Battle of Morlaix

Part of: War of the Breton Succession ,
Hundred Years War

date	September 30, 1342
place	near Morlaix
output	draw

Parties to the conflict
Kingdom of England	House Blois Kingdom of France
Commander
William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton	Charles de Blois
Troop strength
probably around 2000	unknown, probably 3500
losses
unknown, low	50 knights killed, 150 knights captured; Commons losses unknown, probably significant

The Battle of Morlaix on September 30, 1342 was a clash between England and the House of Blois in the War of the Breton Succession during the Hundred Years War . The English besieged the city when a large Franco-Breton army appeared to relieve them. Although Blois' party suffered great losses in the battle, they were able to drive out the English and prevent the city from being conquered.

prehistory

After the death of Jean III, Duke of Brittany in 1341, both his half-brother Jean Montfort and Charles Blois , as the husband of his niece Johanna von Dreux , claimed the successor. While Blois from the French King Philip VI. was confirmed, Montfort received from the English King Edward III. the promise to support him in the enforcement of his claims, if this recognizes Edward as feudal lord and rightful king of France. The initially regional dispute over a French fiefdom was soon instrumentalized in the overarching dispute of the Hundred Years War between England and France for the French throne.

After Jean Montfort had first brought large parts of Brittany under his control, he was defeated in November 1341 in the Battle of Champtoceaux to the Franco-Breton army of Charles Blois. This captured Montfort and occupied almost all of Brittany in the following months. From August 1342 the first English troops landed in Brest and were just able to avert the complete defeat of the House of Montfort. From the withdrawal of some of his troops at the behest of the French King Philip VI. and weakened by the desertion of his Castilian mercenaries , but also because he clearly overestimated the size of the English army, Charles Blois broke off the siege of Brest and withdrew to the north of Brittany. Soon the English troops who had arrived, 1,350 men under William de Bohun and 800 men under Robert de Artois, took the initiative and advanced to the north of Brittany.

Preparations for battle

The English troops finally reached the important fortress of Morlaix in September . After the attempt to take this by surprise had failed, the English prepared for the siege.

After the hasty withdrawal of his shrunken army, Charles Blois quickly managed to raise more troops from Brittany. After realizing that the English army was far smaller than expected and clearly outnumbered them, he decided to attack and break the siege of Morlaix. William de Bohun, whose scouts had reported the approaching Franco-Breton army, wanted to avoid being caught between the fortress and the enemy army. He left only a small siege troop behind, which was supposed to keep the fortress crew from a sortie and marched in a forced night march with the majority of his troops towards Charles de Blois to intercept them.

Course of the battle

Only three chroniclers ( Geoffrey le Baker , Adam Murimuth , Henry Knighton ) report the Battle of Morlaix and they all described the events from an English perspective. They give very little information about the battle, and all we know is that the Franco-Bretons formed three lines of battle, one of which consisted entirely of knights led by Geoffroi de Charny . Murimuth indicates the strength of the Franco-Breton troops with 3,000 mounted men and 1,500 "Janissaries", by which he probably means a mixed troop of Genoese mercenaries and Breton conscripts. The English army may have consisted of about 2000 men. Furthermore, the chroniclers say that the English troops positioned themselves at the edge of the forest, with the knights fighting on foot to be protected from a Franco-Breton cavalry attack . In addition, the English dug pitfalls in the battlefield in front of them and carefully camouflaged them.

Due to the lack of historical sources, a number of historians (Jonathan Sumption, AH Burne, Kelly DeVriess) have made scholarly speculations about the course of the battle and the formation of the English troops. Ultimately, however, one can only speculate about the exact course of the battle. It can only be said with certainty that the English longbow archers caused great losses among the attackers and that the pitfalls that were dug did not fail to have their effect. The attack by the Franco-Breton knights was repulsed and Geoffroi de Charny was taken prisoner by the English. After the English had fired all their arrows, they retreated in order to the forest behind them. Blois gave up pursuing them with his troops, and the battle was over. Fifty Franco-Breton knights were killed and another 150 were taken prisoner by the English. The number of the fallen commons is unknown, but should not have been small. The English probably suffered only minor losses, since the Franco-Breton attack waves could presumably be repulsed mostly without major close combat.

consequences

Immediately after the battle, the English troops holed up in the forest into which they had retired. Charles de Blois took advantage of this opportunity and with his remaining army destroyed the English siege troops that had remained in front of Morlaix. In the following days he had the forest surrounded to keep William de Bohun from leaving. It became clear, however, that this tactic would not work, and the two armies eventually withdrew from each other.

literature

Jonathan Sumption , The Hundred Years War. Volume 1: Trial by Battle . University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia 1999. ISBN 0-8122-1655-5
AH Burne , The Crecy War. A Military History of the Hundred Years War from 1337 to the Peace of Bretigny, 1360. , Greenhill Press: London 1991. ISBN 9781853670817
Kelly DeVriess, Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th Century . The Boydell Press: Woodbridge 1996. ISBN 978-0-85115-571-5
Andrew Ayton, Philip Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346 . Boydell & Brewer: Woodbridge 2005. ISBN 978-1-84383-115-0