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00:00On the 26th of August 1346, south of the port town of Calais in northern France, an outnumbered
00:10English army, commanded by King Edward III of England, confronted the forces of King
00:16Philip VI of France.
00:19As the fighting raged, the English right flank was furiously assaulted by the French.
00:26Despite the immense odds and after being thrown to the ground and nearly losing his life in
00:34the fighting, it was the 16-year-old son of the English king, Prince Edward, who rallied
00:41their forces and beat back the French.
00:45Victory at the Battle of Crécy was only the beginning of the remarkable career of Prince
00:51Edward.
00:52Who was he?
00:54How did he contribute to the Hundred Years' War?
00:57And why did he never become King of England?
01:02This is the story of Edward, the Black Prince.
01:20The man known to history as Edward of Woodstock, or Edward the Black Prince, was born on the
01:2815th of June 1330 at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire in England.
01:34The origins of the name, the Black Prince, are not known for certain.
01:41Prince Edward was not called by this name when he was alive.
01:45Rather, it was adopted during the Tudor era over a hundred years after his death.
01:52Some speculate that the name arises from the black armour he was said to have habitually worn into
01:59battle, whilst others claim that it was derived from the dark reputation he garnered by engaging
02:07in scorched earth campaigns across France during the Hundred Years' War.
02:15A third theory is that this name comes from his coat of arms, which depicted three ostrich feathers
02:23set against a black background.
02:29The Black Prince's father was King Edward III of England, the son and heir of King Edward II.
02:36Edward III became king in 1327 at the age of 14 after his weak and unpopular father was deposed by
02:47his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, a powerful English noble who, along with Isabella, organised an uprising while
02:58in France and invaded England in 1326, rapidly supplanting Edward's government.
03:06Edward II's great mistake was to grant excessive power throughout his reign to a series of court favourites such as
03:15Piers Gaveston and the Dispenser family, actions which ultimately cost him his throne and his life in 1327.
03:26The Black Prince's mother was Philippa of Hainault, the daughter of William I, Count of Hainault.
03:34She was Queen of England from the date of her marriage to Edward III on 24 January 1328 until her
03:43death on 15 August 1369.
03:47Edward and Philippa would ultimately have thirteen children, of whom Prince Edward was the eldest.
03:59When Edward was born in the summer of 1330, his father was still basically a puppet of his mother and
04:07Mortimer.
04:08They had managed to overthrow the unpopular Edward II in 1327 and then seized control of England, with Isabella's teenage
04:18son being King in name only at first.
04:22However, Edward III soon showed that he was nothing like his father in terms of his political and military abilities.
04:32It was the birth of his son and heir Edward of Woodstock that galvanised the King to move against the
04:39increasingly unpopular Mortimer and Isabella.
04:43On the 19th of October 1330, Edward III raided a castle where the couple were residing in Nottingham and captured
04:53them.
04:53On the 29th of November, Mortimer was executed, while Isabella was placed under house confinement and banned from all political
05:04activity.
05:05Edward's decisive reassertion of royal power was welcomed by the English nobility.
05:12The young King immediately resolved to wage war on the Scots to avenge the humiliation of the Battle of Bannockburn
05:20in 1314, through which Edward II had lost control over Scotland.
05:26Edward III's well-trained army secured a complete victory over the Scottish forces at the Battle of Hallidon Hill on
05:36the 19th of July, 1333.
05:39Edward was received as a hero on his return to England.
05:44Thereafter, he was determined to rebuild England's might as it had existed in the time of his grandfather, King Edward
05:52I, or indeed, in the days of King Henry II in the 12th century, when the English king had ruled
06:00over most of northern and western France as well.
06:04In this task of royal renewal, his eldest son would become an able participant.
06:16Edward of Woodstock and Edward of Woodstock are scarce.
06:20He was made the Earl of Chester in 1333, his first title, and was brought up in the surroundings of
06:28a magnificent court where feasting and celebration were abundant.
06:33The young prince was dressed in fine silk clothes and given a personal tailor.
06:40However, the prince's father also wanted to ensure that his heir could perform his duties as a military ruler as
06:48well one day.
06:50To this end, the prince received his first suit of armour at the age of seven, and from the age
06:58of thirteen participated in the numerous chivalric tournaments held by the king.
07:03The first decade of his reign saw Edward III embroiled in further conflict with the Scottish king, David II, leading
07:13multiple campaigns in the Scottish borderlands following Hallidon Hill.
07:18However, his thoughts soon turned towards England's greatest enemy, France, and in 1337, Edward launched what would become known as
07:31the Hundred Years' War, the conflict in which the Black Prince would establish himself as one of the great military
07:39leaders of the medieval period.
07:41Edward's claim to the French throne originated from the death of King Charles IV of France without a male heir,
07:53leaving two chief claimants for the throne,
07:56Philip, Philip Count of Valois, Edward's cousin, and Edward himself, whose mother, Isabella, was Charles' sister.
08:05The French aristocracy chose Philip of Valois to become Philip VI of France.
08:11This choice was not contested at first, primarily because at the time Isabella and Mortimer wanted to maintain good relations
08:21with the French.
08:23Indeed, even when Edward took personal control of England late in 1330, he maintained cordial relations with Philip as he
08:32dealt first with the Scots in the years that followed.
08:36But, relations between the English and French monarchs soured gradually, and in 1337, England went to war with France after
08:47Philip threatened to confiscate the Duchy of Gascony, England's last major holding on the continent.
08:54At first, Edward went to war exclusively over the Gascony issue, but early in 1340, Edward extended the calls for
09:05war by publicly asserting his claim to the French crown.
09:09Thus, the war that would rage on and off down to 1453 was over England's right to the French throne,
09:18but also the effort to reclaim territories like the Duchy of Normandy that England had lost back in the early
09:2713th century.
09:31Edward's initial plan in the war was to draw the French forces into a decisive battle.
09:37Thus, he invaded northern France in the autumn of 1339, using scorched earth tactics to devastate the countryside.
09:47However, King Philip refused to meet the English in open battle and withdrew his forces into defensive positions, forcing Edward
09:57back to Flanders without a victory.
10:01It was there that he formally declared his claim to the French throne in January 1340 in the city of
10:09Ghent.
10:10By then, Edward was desperate for a victory over the French as heavy taxation at home in England to pay
10:18for his army was unpopular.
10:21He therefore assembled more than a hundred ships at Holbrooke in the east of England to ferry his troops to
10:29Flanders and began a new offensive with his Flemish allies.
10:33Yet, the French had anticipated this move and were blockading his entry into Flanders with a fleet twice as large
10:43as his own.
10:44Edward received news of this, but nonetheless chose to sail on the 22nd of June.
10:51The fleets clashed two days later near the town of Sloyes.
10:57Though the French boats were faster, their sailors were inexperienced in combat while Edward's vessels were crammed with skilled archers.
11:08Furthermore, the French boats were bound together to maintain a defensive position, making the fleet extremely immobile.
11:17The English consequently won a total victory, capturing almost the entire French fleet.
11:25Despite the stunning naval success at the Battle of Sloyes, Edward could still not force King Philip into a decisive
11:34battle on French territory.
11:36He soon ran out of funds and was forced to abandon his campaign.
11:45After peace talks in 1344 ended in failure, Edward launched a major new campaign in 1346.
11:55By now, the Black Prince was 16 years old and considered to be old enough to take part in the
12:01war.
12:02He had also been made the Prince of Wales in 1343.
12:07Father and son with their army landed in Normandy on the 12th of July 1346 with a 14,000 strong
12:16army.
12:17Upon their arrival there, the Prince was knighted by his father and given command of the vanguard of the army.
12:25After pillaging the town of Caen in late July with the Black Prince playing a leading role in the town's
12:33capture,
12:34Edward's army continued its easterly march through Normandy towards Calais.
12:40After crossing the river Somme on the 24th of August, they arrived on a ridge of high ground between the
12:48villages of Crecy and Vadicourt.
12:51The English king had around 2,500 men at arms, 3,000 cavalry, 2,000 spearmen, and 5,000 to
13:017,000 longbowmen,
13:03whilst a swiftly approaching French force was much larger, numbering over 20,000 men.
13:11However, the English were well rested when the battle commenced on the 26th, whereas the French were tired after a
13:20long march northwards.
13:23While King Edward commanded the centre of the army and the Earl of Northampton the left,
13:28the Black Prince was given command of the right wing.
13:32The French advance was led by Genoese crossbowmen, with the extensive French cavalry building up behind them.
13:41Seeing the Genoese falter under heavy English longbow fire, they charged through the crossbowmen, causing chaos and confusion in the
13:51French ranks.
13:52While this slowed the French onslaught, in the early evening the main French force arrived on the battlefield and charged
14:01the English right under the Black Prince.
14:04This led to a severe struggle, in which the Prince himself was beaten to the ground.
14:11However, reinforcements from the English left helped repel the French attack,
14:16and Prince Edward, though badly concussed, soon picked himself up and continued fighting valiantly.
14:25As daylight faded, the French launched wave after wave of cavalry attacks, to no avail.
14:33King Philip himself had two horses slain under him during the battle and received an arrow wound in his face.
14:40As night fell, with his army disintegrating around him against a steady English advance,
14:49he reluctantly fled the field, conceding a terrible defeat to King Edward's triumphant army.
15:00The Battle of Crecy was one of the greatest English victories of the Hundred Years' War,
15:05with Edward's army sustaining fewer than 300 casualties, while the French casualties were far higher,
15:14including a great number of prominent nobles, such as Philip's brother, the Count of Alencon, and King John of Bohemia.
15:23The Black Prince and his father came across the body of King John when surveying the battlefield the following day.
15:30They were deeply moved, for John was one of the foremost warriors of his age, losing his sight whilst on
15:39crusade.
15:40It is said that the Prince took John's emblem of three white feathers and made it his own.
15:47John's emblem remains the symbol of the Prince of Wales to this day.
15:52Following the battle, Edward laid siege to the port of Calais, whilst an invading Scottish army encouraged by Philip to
16:02exploit Edward's absence
16:03was decisively defeated at Neville's Cross by an English force under the Archbishop of York on 17 October 1346.
16:14Calais finally surrendered in August 1347 and, in October of that year, King Edward negotiated a truce and returned to
16:27London.
16:29The spirit of jubilation across England surrounding Edward and his son's great victories was quickly brought to an end when,
16:39in August 1348,
16:41the Black Death crossed the English Channel and ravaged the country.
16:47The bubonic plague would eventually kill over one third of Europe's population.
16:54Densely populated cities like London were particularly badly hit.
17:00Indeed, the Black Prince was personally impacted by the disease as it claimed the life of his sister Joan on
17:072 September 1348.
17:10Nevertheless, in spite of the plague, King Edward inaugurated a new chivalric order at Windsor Castle that same year,
17:19naming it the Order of the Garter.
17:22It had twenty-six original members, including the Black Prince, who had assisted his father in selecting the other founding
17:31members,
17:32all of whom were selected based on acts of valour rather than simply their rank.
17:38The Order was arguably the most enduring legacy of King Edward III's reign as it remains the most senior Order
17:48of Knights in the United Kingdom to this day.
17:52As the effects of the plague began to dissipate in late 1349, King Edward saw the chance to reclaim the
18:00offensive against France.
18:03After hearing of an imminent attempt to recapture Calais, the King and his son went to the vital port ahead
18:11of the French and sprung a trap on their enemy, repulsing the French force on 1 January 1350,
18:18the King Edward III, although not without the Black Prince having to lead his garrison in saving his father after
18:26Edward became stranded outside the city gates against a much larger enemy force.
18:35The Black Prince owned large estates throughout England.
18:40He implemented a host of revenue-generating policies when his income fell after the Black Death.
18:48During the crisis, he showed himself to be a fair landlord, instructing his revenue official in Cornwall in 1351 to
18:57deal equitably and rightly with his tenants and to protect them from oppressions and extortions.
19:06Furthermore, after local unrest in Cheshire in the summer of 1353, the Prince travelled to the county himself holding judicial
19:16sessions to settle grievances.
19:19He also agreed to grant Cheshire a charter of liberties.
19:23This successful management of his lands aside, the Black Prince was also gaining a reputation as an overly indulgent spender,
19:34constantly living beyond his financial means to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
19:40This being said, it should be noted that the Prince's extravagance was not mindless spending.
19:47In medieval England, great lords needed to be generous in feasting and gift-giving to recruit men into their service
19:56and maintain their allegiance.
19:59Striking a balance between rewarding one's followers and avoiding the burden of debt was a challenge faced by many medieval
20:07lords,
20:08especially after the Black Death when there were labour shortages all across the continent and soldiers and farmers were in
20:16an excellent negotiating position when it came to the retention of their services.
20:26In 1355, Jean de Grey, a Knight of the Garter from Gascony, the English-held province in southwestern France, informed
20:35King Edward that people in the region were concerned with the actions of the Count of Armagnac,
20:41who had been appointed by King John II of France as governor of the southern region of Languedoc and who
20:49had captured a number of Gascon towns and fortresses.
20:53Edward was keen to resume the offensive against France and his great council decided that the Black Prince should lead
21:02an expedition from Gascony to secure the province and punish the Count of Armagnac.
21:08Furthermore, on 10th July, the Prince was made the King's lieutenant in Gascony, allowing him to basically govern Gascony as
21:18a de facto royal viceroy.
21:21He was given an army of 2,600 men to be bolstered by Gascon soldiers.
21:28Accompanying the Prince to France were 14 Knights of the Garter, including the experienced Earls of Warwick and Suffolk, and
21:37the Prince's special advisers and close friends, Sir John Chandos and Sir James Audley.
21:43They reached Bordeaux on 20th September 1355.
21:48The following day, a religious ceremony was held in Saint-André Cathedral, after which the Prince spoke directly to the
21:58inhabitants of Bordeaux, telling them of his plan to take the offensive against the Languedoc governor by marching east and
22:06ravaging his lands in a great chevauchée, a French term meaning a brutal plundering raid, where land either side of
22:16the advancing column was burned.
22:18The aim of a chevauchée was to plunder the wealth and resources of the enemy's land in order to undermine
22:25the enemy's capacity to wage war.
22:28With the Gascon contingents joining his army, the Black Prince's force reached around 8,000 men, and on 5 October,
22:38they set off from Bordeaux following the river Garand and entering Armagnac's lands on 12 October, where the troops began
22:48burning and fires soon raged for many miles around the army.
22:53Though Armagnac was in command of a larger force than the Anglo-Gascons, he did not want to risk battle
23:01against the Black Prince's experienced men.
23:05Instead, he gathered his army in the fortified city of Toulouse and destroyed the bridges over the Garand and Ariège
23:13rivers, hoping the raid would fizzle out or come to a halt before the rivers.
23:22On the 28th of October, the Prince reached the Garand south of Toulouse.
23:28The Prince had been informed by local guides in his service that the stream could be forded.
23:35As such, he led his army across the river.
23:39This audacious move greatly boosted the morale of his men while causing panic amongst Armagnac and the French, who assumed
23:49the Prince would turn back before the rivers.
23:52Instead, his army now marched east through the Languedoc, a region totally unprepared for the carnage that bore down upon
24:02them.
24:02The army reached the major town of Carcassonne and razed its outer settlements to the ground on 6 November, and
24:11then continued on to Narbonne, which was occupied on 8 November.
24:17The Prince's troops had now covered 250 miles since leaving Bordeaux and were within sight of the Mediterranean Sea.
24:27Edward ultimately decided to return to Gascony before the winter weather set in.
24:33The Prince's army recrossed the Garand on 20 November, and after receiving reinforcements, the Count of Armagnac finally left Toulouse.
24:44He shadowed the Anglo-Gascons as they moved west, much to the fury of John II, the French King.
24:52On 28 November, the Prince arrived back on Gascon's soil and spent Christmas at Bordeaux amid great rejoicing and celebration,
25:02for the expedition had been a clear success.
25:06Many Gascon lords who had joined the French now rallied to the English cause, as Armagnac's failure to protect his
25:16vassals' lands had been brutally exposed.
25:23The Chevauchée of 1355 further demonstrated the Black Prince's military skill.
25:31As news of its success arrived to England, Edward III sensed an opportunity to launch a wider offensive against his
25:39enemy, as King John II was facing a crisis in his relations with the French nobility, originating
25:48from John's arrest of the powerful aristocrat Charles of Navarre and other Norman lords at a dinner party in Rouen,
25:57when he threw Charles in jail and executed four nobles, causing Normandy to rise in revolt against the French King.
26:06To exploit this situation, King Edward sent a small force under the Duke of Lancaster to Normandy at the beginning
26:14of June 1356, and urged the Black Prince to march north to link up with Lancaster's army, in order to
26:23attack John II's son, the Count of Poitiers, who was charged with the defence of France south of the Loire
26:32River.
26:32The Prince was delayed in his expedition by a resurgent Count of Armagnac, whose incursions into Gascony forced the Prince
26:42to leave 2,000 of his 8,000 strong force in the Duchy to defend it before he began his
26:49march on the 4th of August, moving north through France and devastating the lands as they went.
26:56As the Prince neared the Loire River, he began to realise the serious danger his army was in, as Lancaster
27:05had ended his Normandy campaign in the face of a much larger French force, whilst John II was building an
27:14immense army at Chartres.
27:16Moreover, while John remained unpopular with the French aristocracy, they now rallied to him out of fear of the Black
27:25Prince.
27:27Thus, the King was able to assemble a force more than twice the size of the princes, who now became
27:34desperate to locate and link up with Lancaster's army.
27:38On the 7th of September, the Prince's army reached the Loire and the suburbs of Tours, aiming to join Lancaster,
27:48who was just 70 miles away on the north bank.
27:51However, heavy rains soon made the swollen river impassable, and after receiving news that John's army was advancing towards him
28:02just 20 miles away, the Black Prince ordered a retreat, whilst Lancaster withdrew into Brittany, leaving the Black Prince to
28:12fend for himself.
28:13With both armies moving south, the French had managed to overtake and cut across the English line of march, and
28:23were now west of their enemy near Poitiers.
28:27It was clear that a major confrontation was imminent, but while the Prince led about 7,000 men, King John
28:37had over 20,000 men with him.
28:43On the 18th of September, the Prince took up his position southeast of Poitiers.
28:50His forces occupied a ridge of high ground, while his flanks were protected by thick woods on one side, with
28:58wagons from the baggage train used to shield his flanks further.
29:03The Prince placed Warwick and Oxford's division on his left, Suffolk and Salisbury's on his right, whilst he commanded the
29:12centre.
29:13His longbowmen were placed on the wings of the army.
29:17On the morning of the 19th, King John and the French had arrived.
29:22He formed his army into three divisions, led by the Dauphin Charles, John's brother Philip the Duke of Orléans, and
29:32himself.
29:33At 7.30 a.m., the Prince gathered his carts and moved them in a southern direction as if he
29:40were retreating.
29:41The feint worked, and the French cavalry charged the English line.
29:47This charge met with initial success as the armoured French horses resisted the Prince's archers and crashed into the Anglo
29:56-Gascon.
29:57However, after repositioning to the side, the English archers targeted the horses behind the front line to devastating effect, destroying
30:07the momentum of the French assault.
30:09The cavalry that had broken through the defences were surrounded and cut down.
30:16The English then attacked the exhausted French men-at-arms through the hedges and spilt around the flanks of the
30:24French line, forcing them to retreat after two hours of bloody fighting.
30:29The strongest French division under King John now began to advance.
30:34While this presented a grave threat, the Black Prince launched a surprise cavalry charge directly at the French line while
30:44also sending a mounted force on a large flanking manoeuvre to fall on the French left.
30:51A melee ensued, with both sides taking casualties.
30:56But then the Gascon reserve force crashed into the French left flank, causing widespread panic in John's ranks.
31:05The English archers, having expended their arrows, threw down their bows and launched themselves into the battle.
31:14With contingents of the French army now fleeing, the French king was surrounded and captured by the English.
31:26On the evening of the 19th of September, the French dead stood at 2,500 men-at-arms while the
31:34king and dozens of notable lords were captured.
31:38From the jaws of defeat, the Black Prince had snatched an improbable and total victory.
31:46The captured King John was treated respectfully by the Black Prince, who waited on his table on the evening after
31:54the battle and praised the king's valour and bravery.
31:57If the central tenets of medieval chivalry were bravery in battle and respect for one's enemy, then, at Poitiers, the
32:07Black Prince had demonstrated why he would be remembered in history as the embodiment of a chivalrous warrior.
32:17The Anglo-Gascon army returned to Bordeaux on the 5th of October to great public jubilation.
32:23Thereafter, a two-year truce with the captive King John was agreed on the 23rd of March, 1357.
32:32The Prince and his royal prisoner set sail for England, and on the 24th of May, Edward of Woodstock rode
32:41through London in triumph.
32:43This was the pinnacle of his career as England's warrior prince.
32:48On the 8th of May, 1358, Edward III signed an agreement with John II, in which John agreed to pay
32:58four million French crowns for his release and recognised Edward as sovereign ruler of the large southern province of Aquitaine.
33:09In return, Edward would renounce his claim to the French throne.
33:15This treaty constituted a substantial victory for the English.
33:23Following his victory, the Prince fell back into his ever-persistent problem of excessive spending as he embarked on an
33:32ambitious expansion of his Vale royal residence in Cheshire, an abbey begun by his great-grandfather, Edward I.
33:41Nevertheless, when the French provisional government rejected the treaty signed with John, the Black Prince and his father once again
33:52led a large expedition into France on the 28th of October, 1359, intending to march on Reims and have Edward
34:02III crowned as King of France.
34:04However, the army failed to capture the city, and Edward decided to negotiate, agreeing to the Treaty of Bretigny on
34:14the 8th of May, 1360.
34:16Under the terms of the treaty, Edward ceded lands in the north and west of France totalling around a third
34:24of the country.
34:25In return, Edward relinquished his claim to the French throne and lowered John's ransom to three million crowns.
34:34With the war with France now briefly in abeyance, the 31-year-old Black Prince married Joan of Kent, his
34:4333-year-old cousin, in the summer of 1361.
34:48He returned to France, and soon after he was invested as Prince of Aquitaine as a reward for his victory
34:56at Poitiers.
34:57The prince departed for France with most of his household, as well as over 600 soldiers arriving at Lormand near
35:05Bordeaux on the 29th of June.
35:08There, the prince was quite popular at the beginning of his rule, as his exceedingly generous hospitality and grand feasts
35:17endeared him to the local lords.
35:19Furthermore, the prince and his wife were extremely happy in their new domain, especially so upon the birth of their
35:28first child in January 1365, a son whom they named Edward.
35:34In addition, in a meeting of the three estates, the representative body of Aquitaine in September 1365, the prince showed
35:44himself to be willing to listen to the grievances of his subjects and act to redress them, working to reduce
35:52lawlessness in his lands, after hearing complaints of marauding brigands and feuding lords.
35:59Meanwhile, France had a new king.
36:03John II had died in April 1364.
36:07The new king, Charles V, proved himself to be a strong and effective ruler and a formidable adversary for the
36:16black prince, who by 1365 was already experiencing some tension with his nobles, including his old enemy, the Count of
36:27Armagnac.
36:31The black prince's attention was soon drawn away from Aquitaine altogether towards Spain, when he received a message in 1366
36:40from the displaced King Pedro of Castile, begging the prince to help restore him to the throne.
36:48John III
36:49The 32-year-old Pedro had succeeded his father, Alfonso XI, as the sole child of a loveless marriage to
36:57Queen Maria of Portugal, but his father preferred his mistress, Leonora de Guzman, with whom he had multiple children who
37:08he showered with honor and affection, whilst isolating Pedro, who forged a strong resentment towards his half-siblings.
37:17John III
37:17He was himself from the king's, especially the oldest, Enrique of Trastamara.
37:22As King Pedro, he was a valuable ally of Edward III, as Castile had emerged as the most powerful
37:30state in the Iberian Peninsula.
37:33Then, in 1366, Pedro was removed from the throne by his bitter enemy, Enrique, in an invasion
37:42supported by Charles V of France.
37:46When he fled to Gascony, many of the black prince's advisers were opposed to helping Pedro,
37:53as in his rapid flight over the Pyrenees he had not brought any soldiers with him,
37:59meaning that the prince would have to mobilize an army and bear the financial burden of the campaign
38:05if he was to try to restore Pedro to the throne of Castile.
38:10Furthermore, Pedro was widely considered to be an unstable tyrant,
38:17one who had also been excommunicated by the Catholic Church.
38:25Despite his reservations about Pedro, the English were wary of allowing Castile to come under French
38:33influence and were determined to uphold the Anglo-Castilian alliance.
38:37Therefore, Edward reluctantly agreed to help restore the Castilian king on September 23rd,
38:461366, on the condition that Pedro swear an oath to reform how he ruled if he was restored to power
38:56in Castile and to also repair his relations with the Church. After the birth on the 6th of January,
39:041367, of the black prince's second son, Richard, who would later become King Richard II of England,
39:13the prince left Bordeaux to join his assembling army of over 6,000 men in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
39:21Then, on the 14th of February, 1367, the prince's vanguard under Sir John Chandos crossed the Pyrenees,
39:31followed on the 20th by the prince, with the main body reaching Pamplona, the capital of Navarre, on the 23rd
39:39of February.
39:40As the prince's army reached Vittoria, it suffered under harsh weather and a lack of provisions.
39:48While encamped around Vittoria, it was ambushed on the 25th of March by a Franco-Castilian force under Enrique, losing
39:57hundreds of men.
39:59However, this shock spurred the prince into action, and after retreating into Navarre, he marched south on a new route.
40:09On the 3rd of April, 1367, the two armies would meet on an open plain a mile east of the
40:17town of Najera.
40:19Though the exact sizes of the armies are disputed, it is likely that Enrique of Trastamara held the numerical advantage,
40:29but the black prince had the element of surprise.
40:33He shielded his advance behind a ridge and appeared unexpectedly with his army on Enrique's left flank.
40:44The surprised Castilians and French launched a poorly coordinated cavalry charge, which was shot down by the Anglo-Gascon archers.
40:55Enrique's Spanish soldiers were not accustomed to the devastating effectiveness of the English longbow,
41:02which broke the advancing infantry in similar fashion, and the prince, seeing the enemy's distress,
41:09charged with his mounted soldiers to rout the Spanish and French troops.
41:14The Battle of Najera was another complete victory for the black prince, whose army inflicted heavy casualties
41:22on the Spanish, whilst sustaining very few casualties themselves, much to the delight of Edward III.
41:30Despite this, the black prince was soon frustrated to learn that Enrique had escaped to France
41:38to be shielded by Charles V. On the 2nd of May at Burgos, Pedro was informed that the campaign to
41:46restore him
41:47to his throne had cost over £400,000, and that the English crown expected to be reimbursed.
41:56Although Edward intended to remain with his army in Spain to ensure the debt was paid,
42:01an outbreak of dysentery hit the army in August. It was almost certainly at this time that the prince himself
42:10was struck with the sickness, from which he would never fully recover. As the disease spread,
42:17the Anglo-Gascons marched back across the Pyrenees and returned to Bordeaux in early September 1367.
42:26By autumn of 1367, Pedro's failure to repay his debts left the black prince on the verge of bankruptcy,
42:35with most of his army still unpaid. The prince was accordingly forced to resort to taxing Aquitaine,
42:44introducing a property tax known as the Fouage, which was approved by the estates in January 1368.
42:52A cohort of noblemen, led by the ever-difficult Count of Armagnac,
42:58denounced the tax as oppressive and refused to allow its collection on their lands.
43:08Following his Spanish expedition, many of the prince's political strengths were fading,
43:15as he now lacked the financial means to maintain loyalty through his generosity and gift-giving,
43:21and his personal charm was greatly diminished by debilitating sickness, which continually plagued
43:28him from the summer of 1368. In June of that year, Charles saw his opportunity and took it,
43:38entering an agreement with Armagnac, Albreu and the Count of Perigord, three influential Aquitanian
43:45nobles who were resentful of the prince and his new tax, pledging to defend them if the prince ever
43:52attacked their domains and granted them lands and funds, whilst the nobles promised to fight for
44:00Charles to recover Aquitaine for the French crown. As the prince's health worsened, his hold over Aquitaine
44:09became ever more precarious. Edward III, whose energy and decisiveness had declined with age and ill
44:17health, failed to provide the prince with adequate financial resources and had dithered, whilst Louis,
44:24Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles V, began raising troops in southern France in coordination with the
44:32rebellious nobles to threaten the prince's authority. Furthermore, the prince's position was further
44:39weakened when Enrique of Trastamara reconquered Castile and killed Pedro in March of 1369,
44:48placing a French ally directly south of the prince's lands. In June 1369, following months of tension,
44:58war broke out once again between England and France, and Edward III sent a small force under the earls of
45:05Cambridge and Pembroke to assist the black prince. Charles, meanwhile, had saved prudently throughout
45:14his reign and had large funds with which to supply the rebellious lords as towns and castles in vulnerable
45:22eastern Aquitaine began to fall to the French. As he remained crippled by illness to add to the prince's
45:34woes, he began to lose some of his closest military companions. Sir James Audley died of sickness at the
45:42end of August, whilst his most experienced captain in Aquitaine, Sir John Chandos, was killed in a skirmish
45:50in Poitou on the 1st of January 1370. The French then launched an offensive in the summer of 1370, with
45:59two
45:59large armies, one of which, under Charles V's brother John, Duke of Berry, captured the city of Limoges in
46:08northeastern Aquitaine in mid-August, after the bishop Jean de Croix, a trusted friend of the black prince,
46:16surrendered it to the French. The prince, aghast at the city's surrender, joined a 4,000-strong army and
46:25marched to Limoges in what would be his final expedition, though he had to be carried in a litter as
46:33he was
46:33by now too ill to mount a horse. Nevertheless, the army arrived and laid siege to the city on the
46:4114th of
46:42September. On the 19th, the prince's miners succeeded in destroying a large section of the city wall, allowing the
46:52English troops to surge into Limoges and push back the French defenders. The city was pillaged and burnt
47:00by the retreating French and advancing English, and when the bishop of Limoges was brought before the
47:07prince, he was told that he deserved execution, although he was ultimately spared. The recovery of
47:16Limoges was an important victory for the English, but it was clouded by the news that the black prince's
47:23eldest son, Edward, had died from the plague just days after the fall of Limoges. This devastating news,
47:34combined with his own illness, made the black prince resolve to leave Aquitaine and return to England.
47:45The capture of Limoges became infamous as the French chronicler Jean Froissart wrote an account of it
47:53in which he claimed that the prince's forces indiscriminately killed a large part of the
47:59civilian population after the city fell. Froissart's account was largely fabricated. While there was
48:08substantial property damage, casualties were limited to around 300 people, not the 3,000 that Froissart
48:16suggested. Nevertheless, this story of the capture of Limoges stained the prince's reputation. In early
48:25January 1371, the prince and his household sailed to England. He spent much of the remainder of his life
48:34at Berkhamstead Castle, having left his brother, John of Gaunt, in charge of the worsening military
48:40situation in Aquitaine. By the time a year's truce was signed in June 1375, England's holdings in France
48:50had been greatly diminished. At home, old King Edward III had become unpopular as he came under the influence
48:59of his young mistress, Alice Perez. Meanwhile, the black prince remained an admired figure, though his
49:08health continued to deteriorate from the dysentery he had contracted, an illness that is easily treated
49:15with antibiotics today. As the prince approached his 46th year in 1376, he was virtually unable to leave his
49:25bed, and on the 1st of June he was carried to the Palace of Westminster so that he could spend
49:32the last
49:32of his days with his elderly father and the rest of his family. On Sunday the 8th of June 1376,
49:41Edward of
49:42Woodstock said a final prayer and died, almost certainly from the dysentery that had plagued him since the
49:50Spanish campaign nine years earlier. He was then buried in Canterbury Cathedral, where his tomb can
49:58still be seen today. Just over a year later, his father died, meaning that the black prince's ten-year-old
50:07son, Richard, became England's first new king in half a century. Richard II would prove to be a divisive
50:16ruler who was deposed in 1399 in what many historians view as the start of the Wars of the Roses
50:24that tore
50:25England apart between the 1450s and the ascent of the Tudors in 1485.
50:35The black prince is regarded as one of the greatest medieval warriors in the history of England,
50:41playing a leading role in two of the most decisive English victories of the Hundred Years' War at Crecy
50:49and Poitiers. He was respected by the people of England throughout his life and by his friends
50:56and soldiers whom he never ceased to reward generously for their service to him. Even the French kings,
51:04John II and Charles V, recognized the prince's valour and honour. The prince's reputation has significant
51:13blemishes, however, especially in France, where his brutal raids through Languedoc and northern Aquitaine,
51:21prior to the Battle of Poitiers, included mass atrocities toward civilians and the destruction of
51:28significant swathes of French countryside. Nevertheless, the black prince was, above all else,
51:36a hero for his time, labelled by his surgeon John Ardern, who accompanied him on many campaigns,
51:44as the very flower of chivalry. For there are few men in history who embodied medieval chivalry as much
51:52as Edward of Woodstock did. The principles of courage in battle and showing honour towards one's opponents
52:00defined the warrior prince's life, who lived and died adhering to a code of chivalry that was widely
52:07aspired to in medieval Europe. Chivalry, in many ways, defined the era of the black prince,
52:16and the black prince, in many ways, defined chivalry.
52:23What do you think of the black prince? Was he a ruthless military commander who devastated large
52:31parts of France through his chevauchée raids, or would he have made a great English king? Please,
52:39let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
53:27Well, again, thank you very much for watching.
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