What Really Happened in a Medieval Battle

What really happened in a medieval battle? The chroniclers describe something slower and stranger than the film version. Armies often avoided fighting at all. At Bouvines in 1214 foot soldiers with hooks pulled the king of France off his horse. At Lincoln in 1217 the winners took three hundred knights alive, and mass graves at Towton, Visby and Sidon show where men were actually hit. We follow medieval battles from Hastings in 1066 to Towton in 1461 through the chronicles, the modern historians who tested them, and the bones. Where the evidence is thin or still argued over, the video says so. Chapters: 0:00 Not one great crash 1:16 Why armies avoided battle 3:10 How big were the armies? 5:05 Fighting in armour 7:04 On the field: Hastings, Bouvines, Courtrai, Crecy 9:15 The moment it breaks 11:59 Lincoln 1217: three hundred prisoners 13:35 What the bones say 15:51 A prisoner is a contract 17:38 Courtrai: when nobody was spared 18:23 What we know and what we don't 19:37 Crecy: the king who wanted prisoners 20:58 Next: Agincourt Sources: William the Breton, prose account of Bouvines, trans. C. Tihanyi in G. Duby, The Legend of Bouvines (1990), via deremilitari.org Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History, trans. J.A. Giles (1849), Lincoln 1217, via deremilitari.org Annales Gandenses (Annals of Ghent), trans. H. Johnstone (1951), via deremilitari.org Froissart, Chronicles, trans. Lord Berners, ed. G.C. Macaulay (1904), Fordham Medieval Sourcebook S. Morillo, Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy (2002), introduction via medievalists.net J. Gillingham, Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages (1984) J. Titterton, Deception in Medieval Warfare (Boydell, 2022), ch. 4 The Feigned Flight J.D. Hosler, review of P. Rex, 1066: A New History of the Norman Conquest, deremilitari.org Battlefields Trust, Battle of Hastings 1066 (battlefieldstrust.com) Askew, Formenti and Minetti, Proceedings of the Royal Society B 279 (2012) 640-644, doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0816 R. Ambuhl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War (Cambridge UP, 2013), via medievalists.net Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.638 (Crusader Bible) catalogue record Image and footage credits: Visby skull in mail coif: Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Towton battlefield: Chris Heaton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Battle Abbey and the field: Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Lincoln Castle and cathedral: Sanj1982, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Visby town wall: ArildV, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Effigy of Richard I, Fontevraud: Adam Bishop, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Church of Our Lady, Kortrijk: User:LimoWreck, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons Hastings memorial: Duncan Graham, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Battle Abbey: WikJonah, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Lincoln Cathedral from the castle: DrMoschi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Cut farthing of Henry III: Tom Redmayne, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Sidon Sea Castle: Choinowski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Towton memorial: JThomas, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Dacre's Cross, Towton: Chris Heaton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Archival material courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum (Crusader Bible, MS M.638), the Parker Library (Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora), the British Library, the Bibliotheque municipale de Besancon, Lambeth Palace Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access), via Wikimedia Commons where noted. Public domain images are used under their public domain status. Narration is synthesized. No AI-generated images are used in this video.