page_title: Black Prince's chevauchée of 1355
section_title: Prelude
hierarchical_section_title: Black Prince's chevauchée of 1355 / Prelude
caption_attribution_description: Full page miniature of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, of the Order of the Garter, wearing a blue Garter mantle over plate armour and surcoat displaying his arms. A framed tablet displays painted arms of successors in his Garter stall at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
context_page_description: The Black Prince's chevauchée, also known as the grande chevauchée, was a large-scale mounted raid carried out by an Anglo-Gascon force under the command of Edward, the Black Prince, between 5 October and 2 December 1355 as a part of the Hundred Years' War. John, Count of Armagnac, who commanded the local French forces, avoided battle, and there was little fighting during the campaign.
  The Anglo-Gascon force of 4,000–6,000 men marched from Bordeaux in English-held Gascony 300 miles to Narbonne and back to Gascony, devastating a wide swathe of French territory and sacking many French towns on the way. While no territory was captured, enormous economic damage was done to France; the modern historian Clifford Rogers concluded that "the importance of the economic attrition of the chevauchée can hardly be exaggerated." The English component resumed the offensive after Christmas to great effect, and more than 50 French-held towns or fortifications were captured during the following four months.
context_section_description: In their 1345 and 1346 Gascon campaigns, the English had pushed the main front back well beyond the borders of Gascony to the north and west, among other things guaranteeing its food supplies and putting the Gascon territory beyond reach of French advances from those directions. Numerous French-held castles and small towns remained within what was nominally English territory, just as the English had outposts deep within French territory. To the immediate south lay the County of Armagnac, largely untouched by the war. It was the heartland of John, Count of Armagnac, the French King's personal representative in the south west and the most powerful French noble in the region. John had long been a proponent of pressing the war against Gascony. He had ignored his orders to keep the truce in 1354, raiding repeatedly into Agenais and besieging several important towns, albeit unsuccessfully. In spring 1355 he again made unsuccessful attempts to capture English-held towns. Frustrated, and with the peace talks having failed, he launched repeated raids deep into Gascony throughout the summer, to great effect. He devastated agricultural areas and burnt down the suburbs of several Gascon towns.
  Edward III's eldest son, Edward of Woodstock, later commonly known as the Black Prince, was given the Gascon command and began assembling men, shipping and supplies. He was scheduled to sail in July, but eventually set off on 9 September, arriving in Bordeaux, the capital of Gascony, on the 20th accompanied by 2,200 English soldiers. The next day he was formally acknowledged as the king's lieutenant in Gascony, with plenipotentiary powers. The Gascon nobility pressed on him the advantages of striking at the County of Armagnac. The Black Prince agreed to make Armagnac his first target. Gascon nobles, who had been preparing for the expedition for some time, reinforced him to a strength of somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 and provided a bridging train and a substantial supply train. The latter largely carried grain for the horses, although later it was used to transport the spoils of the chevauchée.
  The English expedition to Normandy was intended to be carried out with the cooperation of the French magnate Charles II of Navarre, but Charles reneged on the agreement. Instead a chevauchée, a large-scale mounted raid, was attempted from the English enclave of Calais in November. However, the French King had stripped the area of fodder, food and potential booty, causing the English to return to Calais within ten days. They had achieved nothing, but did focus French attention on the north.
caption: Edward, the Black Prince
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