User:Retroplum/List of casualties of the Battle of Crécy

The Battle of Crécy (26 August 1346) was an important English victory during the Edwardian phase of the Hundred Years' War. Coupled with the later battles of Poitiers (also fought during the Edwardian phase) and Agincourt, it formed the first of three decisive English successes during the conflict.

The battle was fought on 26 August 1346 near Crécy in northern France. An army of English, Welsh and allied troops from the Holy Roman Empire led by Edward III of England engaged and defeated a much larger army of French, Genoese and Majorcan troops led by Philip VI of France. Emboldened by the lessons of tactical flexibility and utilisation of terrain learned from the earlier Saxons, Vikings and the recent battles with the Scots, the English army, despite being heavily outnumbered by the French, won a decisive victory.

The battle saw the rise in power of the longbow as the dominant Western European battlefield weapon, whose effects were devastating when used en-masse. Crécy also saw the use of some very early cannon by the English army, shot being found on the battlefield centuries later during archaeological digs. The combined-arms approach of the English, the new weapons and tactics used, which was far more focused on the infantry than previous battles in the middle-ages (whose predominant focus was the heavily armoured knight) and the killing of incapacitated knights by peasantry after the battle has led to the engagement being described as "the beginning of the end of chivalry".

The battle crippled the French army's ability to come to the aid of Calais, which fell to the English the following year. Calais would remain under English rule for over two centuries, falling in 1558.