CRÉCY 1346 — The First Great Battle of the Hundred Years' War

On that Saturday, 24 August 1346, night had long since fallen. It was nearly midnight. A small band of horsemen arrived before the château de Labroye, 5 km north-east of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. The gate was closed, the drawbridge raised — fugitives from the French army had already warned the garrison that the battle was lost and the English victorious. The riders called out to the châtelain, who climbed to the battlements and asked who would seek entry at such a late hour. The voice of Philippe de Valois answered him, pathetically: "Open, open, châtelain: it is the unfortunate King of France!" This scene, composed by Jean Froissart, never took place. The celebrated chronicler had superimposed upon the real events a scene he had himself composed for a chivalric romance of his own devising. Yet his literary genius succeeded in a few words in suggesting the unimaginable outcome of the bloody Battle of Crécy: the transformation of the most powerful prince of the West into a wretched fugitive.

With a France so populous, so wealthy and so powerful, and an England so poor and so weak, Crécy should by all logic have marked the early end of the Hundred Years' War, so assured did victory seem for the Valois. And yet, on the evening of a particularly bloody engagement for the French, it was indeed Philippe VI who was forced to flee to avoid capture.