Classic campaign:
The battle of Crécy
The year 1340 saw the start of the Hundred Years War between England and France, when Edward III made his bid for the French throne and launched successful raids into France to enhance his claim. These were hit-and-run terror attacks designed to humiliate the French king and make the French people question why the state could not protect them.
Six-week campaign
By 1346, Edward was in Normandy leading an invasion force of some 14,000 men, over half of whom were archers (5,000 foot archers, 2,500 mounted). They included Welshmen loyal to the king through his son Edward the Black Prince, the Prince of Wales.
Edward sacked Caen, skirted Paris and then headed straight for Calais loaded with spoils. This six-week campaign gave Philip VI of France time to muster his forces. From Paris, he gave chase with 20,000 knights and soldiers, including Genoese mercenary crossbowmen. With the bridges across the river Somme destroyed by French forward forces, the British were trapped until they found a fording place and escaped to the village of Crécy where a stand would be made.
High ground
At Crécy, the English took the high ground and settled into position. They had enough of a lead on the pursuing French to rest and prepare. Philip and his force arrived at noon the next day (26 August) and found themselves faced with the Crécy bank, a natural landscape feature that forced them to funnel their forces through a narrow space. And as they approached the English line, the sun was in their eyes. This combination of timing, landscape and dazzling sun greatly favoured Edward and his archers.
The first move of the French was to send their Genoese crossbowmen into the line to damage the English while the knights prepared to charge out of the valley. Unfortunately, the Genoese had left their large head-to-toe pavaise shields with the baggage train, still at their rear. This meant that they were unprotected from the longbows, and they suffered horrific losses even at long range.
On seeing the Genoese start to retire from the field, the French believed that they had been betrayed and set about cutting down the archers. This extraordinary destruction of their own troops left the French with little or no archery support. The English had the only bowmen on the field.
Formidable barrage
The French then carried out a succession of chivalric charges in a full-frontal assault, believing that their heavily armoured knights would decimate the English line. Unfortunately for them, it took around 40 seconds to charge on horseback up to the high ground at Crécy. In this time, the 7,500 English archers could loose a formidable barrage of 90,000 arrows in a ferocious and violent storm.
High-arching barbed arrows fell in a plunging trajectory, ripping into the charging horses and men. At closer range, the bodkin bolt arrows punctured plate armour. Massed heaps of writhing horses and men in front of the English line only served to hinder the following waves. Sixteen successive charges were repelled, and Edward's own account notes that some 1,500 knights fell in just one area of the assault in the first wave.
Aristocratic holocaust
The French side was almost completely destroyed by the onslaught. It has been estimated that the French aristocracy suffered up to 10,000 casualties, a virtual holocaust of that layer of society, mostly at the hands of well-trained peasants and artisans.
The carnage at Crécy saw the longbow at the height of its power. Almost unequalled, it was master of the battlefield and the English army was unrivalled in Europe.
