Over 80 ports supplied ships for the fleet, which was essentially a requisition merchant fleet. They didn't care what the French thought of them, they did though. And as Erica was saying, we're really talking here about probably provoking the King of France into accepting battle and no better way of doing it than to completely devastate Normandy. So that's going on, but battle hasn't commenced, but we're moving towards the fighting bit. The word must have brought back badly quickly, very quickly. What was his response? His response is, I think, of some shock. Edward astonishingly moves nearly up to Paris. He gets up to Plessy, just outside Paris. But
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the town of Crécy in northern France.
Although the French, led by Philip VI, massively outnumbered the English, under the command of Edward III, the English won the battle, and French casualties were huge. The English victory is often attributed to the success of their longbowmen against the heavy cavalry of the French.
The Battle of Crécy was the result of years of simmering tension between Edward III and Philip VI, and it led to decades of further conflict between England and France, a conflict that came to be known as the Hundred Years War.
With
Anne Curry
Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton
Andrew Ayton
Senior Research Fellow in History at Keele University
and
Erika Graham-Goering
Lecturer in Late Medieval History at Durham University
Producer Luke Mulhall