The raid that led to the battle
In the summer of 1356, Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales and later called the Black Prince, led an English and Gascon army out of Bordeaux. At about twenty-six years old he was already an experienced commander. The purpose was a raid, in the style of the earlier chevauchee raids of the war: burn and plunder French lands, damage the king’s authority and draw out supplies and money. The prince marched north toward the Loire and hoped to meet another English force under the duke of Lancaster, though the two did not manage to link up.
King John II of France gathered a much larger army and pursued the English as they turned back toward Gascony, loaded with loot and slowed by their baggage. He caught them southeast of the city of Poitiers. The prince’s army, probably several thousand strong, was well outnumbered, and exact figures are uncertain in the sources.
The position
The English chose a strong position near Maupertuis, with vineyards and hedges on one side and a narrow lane through the hedges. The archers were placed on the flanks and in cover, and the men-at-arms were dismounted. The prince tried to negotiate, and a cardinal who was present is reported to have offered his services as a mediator. The French demanded the surrender of the prince and a number of his knights, which he refused. The talks consumed a day and let the English dig in.
The French king, learning from Crecy, decided that his knights should fight on foot against English archers. Most of his men dismounted, with only a small mounted force kept to strike at the archers. This meant that heavily armored men trudged forward, not always in good order, against missiles.
The battle on September 19, 1356
The fight began with a French mounted attack by a small group of picked knights, intended to clear the archers from the lane. It was broken up by arrows and by English troops in the hedges. The first main French division, associated with the king’s eldest son, the dauphin Charles, then advanced on foot but was driven back. Some sources say that the dauphin’s division and at least one other left the field before the main fight was over. Historians disagree on whether this was a planned withdrawal to protect the heir or a collapse.
The last French force was led by the king himself. John II fought hard on foot, reportedly with a battle-axe, with his young son Philip beside him, who later became known as Philip the Bold. A flanking move by a Gascon force under the captal de Buch, Jean de Grailly, struck the French rear. The French line gave way, and the king surrendered, after reportedly being surrounded by men who each wanted him as a prisoner. Many French nobles were killed or captured. Casualty figures vary widely and should be taken as rough.
Chroniclers, notably Jean Froissart, describe the prince receiving the king that evening with courteous ceremony, serving him at table, and refusing to boast. This became a standard picture of chivalry, and the later reputation of the Black Prince’s chivalry owes a good deal to such accounts. Modern writers point out that this courtesy coexisted with raids that devastated French villages, and that a captured king was also a very profitable asset.
The ransom and the crisis in France
John was taken to Bordeaux and then to England. His ransom was eventually set in the Treaty of Bretigny at about three million gold écus (crowns), a sum far beyond normal royal revenue. Raising it required heavy taxes. With the king absent, the government fell to the dauphin Charles, who faced a hostile Estates-General led by Parisian merchants such as Etienne Marcel. The assembly demanded reforms and control over taxation, and the crown’s authority wobbled. In 1358 a large peasant uprising known as the Jacquerie broke out in northern France, driven by anger at war damage, taxes and the failures of the nobility. Rural unrest of that kind was savagely suppressed. The dauphin did eventually restore control, but the period was one of the most dangerous in French monarchy before the later struggles of the war.
Peace and what came after
After Poitiers, English strength looked overwhelming. Negotiations produced the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360. Under it, Edward III gained full sovereignty over a greatly enlarged Aquitaine and Calais and surrounding land, and the ransom was set. In exchange, he was meant to give up his claim to the French crown, though the arrangement was never fully carried out. John returned to France, and when one of the hostages given for his ransom broke parole and escaped, he went back to England in 1364 as a point of honor. He died there that year.
The settlement did not last. John’s son, Charles V, rebuilt France. He avoided large battles, relied on commanders like Bertrand du Guesclin, and took back much of what had been lost over the following decade through sieges and small actions. In this light, Poitiers was a spectacular English victory that did not become a permanent conquest. It shows the same pattern as the earlier battle at Crecy: great success in the field, followed by a war that continued through truces and treaties and hard political choices.
What historians stress
A few points help keep the battle in proportion. The English success relied on position, archers and discipline, and the French decision to attack on foot reduced their strength rather than increasing it. The captured king was the real turning point, because the crisis of government and finance did far more to harm France than the dead on the field. And the story of the prince’s courtesy, though vivid, comes from writers who admired chivalry and who may have polished the scene. The Hundred Years War as a whole is better understood through its slow cycle of campaigns than through any one afternoon.