Battle of Poitiers (1356): The Black Prince Captures a King

The Battle of Poitiers was fought on 19 September 1356 near the town of Poitiers in western France, during the Hundred Years’ War. An Anglo-Gascon army led by Edward the Black Prince defeated a much larger French army and captured King John II of France. The capture of a reigning king threw France into one of the worst crises of its medieval history.

Background: the war resumes

Ten years after the English triumph at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the war between England and France had settled into a pattern of truces and raids. King John II, who had succeeded his father Philip VI in 1350, struggled with a weak treasury, rebellious nobles and the intrigues of his son-in-law, Charles II of Navarre.

Edward III’s strategy relied on the chevauchée, a large mounted raid that burned and plundered enemy land to destroy the king’s revenue and prestige. In 1355 his eldest son Edward, Prince of Wales, later called the Black Prince, led a devastating raid from English-held Bordeaux to the Mediterranean coast near Narbonne.

In August 1356 the prince set out again, this time northwards towards the Loire, possibly hoping to link up with English forces under Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster, in Normandy. The French held the Loire crossings, and the prince turned back towards Bordeaux. King John, who had gathered a large army, moved fast to cut him off and got ahead of him near Poitiers.

Before the battle

The two armies faced each other on 17 and 18 September. The prince took up a strong position among hedges, vineyards and marshy ground near Nouaillé, where the French could approach only along narrow routes.

On Sunday 18 September, Cardinal Hélie de Talleyrand-Périgord, a papal envoy, tried to arrange a truce. Chroniclers report that the prince, short of food and anxious to escape, offered generous terms, including the return of his captures and a truce of several years. John demanded more, possibly the prince’s surrender, and the talks failed. The delay gave the English time to strengthen their defences.

By the morning of 19 September the prince’s position was difficult. His men had little food or water, and he may have been preparing to slip away southwards across the little river Miosson when the battle began. Some historians think the French attack was triggered by the sight of part of the English army moving off, which looked like a retreat.

The battle

Remembering how French mounted charges had been shot down by archers at Crécy, John decided that most of his men-at-arms would fight on foot, following advice attributed to the Scottish knight William Douglas. Only a small vanguard of a few hundred picked horsemen, under the marshals Jean de Clermont and Arnoul d’Audrehem, would charge.

On the morning of 19 September the French cavalry attacked. They were cut down by English and Welsh archers shooting into the horses’ flanks from behind hedges and marshes. Clermont was killed and Audrehem captured.

The first French division on foot, under the king’s eldest son Charles, the Dauphin, then advanced. After a long and exhausting fight at the hedge it fell back. The second division, under the king’s brother the Duke of Orléans, left the field without seriously engaging, for reasons that are still debated.

John then advanced with the last and largest division. By now the English were tired and short of arrows, and the fighting was fierce. At the decisive moment the prince sent the Gascon lord Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch, with a small mounted force around the French flank. Their attack from the rear, combined with a charge by the prince’s own men, broke the French division.

John fought on foot with his youngest son Philip, then fourteen, beside him. Tradition says the boy called out warnings to his father during the fighting, which later earned him the name Philip the Bold. Surrounded, the king surrendered. A scramble followed among soldiers claiming the right to his ransom before he was brought safely to the prince.

Key people

• Edward the Black Prince (1330–1376): Eldest son of Edward III, commander of the Anglo-Gascon army.
• John II of France (1319–1364): King since 1350, captured at the end of the battle.
• Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch: Gascon lord who led the decisive flank attack.
• Charles, Dauphin of France (1338–1380): Led the first French division and later governed France as regent and king.
• Geoffroi de Charny: Famous French knight and writer on chivalry, killed while carrying the Oriflamme, the sacred royal banner.

By the numbers

All figures are estimates drawn from chronicles and modern studies, and historians differ on them.

Why the French lost

The French had more men, but several factors turned the battle against them. The ground favoured the defenders: hedges, vines and marsh broke up any attack and protected the archers. The French fought in separate divisions that came forward one after another, so the English could meet each in turn rather than facing the whole army at once.

Dismounting most of the French men-at-arms avoided the slaughter of horses seen at Crécy, but it meant long, tiring advances in heavy armour. The retreat of the Duke of Orléans’s division removed a large part of the army without a fight. Finally, the English commanders kept a mobile reserve, and the Captal de Buch’s flank attack came at exactly the moment when the last French division was fully committed.

Consequences

The French losses among the nobility were heavy. The dead included Peter I, Duke of Bourbon, the Constable of France Walter of Brienne, Marshal Clermont and Geoffroi de Charny. Among the many prisoners were the king, his son Philip, the Archbishop of Sens and numerous counts.

The prince took John to Bordeaux and in May 1357 to London, where he entered the city in a ceremonial procession. John lived in honourable captivity, first at the Savoy Palace and later at Windsor and other residences.

In France, the eighteen-year-old Dauphin Charles had to govern a kingdom without its king. The Estates-General, led by the Paris merchant leader Étienne Marcel, demanded reforms. Discredited nobles, plundering bands of soldiers and heavy taxation provoked the peasant uprising of the Jacquerie in 1358. Peace finally came with the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, which set the king’s ransom at 3 million gold écus.

Timeline

• 1355, October–December: The Black Prince raids southern France as far as Narbonne.
• 1356, August: The prince leaves Bergerac on a new raid northwards.
• 1356, 17 September: The armies come into contact near Poitiers.
• 1356, 18 September: Cardinal Talleyrand’s peace talks fail.
• 1356, 19 September: The French are defeated and John II is captured.
• 1357, May: John II is brought to London.
• 1358, May–June: The Jacquerie rising in northern France.
• 1360, 8 May: The Treaty of Brétigny is agreed.

Why it matters

Poitiers confirmed that disciplined English armies of archers and dismounted men-at-arms could defeat far larger forces. The capture of John II produced a crisis that nearly broke the French monarchy, yet it also forced the future Charles V to rebuild royal finances and armies, which later allowed France to recover most of what it had lost.