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On the death of King Charles IV of France in 1328, Edward III of England was his closest male heir and therefore the legitimate successor to the throne of the childless Charles. This was due to the ancient Salian (or Salic) law which prevented female succession (it had, however, only been enacted in 1316).
Despite Edward¡¯s legitimate claim, the French crowned Philip, Count of Valois, King Philip VI of France and the slighted Edward refused to pay him homage. In revenge, Philip confiscated Edward¡¯s lands in Aquitaine (held as a vasal Duchy to the crown of France). Edward therefore declared war against France and plunged England and France into a war that would last, on and off, for the next one hundred and sixteen years, a war we know as the Hundred Years War-
In 1340, Edward declared himself King of France and his forces achieved spectacular success against the French in the early years of the war, winning the naval battle of Sluys in 1340 and then at the Battle of Crecy in 1346. This allowed the English to capture Calais in 1347.
More campaigning was interrupted by the outbreak and spread of the Black Death, which reached and proliferated in France and then England in 1348 and 1349. Philip VI died in 1350 to be replaced by his son who became King Jean II (or King John II), known as le bon, ¡®the Good¡¯. French manoeuvres against English Gascony were renewed in 1352 and a new campaign by English forces in France was planned in 1354, one to be led by Edward¡¯s eldest son, Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince. His campaign would culminate in one of the greatest and most significant victories of English forces against the French during the Hundred Years War at Poitiers in Aquitaine, Western France, in September 1356.
We have a relatively large number of sources for the campaigns of the Black Prince and the battle of Poitiers, but none of them provides a complete picture; all have the usual issues of bias and reliability which must be resolved, and we are left with multiple, partial pictures, some of which contradict one another. Nonetheless, we can, with care, use them all to create a relatively certain picture.
Edward the Black Prince Prepares for Battle
Edward landed with his relatively small force (no more than 4,000 men) in Gascony in September 1355. He was reinforced with local troops bringing his strength up to approximately 8,000 men. His immediate plan was a large raid, a Grand Chevauch¨¦e, from Bordeaux to Narbonne, plundering indiscriminately and burning towns along the outward and return journeys (more than 500 were put to the torch). |
