Formigny

His government is drowning in debt.

Only weeks ago, in April, an English army was routed at Formigny, and Normandy, won by Henry V a generation earlier, is slipping away for good.

In May, the king's hated favourite, the Duke of Suffolk, was seized at sea and beheaded on the side of a small boat.

And now, out of Kent, thousands of angry men have marched on London, behind a mysterious leader who calls himself John Mortimer, though history will remember him as Jack Cade.

There are the soldiers, as we have seen.

Lean, bitter men home from Normandy with nothing to show for it but scars and grievances.

Some served at Formigny and watched the French cannon tear their lines apart.

Others garrisoned towns that surrendered without a fight.

The French, with their newly professional army, were now fighting a war that the English could no longer afford to win.

The first major military action of this final phase of the war was the Battle of Formigny in fourteen fifty.

This was a significant battle because it was the first time that the French had decisively defeated a major English force in a pitched battle since the start of the war.

The English force at Formigny was a relatively small one, but it was a veteran army, a classic English fighting force of longbowmen and men at arms.

The French, under the command of the Count of Clermont, had a much larger army, but they also had a new and powerful weapon: artillery.

The French had been quietly modernizing their military, and their cannons and gunpowder weapons were now a major force to be reckoned with.

They outmaneuvered the English, and the French artillery, in a terrifying display of its power, simply decimated the English ranks.

The English, who were used to winning with their longbows, were now outgunned and outmaneuvered.