Today's update:


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Man of War: Edward III, King of England
An article by Ted Hitchens

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The Battle of Crécy
An article by Jonathan Blair

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Albion Armorers Crécy Sword
A hands-on review by Chad Arnow


As always, you can see our Complete History of Updates listed right from our home page.

I'm a proud owner of an Albion Crécy and I've always been interested by the Hundred Years War (especially the period between Crécy and the Black Prince's death) so, for me, this update is a big hit !

Thanks to all and keep up the good work !

Cheers,

David

P.S. My avatar is a detail of a gold coin minted in Aquitaine in the name of the Black Prince.

With this update group, we welcome a new author: Jonathan Blair. Jonathan's article on the Battle of Crecy inspired my article on the Battle of Poitiers and was the basis for a new series on important battles (more installments to come). I'm excited to see Jonathan's article published, and it was a pleasure to work with him. Thanks Jonathan! :) Ted's article gives us a second published installment in our Man of War series, which is great to see as well. Ted, it's always fun working with you.

As folks may have noticed, we are creating new series and adding breadth to our publication efforts. The battle series and Man of War series give us background info and context to the study of weapons. They also happen to be articles that are quite author-friendly. :) I'd encourage people to contact us via the information on this page if they want to help us add to these series or if they want to write any article.

Absolutely fantastic stuff this week! I've become a huge fan of the battle series and the man of war series. Kudos to Ted, Jonathan, and Chad on very nice works.

Wonderful - or should I say "Excellent" - work all around, once again!

One thing that really stands out for me, as a media arts student, is the stunning photography featured in the reviews - the Albion weapons in particular are really done justice, much more so than the (already quite nice) pictures on their own site.

As the owner of a Crecy, I'm very happy to finally see a review of this awesome sword! I was considering sending mine to you guys just so someone could do one. Nice work! :)

Eric,
Glad you liked it. The review had been written for a little while, it was just waiting on friends to publish it with. :)

Mikko,
Thanks for the kind words. The Crecy photoshoot wasn't one of my best. Fortunately, I know some guy in San Francisco who is a really good photo fixer. :) We try to do our best as non-professional photographers to show many different angles that normally don't get featured even on the Maker's sites. It's nice to know it's appreciated.

Matt,
Thanks! :)

I very much enjoy the mix of articles between history and reviews. Thanks, folks, for some well-written articles.

Very nice articles. I think it is good for these sort of things to help people see new things and ideas and keep the love of arms and armour in history growing.

RPM

Great article! The layout was great for getting a good understanding of the battle itself and the context leading to the Battle itself. Very nice clear background of the battle and a good breif explaination of the origins of the Hundred Years War (somewhat complicated in its own right!). Very good use of sources for the article as well. Familiar with them all and very appropriate. The map, illustrations and other artwork with it are very well chosen and I felt over all a great article!

One thing that could have been useful would have been a few more sources. Andred Ayton wrote a great book on the Battle of Crecy a few years back and it is worth a read for those who are inspired by the article in interest. His book is very,very detailed and gives a good expliantion of battle tactics of the time, troop types, weapons etc. Over all agood read. There are many other great crecy books out. Perhaps I should get them up on my favorite books?

One point that perhaps could have been addresses is the uncertainty of cannons on the field. A whole group of historians has debated this and there are two reasons why. There exist only a small number (2 I believe) of sources that recount this event at the battle. One is Froissart, not in his earlier editions of Chronicles, (there are a good number of them) but in his edition that came out in the 1370's or 80's. In his earlier I think 3 he never mentions cannons. There is a italian who is contemporary with the battle but it would seem very strange if he had directly witnesses the battle as I do not think left italy around this time. His account is also vastly different from all the other ones. I think it sounds like propaganda to expalin how th ebest mercinary force in Christiandom got totally thumped by a underdo-newbie. Also sounds more like italian warfare than english at this time, but that could give more clout that the English perhaps were toying with them.
One thing that seems out of sync. If there had been rain it would seem probable the cannons would not have fired. At this time cannons took a good while to load. You had to have hte loam set and deal the gunpowder of it would not have any force (the explosive gases would just leak out). So if it had rained this devises would get wet and as often happened until the began covering the powder would have made the cannons infunctional.

A great article I recommend it for a good read when you have around a half hour. Well done!

RPM

I just finished reading all of the articles. The authors did a great job with interesting subject material as usual!

Keep it up, guys!