret were highly significant landholders. More than this, ‘They were the weather-vanes of the south-west’,29their allegiance marked the ascendancy of the English and the prince; their defection in 1368–9 would, similarly, mark his decline.
1356: Poitiers
The success of the first raid, and the support of new allies and the despatch of reinforcements necessitated a second campaign. Letters of protection were made out for Edward Despenser (Lord Despenser from 1357); William, 3rd Lord Morley, Edward Courtenay (household bachelor and retainer) and 119 others going to join the retinues of the prince and his captains on 28 March 1356.30 It was to be fought under different conditions, however, as on 12 January, Edward III had given the prince authority to undertake peace negotiations with the French.31 The 1356 raid was,l] again, part of a wider strategic programme involving Lancaster and possibly also the king. The intention seems to have been that the prince was to join forces with Lancaster. In retrospect, problems of communication and the pressure and opportunities created by the French defenders meant that if such co-ordination was achieved, it would be more by luck than judgement. Lancaster invaded Normandy in June and was joined by Robert Knolles, Jean de Montfort, Philip of Navarre and Godfrey de Harcourt. They departed on 22 June, resupplied the Navarrese strongholds of Pont-Audemar and Breteuil, and although they avoided battle they diverted attention from the south. On 8 August, Lancaster was commissioned to begin a new campaign in Penthièvre.32
Gascony was again not left undefended, particularly as the prince had received intelligence that Armagnac was likely to attack after his departure. John Chivereston, the seneschal, Bernard d’Albret and Thomas Roos, mayor of Bordeaux, remained behind in command of the defence. The reason given for the expedition was that the prince wished to face the count of Poitiers, now the king’s lieutenant in Languedoc, who was believed to be at Bourges and had been gathering troops since mid-May. Soldiers assembled there in June and July led by Jean de Clermont, Jean le Maingre, the seneschals of Poitou, Saintonge and Toulouse, and the royal secretary, Pierre de Labatut.33
The prince left Bergerac in early August with an army of 6,000–7,000 men.34 They marched north along the east of the Massif Central through Périgord, the Limousin and Poitou. The second raid was not characterised, at least by the chroniclers, as being as destructive as that of 1355, but this is not to say that the Agenais, the Limousin and La Marche escaped without harm. After crossing the Vienne, there was some inconclusive skirmishing outside Bourges, which, despite the absense of the count of Poitiers, was strongly defended. The force attracted attention almost from the outset, and Jean II raised his siege of Breteuil and rode south. The prince’s army headed for the French interior and Edward spent a night at Vierzon, which he burned on leaving. Scouting parties soon made contact with French forces, and Chandos and Audley encountered a French detachment led Philip de Chambly. On about 28 August, the prince learned that Jean’s army was at Orléans and had not joined the count of Poitiers. The Anglo-Gascon army advanced along the valley of the Cher to Romorantin, which fell on the 30th, although the keep of the castle held out for another three days when Marshal Boucicaut and the sire de Craon were captured. The delay caused by the siege gave the French an opportunity to overtake the prince. As in 1346, relatively small gains were given precedence over the potentially disastrous consequences that could result from the time lost to acquire them.35
The raiders marched westwards from Romorantin towards Tours down the bank of the Cher, but they were unable to cross the Loire, near Amboise, thereby precluding any meeting with Lancaster. The prince had been hoping for support and was ‘intending to meet our dear cousin … of whom we heard for certain that he was trying to march towards us’.36 Lacking supplies and ever more aware of the approach of the French army, the prince found himself resting for four days near Tours after a march of 320 miles in thirty-two days. The French royal army had moved more swiftly still, but in doing so had become extended over a considerable distance. After reaching Montbazon on 18 September, the prince’s scouts finally found the French army outside Poitiers. Attempts were made by Cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord to make peace and the prince appeared willing to make a number of concessions. However, the French insistence on total surrender was refused and the battle lines were drawn on broken ground on the plains of Maupertuis.37
There is some disagreement about whether the English forces were retreating before battle was joined. The delay caused by Talleyrand’s attempts to broker a truce may have offered the prince a route of escape and he may have been trying to get away up until the moment of the French attack. On Monday 19 September, following a council held the previous evening, the earl of Warwick led the baggage-train over or towards the River Mioson, probably at Nouaillé. This prompted the French to an immediate attack.38The prince later wrote:
Because we were short of supplies and for other reasons, it was agreed that we should retreat in a flanking movement, so that if they wanted to attack or to approach us in a position which was not in any way greatly to our disadvantage we would give battle.39
Although written after the event this does not indicate the prince was looking for a battle at that time, nor did he feel the need to hide the fact that retreat was part of his plan. It is unclear if the prince intended to retreat as early as possible or only if the attack proved to be too strong. It is possible, however, that it may have been a ploy to provoke a French attack.40
The charge led by Audrehem and Clermont was repulsed by the English archers. The Dauphin’s ‘battle’ followed on foot and managed to engage the dismounted Anglo-Gascons, but was similarly driven back. This may have caused the division under the command of the young duke of Orléans to flee towards Chauvigny; this proved critical ‘from the moment this large body of troops turned away from the fight a French victory became almost impossible’.41 The ‘battle’ commanded by King Jean may also have been separated from the main army. Burne places much emphasis on this for the final French defeat. Its approach was slow and gave the Anglo-Gascons time to recover, although some of the force may have pursued the dauphin and Orléans.
These attacks, poorly co-ordinated and impeded by the terrain, foundered against the English forces, and the prince took the initiative by remounting a number of his men for a counter-attack. The most important aspect of this manoeuvre was the flanking strike of the captal de Buch into the left rear of the French army that crumpled under this attack. Burne gave two reasons for the cavalry charge: first that the defensive position occupied by the English was more effective against mounted than dismounted troops, and Jean was attacking on foot; and second, since the morale and resolve of the prince’s troops was ebbing away, he would rely on the surprise and trust of the old cavalry charge, a frontal assault made in conjunction with a flanking manoeuvre. It proved decisive.42
The prince’s forces in 1355–6 consisted of three types of troops: men-at-arms, horsed archers and footmen. This allowed for an extremely flexible tactical response to a variety of situations. It is uncertain whether a set-piece battle was ever intended. If a meeting with Lancaster had been achieved, then the combined force would have been strengthened to such an extent that a successful battle might have seemed likely. Certainly, Crécy provided a precedent. Had additional forces and resources been available, and the arrival of the Black Death not precluded further military action, then the victory at Crécy might well have yielded far greater spoils than Calais and the ransoms and deaths of many of the French nobility. With the later Reims campaign in mind, it appears that a once-and-for-all victory was considered to be the best way of achieving success.
After the defeat at Crécy, the French had made several attempts to combat the English, particularly through imitating their tactics and dismounting their own men-at-arms. Tout suggested the battles of Lunalonge (Poitou, 1349), Taillebourg (near Saintes, 8 April 1351), Ardres (6 June 1351) and Mauron (14 August 1352) were indicative of this. The example of battles such as Courtrai (1302), Morgarten (1315) and Crécy (1346) had affected French military thinking and they endeavoured to find a weakness in the infantry-archer formation. In the event these approaches proved ineffective or were not put into action at Poitiers.43 The use of a mounted force to lead the attack was one such innovation44 but the defeat at Poitiers destroyed the illusion that snch military changes could be effective. The contrast between the French response in 1356 with that of 1359 is very clear. New defensive tactics allowed them to turn the tables on the English, first by denying Edward the crown in 1359–60, and then by reversing the territorial gains the English had gained through the treaty of Brétigny. This was only possible when they had an easily assailable military objective, the principality of Aquitaine.
The location of the battle of Poitiers is highly conjectural, and as the terrain played an important part, this is significant. Jean caught the prince south of Poitiers trying to cross the River Miosson. The prince, it appears, was able to draw his force to an area of broken ground uncharacteristic of the plains of the area. Three divisions defended a position protected by natural obstacles, hedges, trees and marshy areas that allowed the French only two routes of attack. The difficult terrain and the volleys of arrows broke the charge led by Clermont and Audrehem.45
The formations used are also unclear. The French appear to have had a small advance cavalry force, which tried to attack and disrupt the archers at the opening of the battle. Three large divisions led by the dauphin, the duke of Orléans and KingJean fought on foot. The English were also arranged in three major ‘battles’. The Anglo-Gascon vanguard was led by Warwick, Oxford and the captal de Buch, and the rearguard by Salisbury and Suffolk. The bulk of the prince’s retinue was in the centre led by Edward himself, with Burghersh, Audley, Chandos and Cobham. The archers were stationed on the flanks and possibly at right angles to the enemy. Their positions may have been defended with earthworks. The French divisions attacked in turn, although it appears that Orléans fled before engaging the enemy. The flanking force led by the captal de Buch may have included Gascon crossbowmen. The Anglo-Gascon army probably included of 3,000–4,000 men-at-arms, 2,500–3,000 archers and 1,000 other light troops. The French army comprised about 8,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 arbalesters and numerous other poorly trained and lightly armed troops totalling some 15,000–16,000.46 Jean could raise fewer men for Poitiers than his father had ten years before, although contemporaries did not attribute defeat to a shortage of manpower. Rather, and particularly by the author of La complainte sur la bataille de Poitiers, blame was heaped upon the nobility.47 Furthermore, the French had few missile weapons with which to retaliate:
Par son recrutement, et plus encore par sa préparation immédiate, la petite armée du prince de Galles était dans les meilleures conditions pour vaincre.48
The victory at Poitiers combined the defensive tactics demonstrated and witnessed by the prince at Crécy with the chivalric traditions of an earlier age. Only the French vanguard, led by the marshals, was mounted. After the failure of the French attacks, the Anglo-Gascon response was the classic heavy cavalry charge. The battle was thus a fine illustration of the use of dismounted troops who, as at Crécy, in concert with archers in a defensible position, broke the French attacks, then remounted and were victorious by the use of a cavalry attack, which was now uncommon, perhaps even anachronistic.49
Archers and the Longbow
The role of the longbow in the early campaigns of the Hundred Years War is a contentious matter. A number of issues are open to argument and interpretation, ranging from the nature of the weapons themselves, their power and rate of accurate fire, to the disposition of the archers on the battlefield. The archers formed an integral part of the English tactical system, seeking to slow or disrupt an enemy advance. At Crécy, the bowmen were very effective against the French cavalry and at Poitiers against dismounted men-at-arms. These battles certainly showed the superiority of the longbow over the crossbow. At this point, the range of the crossbow was less than the longbow and its speed of fire considerably slower, and at Crécy this may have been further reduced by rain and weather damage. The success of the archers in 1346 altered the structure of future English armies both proportionally and tactically.50 Their importance can also be seen in 1357 and 1369 when the export of bows and arrows was forbidden, and in 1365 archers were forbidden to leave England without royal licence. However, the effective defence of the forces under Charles de Blois and du Guesclin at Auray (1364) demonstrated that close formations of well-armoured soldiers could provide a less easy target.
The use of the longbow, a popular, not aristocratic weapon, demonstrated the need for the king to draw on the support of all levels of society in his (at least theoretical) quest for the French throne. In 1363, instructions were issued requiring everyone, including the nobility, to participate in regular archery training and practice. The Reims campaign would witness the full emergence of the mounted archer and establishment of mixed retinues (men-at-arms and archers). This in turn led to a shift in the social composition of the military community. The mounted troops gave the necessary mobility that allowed them to participate fully in chevauchées and for such raids to become engrained as the predominant English strategy. The balanced troop composition allowed for an effective and flexible tactical response to a variety of military situations. Such forces were particularly effective when used in defensive positions, preferably prepared in advance or chosen for their advantageous terrain and natural features. The massed power of the archers could thin out the enemy at a distance and slow their advance.
The disposition of archers in general, and in particular encounters, is still unresolved, at least partly due to the questionable nature of the formation described by Froissart as a herce in which the longbowmen operated.51 It appears likely that troops’ dispositions were not standardised, but dependent on a number of contingencies. At Crécy, the archers seem to have been used on the wings in a forward flanking position. They may have begun the battle beyond the front rank of dismounted troops to allow them to gain a little extra range. Bennett has questioned Sumption’s proposition that the archers were surrounded by wagons for protection and suggests they had a more mobile role, and that after the enemy approached, they fell back to the flanks curving slightly forward to provide crossfire. In this position, they would not have provided the vanguard with much protection. Due to the numbers involved and the lie of the land, it may be that the front was almost a mile in length. This allowed only a very light defence of the prince’s division in the centre. Formations at Poitiers are less certain but, again, archers seem to have been used on the flanks (possibly at right angles). They were led by the earl of Oxford to attack the French cavalry, and were used to defend the Anglo-Gascon lines from behind earthworks.52
With considerations of strategy completed and the battle won, the prince invited all the captured nobles to dine with him:
The prince himself served the king’s table, and all the other tables as well with every mark of humility, and refused to sit at the king’s table saying he was not yet worthy of such an honour, and that it would not be fitting for him to sit at the same table as so great a prince, and one who had shown himself so valiant that day.53
Geoffrey Hamelyn, the prince’s attendant, was sent to London with Jean’s tunic and helmet as proof of his capture. The army returned to Bordeaux and negotiations began regarding a truce and the terms of the king’s ransom.