Life Of Edward The Black Prince

One of the most charismatic and enigmatic personalities of the High Middle Ages, Edward the ' Black Prince' commanded an English division at the battle of Crecy when just sixteen years old. But despite his battlefield exploits, romantic reputation and popularity among the people, Edward has become notorious as a proponent of 'scorched earth' campaigns, or chevauchee. These expeditions amounted to little more than the licensed plunder of undefended towns and the murder of non-combatants. The premature death of Edward saw his infant son ascend to the throne and led, eventually, to the fracticidal chaos of the Wars of the Roses and the emergence of the Tudor dynasty. In this startling reappraisal of the prince's life, David Green assesses his actions in their historical context and examines what might have been had Edward the Black Prince become King Edward IV.

As a child he was given his own suit of armor; at the age of sixteen, he helped defeat the French at Crécy. At Poitiers, in 1356, his victory over King John II of France forced the French into a humiliating surrender that marked the zenith of England’s dominance in the Hundred Years War. As lord of Aquitaine, he ruled a vast swathe of territory across the west and southwest of France, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility and drew them like moths to the flame of his cause. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, and better known to posterity as “the Black Prince.” His military achievements captured the imagination of Europe: heralds and chroniclers called him “the flower of all chivalry” and “the embodiment of all valor.” But what was the true nature of the man behind the chivalric myth, and of the violent but pious world in which he lived?

To attempt to write a biography of Edward 'the Black Prince', a legendary paragon of chivalry, without turning first to the chronicler of chivalry par excellence, Jean Froissart, may seem self-defeating, particularly as there is so little light to be shed on the prince's character from other sources. But the classic stories of the school textbooks and romantic histories have held sway for too long without being challenged, and I have therefore tried to work outwards from accounts and 'official' chronicles to arrive at an account of Edward, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, and in particular of the group of men who were his companions-in-arms. Space and time have not allowed me to do as much work on the latter as I would have wished, but I hope that I have been able to show both the prince and his father as part of a close-knit, brilliant group of knights rather than as isolated figures, and to capture something of the prince's life as a great baron and as an almost sovereign ruler in Aquitaine. - Preface.