Battle of Poitiers

The Battle of Poitiers was a major battle of the Hundred Years' War between Englandball and  Franceball. The battle occurred on 19 September 1356 near Poitiers, France. Preceded by the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and followed by the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, it was the second of the three great English victories of the war. The town and battle were often referred to as Poictiers at the time, a name commemorated in warships of the Royal Navy.

The battle
At the beginning of the battle, the English removed their baggage train leading the French to think they were about to retreat which provoked a hasty charge by the French knights against the archers. According to Froissart, the English attacked the enemy, especially the horses, with a shower of arrows. Geoffrey the Baker writes that the French armour was invulnerable to the English arrows, that the arrowheads either skidded off the armour or shattered on impact. Given the following actions of the archers, it seems likely Baker was correct. The armour on the horses was weaker on the sides and back, so the archers moved to the sides of the cavalry and shot the horses in the flanks. This was a popular method of stopping a cavalry charge, as a falling horse often destroyed the cohesion of the enemy's line. The results were devastating. The Dauphin attacked Salisbury and pressed his advance in spite of heavy shot by the English archers and complications of running into the retreating vanguard of Clermont's force. Green suggests that the Dauphin had thousands of troops with him in this phase of the attack. He advanced to the English lines but ultimately fell back. The French were unable to penetrate the protective hedge the English were using. This phase of the attack lasted about two hours. Without doubt, the effectiveness of the longbow has been exaggerated, perhaps to serve a juxtaposition between the ignorant French nobles whose customs followed outdated rules of chivalry and the longbowman whose tactics were the product of their common sense. However this is false, as at the Battle of Poitiers (1356), Neville’s Cross (1346), and Nogent (1359), the French Men-at-Arms formed, according to Geoffrey le Baker, a shieldwall "protecting their bodies with joined shields, [and] turned their faces away from the missiles. So the archers emptied their quivers [sic] in vain". This cavalry attack was followed by infantry attack. The Dauphin's infantry engaged in heavy fighting, but withdrew to regroup. The next wave of infantry under Orléans, seeing that the Dauphin's men were not attacking, turned back and panicked. This stranded the forces led by the King himself. This was a formidable fighting force, and the English archers were running very low on arrows; the archers joined the infantry in the fight and some of both groups mounted horses to form an improvised cavalry. At about this time, King John sent two sons from the battlefield. His youngest son, Philip, stayed with him and fought at his side in the final phase of the battle. When the Dauphin and other sons withdrew, the duke of Orléans also withdrew. Combat was hard, but the Black Prince still had a mobile reserve hidden in the woods, commanded by Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch; which was able to circle around and attack the French in the flank and rear. The French were fearful of encirclement and attempted to flee. King John was captured with his immediate entourage only after a memorable resistance.