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Today in History - 26th August

26th August 1346 - English forces defeat the French at Crecy

681 years ago today, a heavily outnumbered English army led by King Edward III defeated the French at the Battle of Crecy, in the very north of France.

The battle was part of the Hundred Years' War which had begun 9 years earlier. The war came about due to King Edward's belief that, as grandson of the late Charles IV of France, he was the French king; the French nobility disagreed due to the fact that Edward's claim stemmed from his mother, and crowned Charles' cousin Phillip king instead. Edward was aggrieved by this, and formally claimed the French crown in 1337, sparking an on/off war that would last until 1453.

Fast forward 9 years to July 1346, when Edward, under pressure from parliament to bring the war to an end, landed in Normandy with an army. The king and his forces spent a month and a half marching through northern France, storming and sacking numerous towns, before meeting the French army at Crécy-en-Ponthieu.

The English only had about 10,000 men, compared to the French who had an estimated 20,000 - 30,000 troops. Nevertheless, it was a crushing victory for England, whose longbowmen took down wave after wave of enemy soldiers. In the end, the French lost thousands of men, whilst English losses were limited to just a few hundred. The victory enabled the English to move on to the port of Calais, which they successfully besieged over the next year, and held onto for the next 200 years.

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