Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ARTICLES
- 1 A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History
- 2 War and Sanctity: Saints' Lives as Sources for Early Medieval Warfare
- 3 The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne's Army
- 4 The Role of the Cavalry in Medieval Warfare
- 5 Sichelgaita of Salerno: Amazon or Trophy Wife?
- 6 Castilian Military Reform under the Reign of Alfonso XI (1312–50)
- 7 Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–7: Restellou and La Roche Derrien
- 8 Ferrante d'Este's Letters as a Source for Military History
- Appendix: Selected Letters of Ferrante d'Este (Punctuation and accents added)
- NOTE: Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436
7 - Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–7: Restellou and La Roche Derrien
from ARTICLES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- ARTICLES
- 1 A Lying Legacy? A Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History
- 2 War and Sanctity: Saints' Lives as Sources for Early Medieval Warfare
- 3 The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne's Army
- 4 The Role of the Cavalry in Medieval Warfare
- 5 Sichelgaita of Salerno: Amazon or Trophy Wife?
- 6 Castilian Military Reform under the Reign of Alfonso XI (1312–50)
- 7 Sir Thomas Dagworth in Brittany, 1346–7: Restellou and La Roche Derrien
- 8 Ferrante d'Este's Letters as a Source for Military History
- Appendix: Selected Letters of Ferrante d'Este (Punctuation and accents added)
- NOTE: Provisions for the Ostend Militia on the Defense, August 1436
Summary
In terms of battlefield successes, the years 1345–47 were the most impressive in all of British military history. English troops were fighting in three theaters in France (Aquitaine, Brittany, and the north), and also on the Scottish border, and in all four areas they won remarkable victories against heavy numerical odds. The most famous of these is of course Crécy, where Edward III defeated an army which included Philip VI of France and three kings more (James of Majorca, John of Bohemia, and his son Charles, “King of Germany,” as the Emperor-elect was known before his imperial coronation). But the triumphs of Edward's lieutenants, on their own smaller scale, were perhaps even more impressive. At Neville's Cross, the Scots were severely defeated, and King David II was captured. In the south of France, Henry of Lancaster twice defeated the main French forces in the theater, first at Bergerac, then at Auberoche. In the latter engagement, Henry captured the Count de l'Isle, Philip VI's principal general in the theater, “who was then like a king in Gascony.” In Brittany, English forces under Sir Thomas Dagworth won two extraordinary victories over the army of Charles of Blois, the Valois-supported claimant to the Breton ducal coronet. The second and larger of these two engagements, the battle of La Roche-Derrien in 1347, resulted in the capture of Charles himself, and – contrary to the assertion of the most recent historian of the action – radically altered the course of the Breton civil war in favor of the Anglo-Montfortian cause. Truly this was a military “annus mirabilis.”
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- Information
- Journal of Medieval Military History , pp. 127 - 154Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005