The Black Prince
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There is a man who represents one of the greatest what-if moments in English medieval history. He was the oldest son of the mighty King Edward III. He became the first duke of the first dukedom in English history when his father created him Duke of Cornwall. He was a founding member of the Order of the Garter, into which I'm still awaiting my invitation, by the way. He fought in the legendary victory at the Battle of Crecy and led the English army at Poitiers.

He was born to be king, shaped and moulded by experiences second to none. Yet he would never rule England. He was not King Edward IV. Instead, history remembers him by another epithet: the Black Prince, which sounds pretty cool. So who was this chivalric warrior? How did the events of the Hundred Years' War shape his life? And what kind of king might he have been?

To help us get to know him better, I'm delighted to welcome his biographer, Michael Jones, whose 2018 book, The Black Prince, is the captivating story of an incredible life. MUSIC PLAYS

Welcome to God Medieval, Mike. It's fantastic to have you with us. It's a big pleasure, Matt. I can't wait to get stuck into this figure who, again, it's going to be a name that everybody knows, but how much do you really know about the life and career of the Black Prince? So I wonder if you could start off just to set the scene for us. Who is the Black Prince? When is he born? Who are his parents? What situation is he born into?

Yeah, he's born in 1330, and his parents are Edward III and Edward's queen, Philippa of Hainaut. He's born into a period of uncertainty, really, that the reign of his father, Edward II, was blighted by civil war. England had gone on to the defensive, both in terms of the war with Scotland and also its possessions in France. So England

He's born, I wouldn't say necessarily at a time of crisis, but a time of dislocation politically and militarily. Edward III is quite young when the Black Prince is born as well, isn't he? And that seems later on to forge a sort of closeness between them that almost verges on brotherhood. Yeah, there is a kind of brotherhood between them. And symbolically, when the Black Prince was born, it marked an occasion where

Edward III really established his own authority. He was 18 and broke away from the rule of his mother and also his mother's favorite, Mortimer, and established his rule in his own right. And I mean, this is tempting to speculate, but the birth of his son seems to have been a galvanizing influence. And I think that a consequence of that, well, of course, he was the

oldest son and heir, a parent. But a consequence, I think, psychologically, was that there was a sense of brotherhood in arms, really. And one sees that in the creation of the Order of the Garter around 1348, where the king and the black prince are co-creators of this extraordinary chivalrous order.

Yeah, which I've repeatedly said, the only thing that I would really want in terms of honours in my life, if I could be a member of the Order of the Garter, that would be so cool. So I'm jealous of anyone who has been or is a member of the Order of the Garter. I think it's an incredible institution. Well, that would have been music to the ears of both Edward III and the Black Prince. So they'd probably give you an honorary invitation, Matt. Oh, I'll keep waiting for that. I'm sure it's in the post somewhere. You know, it'll turn up eventually. Yeah.

And we're going to get into some detail about his life and his career. But I wonder if you could just give us a kind of quick overview of why the Black Prince is a significant figure in English political history. Why is he important? In a way, he's very involved in the Hundred Years' War. And we'll get onto this in terms of the narrative, but he's a powerful military figure, but also becomes...

an embodiment of, an embodiment really of chivalry belief system that was so powerful at this time in the Middle Ages. And I think that I'm a great admirer of the Black Prince. I think that he's in a privileged position because his father has to be pragmatic in much of his dealing. But when you're a prince rather than the king, you have, if you like, leeway

in terms of patronage, in terms of lifestyle, to really step into that chivalrous world. So

The Black Prince is important in terms of his military prowess. He will become important because he will rule the Principality of Aquitaine, that's later on in our story, in his own right. But I think the key thing is he becomes a focal point for, if you like, chivalrous sentiments, a kind of idealism about the way, certainly historically,

from the point of view of the aristocracy, but in the broader realm as a whole of how ideal rules should be carried out. And when you're putting together a biography of the Black Prince, how much good historical source material do you have for his life? Is he well documented? Are there any problems with the sources that you had to deal with? We have a good variety of sources, bearing in mind it's the 14th century, not the 16th or 17th, when there are a lot more

personal sources, letters and diaries. But we have a life of the Black Prince by the

the Chandos Herald that was composed. The Chandos Herald was on the Black Prince's campaign to Castile, and so the count there is very, very vivid. But in the early sections of the life, he's clearly talked to a lot of people close to the Black Prince, so it's a powerful and detailed source. Of course, it's very

is very much in favor of the Black Prince. And with all source material, one has to sort of assess and measure it. We've got some good chronicle material. There was more that one could unearth, particularly some of the more obscure French chronicles that do give very attractive vignettes about what the prince was like as a person. And

And there's a whole range of documentary evidence that what is known as the registers of the Black Prince, which are a mine of information that had been known for a very long time. But what motivated me when I wrote my book was to really trawl the French archives. The prince spent a very large part of his career fighting and then ruling in France, in the southwest of France. And there are some very, very interesting records

archival documentary sources some of them new that can be brought into the picture and i guess lots of people who know the name the black prince will want to know why we call him that his name's edward how does he acquire the name black prince because i think i've seen several potential theories so i don't know if you have a theory a theory that you favor or any thoughts on the other theories but

Well, the first thing to say, he was never called the Black Prince in his lifetime. So he and his contemporaries would have been quite mystified by this way of describing him. And I mean, I've said that Chandler's Herald writes a life of the prince, which is now called a life of the Black Prince, but that's us. The first evidence of him being called the Black Prince is some

200 years or so after his birth, when Antiquarian John Leyland, who traveled around the country, you know, visiting places and jotting notes down, when he visited the Black Prince's tomb at Canterbury Cathedral and

If you're interested in the Black Prince, you may know about his magnificent tomb already. If you don't, please come and visit it. And also the Cathedral now in the crypt is a brilliant display of the Black Prince's achievements. So it's well worth a visit. I'm just putting that in there. But Leyland visiting Canterbury Cathedral and the tomb jotted down that this was the tomb of

of the Black Prince. So that was the first reference to it, quite obscure. The first reference in print was in the Chronicle of Richard Grafton in

About 1572. So again, a long time after the Black Prince died. And it was really William Shakespeare who popularized, Shakespeare used Grafton's Chronicle and he popularized it. So in Henry V, the French King, Charles VI, bemoaning Shakespeare.

how the English have afflicted French fortunes looks back in time and mentions the terrible Prince of Wales, the Black Prince of legend. And once Shakespeare has mentioned something, it's enshrined in our consciousness. So that's the chronology of it. So we're kind of back projecting from a sobriquet, a nickname that was created several hundred years after his death. And there are, as you said, some,

a variety of theories. So all I can do is offer my own, which is that if we go back to the first reference, John Leyland, he's visited Canterbury Cathedral. And my own belief is that it was a nickname for the prince and the tomb.

from pilgrims the tomb is placed very close to the shrine of thomas the beckett so it's right on the m1 if you like of pilgrimage roots and the tomb itself is very striking because the badges that adorn the monuments of the black prince the badges of peace with the ostrich feather which are very imposing have a black backdrop so i think it was uh

that pilgrims used for the tomb and the prince. Yeah, and important to remember then that he was never called that in his lifetime because it didn't really mean anything to him and it wasn't something that his contemporaries called him. No, they never did. If we could go back a little bit to Edward's upbringing, do we know much about how he was raised in terms of being heir to the English throne? What would his education have looked like? Yes.

As far as we know, as a conventional education, he was trained in the arts of war pretty early. Normally an aristocrat or a prince would start martial training around the age of nine. The prince already was kitted out. He had his own sword, miniature armor, and even his own tent by the age of seven. So he was expected to learn fast on the job.

No pressure or anything. No pressure at all. The thing that really strikes me is that he's surrounded in the broader ambience of the court and culture of his father and mother. He's surrounded by

colossal sense of expectation that the idea that through acts of valour the English would regain a sense of power, a sense of mission. And I think that's kind of inculcated into his outlook. So he learns on the job and I think he's profoundly influenced by stories of what went well in previous history and military history and also what went wrong. I think

There's a resolution to do better, to somehow that England's reputation has been besmirched by the failures in the war against Scotland, the humiliation of terms imposed on them in terms of their power.

rule over Gascony in southwest France. And there's, I think, a huge expectation that wrongs will be righted and England's martial reputation and standing in Europe will be restored. It seems like a lot to put on the shoulders of a child, but he also seems like someone who was willing to take that on. You know, he imbibed deeply of all of this sense that there was something that needed to be corrected. There was

history that you could learn from there were ways that you could do things better than they'd ever been done so there was a lot of expectation on him but also he seems to have put a lot of expectation on himself even as a child growing up he's living this life and almost can't wait to be an adult and take part in it yeah we have to remember far more than the prince was

from an early age, and it's far more than conventional piety. And we get on to Cressy, I'm sure, and also the siege of Calais. On both occasions, during the battle and then during the siege, the prince nearly dies, and I think came to believe that he was protected by God. And if one sees oneself being protected by God,

by God, then there is a huge sense of mission. And this would come again in the way the prince saw the Battle of Poitiers, his great victory against the French, that this was a battle that was going seriously wrong, but he was protected by God and given divine strength. So I think

This mission comes into play very early. And interestingly, in the will of Archbishop Stratford, who was on the governing council with the young prince when Edward III was abroad, in his will, I mean, to other people, including the king, there are conventional gifts of silver spoons, this, that, and the other. But to the black prince, Stratford gives a silver resurrection depiction.

And I think this was personal and insightful that Stratford was recognising already that the prince saw himself and was perceived as a man of destiny, young man at the stage of destiny. Amidst all of this martial training and expectation, do we see much room for the influence of his mother, Philippa of Hainault?

Yeah, one influence was spending. Edward III was also overspending in the sense that he was embarking on a very ambitious foreign policy. But Philippa's household and lifestyle was quite extravagant. And I think the Black Prince followed that. Also, I mean, both

Edward III and Philippa were capable of being enormously charming. And indeed, when the chronicler Jean Frossa first visits the English court, I mean, he is enormously charmed. Now, that charm will go sour, but I think one sees the influence of Philippa, and it's often lost that sometimes I think the prince can be enormously coquettish.

a two-dimensional depiction of martial valor, but nothing much else. He had a very mischievous sense of humor. He understood the power of largesse, the power of gift-giving, and he had a natural ability to win people over. And I certainly think that when

One sees this in Edward III as well, but I see it more strongly in Philip. How then does Edward the Black Prince's military career begin? Is Cressy kind of his baptism of fire? Yeah, it certainly is a baptism of fire because he's given command of the vanguard of the English army. It's on an ambitious campaign. It lands in Normandy, marches towards Paris, England.

to draw the French king into battle and then moves back to what I think was very likely to have been a prepared battle site at Crecy. And the prince was in the vanguard of the army on the march, which was an honor position. And he was clearly up for the fight. He took a prominent role in some of the fighting. And he's only 16 at this point, isn't he, as well? In charge of the front portion of the army at the age of 16. Yeah.

Remember, the future Henry V, Prince Henry, is around the same age during the Battle of Shrewsbury and plays a really important part in the battle as well. So I think that you did. I think one hastens to add here that the prince...

was surrounded by trusted, experienced advisors, both in terms of counsel but in terms of actual fighting and commands. He has key

key men around him who are very experienced. So he's learning on the job, but I would also caution against seeing him merely as a figurehead, but he has that support in place. And why this vanguard position is very significant to Cressy is if we look at the topography of the

likely battlefield site. I mean, the battlefield site has recently been questioned or is being debated, but I still favor the traditional battle sites. And basically, Edward III was...

making the Black Prince himself and the vanguard a kind of bait to lure the French forward. So that in terms of the terrain, there was an embankment, the English were on a hill and there was an embankment which would force the French cavalry because it was largely a cavalry on the French side against infantry on the English side.

The French would be funneled into the English position, and if you like, the stopper on that bottle was the Black Prince's division. So he would bear the brunt, his forces would bear the brunt of the fighting. This is tough love, 14th century style. It meant that if all went well, the Prince would win his spurs, but if it went badly, he wouldn't be winning anything anymore.

And he did come very close to being killed. The French broke through not just the battle line, but broke into his own personal bodyguard. The standard was grabbed by the

and then grabbed back again. And according to some chroniclers, the prince was concussed and knocked to the ground, but he picked himself up and carried on fighting. So he really does gain renown in this exceptional English victory in 1346. Yeah.

It feels like a really dangerous game for Edward III to have been playing with his oldest son and his heir. Yes, you want him to take on the military characteristics that he might need as a king. But at 16, to throw him in front of a French army, Edward must have been, well, both Edwards, Edward III and Edward the Black Prince, must have been slightly terrified about what might have happened. Yeah.

I think that's quite a modern way of seeing things. And I suppose what I'd put into place here is that at Bannockburn in 1314, and at Bannockburn, this defeat of Edward II, Edward III's father, by the Scots came.

hangs over like a shroud everything that follows and the English cavalry are defeated and as a result in the Hundred Years War they always fight on foot it's like they don't want to go down that route again and whatever else one says about Edward II he was personally brave but he was

almost forced to flee from the battlefield for precisely the reason you said. You know, it's gone terribly wrong, but the last thing we want is for the French to capture you. But this is a huge propaganda disaster. So Edward II rides Pall Mall and eventually escapes.

It's so humiliating that I think from the point of view of Edward III and the Black Prince, they'd rather take the risk of being killed and be seen in that light. And I just think in terms of medieval kingship, because often kings

Richard the Larnhart in the 12th century was seen as very foolhardy. There's a moment when he wants to ride to the rescue of a reconnaissance party that he sent out that's surrounded by the French. And some of his advisors said, don't even think about it. The risk is too great. You don't want to be captured. You're the king after all. And Richard's reply is very simple. He says, those men are there. Those men are

at risk because they have followed my command. And if I don't make an attempt to rescue him, I don't deserve to be wearing the crown. And I suspect that Edward III and the Black Prince knew of that incident and certainly would have shared its sentiments. And so after Crecy, as you mentioned earlier, they move on to the siege of Calais. And this is the point at which Calais will be taken by the English and held for just a shade over

200 years. What part does the Black Prince play in the Siege of Calais? So again, it's very interesting. We know that the Black Prince gets knocked around at Crecy, but some new research I did showed that the Black Prince became very ill because he

In our program, we are using this title of convenience, The Black Prince. He became very ill. And I found a very interesting document that the Count of Flanders was in alliance with the English and

a hospital under the patronage of the Count of Flanders, was looking after the Black Prince. This is during the siege. So Edward has left the siege. Obviously, experienced commanders are still carrying on with it to be by his son. And then as...

a grant of thanksgiving that the prince's life has been saved. And Edward III promises to found a hospital in that area. So you have a double whammy of, you know, thereby the grace of God. So we do, the prince and the king go back to the siege and it's successfully concluded. But also from the prince's point of view, there is this emerging sense of

Of kind of indestructibility that God wants him to survive all of these things because he's meant for something greater. Indeed. And this is going to create a lot of bathos later on when we look at not only what went wrong, but how the prince might have tried to understand or come to terms with why it was going wrong.

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And one of the military tactics that will become closely associated with Edward the Black Prince is the chevrachet. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what those were, why they were useful and why the Black Prince is keen on using them. Well, yeah, I mean, they're used by Edward III in the war against Scotland and also in France. The chevrachet literally means a riot. The idea is both men-at-arms and archers are moving in fast movements

mobile columns

spanning out over quite a distance. And the idea of a chevauchée is to damage the agrarian economy for a number of reasons. First of all, by raiding, destroying, burning, it renders these lands incapable of paying taxes and supporting the French war effort. And that in itself is very important. Of course, France is economically more populous and more prosperous than England.

So economically, these are important tactics. But it's also more than that, because I think

If you launch a chevauchée, you might be forced to face a battle, a pitched battle, and you have to be confident that your army can regroup and fight. And both Edward III and the Black Prince are, so they're prepared in these chevauchées to fight, and we'll learn about that in the Pratier campaign. And if the French, either the king himself or those magnates who are commanding the regions that are being raided,

fail to put up a strong resistance, they're also being humiliated. So it's like you can't even defend your own people. And when the Black Prince launches a big chevauchée in 1355 across the south of France, really from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the French king's lieutenant

is criticized. So there is an inquiry and the inquiry doesn't attack the Black Prince. It doesn't say what an awful chap he is. Although this was a very brutal raid, it says how appalling that the defenses weren't properly maintained and he wasn't confronted in battle. So this is a big

morale booster. So it has a propaganda element, particularly as the English are fighting this war. Ultimately, it derives from Edward III claiming the throne of France. And it's very powerful to be able to say that if you had a king who God favoured and who has the rightful claim, he'd be putting up a much better resistance. It seems like they have a bit of everything. From a 21st century point of view, it seems like quite a brutal thing that it's essentially targeting the rural population

population, the civilian population, but it also serves so many purposes in a 14th century context in terms of denying resources to your enemy, but also, as you say, embarrassing them and causing those people in the rural communities to question, you know, why would I

have that person as my lord who can't defend me when I could have this person who clearly has the military upper hand. So there's a lot of psychological stuff going on as well as the physical warfare. Exactly. And it's similar to the issue we were talking about before, the conscious acceptance of risk in battle. So in some respects, in the Middle Ages, they see things differently from us. And if we get on to Poitiers then, so we're 10 years after Crecy in 1356,

Does Poitiers begin as a chevruchet? Yes, it does. So it's a chevruchet, but a chevruchet with a broader military purpose. So the Black Prince's army is coming up from Gascony towards the Loire. And the plan is to have three armies, to have three English armies, one under a very competent nobleman, Henry of Grosmonton,

Brittany, the king himself, will land at Calais, and the Black Prince will come up from Gascony, and this kind of combined movement will trap the French king, who is struggling. He's facing opposition from his own noblemen, and this is seen as a great plan. But it all goes wrong for a variety of reasons. By the time the prince dies,

after some delays gets to the loire he finds out that edward iii isn't coming after all and you know the force from brittany is trying to reach him but unable to reach him the loire was very heavily flooded that summer and then the french the king and his aristocrats who'd been

conducting a very lackluster campaign, was suddenly galvanized by the thought, my good, we could actually pounce on the Black Prince and wipe him out. And at this point, the Black Prince is in serious trouble, and he's moving back towards Gascony with a

It needs to be emphasised, an Anglo-Gascon army and the Gascons, it's often described as an English army, but the Gascons were a very important part of that army and they were good troops, but they were heavily outnumbered and they were in big trouble. So how do they end up then being confronted by the French at the Battle of Poitiers?

What role does the Black Prince play in deciding the military tactics of that day? The broader question is how we understand warfare, medieval warfare. And of course, we are very fascinated by tactics. And up to a point, medieval commanders were too. From a tactical point of view, the English will start in the traditional manner of dismounting, finding protection for their archers, so the longbow archers.

has the potential to be a battle-winning weapon if it's used correctly enough.

But the French have wised up a bit since Crecy, when these tactics were used very effectively. And they're not making the same mistakes. So they have very strong cavalry forces, but also their main body will advance on foot. So it's a different tactical mix. And the other thing is that the French have got so many more troops. So at the crisis point of the battle, when the

the Black Prince's army has conducted itself very well and beaten off the first French advance, then the king's own force, his own division, is larger than the entire Anglo-Gascon army, which is knackered, to be honest. And at once, Orchard just goes, kind of,

bloody hell. It's just, I'm out of here. And although the prince rounds on him and says, you know, you knave, no battle is lost while I'm still in command. It doesn't quiet. People are going, yeah, but the prince and his close entourage, this is where the Chandos Herald, I mentioned, who did this life of the black prince, he catches this moment. He's talked to people who clearly were around the black prince. Well,

What happens is quite remarkable. If you imagine this huge French force advancing towards the prince's position, the prince stops and prays out loud,

So there's this little eye of calm in the storm. He prays, and his entourage around him has been absolutely quiet. And when he finishes praying, suddenly there's an idea from some of his military advisors. Why don't we try this? And it involves sending a cavalry force behind him.

outflanking to come up from the rear. Then the extraordinary thing, and this is really dreamt up on the spur of the moment, it's not some deep tactical blueprint in the map room,

The whole English force, I mean, English and Gascon force, is given the orders to mount up. So they reverse the tactics on the spur of the moment and the signal is given and the force riding behind comes into the French position and they all charge the entire prince's army towards where the king is with such force that they knock the king's own army

bodyguards and the men around him right out of the battle line and into a neighbouring meadow.

If we use the funeral oration in Canterbury, but it comes from clearly a conversation from the prince himself, they're still at this point outnumbered about 10 to 1. But you can imagine they're totally adrenalized. The archers are mounted up and come after them. And the French don't know what's going on. So it's very hard to rationally explain that. And the prince...

particularly in his Chantry Chapel in Canterbury. He sees it as the story of Samson and the lion, the lion being subdued by God-given strength. And one chronicler, Geoffrey Le Baker, again,

you know, clearly talked to a lot of veterans of that battle, describing the prince being heroically fighting everywhere. Again, this idea of God-given strength. And so I think it was seen by the prince and his entourage as a miraculous victory. And of course, had a miraculous result because not only were the French defeated, but their king, Jean II, was captured. And that must have been...

a real high point for the Black Prince to think that he could go back to his father and present him with the King of France who's been captured on the battlefield in a war to try and take control of France. That must have felt like a real high watermark. It was a high watermark and I think a bittersweet moment for the King or perhaps the

you know, over time, because in some respects, his son is starting to surpass him in martial endeavor and achievement. But yes, a very powerful moment. And it leads, it's a huge bargaining counter. And after another campaign in 1359 to 60, the Rats Campaign, the Treaty of Bretigny is signed. And this treaty gives the English authority

the Principality of Aquitaine, a much enlarged Gascony. And unlike their predecessors, they hold this in sovereignty. They no longer, like Henry II and Richard the Lionheart and their successors, they no longer have to render homage for it. And when Edward III makes his son Prince of Aquitaine, he specifically in the grant says, and quite vividly, this is, you know,

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I quite like the idea of Edward III saying that's really nice and kind of through gritted teeth because actually...

This little version of himself that he's created is beginning to surpass him. And that must have been, as you said, a bittersweet feeling that he's being eclipsed by his own son. Edward the Black Prince will go on to acquire a huge chivalric reputation. After Poitiers, he gets involved in tournaments and things like that. Does that help to craft his chivalric reputation? And I also wondered whether you could talk a little bit about

whether there are any blots on that. I think famously the massacre at Limoges in 1370 has sort of been laid at his feet as a black mark against him. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about his chivalric reputation, please. Well, he was involved in tournaments from the off, spectator while he was still a child, and then in combat in his teens, along with many of his closest friends and advisors.

And in a way, you can imagine that an aspect of the Order of the Garter is two tournament teams on either side, one the king's team and one the black prince's team. So being skilled in tournament was a part of the black prince's life. In terms of broader history,

chivalrous reputation. I mean, there are many factors. There's the tournament, there's la chef, there are so many aspects of chivalry. But where things start to go wrong, you know, we get to Limoges, but the prince intervenes in Spain in support of the deposed king of Castile, who had the wonderful name of Pedro the Cruel. And the prince also has to seek the support because it

This unsavory person held the roots over the Pyrenees of Charles the Bad, so cruel and bad. And the whole campaign, although the prince wins it, he wins this great battle at Nachiera in 1367, my own view is that the prince...

sees this as where subsequently is seeing this as where things go wrong because pedro the cruel is an excommunicant and i think this is where the prince starts seeing over the next few years that he's lost that divine protection and the english cause has lost the protection and favor of god

And why this is important to Limoges, the new king of France, Charles V, reopens the war in 1369. And why this idea of losing God's favor is so important is that the prince, who's now suffering from illness, we'll talk about his illness perhaps in a while, both his personal illness and the reversal of fortunes, the king brokers an agreement with his father in which Limoges

towns that have sworn allegiance to the prince and to Edward III, if they go over to the French because of force majeure, there aren't enough troops to look after them, they should not be penalized. Because in the traditional account of Limoges, which was loyal to the prince, and then part

of the town then goes over to the forces of Charles V. It's seen that the prince orchestrates this terrible punishment for oath-breaking where 3,000 innocent civilians begging for mercy are nevertheless slain in cold blood. This is the product of Jean Frassin and

And in my book, I use a variety of chronicle and documentary evidence, some of it new, to show this is very unlikely to happen. And in fact, the reverse seems to happen, that the French garrison, when some of the town, the prince had very good relations with Limoges, actually let the prince's army in.

then the garrison turn on the inhabitants. And I think those in the book itself, the end notes, the appendix, this can, you know, this is discussed in detail. But the one thing I would say here is that when the prince dies and,

1376. The French, this is absolutely extraordinary, have a solemn day of mourning. This is a man who's beaten in a battle, conducted these brutal raids, and they hold a requiem mass for him. And a French chronicler, court chronicler, says, this may come across as rather strange that we're holding this for our mortal enemy, but what he represented transcended that. And

and was a kind of emblem of how chivalry should be conducted. I wonder if we could just talk a tiny little bit more about that Castilian civil war. You mentioned that the Black Prince becomes embroiled in that party to do with access over the Pyrenees and things like that. But it also seems to, it comes with the victory at Nehera, which I think, again, is another high point for him overall.

on an otherwise difficult campaign, but it also comes at the detriment to his health. Was it that campaign that ultimately made him ill? It's often said. This was a very tough, grueling campaign and in its aftermath, many of the soldiers were afflicted by dysentery.

Amoebic dysentery, if we believe that is what finished Henry V off, it did so very quickly. The prince's illness goes on for years and years and years, and dysentery kills people in weeks or months. So certainly his soldiers were affected, but when the prince comes back to Gascony, he's very active in government and administration for about a year.

So the dysentery outbreak is in the summer of 1367. The first evidence of the prince becoming seriously ill is in the late autumn of 1368. So it's commonly said, but I don't think it was the case then.

My own view is that what the prince becomes afflicted with is rectal cancer, and that's because a surgeon who wrote a treatise on rectal cancer, John Ardern, and he brought this out on the year of the prince's death. I think that's a kind of telling coincidence, but we will never know for sure.

Whatever it was, it was a terrible wasting sickness that really becomes evident in that last phase of the war and ultimately forces the prince to leave Aquitaine and come back to England.

Which from the prince's point of view must have reinforced that idea that God had for some reason withdrawn his favour. This is a man who had considered himself invincible and meant for some greater purpose. And now all of a sudden he's finding himself wasting away and struggling. He must have felt like he'd done something to lose God's favour. And maybe, as you said, the fact that Pedro the Cruel was excommunicated,

might have played into that, but he must have felt like something had gone horribly wrong for him. Yeah, absolutely. I think this was the medieval idea of the wheel of fortune, that when you're at the highest points of your career, when everything is going brilliantly, and if we think the prince, you know, he's won at Prattier, he's married, very beautiful Joan of Cairns, he's married for love, he has this magnificent court in Aquitaine, and then it all goes wrong very, very quickly. Yeah.

And one thing is that when we visit the prince's tomb, it's very, very close. Deliberately, his son Richard II actually...

disobeyed the will of his father in this one instance so that the tomb would be as close as possible. It was going to be in the crypt, but the tomb would be as close as possible to the shrine of Thomas the Becket. But if the prince dedicated his victory to God and Thomas the Becket, that he was supporting someone not only in excrement,

But the last thing he did before he reached the prince was he murdered on consecrated ground the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, the other great pilgrimage route. So I think two and two work.

pretty quickly equaled four in the prince's own mind. And this was indeed the tragedy of his life. And you mentioned he will effectively govern in Aquitaine, sort of in his own right as prince there. Do we get, amidst his growing illness, do we get enough of a view of him ruling in Aquitaine to get a sense of what kind of ruler he might have been? Can it give us a glimpse of what kind of king of England he might have ever made? Yeah, and it's far more than just having

big tournaments and swanky banquets. The prince, and there is an element of risk in this, he developed a way of ruling that was chivalrous, that was based on an honor code. If you had some tough local lord who was oppressing the local population, a pragmatic view would be, well, he might be a tough old bastard, but he's a useful guy to have on our side.

And we don't in defecting to the Valois King Charles V. But the Black Prince took the view that if someone was oppressing the population and was not behaving in a bad way, he should be removed.

And that won him a lot of loyalty, but it made him some very dangerous enemies as well. And I guess goes against the idea of that man at Limoges who is punishing a community because he's willing to stand up to rulers who are behaving badly. So there's maybe a bit of an indicator again there that maybe he wasn't behind a kind of massacre at Limoges. I think absolutely. Absolutely. So could you just bring us towards the close? When does...

the Black Prince die? You've mentioned what you think may have been the illness that afflicted him, but when does he die and how significant, how consequential is his death? So he dies in 1376, a year before his father. So his father outlives him. And he, in a way, his illness is

protects his reputation because it takes him out of the firing line of criticism of the government because, I mean, he has brief periods of recovery, but he's not at the center of his father's administration. So it protects him. And in the good parliament of the year of the prince's death, he's seen as a kind of ideal champion of England's fortunes. So

There is this element of idealism, whether he would have been able, if fit and well, to reverse the decline in English fortunes in the war and indeed,

in government generally is of course the big question. I guess he ends up in that position of not living long enough to fail and people can hang all of those hopes around him and obviously he leaves us with Richard II, a young boy who will become a king and we'll remember that as a reign that will end soon.

but as you mentioned, the Black Prince is sort of removed from any kind of blame for the things that have gone wrong by his early death. And you can hold him up as this great chivalric figure who might have done so much more. I wonder if you had an idea from your research about him, from writing the biography, do you think he would have made a good King of England? Yes, I do. I think that he would have needed to have...

his high principles with a measure of pragmatism. And I think that he would have needed to have kept a closer check on his spending. But in the broader sense, he had the huge gift of binding the aristocracy, binding the governing class, and also reaching out to ordinary people, which his son, who had become Richard II, sadly lacked.

and this was a huge contrast, that Richard's uneasy relationship with most of his aristocracy became a hallmark of not only his reign, but also the Civil War and ultimately his deposition. In that sense, he was the opposite of his father. So I do think on balance, if he had been fit and well,

the prince would have been a great king. Potentially would have had time to make a better king out of his son as well, maybe. Yes. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Mike. It's been amazing to get a little bit closer to the Black Prince. I'm definitely going to add Canterbury Cathedral and visiting his tomb to the list of things I really, really need to get on and do because I haven't ever been to Canterbury Cathedral, which is a terrible thing for me to admit.

I'd thoroughly recommend the book and I will be hoping to go and visit the tomb at Canterbury. Thank you so much for bringing us a little bit closer to The Black Prince. It's been a pleasure. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can grab Mike's book, The Black Prince, to find out even more. You can also find episodes in our back catalogue on Edward III, his wife and his mistress with Gemma Holman and on the end of the Hundred Years' War with Jonathan Sumption.

There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and to get all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Sign up now at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit. History Hit.

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