What if France had won at Crécy?
At Crécy in August 1346 the English longbowmen broke charge after charge of French knights, and Edward III went on to take Calais. What if Philip VI had waited just one night?
What actually happened
When King Philip VI of France confiscated the English king's duchy of Gascony in 1337, Edward III, who had Capetian blood through his mother, claimed the French crown and went to war: the start of the Hundred Years' War. Having destroyed the French fleet at Sluys in 1340, Edward landed at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue in Normandy in July 1346, sacked Caen and marched north. Pursued by the French, he crossed the ford of Blanchetaque at the mouth of the Somme on 24 August.
On 26 August Edward drew up on the ridge between the village of Crécy and Wadicourt, in a defensive formation with dismounted knights standing alongside the longbowmen. Philip, who had marched all day, began the battle late in the afternoon. The Genoese crossbowmen in front were driven back by the rapid arrows of the longbows, and the French knights charging up behind trampled them as they rode up the slope. Froissart writes that the French knights charged more than fifteen times before nightfall.
France suffered heavy losses. The blind King John of Bohemia, the king's brother the Count of Alençon, the Count of Flanders and the Duke of Lorraine were killed, and the English heralds are said to have counted some 1,500 bodies of knights and squires in front of the Prince of Wales's division alone. Philip fled in the night to the castle of La Broye. Edward went north and besieged Calais from September 1346 to August the next year, taking it; Calais remained English for more than two hundred years.
The turning point
The traditional verdict is that France lost through haste. Jean le Bel and Froissart say Philip ordered the army to halt and fight the next day, but the nobles in front pushed forward, each trying to get ahead of the others. The crossbowmen were tired after a long march, their large shields, the pavises, were back with the baggage, and there is a story that a downpour just before the battle wet their strings. Edward's army, on the other hand, was short of food after six weeks' march; had the French blocked the road and waited a day or two, he might have had to fight on bad ground or go hungry.
The research of Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston stresses that Edward wanted battle from the start and chose his ground well. The combination of longbows and dismounted knights had already been tried in the Scottish wars of the 1330s. If so, even had France waited a day, attacking the English head-on up the ridge would still have been hard. This turning point depends on how the French king used that one night.
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: on 26 August 1346 Philip VI listened to the old knights who told him not to send the rain-soaked crossbowmen in front, and waited one night. At dawn the next day the French knights fell on the English camp, its arrows spent, from both sides. The sixteen-year-old Edward, Prince of Wales, was captured, and his father asked for ransom terms and a truce. Calais was never besieged. In the game the English army is greatly reduced, the two kingdoms enter a nine-year truce, and Brittany goes to Charles of Blois, on the French side.
For a player who started as Bertrand du Guesclin, the altered world runs like this. News of the victory at Crécy reaches Brittany, and in 1347 Charles of Blois captures the Englishman Thomas Dagworth at La Roche-Derrien; in real history it was there that Blois was captured by Dagworth. Du Guesclin becomes marshal of Brittany; in 1365 knights flock to King Peter I of Cyprus's crusade to Alexandria; and from 1366 he leads mercenaries over the Pyrenees into the war between the two kings of Castile. Since the Black Prince, once captured, never crossed the sea again, no one comes to help King Peter.
Beyond the game, a victory at Crécy would probably have delayed the English offensive by a generation rather than ended the war. In both worlds the Black Death reaches the southern ports in autumn 1347, and for decades afterwards neither kingdom had the means to mount a great campaign. Without the foothold of Calais, and with the heir to the throne a prisoner, England's reckoning when choosing its next fight would have been very different.
Ripples through time
Crécy changes the odds of the last turning point of the same era, Orléans in 1429. In a world where France won at Crécy, the English side's strength is cut sharply and the French side's increased when the odds at Orléans are set, so the chance of Orléans falling drops accordingly.
In real history Crécy opened the age of the English longbow that ran on to Poitiers in 1356 and Agincourt in 1415, and it is remembered as a battle that showed the age when knightly charges decided wars was drawing to a close. Calais did not return to France until 1558.
Play this turning point
Choose the scenario The Black Dog of Brocéliande, which begins as the seventeen-year-old Bertrand du Guesclin in 1337. In 1345's “The king's summons”, leading your band north to the king's army raises the Crécy odds a lot, and staying in Brittany to tie down the Earl of Northampton's English garrisons also raises them.
If you started the Middle Ages era in another position, in the Currents of History story Hundred Years' War siding with France pushes for a French victory and siding with England for the real outcome. In 1345 a French character can join the king's army or contribute to the Genoese crossbowmen's pay, and an English character can enlist in King Edward's expedition or pay for arrows. This turning point opens while both France and England survive.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “The Black Dog of Brocéliande” →
Questions and answers
How important was the longbow at Crécy?
Very important, but it did not win the battle alone. The English held a ridge and stood their dismounted knights alongside the longbowmen, while the French charged in disorder and exhausted. A longbow could shoot several arrows a minute, far faster than a crossbow.
What did the Black Prince do at Crécy?
Sixteen-year-old Edward, Prince of Wales, commanded the vanguard on the English right. Froissart tells the famous story that when his division was hard pressed, Edward III refused to send help, saying “Let the boy win his spurs”. The nickname Black Prince was given after his death.
How did the Hundred Years' War go after Crécy?
Edward took Calais, and the truce of 1347 and the Black Death briefly halted the war. At Poitiers in 1356 the Black Prince captured King John II of France, and by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 England gained the whole of Aquitaine.
Sources and further reading
Jean Froissart, Chronicles, book 1; Jean le Bel, True Chronicles; Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica. Modern accounts: Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346; Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 1: Trial by Battle.
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