The battle of Crécy

The Batte of Crécy saw the demise of the armoured knight when trying to attack field-fortified positions held by infantry and longbow archers. Wave after wave of French knights attacked the English lines and were mostly cut down even before they reached the infantry.

Obviously, terrain features in this battle in a major way. Not only were the French charging uphill, but they also were trying to cross a muddy field on which the corpses of horses and knights from previous assaults were blocking the path. This slowed down subsequent assaults such that they remained for a longer time in the killing zone of the bows.

From a simulation point of view, the battle is interesting because the timescale at which the archers stop charges of armoured knights is rather short - giving time for three to four volleys of arrows at most, so this gives a valuable data point to calibrate the relative strength of arrow damage vs. armour.

A recreation of the battle in the simulation can be found in example13.cfg along with the terrain definition files elevation_crecy.dat crecy.map and surface_atlas.cfg.

The units

Both the knight and the longbowman are taken to be highly trained units, competent in the use of their weapons. The armour value of the knight is rather low when compared with the Cataphract we have studied earlier. That is because while the knight himself has very effective plate armour, the horses of the French knights were not really armoured, whereas the Cataphract horses wore chain mail - but it is usually sufficient to take out the horses to stop a charge.

In contrast, the bonus for a mounted charge for the knight is high, because essentially their equipment is optimized for this kind of warfare - the saddle and long lance are better for a charge than the all-purpose equipment of the Cataphract.

The longbowman is supposed to be pulling the heaviest class of longbow possible - about 140 to 160 pounds of draw weight. Descriptions for how long it took to fire a volley of arrows range from three to six seconds - here four seconds have been assumed, with essentialy infinite arrows provided as the archers were dug in and could not only be supplied from behind but also had sufficient time to go and gather part of their used arrows between charges.

The definition files for both units are below:

unit_type
name Knight
speed 600.0
attack 50
armour 5
damage 6
ranged_defense 20
num_soldiers 80
turn_deg_per_min 360
mount horse
mount_weight 750
bonus_mounted_charge 30

unit_type
name Longbowman
speed 80
attack 20
armour 3
damage 3
ranged_attack 50
ranged_damage 5
num_shots 300
range 300
shots_per_min 15
num_ranks 15
num_files 10

The battle

The actual historical battle starts out with an advance of crossbowmen against the English lines. Since the longbows have both a longer reach and fire faster and moreover the archers are uphill, this is a fool's attack. The crossbowmen stand little chance to do any damage.

This opening phase is followed by sequential charges of knights across the muddy slope, few of which even reach the enemy lines to enter melee as the mud and obstacles from previous charges slows down the charges long enough for the archers to do their work.

The simulation uses the event manager to command the next charge when the previous one is destroyed so that all actions occur sequential. The simulation likely ends up with the English winning 100% of the encounter, most of the time with minimal losses in life (and a few hundred troops fleeing the field).

Note that fortunes are different if terrain is eliminated from the simulation. In this case, the French charges are never slowed down sufficiently to remain long in the killing zone of the archers, and as a result the fight is taken to the archers, gradually weakening them so that later French charges can successfully wipe out any resistance. In fact, without any terrain effects nearly always victory goes to France.

Generally the battle as it happened is an example for astounding tactical stupidity from the French side who wasted troops charging a superior position piecemeal.

But what could the French have done?

An alternative

The file example14.cfg contains the same armies in the same terrain with a different placement of the French units. The idea now is to let all knights charge at the same time, i.e. to sacrifice the first ranks to provide cover for the following, and, as soon as the longbowmen are engaged, rush the crossbowmen forward and provide additional fire support for the knights in close combat.

The initial massive charge

This allows the French to overrun at least one of the English wings and attack the center from behind, which, if additionally supported by crossbow fire, usually proves deadly.

The English left wing fails

In this scenario, the French win nearly 100% of times, albeit with severe losses - the first ranks of the charging knights are usually completely eliminated, and also the crossbowmen take heavy casualties from arrow fire. Generally, France can be expected to lose around 2/3 of the army charging the superior position of the English.

Back to main index     Back to science     Back to historical battle simulation

Created by Thorsten Renk 2022 - see the disclaimer, privacy statement and contact information.