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.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

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 (ed.) (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 (ed.) (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 (Europe)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. On the 26th of August 1346, two armies met in a funnel-shaped valley outside the village of Crecy in northern France.