![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.](https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/M-Potiers-LEAD-Spread-crop-760x427.jpg)
King Philip IV
Death at the Hawthorn Hedge: Poitiers, 1356
By William E. WelshThe 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