The Battle of Crécy
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the brutal events of 26 August 1346, when the armies of France and England met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the town of Crecy in northern France. Although the French, led by Philip VI, massively outnumbered the English, under the command of Edward III, the English won the battle, and French casualties were huge. The English victory is often attributed to the success of their longbowmen against the heavy cavalry of the French. The Battle of Crecy was the result of years of simmering tension between Edward III and Philip VI, and it led to decades of further conflict between England and France, a conflict that came to be known as the Hundred Years War.
Guests
- Anne Curry
4 episodes
Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Southampton -
Andrew Ayton No other episodes
Senior Research Fellow in History at Keele University -
Erika Graham-Goering No other episodes
Lecturer in Late Medieval History at Durham University
Reading list
-
The Battle of Crecy, 1346
Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston (Boydell, 2005) Google Books → -
Edward III and the Triumph of England. The Battle of Crecy and the Company of the Garter
Richard Barber (Allen Lane, 2013) Google Books → -
The Hundred Years War
Anne Curry (Red Globe Press, 2003) Google Books → -
The Hundred Years War Revisited
Anne Curry (Red Globe Press, 2019) Google Books → -
Princely Power in Late Medieval France. Jeanne de Penthievre and the War for Brittany
Erika Graham-Goering (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Google Books → -
Crecy 1346: A Tourists' Guide
Peter Hoskins with Richard Barber (Pen & Sword, 2016) Google Books → -
The Road to Crecy. The English Invasion of France, 1346
Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel (Pearson Longman, 2005) Google Books → -
Edward III
W. Mark Ormrod (Yale University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
France in the Later Middle Ages
David Potter (Oxford University Press, 2002) Google Books → -
A Short History of the Hundred Years War
Michael Prestwich (I.B. Tauris, 2018) Google Books → -
War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327-1360
Clifford J. Rogers (Boydell, 2000) Google Books → -
Late Medieval France
Graeme Small (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Google Books → -
The Hundred Years War, Volume 1: Trial by Battle
Jonathan Sumption (Faber & Faber, 1990) Google Books →
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Programme ID: m001kx5s
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kx5s
Auto-category: 940.2 (Medieval History)