By September 1356 the Black Prince had spent months raiding France, and a French royal army had cut off his road home. What followed was one of the most lopsided English victories of the Hundred Years’ War.
The Horror
Edward, the Black Prince, led an Anglo-Gascon army that had caused heavy economic damage in France through the 1355 raid and the 1356 campaign. King John II pursued him and cut off his route back to Gascony. The Anglo-Gascons took a defensive position in the Forêt de Nouaillé, about five miles south of Poitiers. Negotiations over a truce and free passage failed.
Modern historians estimate about 6,000 Anglo-Gascons, made up of about 3,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 longbowmen and 1,000 Gascon infantry, against 14,000 to 16,000 French. The French attacked four times, mostly on foot. The longbowmen helped repel the first two. The Dauphin’s division withdrew, and about half of Philip of Orléans’s division left the field. In the fourth attack the king’s division advanced under the Oriflamme. A small mounted Gascon force then appeared behind the French, and the army collapsed. How large that force was is contested, and most accounts give 160 men.
John II was taken, with his youngest son, Philip, who was fourteen. About 2,500 French men-at-arms were killed. Anglo-Gascon losses were reported as only 40 to 60, a figure one historian calls improbably low.
John was taken to England and held in several places, including the Savoy, Windsor and the Tower of London, in some comfort. The Treaty of Brétigny of May 1360 set the ransom at three million gold écus and ceded large areas of France to England. John was released in June 1360 in exchange for his son Louis of Anjou. When Louis broke his parole in 1363, John returned to England in January 1364. He died at the Savoy Palace in April 1364, aged 44. The cause of death is unknown.
The Legend
The scene in which the Black Prince serves the king at supper, and the cry of “Father, guard right! Father, guard left!” from Philip, come from the chronicle tradition and are unconfirmed. The nickname “the Bold” is linked to Philip’s conduct at Poitiers, but no specific exchange is confirmed. The claim that the fight on the field was a pure longbow massacre also simplifies things: some historians dispute whether certain archers were longbowmen or Gascon crossbowmen. One contemporary chronicler claimed John ordered that only the Black Prince be spared, but this rests on a single account.
The Modern Relic
The battlefield lies south of Poitiers near Nouaillé-Maupertuis. Whether any memorial or marked path exists there is unconfirmed. The coordinates given are approximate. The Treaty of Brétigny, which the battle made possible, gave England about a third of France according to one historian, but the fighting resumed on a large scale in 1369.
