The Battle of Morlaix was fought in 1342 between England and France. The English besieged the town, but a French relief force arrived, forcing the English to flee into the woods. The French force then withdrew. Events May - Pope Clement VI elected John III Comnenus becomes emperor of Trebizond Louis becomes king of Sicily and duke of Athens Constantine IV becomes king of Armenia Patriarch of Antioch transferred to Damascus under Ignatius II Kitzbühel becomes part of Tyrol Louis I becomes king of Hungary Births... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: Multiple unofficial anthems Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Government Constitutional monarchy  - Queen Queen Elizabeth II  - Prime Minister Tony Blair MP Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq...

Notably it was the first use of a tactical withdrawal by the English in medieval warfare.

The Earl of Northampton was present as the commander on the English side. The title of Marquess of Northampton was created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1812 for the Earl of Northampton. ...

The Battle of Morlaix

This occurred on September 30, 1342. The English army took up position just in front of the wood, in a line astride the road, and perhaps 600 yards in length. The selection of a position with a wood in rear was popular with English troops in those days, because it could not be effectively attacked in flank by cavalry, and formed a useful baggage park. Some hundred yards in front of it, on a line now marked approximately by a hedge and a cottage, they dug a trench and covered it with grass and other herbage as a boody-trap for the horsemen of the enemy. It was only 30 years since the battle of Bannockburn and the English troops had not forgotten the lesson taught by the pots of the Scots. The dismounted men-at-arms occupied the centre of the line, the archers were stationed on the flanks. During that morning the French army was apparently stationary a league away, which would seem to indicate billets in the village of Lanmeur – at least for the mounted troops – and we may suppose the foot arrived the next morning. This would account for the fact that the French did not attack until three o’clock in the afternoon. The count of blois drew up his army in three huge columns one behind the other, with an appreciable space between each. The leading column consisted of irregulars, presumably local levies. These were all dismounted troops. On the order being given they advanced straight to their front, descending the hill into the slight dip and up the other side. When they got within effective range the English archers drew bow, and a hail of arrows dispersed the column before it had got into close contact with the men-at-arms. The contest was short; the Bretons went reeling down the hill.

Charles was disconcerted by this sudden disaster and took council with his chief captains regarding the next step. Eventually it was decided to launch the second column, the men-at-arms, in a mounted attack. This was, of course, exactly what Northampton wished and had prepared for. His stratagem worked admirably. The French horsemen, who had not been warned of the concealed trench by the irregulars for the simple reason that they had not reached it, rode forward impetuously and unsuspectingly. Men and horse plunged into the concealed trench; archers plied them with arrows to add to their confusion, and the attack practically came to a standstill. A few horsemen, did manage to negotiate the trench and indeed to penetrate the line. But local reserves came up and they were cut off and captured, including their commander Geoffrey de Charni.

The second attack had ended as disastrously as the first, and again there was a considerable pause while the attackers licked their wounds and consulted on what to do next. Northampton waited to see if there were any signs of a general retreat. But there was none. His archers were by this time short of ammunition. Had time allowed, the archers would doubtless have run forward to recover their arrows, but the final column was now on the move, and the sight of the huge mass of fresh troops approaching must have discouraged the English. The trench was by this time battered in or filled with corpses; it was no longer a defense.

The third French column was so large that it extended beyond the flanks of the position and thus threatened the flanks. Seeing the weight of all this, the earl decided on a novel manoeuvre, If he did not retreat he could not prevent the enemy surrounded him if they willed. He decided to adopt a course of action in battle that is almost unprecedented in that era: he would fall back into the woods less than hundred yards in rear, and form what we now call a hedgehog, a defensive line along the edge of the wood and facing in all directions. No doubt he had this eventuality in mind when he selected a position immediately in front of a wood. So into the wood his victorious troops fell back in good order, taking with them their prisoners, and a new position, facing all ways, was taken up.

The details of what happened next are scanty and rather puzzling. Wht seems clear is that the English reserved their fire thus reserving their ammunition, and that the French came on and engaged, but failed to penetrate the woods. Charles was at his wits’ end. Many of his troops had fled the field, including the Genoese crossbowmen; the English position was still intact and unbroken, and there seemed to be no means of getting at it. Night was coming on, and Charles decided to abandon the contest, to give up his goal of relieving Morlaix, and to beat a retreat. Darkness was falling, with his immediate task accomplished; he would return to the siege of Morlaix.

The battle of Morlaix was the first pitched battle on land of the hundred years war, and it made a deep impression at the time. The tactics pursued by the English were evidently founded on lessons learnt at Bannockburn and Halidon hill. The men-at-arms were used dismounted; trenches were dug and a defensive position was selected on a ridge. The fire power of the archers was a feature in both battle, and lastly the two arms cooperated in defeating the mounted enemy. It is not a surprise that Edwards first great victory should form the prototype for all other great battles of the hundred years war – except the last

The present article is a blatant word for word plagiarism of Burne’s ‘The Crécy War’ pp. 71 – 74, 1990 Greenhill edition, probably still under US copyright. Here’s a new one 4u.

The Battle of Morlaix 1342

In 1341 John III, Duke of Brittany died without leaving an heir. The question of the succession ignited a civil war in Brittany which lasted about 25 years initially between John’s half brother, John de Montfort and his niece Jeanne de Penthièvre, wife of Charles of Blois. Charles and Jeanne had the support of the Breton nobility and clergy while John was an outsider whose main concentration of power was in the Ile de France. However, Charles was the nephew of Philip VI of France who backed Jeanne’s claim while England of course supported John de Montfort’s claim.

Initially Edward III of England could do little to help the de Montforts, he had his own problems at home, but eventually he felt able to send a small force under Sir Walter Mauny to aid them. As a result of Mauny’s initial successes Edward decided to send a larger force of knights and archers under the command of William de Bohun, earl of Northampton. For a long time its departure was delayed and by the time they arrived in Brittany John de Montfort was a prisoner of the French and the struggle was being carried on by his wife Jeanne de Montfort. When Northampton landed on 18th. August 1342 the Countess, her men and the remnants of Mauny’s force were besieged at Brest by a large French army under the command of Charles of Blois and a force of Genoese ships. On Northampton’s arrival the French appear to have fled without bothering to engage the smaller English force and the siege of Brest was relieved.

From Brest Northampton moved inland and there are few details of what happened during this journey but eventually he reached Morlaix, one of Charles de Blois’ strongholds. His initial attack on the town was unsuccessful and having been repulsed with slight losses he settled into a siege.

Since Charles de Blois’ forces had run from the siege in Brest they had been growing in numbers possibly reaching as many as 15,000. Informed that Northampton’s force was considerably smaller than his own Charles began to advance on Morlaix intending to raise Northampton’s siege. On receiving intelligence of de Blois’ advance Northampton, not wishing to be trapped between de Blois’ force and sorties from the garrison of Morlaix, made a night march to intercept him.

Only three chroniclers give any account of the battle and they are all English, Geoffrey le Baker, Adam Murimuth and Henry Knighton. This absence of contemporary interest is possibly because the battle was indecisive and also because Brittany was somewhat of a backwater removed from the main action of the courts and armies of Edward III and Philip VI. None of the chroniclers give much detail of the battle and little of the battle orders of the two sides beyond stating that the French were deployed into 3 lines. At least one of the French divisions was solely of mounted knights led by Geoffrey de Charny. Adam de Murimuth puts the total French numbers at 3000 cavalry, 1500 Janissaries by which he may mean Genoese and a mixed force of Breton infantry. The bulk of the Bretons were probably quite an ineffective force, just local levies. The English numbers are also unclear. Northampton had less than 1,500 on his arrival at Brest. He had been reinforced by Robert of Artois with another 800 and an unknown number of Bretons of unknown quality. He would have had to leave some behind to contain the Morlaix garrison so almost certainly his numbers would have been less than the French but all the figures are all from English sources and thus, for the French, probably an overestimation (the larger the force you defeat the greater the glory).

According to Ayton & Preston ‘The Battle of Crécy’ there is no detailed exposition of how the English were deployed except that they had taken position in front of a wood and that all were dismounted even the knights and that before the French arrived on the scene they had prepared the ground in front of them by digging pits and ditches and covering them with hay and grass. It must be assumed that Burne follows Geoffrey le Baker’s idea that the English deployed as at Crécy and Dupplin Moor with archers on the flanks firing into the approaching enemy so as to constrict their formation and thus disorder them before they contacted the dismounted men-at-arms in the centre.

According to Burne, ‘The Crécy War’. who attributes huge numbers to the French, in fact, he maintains that each of the French divisions outnumbered the whole English army, the infantry column attacked first and was sent reeling back by volleys of arrows before it even contacted the English line of dismounted knights. After a consultation between the commanders the second column of cavalry attacked and many were brought down by falling into the pits that had been dug by the English. Some did manage to penetrate the English line but these, including Geoffrey de Charny, were captured by the Breton infantry held in reserve. The last French cavalry column after seeing the defeat of the first two divisions hesitated to attack but because the English archers were now short of arrows Northampton withdrew into the woods at his back and formed a ‘hedgehog’. Here he was safe from a cavalry charge and though the last French column did attack everywhere it was driven back.

Quite a lot of Burne’s account is fanciful driven by his need to give a coherent and readable narrative. One can only assume that he worked it out according to what he called ‘inherent military probability’ drawing on his knowledge of what happened at other battles of the period. However assuming that one commander behaved in the same way as others of that era is a dangerous procedure for writing history because it does not even happen in our own day despite military training schools and standardised books of tactics.

There are few other accounts of the battle by modern historians the notable being by Jonathan Sumption and Kelly de Vries. Jonathan Sumption in “The Hundred Years War. Vol 1 Trial by Battle” gives an alternative description of the battle which, while not contradicting Burne’s battle order for the English, depicts the actions of the French nobility in a way that is far more in line with other battles of the 100 Years War but not necessarily any more accurate than that of Burne.

According to Sumption the first attack was mounted not by the infantry but by Franco-Breton cavalry under the command of Geoffrey de Charny. These reached the English positions but were thrown back in disarray and de Charny himself captured. It has to be assumed that the archers managed to disable the horses and with the force of the mounted charge blunted the men-at-arms were able to finish off the dismounted knights.

After this setback the second line of cavalry attacked but now fell into the pit traps. Presumably they, seeing the damage done by the archers were attempting to drive them off. This of course assumes that the archers were deployed on the wings and the pits dug only in front of them (much like the stakes at Agincourt) otherwise how else could the first line have avoided them while the second line fell into them.

Finally Sumption then goes on to say that almost no use was made of the French infantry who never left their starting positions. Evidently the English were very worried about the dismounted French because they then left their own prepared positions and retreated into the forest with their prisoners. Burne says that it was because they had not been able to retrieve their arrows.

DeVries 'Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th. Century' seems to follow the exitsting chronicle sources more closely than the other two and he gives a different account of the deployment of the English army. He maintains that the archers were intermingled with the men-at-arms because the knights were so few and also that the archers were given other weapons than their longbows which seems to imply that the English used no archery at all.

Like Sumption he maintains that the first line of cavalry attacked under the command of Geoffrey de Charny but were immediately put to flight. There is some confustion in DeVries account because the map he has drawn of the battlefield shows pits and ditches dug all around the English but nowhere does it say the the first French attack fell into the pits but if the pits were all around how could they not fall into them? Like Burne, after the first failure he has the French leaders holding a conference amongst themselves in order to decide what to do next but eventually as the French still outnumbered the English another attack was mounted. From the sources he says it was unclear whether it was just a cavalry attack or a joint cavalry/infantry attack. Now his account becomes even more confusing because he says that the second line actually hit the English but were pushed back into the pits and ditches but does not explain how this was possible. He quotes Henry Knighton as saying that the French were drawn into a narrow cave and they fell on top of each other into the pits the English had dug. This may mean that there were no traps to the immediate front of the English position and the French cavalry came through the gap but when thrown back fell into the traps. Or does it mean that some French had already fallen into the pits and in order to avoid any further traps the next attack had to be mounted on a narrower front?

Whatever the truth of the matter the final result was that 50 French knights were killed and 150 French captured including Geoffrey de Charny and a number of ‘populari’ which seems to indicate that at least some of the infantry were involved in the melee. The English force now made apprehensive by the remaining French forces withdrew into the wood at their back where they were safe from a full blooded cavalry charge. What was left of de Blois’ force then evidently relieved Morlaix and the besieging English, now trapped in the wood, themselves became the object of a siege for several days.

Works consulted.

Sumption, Jonathan ‘The Hundred Years War Volume 1 Trial by Battle’ Faber 1992

Burne, Lt. Col. Alfred H. ‘The Crécy War’ Greenhill 1990

DeVriess, Kelly ‘Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th. Century’ Boydell 1996

Ayton, A & Preston P ‘ The Battle of Crécy 1346’ Boydell 2005