- 7 hours ago
How did Edward III’s smaller army withstand the French cavalry at Crécy? By choosing ground that turned a French advantage in numbers into a series of difficult, disordered attacks. This historical military documentary follows the battle during the Hundred Years’ War, where English and Welsh longbowmen, dismounted men-at-arms, terrain, and disciplined preparation worked together to hold the line.
Rather than a simple story of bows defeating knights, Crécy reveals how fatigue, command pressure, and broken momentum shaped the fighting. Discover how the English victory preserved Edward’s campaign and opened the way toward the siege of Calais in 1347. A vivid account for viewers interested in medieval warfare, English longbow history, the Battle of Crécy, and the tactics that changed the course of a battlefield.
Rather than a simple story of bows defeating knights, Crécy reveals how fatigue, command pressure, and broken momentum shaped the fighting. Discover how the English victory preserved Edward’s campaign and opened the way toward the siege of Calais in 1347. A vivid account for viewers interested in medieval warfare, English longbow history, the Battle of Crécy, and the tactics that changed the course of a battlefield.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The French had finally caught him.
00:02After weeks of marching, burning, raiding, and retreating through northern France,
00:08Edward III's army had stopped near Crecy.
00:11To King Philip VI, this looked like the chance he had been waiting for.
00:17The English were smaller, far from home, and deep inside France.
00:22They were not safely across the channel.
00:25They were standing in open country, with the French army closing in.
00:30But Edward had not stopped because he was helpless.
00:34He had stopped because he had chosen the ground.
00:38Near Crecy, the English king placed his army where the land itself could help him.
00:44The slope, the approach, the formation, and the waiting archers were all part of the same decision.
00:51He would not meet the French in a contest of charging horsemen.
00:57He would force them to come to him.
01:00The French had chased Edward across the north of France.
01:03They had found him.
01:05They had brought him to battle.
01:07But had Philip trapped Edward?
01:10Or had Edward stopped exactly where he wanted to be caught?
01:14The battle near Crecy came during the early years of the Hundred Years' War,
01:19when the crowns of England and France were locked in a struggle over power, legitimacy, and territory.
01:27But for the men moving through the fields and roads of northern France,
01:32the war was not an argument over claims.
01:36It was a campaign of fire, fear, hunger, and pursuit.
01:40Edward III had landed in Normandy and pushed inland with an army built for movement.
01:47His forces raided, burned, gathered supplies, and carried the war across French soil.
01:55Every town threatened and every column of smoke rising behind the English march
02:01was a challenge to Philip's authority.
02:04Philip could not allow it to continue.
02:06If Edward kept moving, the damage would not only be military, it would become political.
02:13A king who could not protect his own lands
02:16risked looking weak before nobles who expected strength, action, and revenge.
02:23Edward needed something different.
02:26He needed his men to survive.
02:28He needed discipline after a hard campaign.
02:31And he needed a position strong enough to turn a smaller army into a dangerous one.
02:38Philip needed to restore royal power.
02:41Edward needed to keep his army alive.
02:44Philip VI was not facing an easy choice.
02:47It is tempting, centuries later, to look at Crecy as a simple story of French arrogance meeting English preparation.
02:56But that is too clean.
02:59Philip was under pressure from every direction.
03:02Edward had crossed into France, damaged the countryside, and forced the French crown to respond.
03:10A royal army had been gathered to find the invader, bring him to battle, and crush him before the campaign
03:18became an even greater humiliation.
03:20The French army was powerful.
03:23It included noble cavalry, men whose status was built around war, honor, and the shock of mounted attack.
03:31But power on the road is not the same as power on the battlefield.
03:36Numbers had to be controlled.
03:39Nobles had to be restrained.
03:41Crossbowmen had to be placed.
03:43Cavalry had to be coordinated.
03:45Orders had to move through noise, dust, impatience, and exhaustion.
03:51And all of this had to happen while the English were already waiting.
03:56That was Philip's problem.
03:58He had the army Edward could not match in size.
04:02He had the pressure to attack.
04:04He had nobles eager to prove themselves.
04:08But a medieval army did not become coordinated simply because a king needed it to be.
04:13The French had strength.
04:16What they still needed was order.
04:18Edward's decision to stand near Crecy was dangerous because it left no easy way to hide the result.
04:25If the English line broke, his army could be destroyed.
04:29If the French cavalry punched through, the campaign might end in disaster.
04:34If his archers failed, or his men-at-arms lost discipline, the chosen ground would become a trap for the
04:42English instead.
04:44But Edward was not building his plan around escape.
04:47He was building it around control.
04:50His men-at-arms fought dismounted, forming a firm defensive line instead of relying on mounted charges of their own.
04:59Around them, English and Welsh longbowmen were placed to strike at the attackers as they advanced.
05:06The formation was meant to slow the French, break their rhythm, and make the approach more costly.
05:13If the attackers reached the line in disorder, the dismounted men-at-arms would be waiting.
05:19The ground mattered.
05:21The slope mattered.
05:23The preparation mattered.
05:25The archers mattered.
05:27But none of these things worked alone.
05:31Crecy was not just a story of bows against knights.
05:34It was a defensive system, and every part of that system depended on the men holding their nerve while a
05:41larger army came toward them.
05:44He had given Philip the battle the French king wanted.
05:48But he had taken away something just as important.
05:51The freedom to fight it on French terms.
05:55The French army was coming.
05:57The English line was waiting.
05:59And before the first great charge reached the slope, the shape of the battle had already begun to turn against
06:07the attackers.
06:09At Crecy, the English army was not arranged for a glorious charge.
06:14It was arranged to survive one.
06:17Edward III placed his men in a defensive position where the shape of the land could work with the shape
06:24of his army.
06:25His men-at-arms stood on foot, not as mounted nobles seeking their own shock attack, but as a firm
06:33center designed to absorb pressure.
06:37Around them were the English and Welsh longbowmen, positioned to strike the enemy as they came forward.
06:44This was not passive waiting.
06:47It was a trap made from patience.
06:49A cavalry charge was terrifying when it had room to gather speed, when horses moved together, when riders stayed close
06:58enough to strike as one force.
07:01Momentum was everything.
07:03Cohesion was everything.
07:06A charge that arrived together could break men who had already begun to doubt.
07:11But a charge that slowed, crowded, or lost its rhythm became something else.
07:18It became vulnerable.
07:20The slope mattered because it forced effort from the horses before impact.
07:26The approach mattered because men moving uphill into missile fire could not simply choose comfort or order.
07:34The archers mattered because their arrows did not have to kill every armored man to change the battle.
07:40They could wound horses, disrupt movement, make riders tighten their grip, force men to shield themselves, and turn confidence into
07:51hesitation.
07:52And the men-at-arms mattered, because arrows alone could not hold the field if the French reached the line
07:59in good order.
08:01Crecy was not a duel between the longbow and the knight.
08:05It was a system.
08:07The bow broke rhythm.
08:10The slope stole momentum.
08:13The dismounted men-at-arms held the line.
08:16And the longer the French took to turn strength into order, the more dangerous Edward's position became.
08:23The French army reached the battlefield with power, prestige, and expectation.
08:29But it did not arrive as a perfect machine.
08:33Philip's men had been pursuing Edward through northern France, and a medieval army on the move was difficult to control
08:41even before it reached an enemy.
08:44Men came by roads and tracks.
08:47Nobles rode with their own followers.
08:50Units did not always appear at the same moment, in the same condition, or with the same understanding of what
08:57the king wanted next.
08:59Accounts differ on parts of the exact sequence, and later retellings shaped Crecy into a cleaner story than any battlefield
09:08truly allows.
09:09But the broad pattern is clear.
09:12The French were under pressure to act before their strength had been fully turned into order.
09:19Edward was visible.
09:21The English were standing there.
09:23For Philip and the nobles around him, delay carried its own danger.
09:29Waiting could look like weakness.
09:31Waiting could allow the English to strengthen their position.
09:35Waiting could let the moment slip away after the long pursuit had finally succeeded.
09:41Yet, attacking too quickly carried a greater danger.
09:45The French needed time to organize the crossbowmen, prepare the cavalry, control the noble companies,
09:52and decide how the assault would unfold.
09:56Instead, urgency began to press against caution.
10:00The army that had hunted Edward now had to become an army capable of breaking him.
10:07That was the hard part.
10:09The French had the strength to crush a weaker force if that strength could be brought to bear together.
10:16But at Crecy, order was already slipping.
10:19The first men sent forward were the Genoese crossbowmen.
10:24They should not be remembered as fools walking blindly into defeat.
10:29They were professional missile troops, valued across Europe for a reason.
10:34Their weapons were powerful.
10:37Their experience was real.
10:38In the right conditions, with support, time, and protection, crossbowmen could be dangerous opponents.
10:47But Crecy gave them the wrong conditions.
10:51They were pushed forward against an enemy already prepared to receive them.
10:56The English archers were in position.
10:59Their bows were ready.
11:00The ground did not favor the attackers.
11:04The French army behind the Genoese was impatient, crowded, and expecting the opening missile exchange to prepare the way for
11:12mounted assault.
11:14A crossbow could strike with force, but it was not a weapon that loved haste.
11:19If the men carrying it were tired, unsupported, exposed, or rushed into a bad approach, their advantages could disappear quickly.
11:30The English longbowmen, by contrast, were already placed to fire repeatedly into the advancing line.
11:38The missile clash began, and the Genoese were disrupted.
11:43The danger was not only that they failed to drive back the English archers.
11:48The greater danger was what their failure did to the army behind them.
11:52The mounted nobles were waiting to attack.
11:56The space in front of them was now confused.
11:59Men who should have opened the way were falling back, slowing, or losing formation under pressure.
12:05The Genoese were not weak men carrying useless weapons.
12:10They were professionals pushed into a killing ground before the French army had turned power into order.
12:17And their disruption did not end the battle.
12:21It made the next phase far worse.
12:25Once disorder appeared in front of the French cavalry, the battle began to change shape.
12:31The mounted nobles had come to fight.
12:33Many of them had spent their lives inside a military culture, where status, courage, and honor were bound to the
12:41charge.
12:42To see the enemy waiting, to see missile troops falter, to feel the pressure of thousands behind and beside them,
12:50was to feel the battle demanding action.
12:53But action was not the same as coordination.
12:56What failed first was not courage.
13:00It was sequence.
13:03The crossbowmen should have opened the way.
13:06The cavalry should have followed in order.
13:08The pressure should have been controlled until the attack could strike with weight and timing.
13:14Instead, the first line broke down.
13:17The next forces pressed forward.
13:20And the English position remained exactly where it had been.
13:25Edward's army did not need to chase.
13:28It did not need to prove itself in a moving contest.
13:31It only needed to hold the chosen ground and keep the French attacks arriving in pieces.
13:38Every failed movement made the next movement harder.
13:41The ground in front of the English line became more confused.
13:46Horses and men crowded the approach.
13:50Wounded animals, fallen bodies, broken formations, and shouted commands turned the space into something more dangerous than open field.
14:00The French army still had strength, but that strength was being forced through disorder.
14:07For the English, discipline was now more valuable than speed.
14:12For the French, speed without discipline was becoming a trap.
14:18The battle was no longer moving toward the clean collision Philip needed.
14:23It was becoming a series of attacks shaped by frustration, pressure, and worsening ground.
14:29And each time the English line stayed where it was, the French problem grew.
14:37From the English position, none of this meant safety.
14:41The men on the ridge could not know how many attacks would come.
14:45They could not know whether the next charge would be the one that finally reached them in enough order to
14:51break through.
14:52They could see the pressure building below them,
14:55But they also knew that a defensive line survives only as long as it remains a line.
15:02The archers had to keep shooting.
15:05The men-at-arms had to hold.
15:07No one could rush forward too early.
15:09No one could let the sight of French disorder become an excuse for abandoning the formation.
15:16A single breach, a single collapse of nerve,
15:20a single section giving way under mounted pressure
15:23could undo everything Edward had built.
15:27His advantage was not that his army was invincible.
15:30His advantage was control.
15:33The English were not stronger than France in open country.
15:37They were not immune to fear.
15:40They were not protected by the longbow alone.
15:44They were dangerous because they were organized,
15:47because the ground favored their arrangement,
15:51and because the French were being forced to attack before their power could be properly focused.
15:57That was the cruel balance of Crecy.
16:01One army was urgent,
16:03the other was waiting.
16:05And in the next hours,
16:07organization would matter more than bravery.
16:11Then the French cavalry came on again.
16:14The first mounted assaults came against a line designed not to move.
16:19For the French cavalry,
16:21everything depended on impact.
16:23A charge was not only courage,
16:26it was rhythm.
16:28Horses had to move forward with force.
16:31Riders had to keep formation.
16:33The men behind had to support the men in front.
16:37The shock had to arrive together,
16:40with enough weight to split the enemy line before the defenders could recover.
16:45But Crecy had already damaged that rhythm.
16:48The French advanced into missile fire,
16:51uphill,
16:52across ground made worse by disorder.
16:55The Genoese crossbowmen had been disrupted.
16:58The space in front of the English position was no longer clean.
17:03Men were falling back.
17:05Horses were being pressed forward.
17:07Commands had to travel through noise and confusion.
17:11The arrows did not need to kill every night.
17:14They needed to do something more important.
17:17They needed to make the charge arrive broken.
17:20Armor could protect a man,
17:22but armor did not guarantee order.
17:25A rider could be shielded and still lose formation.
17:28A horse could panic,
17:31stumble,
17:32crowd against another animal,
17:34or recoil from pain.
17:36A line of cavalry could still be brave
17:39and still fail to strike as one.
17:42That was what Edward needed.
17:45And when the first assaults reached the English position,
17:48they came against archers who had already weakened the attack,
17:52against a slope that had slowed it,
17:55and against dismounted men-at-arms prepared to receive what remained.
18:00The French had charged.
18:02The English line held.
18:05One failed charge did not end the battle.
18:08The French came again.
18:10At first,
18:12the assaults carried the confidence of men
18:14who believed that force could still solve the problem.
18:17These were nobles and armored fighting men
18:20raised inside a world where mounted attack
18:24carried enormous prestige.
18:26They had seen enemies break before cavalry.
18:30To them,
18:31the English line was not impossible.
18:34It was an obstacle that had not yet been struck hard enough,
18:38so they tried to strike it harder.
18:40But each renewed effort faced the same problem in a worse form.
18:45The ground was no longer only difficult.
18:48It was becoming crowded.
18:50The approach was no longer only uphill.
18:53It was marked by confusion from the failed movements before it.
18:57The English archers were still shooting.
19:00The English men-at-arms were still standing.
19:04Then,
19:05confidence began to turn into frustration.
19:08The French still had numbers.
19:10They still had noble fighters.
19:13They still had the will to continue.
19:15But the attacks were not arriving as one clean blow.
19:20They came in pieces,
19:22and each piece had to face the English position,
19:25almost as if it were the first.
19:28Then,
19:29frustration began to turn toward desperation.
19:32By now,
19:33the battlefield itself was working against the attackers.
19:37Men and horses had already fallen.
19:40Movement became harder.
19:42Control became weaker.
19:44Every new attack carried not only the danger of English arrows and English steel,
19:49but the weight of everything that had gone wrong before it.
19:53The French were brave.
19:55That must not be forgotten.
19:57But bravery could not repair timing once the army was attacking in fragments.
20:03It could not make crowded ground open again.
20:06It could not turn separate charges into one coordinated blow.
20:11The battle had become repetition,
20:14and repetition favored the side that was still in formation.
20:18From a distance,
20:19Crecy can look like a clean diagram.
20:22Archers on the flanks,
20:24men-at-arms in the center,
20:26cavalry moving uphill.
20:28Lines,
20:29arrows,
20:30formations,
20:30and movement
20:31drawn in a way that makes the battle seem almost simple.
20:35On the ground,
20:37it was not simple.
20:38It was men trying to hear orders through noise.
20:42It was horses recoiling from pain.
20:45It was armored riders pressing forward
20:48while the men in front of them slowed,
20:51fell,
20:51or turned back.
20:53It was Genoese survivors
20:55caught in the confusion of an army
20:57that still wanted to attack
20:59before it had recovered from the first failure.
21:02On the English side,
21:04the archers had to keep working.
21:07Draw,
21:08loose,
21:09reach again.
21:10Draw,
21:11loose,
21:11reach again.
21:13Each arrow added pressure.
21:15Each volley helped keep the attackers
21:17from arriving in the shape they needed.
21:19Behind and beside them,
21:22the dismounted men-at-arms waited for the moment when missile fire was no longer enough.
21:28They could not assume arrows would solve the battle by themselves.
21:33If armored men reached the line in strength,
21:36the fight would become close, brutal, and uncertain.
21:41The likely experience of the battlefield was pressure more than clarity.
21:46Dust,
21:47churned earth,
21:48wounded animals,
21:49shouted commands,
21:51blocked views,
21:52and the weight of men pushing forward through fear.
21:56No one standing there saw the whole battle.
21:59They saw what was in front of them.
22:01This is why Crecy cannot be reduced to one weapon.
22:06The longbow mattered because men used it in the right place,
22:10at the right time,
22:11as part of a defensive system.
22:14The men-at-arms mattered because they gave that system a spine.
22:19The ground mattered because it turned each French advance into labor before it became combat.
22:26Among the English divisions stood Edward's son,
22:30the young Prince of Wales.
22:33Later generations would remember him as the Black Prince,
22:37and Crecy became one of the battles attached to his legend.
22:41But legend must be handled carefully.
22:45Some later accounts turned his role into a dramatic test of courage,
22:50with the young Prince under heavy pressure,
22:53and his father refusing to send help so that his son could win honor on the field.
22:59The exact wording of those stories should not be treated as certain.
23:06But the pressure on that part of the English line
23:09became one of the famous memories of Crecy.
23:12It also shows something important.
23:15The English victory was not guaranteed from the beginning.
23:20The French attacks were failing, but they were not harmless.
23:24A mounted assault only needed to find a weak point,
23:28open a gap, and turn defensive order into panic.
23:32If the Prince's division had cracked, the meaning of the battle could have changed.
23:38The English position depended on each section holding while the others continued their work.
23:44Archers could disrupt, ground could slow, preparation could shape the fight,
23:50but if enough French men-at-arms broke through at one point, the system could unravel.
23:57Later retellings may have sharpened the scene.
24:01Yet the larger truth remains.
24:04Edward's army was being tested,
24:06and the test fell heavily on the line where his own son was fighting.
24:11The French still had a chance if they could turn pressure into a breach.
24:17But the breach did not come.
24:19The French advantage in numbers was real.
24:23But numbers do not automatically strike at the same point,
24:27at the same moment, in the same order.
24:30A larger army can bring more strength to a battle,
24:34but it can also bring more difficulty,
24:37more nobles to coordinate,
24:39more followers to control,
24:41more movement on narrow approaches,
24:44more confusion when the first plan fails.
24:48At Crecy, Edward did not have to destroy France's strength all at once.
24:54He only had to force that strength to arrive in pieces.
24:58That was the tactical heart of the battle.
25:02If the French army could have organized itself into a clean, deliberate assault,
25:06the danger to the English would have been enormous.
25:10A smaller army on the defensive cannot afford endless mistakes.
25:15But the French attacks did not become that clean assault.
25:20They became repeated efforts against a position built to receive them.
25:24Each attack had courage.
25:27Each attack had men willing to ride or push into danger.
25:31But courage was being delivered without the coordination needed to make it decisive.
25:37The French had finally caught Edward.
25:40But they had caught him on ground that changed what catching him meant.
25:45The English were not running in disorder.
25:47They were not surprised in camp.
25:50They were not forced into battle before choosing their place.
25:54They were waiting behind a system.
25:56Numbers mattered.
25:58But timing mattered more.
26:00And at Crecy, France's strength reached the English line too slowly, too unevenly,
26:07and too broken to deliver the victory Philip needed.
26:11As the assaults continued, French momentum began to die.
26:16Not all at once.
26:18Not in a single clean moment.
26:20It faded under the weight of repeated failure.
26:23Another attack went forward.
26:26Another failed to break the line.
26:28Another group of men found that courage could carry them into the killing ground,
26:32but not through the system waiting beyond it.
26:37Casualties among the French nobility were heavy.
26:40The loss was not only military.
26:42It was social and political.
26:45These were men whose names, households, and reputations mattered in the world Philip ruled.
26:52Every fallen noble represented more than one body on a field.
26:57He represented a family, a network of service,
27:01a piece of the aristocratic order that had ridden into battle expecting the old rules to hold.
27:07But the old confidence was being shattered.
27:11The field in front of the English position grew worse as the fighting dragged on.
27:16Horses and men crowded the approach.
27:18The wounded and fallen made movement harder.
27:22Commands became harder to carry out.
27:25The fading light and exhaustion of the day added to the confusion.
27:30Philip's army could not turn effort into success.
27:34The English position remained intact.
27:37By the time the fighting lost its force,
27:40the question was no longer whether the French army had courage.
27:44It had shown courage again and again.
27:48The question was whether courage, unsupported by order,
27:52could climb that slope and break a line designed to receive it.
27:56At Crecy, the answer was no.
28:00The larger army had failed to break the smaller one.
28:03The mourning after Crecy revealed the cost.
28:06The exact numbers from medieval battles are often disputed,
28:11and later accounts can exaggerate what happened.
28:14But there is no doubt that the French defeat was severe,
28:18and that the losses among nobles and fighting men
28:22shocked those who understood what had fallen on that field.
28:26The English army remained in possession of the ground.
28:30That mattered.
28:32In medieval warfare,
28:35holding the field after battle was a sign
28:37that the army had not merely survived the violence,
28:40but endured it.
28:42Edward had not been driven away.
28:45His line had not collapsed.
28:47His campaign had not been destroyed.
28:50The French had come to end the invasion.
28:54Instead, the battle preserved it.
28:57Crecy did not prove the cavalry was useless.
29:01It did not end mounted warfare in one afternoon.
29:04But it showed that the prestige of mounted aristocratic attack
29:09could be broken when it met preparation,
29:12terrain, discipline, missile fire,
29:15and command control working together.
29:17Edward had not merely survived.
29:20He had shown that an army built on patience
29:22could defeat an army consumed by urgency.
29:25Crecy did not end Edward's campaign.
29:30It saved it.
29:32The French had come to stop the English invasion
29:34before it hardened into something more dangerous.
29:37They had found Edward's army,
29:40forced the confrontation they wanted,
29:42and brought the strength of France
29:44against a smaller force inside French territory.
29:48But after the battle,
29:50Edward was still there.
29:52His army had not been destroyed.
29:54His line had not broken.
29:57His campaign could continue.
29:59That victory opened the way toward Calais,
30:02the port city that became Edward's next great objective.
30:07Calais was not simply another town on a map.
30:10For an English king fighting in France,
30:13a secure coastal foothold could change future campaigns.
30:18The siege that followed lasted into 1347,
30:23when Calais finally fell to Edward.
30:26Crecy mattered because it preserved the army that could move on.
30:30It damaged French prestige,
30:32and it became the battlefield result
30:35that led toward a long-term strategic prize.
30:39The meaning of Crecy has often been simplified.
30:43It is easy to turn the battle into one clean lesson,
30:47longbows defeated knights,
30:49but history rarely moves that cleanly.
30:52Crecy did not prove that cavalry was useless.
30:55It did not make armored nobles obsolete overnight.
31:00Medieval warfare did not change in a single afternoon,
31:04because one army lost one battle.
31:06What Crecy proved was narrower and more important.
31:11It showed that cavalry could be defeated
31:14when forced against a prepared defensive system.
31:17It showed that terrain could reduce the shock power of elite horsemen.
31:22It showed that missile troops could disrupt momentum before impact.
31:26It showed that dismounted men-at-arms could hold.
31:30And it showed that command timing could decide the fate of armies
31:34as surely as courage or numbers.
31:37The longbow mattered because it was used inside a system.
31:43The ground mattered because Edward had chosen how to use it.
31:47The French defeat was not the failure of bravery.
31:51It was the failure of coordination under pressure.
31:55Crecy did not end the age of the knight,
31:57but it damaged the belief that noble cavalry
32:00could simply ride through discipline, terrain, and preparation.
32:05The French came to Crecy believing they had forced Edward III to stand and fight.
32:11In one sense, they had.
32:14They had chased him through northern France.
32:17They had brought him within reach.
32:19They had made battle impossible to avoid.
32:23But Edward had chosen where that weight would fall.
32:27The archers were placed.
32:29The men-at-arms were dismounted.
32:31The ground was selected.
32:33The English line was prepared to receive pressure
32:37instead of spending itself in movement.
32:40French bravery was real.
32:43English discipline was decisive.
32:46The victory came from the way longbowmen,
32:49men-at-arms, terrain, and command control
32:52worked together against an army
32:55that could not turn power into order quickly enough.
32:59Crecy became a warning.
33:00An army can be larger and still lose.
33:04It can be brave and still fail.
33:06It can carry prestige, noble blood, and royal urgency onto a battlefield
33:12and still be broken if it attacks at the wrong time,
33:16in the wrong order, against the wrong position.
33:19The French had caught Edward, but Edward had stopped because he was ready.
33:25And when the charges came uphill, one after another,
33:29the English line did not chase glory.
33:32It waited.
33:34It held.
33:35And by holding, it broke the army that had come to break it.
33:40If you found this story worth remembering,
33:43share your thoughts below.
33:46Crecy is often reduced to longbows against knights,
33:49but the real lesson was far more complicated.
33:52See you soon.
33:52So...