Spore Battle
Representation from the 14th century.
| date | July 11, 1302 |
|---|---|
| place | Groeningekouter near Kortrijk |
| output | Flemish victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
|
|
| Troop strength | |
| 8,000 soldiers | 9,000 soldiers |
| losses | |
|
700 knights, a total of approx. 1,000 dead |
approx. 100 dead |
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The Golden spores battle ( Dutch Guldensporenslag ; also known as Battle of the Spurs , Spurs battle of Kortrijk or Battle of Courtrai ) was dated 11 July 1302 Vorkonflikt of the Hundred Years War (between England and France). It was a battle of the Flemings against France's claim to power. One of the war aims of the Hundred Years' War from 1337 was control of the cloth industry in Flanders .
The troops of Flanders, the nobility , the patricians as well as the craftsmen and peasants used force to defend their freedom against France. The Flemish army consisted largely of citizen militias.
King Philip IV the Handsome of France captured Guido I of Flanders on charges of high treason, confiscated his fiefdom and installed French officials in Flanders. On May 18, 1302, an uprising broke out in Bruges , in which the citizens of the city killed all the French they could get hold of ( Bruges morning mass ). Philip responded by sending Count Robert von Artois with the best knights of northern France. The Flemings could only muster infantry, and since armies of knights were considered to be clearly superior to foot soldiers, the French were sure of an easy victory.
Course of the battle
On July 11, 1302, the battle between the French knight army and the Flemish infantry army finally broke out on the Groeningekouter near Kortrijk (Courtrai). The Flemings formed in front of a small river with no real escape routes, and it is believed that this was done on purpose to strengthen the men's will to fight.
After a brief exchange of fire by the crossbowmen (recruited from Italy on the French side), the Flemings withdrew a little, and Count Robert ordered a cavalry attack from his advance troops. It turned out that the river was more treacherous than expected for the French knights. In addition, the marshy terrain and holes dug by the Flemings made the attack more difficult. The Flemings hit the disoriented French knights so badly that Robert also gave his main force the order to attack to save the advance troops.
But even the main force could not develop its combat strength in the swampy terrain. Although she was able to prevent the advance force from being completely destroyed, she did not manage to break through the ranks of the Flemings. The Flemings, for their part, killed one horse after the other and then the riders and were thus able to achieve victory.
By the end of the day, 700 French knights had lost their lives, including Count Robert, five other Counts, both Marshals of France, and a few other higher nobles. As the French chronicler Jean Froissart reports, eighty years later after the Battle of Roosebeke (1382) , French troops found around 500 golden spurs of their fellow countrymen who had fallen in the battle in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwe-Kerk . Every year the citizens would have celebrated a festival in honor of the victory. Because of these publicly hung trophies, the battle was later given the illustrious name "Battle of the Golden Spurs".
Effects
After this victory, Flanders was spared foreign rule for the time being. (As early as 1305, however, Flanders had to submit to France in the Treaty of Athis-sur-Orge .) Numerous legends quickly arose in which Count Robert was blamed instead of paying attention to the Flemish infantry. The French knights did not learn from the defeat and therefore suffered a few more defeats against the English infantry in the Hundred Years War that followed.
The Flemish leaders Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck , who are said to have led 7,000 weavers and butchers into battle, became folk heroes through this fight. The lower classes benefited from the victory with a say in politics .
July 11th has been a national holiday in Flanders since the 19th century.
The battle of the spurs has gone down in military history as an example of the successful use of civil infantry against knights.
Fiction
- Hendrik Conscience : De leeuw van Vlaenderen . History novel, 1838 (German: "The Lion of Flanders, 1846) http://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:hbz:6:1-75812
literature
- JF Verbruggen / Kelly DeVries (eds.): Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century. Discipline, Tactics, and Technology. Boydell & Brewer , Woodbridge 1996/2000. ( ISBN 0851155715 )
- JF Verbruggen / Kelly DeVries (eds.): The Battle of the Golden Spurs. Courtrai, July 11, 1302. Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge 1952/2002. ( ISBN 0851158889 )
- Alain Arcq: La bataille de Courtrai. 11 july 1302: the massacre de la chevalerie française. Historic'one Éd .: Allonzier-la-Caille, 2009, ISBN 978-2-9129-9425-7
- Leo Camerlynck and Edward De Maesschalck: In de sporen van 1302. Kortrijk - Rijsel - Dowaai. Davidsfonds: Leuven, 2002, ISBN 90-5826-175-1
- Nörtemann, Gevert H .: In the mirror cabinet of history. The myth of the Battle of Kortrijk and the invention of Flanders in the 19th century. Logos-Verlag: Berlin, 2002, ISBN 3-8325-0081-2
- Karim Van Overmeire: De Guldensporenslag. Het verhaal van een onmogelijke gebeurtenis. Polemos: Antwerp, 2018, ISBN 978-90-826-7795-9
swell
- Annales Gandenses , ed. by Johann Martin Lappenberg in: Monumenta Germaniae Historica SS 16 (1859), pp. 569-572
- Henri Pirenne : "L'ancienne chronique de Flandre" et la "Chronographia Regum Francorum" , in: Compte rendu de séances de la comission royale d'histoire ou recueil de ses bulletins (1898), vol. 1, pp. 104-112
- Extraits d'une chronique anonyme intitulée anciennes chroniques de Flandre , in: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France 22 (1860), pp. 377–379
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oeuvres de Froissart, Vol. 13, ed. by Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove, Brussels 1870, pp. 177f.