The Black Prince’s army numbered some 7,000 knights, men-at-arms and archers. Numbers in the French army are uncertain but were probably around 35,000. The French army comprised a contingent of Scots commanded by Sir William Douglas.
In 1355, members of the Gascon nobility sailed to England to inform their overlord, King Edward III, that ever since 1352, Edward’s hereditary lands in Gascony had been under continuous attack by the French King’s lieutenant in the southwest, Count of Armagnac Jean I.
In early 1356 the Duke of Lancaster landed with a second force in Normandy and began to advance south, while Edward, Prince of Wales, the "Black Prince," set out from English-held Aquitaine in southwest France to raid central France. Edward III was engaged in fighting in Scotland.
The new king of France, John I, led an army against Lancaster forcing him to withdraw towards the coast. King John then turned to attack the Black Prince, who was advancing north east towards the Loire pillaging the countryside as he went.
Marching in three parallel columns to maximize destruction, the raiding force went 100 miles South before swinging East, crossing the river Gers, and entering Armagnac territory. There, Edward’s army began mercilessly slaughtering every living creature it came across, torching everything that would burn and smashing everything that would not.
In early September 1356 King John reached the Loire with his large army, just as the Black Prince turned back towards Bordeaux. The French army marched hard and overtook the unsuspecting English force at Poitiers on Sunday 18th September 1356.
At first, a representative of the Pope, one Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord, tried to negotiate a deal between the two sides but neither could agree terms. Both sides used the breathing-space to strengthen their position: Edward by digging trenches and forming barricades with his supply wagons, John by assembling more troops.
The Black Prince’s army camped in a forest near Poitiers for the night. They emerged the next day and seized a hilltop position about a mile in front of the French, who had spent the night camped in battle formation.
The English army was an experienced force; many of the archers veterans of Creçy, ten years before, and the Gascon men-at-arms commanded by Sir John Chandos, Sir James Audley and Captal de Buche, all old soldiers. The French, although they had some archers, continued to rely on crossbowmen as firing a crossbow required less training to use, but the weapon had a seriously slower firing rate than the longbow, about one bolt to five arrows in terms of speed of delivery.
The French attack began in the early morning of Monday 19th September 1356 with a mounted charge by a forlorn hope of 300 German knights commanded by two Marshals of France; Barons Clermont and Audrehem. The force reached a gallop, closing in to charge down the road into the center of the English position. The attack was a disaster.
Eventually the French king and his bodyguard were overwhelmed. Jean was taken into captivity and held until a vast ransom was paid in 1360, but many of his leading nobles had lost their lives. The English and Gascons decisively won the battle. A major consequence of the battle was that it allowed Edward III to keep 25% of France under the 1360 CE Treaty of Brétigny. The battle also cemented the reputation of the Black Prince as one of the greatest of all medieval knights.
Battle of Poitiers
