The Battle of Crécy took place on 26 August 1346 in northern France between a French army commanded by King Philip VI and an English army led by King Edward III. The French attacked the English while they were traversing northern France during the Hundred Years' War, resulting in an English victory and heavy loss of life among the French.
Combined arms is an approach to warfare that seeks to integrate different combat arms of a military to achieve mutually-complementary effects. According to the strategist William S. Lind, combined arms can be distinguished from the concept of "supporting arms" as follows:
Combined arms hits the enemy with two or more arms simultaneously in such a manner that the actions he must take to defend himself from one make him more vulnerable to another. In contrast, supporting arms is hitting the enemy with two or more arms in sequence, or if simultaneously, then in such combination that the actions the enemy must take to defend himself from one also defends himself from the other(s).
A hauberk or byrnie is a shirt of mail. The term is usually used to describe a shirt reaching at least to mid-thigh and including sleeves. Haubergeon generally refers to the quilted undergarment used with a hauberk, but the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
The Battle of Halidon Hill took place on 19 July 1333 when a Scottish army under Sir Archibald Douglas attacked an English army commanded by King Edward III of England and was heavily defeated. The year before, Edward Balliol had seized the Scottish Crown from five-year-old David II, surreptitiously supported by Edward III. This marked the start of the Second War of Scottish Independence. Balliol was shortly expelled from Scotland by a popular uprising, which Edward III used as a casus belli, invading Scotland in 1333. The immediate target was the strategically important border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which the English besieged in March.
A visor was an armored covering for the face often used in conjunction with Late Medieval war helmets such as the bascinet or sallet. The visor usually consisted of a hinged piece of steel that contained openings for breathing and vision. Appropriately, breaths refers to the holes in the metal of the visor. Visors protected the face during battle and could be remarkably durable. One surviving artifact was found to be "equivalent in hardness to cold worked high speed steel."
Annus mirabilis is a Latin phrase that means "marvelous year", "wonderful year", "miraculous year", or "amazing year". This term has been used to refer to several years during which events of major importance are remembered, notably Isaac Newton's discoveries in 1666.
A chevauchée was a raiding method of medieval warfare for weakening the enemy, primarily by burning and pillaging enemy territory in order to reduce the productivity of a region, as opposed to siege warfare or wars of conquest. The use of the chevauchée declined at the end of the 14th century as the focus of warfare turned to sieges. It is conceptually similar to the scorched earth strategies used in modern warfare.
The Battle of Gavere was fought at Semmerzake, near Gavere, in the County of Flanders on 23 July 1453, between the army of Philip the Good of Burgundy and the rebelling city of Ghent. The battle ended the Revolt of Ghent with a Burgundian victory.
The Society for Military History is a United States–based international organization of scholars who research, write, and teach military history of all time periods and places. It includes naval history, air power history, and studies of technology, ideas, and homefronts. It publishes the quarterly refereed The Journal of Military History.
A battle or battaile was a division of a medieval army. The word may be rendered as "battalion", but Abels and Bachrach et al. state this is not accurate because the bataille was a completely ad hoc formation. In late medieval warfare, field armies were often drawn up into three main battles, also called guards: the vanguard (avant-garde), the middle guard, and the rearguard (arrière-garde), often abbreviated to simply the van, middle, and rear. These terms imply, correctly, that the van preceded the middle, which in turn preceded the rear into battle, if the battles were arranged sequentially as a column. If arranged abreast, the van was on the right, the middle in the center, and the rear on the left.
David C. Nicolle is a British historian specialising in the military history of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the Middle East.
Jim Bradbury is a British historian specialising in the military history of the Middle Ages.
Orban, also known as Urban, was an iron founder and engineer from Brassó, Transylvania, in the Kingdom of Hungary, who cast large-calibre artillery for the Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453.
Clifford J. Rogers is a professor of history at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has also been a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Swansea University, an Olin Fellow in Military and Strategic History at Yale, and a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research in London.
During the Hundred Years' War, after the naval Battle of Sluys on 20 June 1340, in which Edward III of England dealt the French a heavy blow, he went on to besiege Tournai. This city in Flanders was loyal to Philip VI of France.
Jean Desnouelles was a 19th-century French abbot and chronicler. He was the Abbot of St. Vincent, Laon and author of numerous works. Desnouelles's Chronicon documented Norman and medieval France and he appears to have been an expert on France in the medieval period.
The Truce of Espléchin (1340) was a truce between the English and French crowns during the early phases of the Hundred Years' War.
Michael Livingston is a historian, a professor of medieval literature, and a historical fantasy novelist. His 2015 debut novel, The Shards of Heaven, was followed by two sequels.
Gravi de pugna is a forged letter written in the name of Augustine of Hippo which asserts that the morally superior side is always superior in battle and therefore that wars are proven to be just wars by their military success. The letter was widely accepted as authentic, and reassured soldiers that God was on their side.
English offensives in 1345–1347, during the Hundred Years' War, resulted in repeated defeats of the French, the loss or devastation of much French territory and the capture by the English of the port of Calais. The war had broken out in 1337 and flared up in 1340 when the king of England, Edward III, laid claim to the French crown and campaigned in northern France. There was then a lull in the major hostilities, although much small-scale fighting continued.
