Two reputations for one man
English writers and, later, English schoolbooks tended to remember Edward of Woodstock as a flawless warrior. French writers of the same century often remembered him as a ravager of towns and villages. Both views are based on real events. This article concentrates on the second view: the raids the English called chevauchees and the harsh siege of Limoges, and why historians treat the prince’s record as mixed.
What a chevauchee was
The word comes from the French for a ride on horseback. In the Hundred Years’ War it meant a large mounted raid through enemy territory. The aim was not to take castles or hold land, though that sometimes followed. Instead the raiders burned crops and villages, seized cattle and goods, and demanded payment from towns in exchange for sparing them.
There was a clear strategic logic. A king who cannot protect his people loses credibility, and the destruction cut into the tax income that paid for his armies. A chevauchee could also tempt an enemy to risk battle on unfavorable terms. The raids also fed and paid the English army, because plunder was an accepted part of a soldier’s income.
This was not unique to the English. French and other armies also plundered, and French commanders raided English-held areas. The difference was that the English wielded the tactic in a deliberate way and in a land they claimed as a lawful part of their king’s inheritance.
The 1355 raid
In October 1355 the prince left Bordeaux with a force of English and Gascon troops, historians estimating a few thousand men, though chroniclers’ numbers are unreliable. He moved eastward across Languedoc, an area that had seen little fighting, and reached the coast near Narbonne before turning back. Towns were burned, though many walled cities were bypassed. Contemporary letters from the prince’s circle describe the destruction in a matter-of-fact way and boast of the damage done to the enemy’s wealth.
Modern scholars often point out that the effects were mixed: the raid hurt French finances and prestige, but it also hardened French opinion. The campaign that followed in 1356 ended at Poitiers.
Aquitaine under the prince
After the Treaty of Bretigny, the prince became ruler of Aquitaine in 1362. He held court at Bordeaux and Angouleme, and in the 1360s he led an expedition to Spain, described by historians as his greatest gamble. To pay for the debts left by that campaign he asked the assembly of his lands to approve a hearth tax. Some Gascon lords refused, appealed to the French king, and Charles V used the appeal to reopen the war in 1369. In effect, the prince’s financial troubles helped bring the peace to an end.
Limoges, 1370
In 1370 the bishop of Limoges handed the city to the French. The prince, by now seriously ill and carried in a litter, besieged it. Miners dug beneath the walls, the walls were brought down, and the English entered the city in September.
What happened next is hard to establish. The chronicler Froissart says the prince ordered everyone to be killed, men, women and children, and puts the number at three thousand. He also writes that the prince was moved by the courage of three French knights who defended themselves, and spared them. Other accounts speak of a smaller killing, and some modern historians suspect Froissart exaggerated, since a city of that size may not have held that many people, and the town was apparently plundered and burned in large part. The exact number is not known.
What can be said more confidently is that the city was sacked, the inhabitants suffered, and it was remembered in France as an act of vengeance on a town that had defected. Under the conventions of siege warfare, a town that refused to surrender and was then taken by storm could expect harsh treatment; the usual excuse was that the defenders had been given a fair chance. Even so, contemporaries disagreed about whether the prince had gone beyond the accepted limits.
Why historians disagree
Several points explain the mixed verdict:
- Most sources were written by people with a stake in the story, either English admirers or French opponents.
- Medieval standards allowed plunder and punishment of rebellious towns, but not without criticism from churchmen, who often condemned the harm done to ordinary people.
- The prince’s illness may have affected his judgment in the final years, though this is speculation.
The Limoges episode is also sometimes used to argue that chivalry was an ideal for fellow nobles, not for peasants and townspeople, a point developed further in the discussion of the prince’s chivalric image.
A fair summary
The prince was a capable commander who used the accepted methods of his day, and those methods were brutal for civilians. He was neither the spotless knight of later legend nor a unique villain. His reputation was mixed in the fourteenth century, and it remains so.