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0:00 · [Music]
0:13 · it's hard to imagine today that there was ever a time when England and France were more than two separate
0:20 · countries But 700 years ago our ruling classes were bound by a shared set of
0:26 · values codes of behavior and language locked together by one culture in a
0:33 · marriage that had lasted 300 years But in the mid-4th century it hit
0:40 · the rocks What followed was the longest and
0:48 · bloodiest divorce in history set against a backdrop of raging plague and violent revolution Oh my
0:56 · goodness you could feel the texture of the skin I'm going to tell the story of over a
1:01 · hundred years of war when little England dared to challenge the mighty superpower
1:07 · that was France and refused to give up I want to uncover how those famous
1:14 · battles like Cressy Hatier and Azenor were more than just military victories
1:20 · in what became a fight for national identity
1:25 · I'll show what was really at stake for charismatic leaders like Henry V Edward
1:31 · III and Jonah VR and reveal how these people and events shaped and changed us helping
1:39 · make England what it is today
1:53 · In this episode a bold English king does the unthinkable when he rips up the
1:58 · medieval rule book to take on France with new weapons new ideas and above all
2:04 · a burning will to
2:14 · [Music]
2:21 · win for me as a cultural historian these are some of the most interesting documents in English
2:30 · [Music]
2:38 · history They're records of parliamentary sessions held between 1066 and 1360
2:47 · They document three centuries of English governance law and
2:54 · policy But have a look at this They're in
3:03 · French remebrance These are the
3:10 · [Music] remembrances of parliament summoned in the reign of the king
3:17 · French was the language of the English ruling class In fact they had more in
3:23 · common with their counterparts across the channel than with the rest of the population There's no more potent symbol
3:30 · than this of the ties that for 300 years bound France the most powerful country
3:37 · in Europe with her poor neighbor
3:43 · England Since the Norman conquest they had been joined not just by language but
3:48 · by lands France was a country divided into semi-independent provinces By 1327 the
3:57 · English king still held Pontier a small area of northern France and the valuable duche of Gaskani
4:05 · or Aquitane The English king ruled over these territories not as a monarch but
4:12 · as a duke These lands came at a price To keep them
4:18 · English kings had to pay homage to the French monarch This was a delicate arrangement
4:25 · but it worked That was until one man challenged the rules of this uneasy
4:31 · marriage And here he is Edward III
4:53 · Edward was crowned age 14 here in Westminster Abbey where his tomb now
5:01 · lies No one could have expected that he would pose such a challenge to the relationship between England and France
5:10 · He was 3/4 French and had grown up steeped in the same chivalri traditions
5:15 · as his relations across the channel With flowing blonde locks and
5:21 · charming manners Edward seemed to embody the nightly ideal But behind this image lay a
5:29 · brilliant mind a ruthless streak and a will of iron
5:38 · Edward had survived a traumatic childhood His father had died a broken
5:44 · man rumored to have been murdered by his mother's ambitious lover A man who would
5:50 · posed such a threat to Edward that he would have him executed Edward may have been a young
5:56 · king but he was not one to [Music]
6:01 · antagonize Only a year into his reign events conspired to do just that
6:08 · Edward had been brought up to believe that through his mother the French king's sister he had a claim to the
6:15 · crown of France But in 1328 it was given to his
6:21 · cousin Philillip Relations between the two men
6:26 · would never recover Paying homage as the Duke of Aquitane to his cousin didn't come easy
6:33 · to the proud Edward But Edward couldn't afford to lose his
6:40 · lands in France Gaskani was more than just his
6:46 · birthright Together with the wool trade from Flanders it was propping up the English
6:52 · economy Over 80,000 tons of wine were exported from here each year The tax
6:58 · alone was worth more than that collected from all the Shire of England
7:06 · In France Edward should have known his place as the king's
7:11 · vassel Instead he seemed increasingly keen to assert his authority over that
7:18 · of his cousin Here in Gaskiny evidence of this
7:25 · still survives today
7:34 · I'm here in the church of Sans Suran and up in the ceiling is a keystone of one of the side chapels You can just make
7:40 · out a shield held aloft by an angel with the three leopards cushon of England
7:45 · depicted on it More than ornamentation this stamp of ownership was 14th century
7:52 · propaganda and would have been unmistakably English This would have been painted in heraldic colors of red
7:58 · and gold and would have been instantly recognizable to the worshippers here as a symbol of strength and
8:05 · continuity Edward was becoming a most problematic vassel Not known for his
8:11 · diplomatic brilliance King Philip was already struggling to manage his unwieldy country
8:17 · And by 1337 he wanted Edward
8:24 · out In an unprecedented move he sent his army to confiscate Ponur attacked
8:30 · Edward's castles and tried to seize Gaskanany Edward couldn't retaliate His
8:37 · army was tied up in a border war with Scotland But the furious English king
8:43 · wasn't going to let this lie [Music]
8:49 · Three years later having secured valuable allies here in Flanders in the
8:55 · market square of Gent he made a provocative gesture Its consequences would last for
9:01 · over a hundred years In front of a gathering of English
9:07 · baronss and Flemish allies he unveiled his new royal coat of arms Where once
9:14 · there was just the three leopards of the English royal family there were now three leopards quartered with the
9:21 · flirtilly symbol of the French monarchy Edward III had done the
9:27 · unthinkable He had proclaimed himself king of England and
9:34 · France This was now more than a territorial [Music]
9:40 · dispute And Edward and Philillip both knew there was only one way this challenge could be settled Nightly
9:50 · combat and that was dictated by a shared code of military conduct A code that
9:56 · would be pushed to its limits These 600year-old manuscripts
10:01 · tell us about this set of rules developed for the French and English knights A way of life both on and off
10:08 · the battlefield Chivalry The rules of chivalry were written by
10:15 · the knights themselves and they were written in French which was the international language of chivalry There
10:21 · was an element of snobbery in it Yes Because it's an upper class thing But above all it was concerned with right
10:28 · honorable behavior that saw the nightly class as ordained by God to protect
10:36 · kingdom and people But the causes that they fought in were those of kings Here
10:43 · in the luck from Salter we can see a knight being equipped Here he is in all his herandic splendor His arms are being
10:51 · handed to him by his wife and daughter He is setting out for war But here in
10:57 · this illustration of the St Ingulva tournament from Fasar's chronicle we see
11:03 · a scene of a famous tournament held at Stingford near Calala And this was a tournament between the English and the
11:10 · French knights in friendly conditions Here we see two knights in the
11:15 · foreground tilting at each other in the lists And you can see it's a great occasion It's like royal ascert It's
11:22 · exotic It's colorful This is showing off Showing off on a grand scale It's
11:28 · conspicuous consumption It's the brotherhood solidarity of the upper
11:33 · classes And the knights used the engagements to show off their prowess and to inspire
11:40 · future generations of knights For all their pomp and ceremony
11:48 · tournaments were a training ground where knights prepared for the greatest of all shalik combats war
11:59 · After 5 years preparation Edward was ready to take on the mightiest army in
12:06 · Europe He organized a force to defend his own lands in Gaskanany But Edward
12:12 · would lead a different campaign He would invade King Phillip's
12:18 · territories On the 5th of August 1346 he set sail across the channel with 750
12:25 · ships and an army of 15,000 men And this is where Edward's army
12:31 · landed He'd wanted to fool the French king that he was going to land several hundred miles in that direction in
12:38 · Gaskanany but instead they landed here on the beaches of Normandy
12:48 · The first thing the king did was to knight his 16-year-old son Edward the Prince of Wales later known as the Black
12:55 · Prince He then sent all the ships home This was to be a campaign of no
13:06 · return With the Black Prince in the vanguard Edward's army stormed east
13:12 · Their target the prosperous city of K The Hundred Years War is remembered
13:18 · for its iconic setpiece battles What happened here at K was very
13:27 · different The city was defended outside the walls by 2 and a half thousand men
13:32 · But when they saw Edward's army approaching the French fled back to the safety of the castle here in the city
13:38 · walls But they were too late The Black Prince and the Earl of Warick were already upon them before they'd reached
13:44 · the city gates And what followed was perhaps more typical of medieval warfare than any of
13:51 · the famous battles to come I'm with Francois No an expert on
13:59 · the history of Normandy
14:26 · The circumstance
14:54 · after 3 days 5,000 men women and children laid
15:01 · dead Then the looting began something which probably motivated Edward's men
15:07 · more than any sense of loyalty to the king or idealistic set of
15:13 · values Chivalry in action was far removed from the gilded images of
15:18 · manuscripts It was a brutal business and its rules didn't apply to everyone
15:36 · respect to combat
15:50 · For example
16:11 · [Music] K was Edward's first victory but to
16:19 · claim back his rights in France he would have to take on Philip's
16:27 · army With still no sign of that mighty force Edward continued south burning all
16:33 · in his path towards Paris
16:40 · [Music]
16:53 · Never before had the superpower France been so violated
16:59 · I've come to the Abbey of Sanden in Paris where Philip prepared a chivalri
17:04 · response confident he could crush his impertinent
17:10 · cousin Now Philip really had to do something to stop Edward III once and for all He raised the call to arms and
17:17 · messengers were sent to all his allies and vassals abroad assembling one of the biggest armies France has ever seen Then
17:24 · he rode here to take possession of the Oruriflam the sacred war banner of France from the
17:33 · abbot And here it is This is the flag of Sanden that medieval monarchs would come
17:40 · here to collect before they went to do battle This is a more recent version During the Hundred Years War the banner
17:47 · would have had a central motif of a flaming gold sun against a blood red
17:52 · backdrop And this banner really symbolized all that was great about
17:58 · France both spiritually and militarily It said that Charlemagne's army bore the
18:03 · oriflam before it as they went to battle against the infidels But the unfurling of this banner during the hundred years
18:10 · war meant something else Gur mortal a fight to the death This meant the
18:15 · opposing side would be shown no mercy given no quarter and no prisoners would
18:21 · be taken
18:29 · But Edward had a trick up his sleeve one that he'd spent years
18:36 · preparing And it would shake the very foundations of chivalry He wouldn't rely just on
18:42 · knights but on lowborn archers equipped with a devastating new weapon rarely
18:48 · used outside the British Isles
18:53 · This is a statute from the latter years of Edward's reign and its very existence
18:58 · is a direct acknowledgement of the importance of the long bow in the king's
19:04 · wars It states that each Sunday every able-bodied man should go to the archery
19:11 · butts and practice with bows and arrows pellets or bolts the art of shooting And
19:17 · it also states rather interestingly that it is forbidden to play or watch sports
19:23 · of null value such as football Draw loose middle
19:33 · Edward would use his archers in a unique formation [Applause] [Music]
19:40 · Their role is still remembered today at events like this in Bosworth
19:49 · I'm here to meet Matthew Strickland an expert on the long bow
19:55 · So Matthew we know that Edward III was developing the use of archers in his battle plans Um in 1341 he makes an
20:01 · order for 3 million arrows and 7,000 bows Archer is important to him It's
20:07 · extremely important uh it's important to remember that Edward the first and Edward II's armies had a lot of archers
20:13 · but they were essentially auxiliaries to the cavalry the English cavalry was the main striking force but during the wars
20:19 · with Scotland and particularly the defeat of the English army at Banickburn in 1314 the English develop this new
20:25 · tactical formation we see this at the first the first time we see this is at uh Dupllinmore in
20:31 · 1332 where the English flank uh a unit of dismounted knights dismounted stand
20:37 · at arms flanked by wings of archers longboats and this gives them a very
20:43 · very powerful defensive formation And it's that uh tactical combination
20:49 · combining dismounted knights flanked by wings of archers that can enilade an
20:54 · attacking French force that he realizes will deliver a knockout blow if he can
20:59 · get the French to join battle And that is his principal strategy
21:06 · This was a risky tactic For it to work Edward's archers would have to be on higher ground than the
21:15 · French By mid August Edward was just 20 m from
21:21 · Paris But he had no intention of attacking the capital With his troops in sight of the
21:28 · French he turned his army and headed north But French garrisons stationed on the
21:34 · Som blocked Edward's
21:41 · [Music] path In an incredible act of heroism two
21:48 · of Edward's senior knights William Deon Earl of Northampton and Sir Reginald Cobb waded across the river under enemy
21:55 · crossbow fire covered by their own archers and 100 men at arms to engage
22:00 · the French on the other side and push them back The two knights had cleared the way
22:08 · The English were through Finally after two more days of
22:15 · marching Edward halted his men They had reached the tiny village of
22:22 · Cressy in Ponur Edward's former
22:28 · duche He stationed his men on a hilltop overlooking the
22:36 · plane He knew this was the best place to do battle because he knew the lie of the land On the 25th of August 1346 the
22:44 · English army took up camp over there in the forest of Cressy and simply
22:50 · waited Two days later Philip's troops one of the largest French armies ever
22:55 · gathered caught up They had followed him all the way
23:01 · here just as Edward had wanted
23:10 · Historian Andrew Aton has pieced together what happened next
23:17 · The battle probably began with the English first division the Vanguard division of the Prince of Wales deployed
23:24 · in a crescent about here from the tower at one end to the that apple tree in the
23:31 · distance down there And below them is a kind of bowl of terrain into which the French army advanced And the battle
23:38 · began when the crossbowmen were pushed forward by by Philillip to neutralize
23:43 · the English defense at the beginning of the battle to soften them up if you like The problem was that before the crossbow
23:50 · got within range they had been moaned down by concentrated mass archery
23:55 · shooting This was exactly what Edward had planned
24:02 · Hasar recorded that the English arrows were so thick they fell like
24:07 · snow The French had never experienced anything like
24:14 · [Music] it With this first setback the massed
24:21 · ranks of French knights responded What we see then are a series of French
24:28 · heavy heavy cavalry attacks on the English position As the as the cavalry advanced of course horses would begin to
24:35 · come down They would create mounds of horse cadaavvers which it would then be
24:40 · difficult for the the next wave of cavalry to get round So they would stop presenting easy targets for the archers
24:47 · And after a while the battlefield here would have been littered with horse flesh And under the horses of course
24:54 · would have fallen their riders If they hadn't been hit by by by arrows they would have been crushed by their horses
25:00 · One of the most vivid remarks that a French chronicle makes is on this day
25:06 · men were killed by their horses So it's a killing ground down there and it's
25:11 · created by the topography of the battlefield and Edward exploits it to perfection So the high ground really is
25:18 · giving an advantage to it is it's it's it's a perfect place for an archer to use his bow because shooting down you're
25:25 · not wasting energy by going up and then down And it negated it neutralized the
25:30 · French advantage and heavy cavalry And it's also uh creating an impediment to this face-to-face combat that's supposed
25:37 · to be so important to this shave king Yes only a proportion of the French aristocracy would actually get within
25:43 · striking distance of their English counterparts on foot around the prince in the in his division That's true But
25:51 · from Edward's point of view this didn't matter because the French had such a
25:56 · numerical advantage in terms of knights noblemen men at arms it was crucial from
26:01 · the English point of view to take out as many of them as possible at a distance to even the odds if you like So when
26:08 · after the battle uh a French chronicle the grik says it was such a shame that
26:14 · so many noblemen were brought down by men of n value Edward's point of view
26:19 · would have been well that's just part of my tactical method But there are individual acts of heroism too aren't
26:25 · there there certainly are The most dramatic of course is King John of Bohemia who by this time was blind And
26:32 · when he hears that the battle is not going well he asks the knights the Bohemian knights who are accompanying
26:39 · him to the field to take him forward into the fray And one of the chronicers tells us that he and they were all
26:45 · killed tied together or chained together on the field Whether he actually got to
26:50 · give a blow with his sword we don't [Music]
26:59 · know In one of England's greatest victories Edward had lost just 300
27:05 · mounted men Philillip who'd been hit in the neck by an arrow had fled
27:12 · Behind him in these fields lay the bodies of 10,000 French
27:18 · [Music]
27:29 · nobles Allegedly a white ostrich feather like this was plucked from the crown of
27:35 · the dead King Jon of Bohemia by the Prince of Wales and presented to his
27:40 · father He said "It I serve." And this act is commemorated to this day on the
27:47 · two pence coin where you see the three ostrich feathers And it's still the emblem of the Prince of
28:00 · Wales Returning from the Battle of Cressy here at Glouester Cathedral one of Edward's commanders commissioned the
28:07 · East Window in celebration [Music]
28:13 · Rising 22 m high it glorifies the great hierarchy of chivalry knights kings and
28:21 · saints beneath the head of the
28:27 · church It's perhaps ironic that it wasn't knights who had won the battle
28:32 · but lowborn archers In fact Edward had shown just how
28:38 · willing he was to abandon the shared rules of chivalry to
28:46 · win But one battle wasn't enough To win back his lands Edward would have to
28:52 · carry on fighting and he needed to keep his men supplied His next target was
28:58 · Calala
29:03 · To take the town Edward would embark on the longest and most expensive siege in
29:09 · medieval
29:16 · history This 15th century copy of Sha Pasar's Chronicles tells us about the
29:23 · fight for this strategically vital port The people of Calala held out for
29:28 · nearly a year forced to eat horses and rats to survive By the time the town fell in September
29:36 · 1347 they were in no position to negotiate Edward could dictate his terms
29:43 · for the city's humiliating surrender Instead of ordering a massacre of the
29:50 · whole population he says that six of the principal citizens of Calala shall march
29:56 · out of the town with bare heads and feet with ropes around their necks and with
30:01 · the keys to the town and their castle in their hands They shall be at my absolute
30:10 · disposal In France these six men have never been forgotten
30:18 · And here they are in the square in Calala captured so evocatively by Roda
30:24 · in 1889 The sculpture was commissioned to commemorate French heroism in the
30:30 · FrancoRussian War And it's interesting that the subject of the burgers of Calala was chosen These men going
30:37 · willingly to what they thought was their imminent death has become a symbol of
30:44 · self-sacrifice A symbol of French national [Music]
30:50 · pride Across the channel the exact same sculpture stands opposite the Houses of
30:56 · Parliament in London Here it has a very different
31:02 · meaning When these men had left the gates of
31:08 · Calala ready to die for their town Edward in a great show of mercy spared
31:14 · their lives Here this sculpture commemorates
31:22 · the act of a monarch powerful enough to be benevolent
31:30 · [Music] 10 years into the war in England King
31:37 · Edward and his campaigns were hugely popular not least for the vast spoils
31:44 · flooding in from
31:52 · France But for Edward this war wasn't just to be fought on the battlefield His
31:58 · next move was a political one at home but every bit as destructive to the
32:04 · relationship with France as any military victory I've come to Lingfield Church in
32:10 · Surrey to see the tomb of one of Edward's most loyal commanders Sir Reginald Cobb
32:19 · Cobb was a prominent figure in Edward III's military circle A hero of Khan
32:25 · Cressy and one of the men who crossed the ford at Blanchtek to clear the way for Edward's
32:32 · army Regginal Cobb's tomb tells us how Edward's knights saw themselves and how
32:39 · they wanted to be remembered But he doesn't just want to
32:45 · be remembered as an individual soldier It's his fraternity that's all important
32:51 · Just look at the coats of arms on the base of this tomb Each one represents a
32:57 · different nightly family But Reginald's tomb tells us
33:02 · something else about him Strapped around his left leg is a
33:08 · thin band of leather It shows Cobbin was a member of Edward's newly founded Order
33:14 · of the Garter This exclusive institution had all the trappings of conventional chivalry But
33:21 · there was a crucial difference Its members were not just the chavaric elite Sir Reginald wasn't a
33:29 · hero of the nobility but of the battlefield The elevation of a man of
33:36 · humble rank to a garter knight was a sign that King Edward himself was
33:42 · interested in rewarding service not birth
33:48 · Edward was changing the way the knighthood would fight this
33:54 · war In creating the order of Pagata at Windsor Castle Edward surrounded himself
34:00 · with men loyal only to him Designed to mirror the legendary
34:07 · Knights of Arthur's round table it had just 26 elite members
34:14 · The inaugural meeting of the knights took place in St George's Chapel on the 23rd of April
34:20 · 1349 All around me are the coats of arms of the original knights and their
34:26 · successors right up to the present day [Music]
34:35 · [Music] Edward's order wouldn't just fight under the traditional shared values of
34:42 · chivalry but for his cause They were bestowed with a mission statement to be
34:48 · displayed wherever they roamed The motto on Mali Pon shame on he who
34:56 · thinks evil of it is thought to be a pointed reference to the king's claims to the throne of
35:04 · France And there was another provocative detail The colors chosen for the leather
35:09 · garter were blue and gold the royal colors of the French
35:15 · [Music] But I think Edward's master stroke was
35:22 · that his men would fight under the Red Cross of the 4th century warrior St
35:27 · George Edward's personal [Music]
35:34 · saint The inauguration of the Gartonites was a seinal moment in our history It
35:40 · wasn't just about Edward's donastic claims This was about service to a
35:46 · national project And the king's saint and protector St George was also
35:53 · nationalized It was a triumph of propaganda and strategic
35:59 · thinking The symbol of the English nation had been born and Edward had
36:04 · further eroded the bonds between France and England
36:10 · In contrast France was racked with crisis King Philip had never recovered
36:15 · from his defeat at Cressy When he died in 1350 it was as a
36:21 · broken man Philip's successor was his son John
36:26 · II He had earned his nickname John the Good more for his prowess in tournaments
36:32 · than for his strategic thinking And here he is John II This is
36:38 · the first real portrait of a French king Taking his inspiration from the 26
36:44 · knights of the garter John found it his own order of chivalry His knights of the star were established for the glory of
36:51 · God of our lady for the heightening of chivalry and the augmenting of
36:59 · honor The French response was to be more chivalri than
37:04 · ever In contrast to Edward's elite force of 26 here 500 knights swore loyalty to
37:11 · the king and never to flee the
37:19 · battlefield The man who put the whole thing together was Jeff Duchan the
37:24 · perfect French knight a hero from the struggle for Calala and the author of his own book on chivalry Here he's
37:31 · pictured fighting opposite Edward III during an ill-starred attempt to retake Cala in
37:38 · 1347 In the book of chivalry Shaune regards skills at arms as the pinnacle
37:44 · of nightly values and war as the greatest of shavaric combats He says
37:51 · "You will have to put up with great labor before you achieve honor from this employee You will be afraid when you see
37:58 · men slaughtering one another fleeing dying and being taken prisoner and your
38:03 · friends dead whose corpses lie before you You could flee with your horse and
38:09 · ride off without honor but if you stay you will have honor ever after Is this
38:14 · not a greater Martyrdan the French king was convinced that with
38:22 · chivalry reasserted they could defeat the English
38:33 · [Music]
38:42 · But in 1348 both France and England were stopped in their tracks by catastrophic
38:50 · events outside of anyone's control
39:00 · There's a remarkable testimony to what happened here at the Church of St Mary's in
39:10 · [Music]
39:16 · Ashewell Its walls are covered in graffiti some of it medieval
39:27 · [Music]
39:35 · These aren't the words of kings and chronicers but of ordinary
39:41 · [Music] people There's a particularly irreverent
39:47 · message here It says ar deacobus
39:53 · asnus roughly translated the arch deacon is an
40:03 · ass But I'm here to see one message in particular It's scratched into the walls
40:10 · of the bell tower [Music]
40:22 · And here it is You can just make it out here Written
40:27 · in Latin It says pestilencia There was a plague
40:34 · Miseranda ferox violenta Miserable fierce and
40:42 · violent A wretched populace survives to
40:49 · witness The Black Death had reached Europe and in just 2 years it would wipe
40:55 · out half the population The disease had arrived in
41:02 · England in 1348 and swept east through the country
41:09 · It's thought this graffiti was scratched in the stone by monks fleeing the plague
41:15 · in London We can only imagine the horrors they
41:23 · witnessed In just 18 months some 40,000 Londoners were
41:30 · [Music] killed that no one could explain this
41:37 · pestilence made it all the more terrifying Most shocking to the medieval
41:44 · mind was that it attacked all levels of society It had no respect for the social
41:50 · order and nobody was safe King Edward himself lost his
41:56 · 14-year-old daughter to the disease
42:03 · France and England were forced to agree a truce but it was a fragile
42:09 · one Edward's appetite for conquest hadn't diminished and France was more
42:15 · vulnerable than ever On top of years of failed war the
42:20 · plague had plunged the country into moral panic and an economic crisis that
42:25 · Edward was keen to exploit
42:35 · After 5 years of truce and failed peace negotiations Edward reignited the war
42:42 · The new campaign was to be led by his 25-year-old son the Prince of
42:48 · Wales In Canterbury Cathedral lies his elaborate tomb built to his specific
42:54 · instructions
43:00 · [Music]
43:06 · It was only after his death that this young prince became known as the black
43:16 · prince Some believed the name came from his tournament arms those three ostrich
43:21 · feathers on a black background others that he'd earned it for the
43:27 · ferocious reputation he would gain in
43:34 · France The boy who'd served at K and Cressy was about to become a legend in
43:39 · his own right [Music]
43:51 · I'm with his biographer David Green Now David you've looked into the life
43:57 · the mind of the Black Prince What do you think about his personality what was he
44:03 · like as a person i think he's a product of his time and his environment And undoubtedly his background is something
44:08 · that is bound up very much with military ability I mean he he goes to his first tournament or that we know of know of
44:14 · when he was about six He gets his first suit of armor when he's eight He fights in his first tournament when he's about
44:20 · 13 And then of course when he's 16 he's fighting in the vanguard at Cresie I think he was a very inspirational figure
44:26 · to his men very effective in rallying the troops I think he's a proud man
44:35 · undoubtedly seen as being perhaps rather haughty rather doineering At the core
44:41 · though is still this military
44:48 · [Music] ability In October 1355 the Black Prince
44:55 · sailed to Gaskani and mustered an army of over 6,000 The plan was not to meet the
45:01 · French in battle but to terrorize them All this was a long way from the Chioalic ideals of warfare
45:11 · The Black Prince launched his army on a chevshade literally a horse raid through
45:16 · the country It was a medieval blitzkrieg beyond Gaskiny and into the French
45:22 · king's lands destroying everything in its path
45:28 · This was systematic pillage and destruction designed to [ __ ] the
45:34 · French economy demoralize the population and undermine faith in the French
45:40 · king Neither life nor properties were
45:48 · spared Historian Peter Hoskins has followed the route and studied the Black Prince's tactics
45:55 · They're going to destroy anything which they can't take So small farms mills
46:02 · homesteads vineyards crops are going to be destroyed in the field Uh but anything that can be taken is going to
46:08 · be taken and and put on the carts to sway the destruction 20 mi wide And what
46:13 · makes it so important really here particularly bearing in mind this really is a very economically important area
46:19 · for France It's it's almost the bread basket because of the grain that is grown there It's really a very important
46:24 · area So it's crippling the French It is And it's about economic warfare It's about damaging the ability of the French
46:31 · king to raise taxes to prosecute the war in the months and the year to come So
46:36 · they're going out They're attacking anything they find Then you think it's indiscriminate well I think it's it's
46:43 · almost more than indiscriminate It's total right if if you come across a mill you're going to destroy it You're going
46:48 · to try and damage or break the millstone if you can If you come across a farm you're going to take whatever you can
46:54 · which will because you've got to live off the land so you're going to take food supplies If you come to a village you're going to want to empty the stores
47:01 · of food as well And then you're going to burn it because the key to these operations is movement You keep on the
47:06 · move all the time You keep the enemy guessing And you want the next villages in advance to know that you're coming
47:12 · and they need to think about what they're going to do Are they going to surrender are they going to flee to the flee to the hills the brutality of the
47:18 · chev campaign seems to be very much about this imposition of the king's power on distant lands You how do you
47:25 · control these distant lands through this brutal campaign of annihilating the land i think it is about the demonstration of
47:31 · power But there's another element to it as well which is to demonstrate that the French king is powerless Yes Because of
47:37 · course one of the fundamental duties of the nobility and and the lords of the period is to protect their people And if
47:44 · you can demonstrate that the king cannot protect you protect the people then that's a powerful message Not far behind
47:51 · us is the little village of Simore We know that the people from Samore fled on the approach of the army We don't know
47:58 · for sure whether it was burned down after the army left but typically it would have been burnt
48:04 · [Music]
48:20 · down leaving a trail of devastation that would scar France for decades to come
48:26 · The Black Prince's men continued east for 300
48:31 · m They traveled at such speed no French army could catch
48:38 · them After 4 weeks they reached the wall city of Carcasson
48:46 · [Music]
48:58 · Down there outside the walls and across the river is the old town or the Borg
49:03 · For three days the Black Prince's men camped there feasting on the finest produce and guzzling the very best wine
49:10 · While up here in the city the French knights looked on offering their towns
49:16 · people no support and offering no resistance [Music]
49:25 · When the town's people offered 250,000 gold echuses to save their city
49:31 · the Black Prince responded that he came not for gold but for [Music]
49:39 · justice What the Black Prince is doing is stressing both his and his father's rights to this city and to the crown of
49:46 · France And as such he's implying that the town's people of Carcasson are deluded in continuing to swear
49:53 · allegiance to King John And with that he burnt the
49:59 · town Still the French King John didn't act He had neither the resources nor the
50:06 · imagination to counter this kind of campaign [Music]
50:14 · Instead of sending an army to Carcasson he sent a letter It arrived two weeks
50:22 · [Music] later It says "I have been deeply
50:29 · affected by these events and want nothing more than to avenge the wrongs done to the people of this town." This
50:36 · is the best King Jon can do to reassure his demoralized subjects
50:43 · The Black Prince's plan was working perfectly So far he'd managed to avoid
50:48 · the French king's army and grew ever more confident He wrote home proudly of the
50:55 · many goodly towns and strongholds burnt and destroyed
51:02 · In spring the next year the Black Prince launched another raid northeast miles
51:07 · into the heart of central France and reached as far as to But King John had
51:13 · finally gathered an army On the 17th of September outside
51:18 · Poier the English laden down with plunder were intercepted
51:24 · The prince's army of 10,000 led by his commanders Sir Reginald Cobb and Sir
51:29 · John Shandos would have to face King John that paragan of chivalry Jeepard
51:35 · dese and 20,000 men All of them determined not just to
51:41 · crush the son but to avenge the sins of his father in what would be the first
51:46 · major battle since Cressy
51:53 · According to an account written by Shandos's Herald they all met on the eve
51:58 · of the battle to try to settle their differences As a last resort D shame says "I make the offer that we fight you
52:06 · 100 against 100
52:11 · sant." The black prince refused this shioal gesture He was his father's son
52:18 · but this wasn't the carefully planned battle of
52:23 · Cressy The French attacked first This time they were prepared for the English
52:29 · longbows The first wave were not on vulnerable horses but on foot and plowed
52:34 · their way through the English lines
52:40 · The Black Prince's only hope was a hidden unit which he sent to attack the French from behind Then he and his men
52:48 · made a remarkable attempt to hack their way through to the French standard and King
52:57 · John In the clash that followed the Knights of the Order of the Star were decimated Bound by the rules of their
53:04 · order they were unable to leave the battlefield and so fell doing their chivalri
53:10 · duty One of chronicles records that Dashane still holding the oriflam was
53:16 · cut down by Reginald Cobbin The order of the star had met the
53:21 · order of the garter and the real prize captured with
53:27 · one of his sons was the French king
53:33 · In triumph the Black Prince took the humiliated Jon to
53:39 · [Music] Gaskani After 7 months in Bordeaux King
53:44 · John his son and hundreds of noble prisoners were shipped to England for ransom Edward III would make a fortune
53:58 · This time Edward had not just humbled the French monarchy he had broken it
54:05 · [Music]
54:16 · So Andrew after Poatier can we really see the bonds between English and French
54:22 · nobility pulling apart once and for all well the English had been using the French war as a means of making vast
54:29 · profits at the expense of the French nobility The balance of payments as it were on on ransoms is massively in
54:36 · England's favor If we imagine the French elite as a vast social network the hubs
54:41 · had been torn out It left society in France without leaders And given that 20
54:47 · years of war had led to the rape of the French countryside on systematically in some parts of France it is hardly
54:54 · surprising that by the 1360s the English and French nobilities no longer saw eye to
55:00 · eye Defeated at Poier with their king held prisoner the French had no choice
55:06 · but to agree a peace With the Treaty of Bretony Edward
55:13 · was to be given full sovereignty not just of an enlarged Gaskanany but of all
55:18 · his conquests in [Music] France On receipt of these lands nearly
55:25 · a third of the country Edward was to formally renounce his claim to be king
55:31 · of France [Music]
55:36 · So really is this claim to the French crown a bit of a red herring he's using
55:42 · it to assert his rights to his ancestral territories Well the question about his
55:47 · claim to the throne of France is how real it really was Was it intended primarily as a sort of bargaining lever
55:54 · in a diplomatic stage was he using this to extract a large ransom from the
56:00 · French king and his ancestral lands expanded now in full sovereignty was
56:06 · that what he was using his claim to the throne for was he therefore accepting that at some point he may need to set it
56:13 · aside in order to achieve what he was really after all the time the property that his ancestors had had in France
56:23 · [Music]
56:29 · whatever his motivation Edward spent his triumphant years and vast spoils turning
56:36 · Windsor the seat of his loyal knights of the garter into a magnificent
56:41 · palace It escaped everyone's notice that Edward's formal renunciation of his
56:46 · claim to the French crown was never made
56:52 · [Music]
57:01 · As for King Jean of France he was unable to pay his colossal 3 million gold crown
57:09 · ransom A gracious King Edward actually let him go home keeping instead his two
57:15 · sons as hostages [Music] Within a year King John was
57:23 · back He preferred hawking in captivity to reconstructing his ruined
57:29 · country He would eventually die here in England a truly defeated
57:38 · [Music]
57:45 · man Edward had got what he'd wanted He'd won But he'd done more than that No
57:51 · longer a vassel he had changed the rules of England's relationship with France
57:57 · And he'd set his country on a path from which there would be no way
58:03 · back Next on the Hundred Years War France is out for
58:11 · revenge England descends into civil war as the peasants rise up in revolt Oh my
58:17 · god But in all this chaos a new cultural
58:22 · identity emerges And for the English a new hero
58:27 · Henry
58:42 · V Heat Heat
58:51 · [Music]