page_title: Battle of Calais
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Calais / Battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Depiction of the Battle of Calais, 2 January, 1350 in Froissart's chronicles
context_page_description: The Battle of Calais took place in 1350 when an English force defeated an unsuspecting French army which was attempting to take the city. Despite a truce being in effect the French commander Geoffrey de Charny had planned to take the city by subterfuge, and bribed Amerigo of Pavia, an Italian officer of the city garrison, to open a gate for them. The English king, Edward III, became aware of the plot and personally led his household knights and the Calais garrison in a surprise counter-attack. The French were routed by this smaller force, with significant losses and all of their leaders captured or killed.
  Later that day, Edward III dined with the highest-ranking captives, treating them with royal courtesy except for Charny, whom he taunted for having abandoned his chivalric principles by both fighting during a truce and attempting to purchase his way into Calais rather than fight. As Charny was considered a paragon of knightly behaviour, the accusations struck deep, and were frequently repeated in subsequent English propaganda, as Charny was to write several authoritative books on chivalry.
context_section_description: Charny's force marched for Calais on the evening of 31 December 1349. The blockhouses were circumvented and the French assembled close to Calais. A little before dawn the advance party approached Amerigo's gate-tower. The gate was open, and Amerigo emerged to greet them. He exchanged his son for the first installment of his bribe and led a small group of French knights into the gatehouse. Shortly a French standard was unfurled atop the tower of the gatehouse and more French crossed the drawbridge over the moat. Suddenly the drawbridge was raised, a portcullis fell in front of the French and sixty English men-at-arms surrounded them. All of the French who had entered the gatehouse were captured.
  At the sound of a trumpet the Boulogne Gate was opened and Edward III, in plain armour and under Walter Manny's banner, led out his household troops, supported by a detachment of archers, and attacked the French. With a cry of "Betrayed!" a large part of Charny's force fled. Charny hastily organized his remaining troops and held off the initial English attack, and Edward was given a hard fight. Edward's eldest son, the Black Prince, led his own household knights out of the north gate, the Water Gate, and along the beach, past the citadel, and into a position on the French force's exposed left flank. As Edward and Charny's forces fought, members of the Calais garrison, who had not been privy to the plan, were hastily arming themselves and steadily reinforcing Edward III's hard-pressed group. How many of the garrison joined Edward and the Black Prince's 900 men before the fighting ended is not known.
  Charney's force still outnumbered the English, but broke when the Black Prince's force attacked. More than 200 men-at-arms were killed in the fighting. Thirty French knights were taken prisoner. As was common, none of the contemporary sources record the number of casualties among the socially inferior French infantry. In the battles of the time, non-knightly captives were usually killed on the spot, partly from aristocratic contempt for the non-knightly, and partly from a disinclination to care for prisoners who could not be ransomed. An unknown number of fugitives drowned as they fled through the marshes. Total French casualties are not certain; "several hundred" according to the historian Yuval Harari. As no Englishman of note was killed, English casualties are not recorded. The King and his son had been in the fore of the fighting. Among the English nobility involved were the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Stafford, Lord Montagu, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Berkeley, and Lord de la Warr. Among the French captured were Charny, with a serious head wound, Eustace de Ribemont and Oudart de Renti – three of the leading French commanders in Picardy; Pépin de Wierre was killed.
caption: The battle of Calais from Froissart's Chronicles
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