Edward the Black Prince
Edwardus Princeps Niger
Prince of Wales · Duke of Cornwall · Prince of Aquitaine
1330 – 1376
Biography
Heir apparent to Edward III and the most celebrated English commander of the early Hundred Years' War. He led the vanguard at Crécy at sixteen and personally captured King John II of France at Poitiers ten years later. Predeceasing his father by a year, he never wore the crown; his son Richard II inherited instead.
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 III
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