Crecy: English Longbow Defeats French Knights

French knights in full plate armor charged uphill into a storm of English arrows at Crecy on August 26, 1346, and the medieval world's understanding of warfare changed forever. By nightfall, thousands of France's finest nobility lay dead in the mud, destroyed by common English and Welsh longbowmen who earned perhaps a penny a day. The battle announced that the age of armored cavalry dominance was ending. King Edward III of England had landed in Normandy in July with roughly 12,000 men, raiding and burning his way across northern France in a destructive march known as a chevauchee. Philip VI of France assembled a massive force, estimated between 25,000 and 40,000, to crush the English invaders. Edward chose his ground carefully near the village of Crecy-en-Ponthieu, positioning his dismounted men-at-arms and longbowmen on a gentle slope with protected flanks. He divided his army into three divisions and waited. Philip's army arrived disorganized and exhausted after a long march. His Genoese crossbowmen advanced first but were outranged and outpaced by the English longbows, which could fire six arrows per minute compared to the crossbow's two. When the Genoese retreated, French knights rode them down in frustration and charged the English position themselves. They charged at least fifteen times. Each charge was shredded by arrow volleys that killed horses and sent armored riders crashing to the ground, where they were finished off by Welsh knife-wielding foot soldiers. The English may have also used primitive cannons, among the first recorded uses of gunpowder weapons in European battle. France lost between 1,500 and 4,000 men-at-arms, including the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Lorraine, and the Count of Flanders. English casualties were minimal. Crecy did not win the Hundred Years' War, which would grind on for another century, but it established the longbow as the dominant weapon on European battlefields for the next hundred years. The battle proved that disciplined infantry with ranged weapons could destroy mounted aristocratic warriors, a lesson that would eventually reshape European society as thoroughly as it reshaped its warfare.