Edward III
Edwardus III
King of England · Lord of Ireland · King of France (claimed)
1312 – 1377
Biography
Restored the prestige of the English crown after his father's deposition and launched the Hundred Years' War by claiming the French throne through his mother Isabella. His reign saw the founding of the Order of the Garter, the great victories of Crécy and Poitiers, and the devastation of the Black Death. He outlived his eldest son, the Black Prince, leaving the throne to his ten-year-old grandson Richard II.
Events
On 26 August 1346, Edward III's English army of roughly twelve thousand destroyed a French force perhaps three times its size at Crécy in Ponthieu. The Welsh and English longbowmen broke wave after wave of French knightly charges; the sixteen-year-old Black Prince commanded the vanguard. The battle announced English military supremacy of the early Hundred Years' War and dethroned the heavily armored knight as Europe's dominant battlefield weapon.
Also there: Edward the Black Prince
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