King Edward III

Philip vs Edward at the Battle of Crécy

By Robert Suhr

Philip of Valois, for long have we made suit before you by embassies and all other ways which we knew to be reasonable, to the end that you should be willing to have restored unto us our right, our heritage of France, which you have long kept back and most wrongfully occupied.” Read more

Bare-headed, French King John II leads a swirling melee at the climax of the Battle of Poitiers in this 1830 painting by Eugene Delacroix.

King Edward III

Death at the Hawthorn Hedge: Poitiers, 1356

By William E. Welsh

­The Black Death that ravaged England and France for a half-dozen years in the mid-14th century served merely as a brief intermission between the first and second acts of the painfully protracted struggle known as the Hundred Years’ War. Read more

King Edward III

King Henry VIII of England and the Siege of Boulogne: His Last War

By Bob Swain

In November 1541, roughly three years before the Siege of Boulogne, King Henry VIII of England suffered one of the most severe shocks of his life when he was shown a report alleging that his plumpish 19-year-old queen, Catherine Howard, had been intimate with other men before their marriage. Read more

French men-at-arms assault a formidable English position at Auray in September 1364. An English counterattack shattered the French.

King Edward III

Bertrand du Guesclin

By William E. Welsh

One month after the disastrous French defeat at Poitiers in September 1356, a large English army besieged Rennes in eastern Brittany. Read more

King Edward III

Battling Bishops of Christendom

By William J. McPeak

Bishops in battle? It’s not as unlikely as it sounds. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Norman Duke William, soon to be dubbed William the Conqueror, held his heavy cavalry in check until the most advantageous moment to charge the right flank of King Harold’s Saxons. Read more