The Battle of Crécy

What Happened

The Battle of Crécy took place in the year 1346 in August, as we all know that the best way to spend your Autumn, rather than sitting out in the garden and enjoying some tea and biscuits, is fighting in a massive brutal bloody war in a strange land miles from home full of your king's mortal enemies killing them to death. It was fought in the fields of Crécy, obviously, in northern France between King Edward III of England and King Philip VI of France. Also participating, surprisingly, was Englishman Edward the Black Prince, the son of Edward III , having a good old bit of father-son bonding through war with one of the greatest powers in Europe. This battle actually was one of the 56 battles throughout the Hundred Years War, a war that lasted 116 years. Although we mainly know it as a war between England and France, it really included numerous other countries such as Burgundy, (which, at that time was not part of France) Italy, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Weapons and Armour

The typical Crécy-era equipment was varied between the two main sides: the English had an army consisting mainly of longbowmen, equipped with at most a bascinet, maille coif ,  gambeson, and a few bodkin-tipped arrows to fire with their longbow, and the English knight would also wear a bascinet or great helm on the head, a maille coif, gambeson, maille shirt, coat of plates, pauldrons, bracers, greaves, elbow and knee plates, a knightly belt showing the coat of arms of the knight, and a sword or lance. Most knights rode on horseback while a few fought on foot, called, who would have guessed it, footmen. The French knights wore virtually the same as the English knights and the French crossbowmen wore the same armour as the English longbowmen but wielded crossbows rather than longbows.

Battle Tactics

The Battle of Crécy was a huge battle fought between men with huge armies, huge halberds and huge brains. King Edward positioned his men on a hill: they were strongly outnumbered but they had a strong advantage over Philip's French knights. Before the French crossbowmen had a chance to begin to advance up the hill, most of the English longbowmen went forward to the front lines and had beaten them back as Philip's knights spread out around the base of the hill. By then, a few French crossbowmen had began to retreat. Next, the French cavalry rode up the hill toward the English, but their pace was slowed by the rain of arrows upon them from the top of the hill. As all of the crossbowmen had either retreated or been killed, the last of the French horsemen reached the English, but were promptly killed immediately.