Edward of Woodstock, known as the Black Prince (1330, Woodstock - 1376, Westminster), Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Aquitaine, was the eldest son of Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainaut.
His nickname is said to be due to the color of his armor, but it was not used by his contemporaries. It does not appear until 1568 in Richard Grafton's Chronicle of England. During his lifetime, he was simply called the "prince", the prince of Wales, between 1362 and 1372 the prince of Aquitaine. He was also known by naming him according to his place of birth:Edward of Woodstock.
Born in Woodstock (near Oxford) on June 15, 1330, eldest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainaut. As a child, Edward of Woodstock enjoyed playing ball, gambling, falcon hunting, minstrel recitations, common distractions of the aristocracy of the time. His tutors were Walter Burley and the Chevalier de Hainaut Walter Mauny. At eight years old when his father left for Flanders to contract alliances against France, he was named "guardian of the kingdom". He was pampered by Edward III, neglecting neither his education nor his instruction as a prince. His father made him a knight on July 12, 1345. Already accustomed to tournaments, he landed on July 11, 1346 in the Hague, ravaged Normandy alongside his father and experienced his first major battle at Crécy in 1346, where he assumed command of the right wing of the English army with the help of the also young Earl of Warwick. A chronicle of the time has it that the young Prince almost lost his life that day:disarmed by a French knight, it was his standard bearer who would have had the presence of mind to hide him under the banner with the red dragon of the Prince of Wales and who would have repelled many attackers. At nightfall, he would have ordered the execution of all French soldiers wounded and unable to pay ransom, and in the morning, an even greater massacre when the French urban militias came as reinforcements but too late. The spirit of chivalry was not respected by the prince who was very ashamed of it in front of his father, it was after this battle that he would have taken to wearing black armor. Following a revolt severely suppressed in his county of Chester, he was appointed lieutenant of Gascony. Mandated by his father, he arrived in Bordeaux on September 20, 1355 in the midst of the Hundred Years' War to protect the Anglo-Gascon possessions against the French. Two weeks later, he led a campaign through the South-West, marauding through the counties of Juillac, Armagnac and Astarac, committing great massacres around Toulouse, martyring women and children in Montgiscard, putting bag Carcassonne and Narbonne. He did not seem to wish to submit the conquered lands to the English crown but rather sought to plunder them and extract wealth from them. He destroyed Castelnaudary on October 31, 1355. On Christmas Day he had returned to Bordeaux from where he wrote to his father to inform him of his success.
In the spring of 1356, his reputation as a strategist and the fear he inspired enabled him to easily raise a disparate army composed mainly of English, Welsh and Gascons. This campaign of 1356 will take him this time through Poitou, passing through Bourges, which he is unable to capture, taking Vierzon, whose garrison he puts to the sword. Slowed down by his considerable booty and tired by the fighting, his troops fell back towards Bordeaux and at Maupertuis, near Poitiers, he inflicted a severe defeat on the French who were pursuing him. It was during this Battle of Poitiers, on September 19, 1356, that he captured King John II, which led to advantageous negotiations for the English.
In 1360, the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais granted King Edward III of England land in addition to his “traditional” Duchy of Aquitaine which stretched roughly between Bordeaux and Bayonne. These were Quercy, Périgord, Limousin, Rouergue, Bigorre, county of Armagnac, Agenais, Saintonge, Angoumois and Poitou. These lands - ceded by France in full sovereignty - constituted an autonomous principality (1362) which he governed on the spot until the beginning of 1371. Edward was appointed by his father Edward III Prince of Aquitaine on July 19, 1362, and he remained so until his abdication on October 5, 1372.
Edward of Woodstock married his cousin Joan, Countess of Kent, in 1362. They maintain a court in Bordeaux where luxury and extravagance reign, parties and tournaments are frequent. The taxes he imposes on his territory to finance them are enormous, the nobility and the people show their dissatisfaction.
The Black Prince also helped the dethroned King of Castile Peter the Cruel in Spain and he would again defeat the French led by Du Guesclin at Nájera in 1367. This expedition was still a military success, but Peter the Cruel's refusal to pay the cost of the expedition put the prince in terrible financial difficulties. On his return to Aquitaine, he summoned the three states of his principality to Angoulême. They accepted the raising of a fouage (a tax levied on each household) to restore the finances of the prince (January 1368). But the Count of Armagnac Johan I (in French Jean I) refused this fouage. He sought the support of the King of France Charles V who accepted his appeal against the prince on June 30, 1368, which had the effect of annulling the peace treaty of Brétigny-Calais. The Comte d'Armagnac brought along his relative, the lord d'Albret Arnaut-Amanèu, and he supported the military offensives of Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of King Charles V, king's lieutenant (i.e. say viceroy) in Languedoc.
The lands of the Principality of Aquitaine ceded to the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais were reconquered by the French led by the Duke of Anjou between 1369 and 1372, following the appeal of the Count of Armagnac. However, the traditional vision of a unanimous uprising of the populations in favor of the "French" is faulty:cities like Millau or Montauban remained faithful for a long time in 1369, as for Poitou, Saintonge and Angoumois, they only submitted in 1372 and strongly supported the prince.
Traditional historiography often blames the prince for the sack of Limoges (August 24, 1370). According to Froissart, 3,000 people were killed that day. We quickly forget that a local source mentions only 300 dead, which may correspond to the "French" of the garrison installed in this city, as well as to certain Limogeaud supporters of the French. After all the French did the same when taking Brive (July 22, 1374). And we also forget that the city of Limoges was divided into two distinct entities:the “City” and the “Château”. The Black Prince only attacked the "City" dominated by the bishop who had betrayed him (Johan du Cros) and not the "Castle" which remained faithful to him until 1372.
He seems to have caught dysentery during his Spanish expedition and this disease prevented him from effectively opposing the offensives led by the French and their supporters. He left in January 1371 for England, leaving in charge of Aquitaine his brother Jean de Gand, Duke of Lancaster. He brought with him his very young son Richard, born in 1367 to the Archiepiscopal Palace of Bordeaux located more or less on the site of the current Bordeaux City Hall and attached to the cathedral. This son will become, on the death of Edward III, the King of England Richard II known as "of Bordeaux" (according to his place of birth), sometimes known as "the Gascon" (Bordeaux was then considered the capital of Western Gascons) . The latter reigned from 1377 to 1399, when he was dethroned by his cousin Henry of Lancaster, who became King Henry IV of England (1399-1413).
Among his companions in the fight and his senior officers we can mention John Chandos († January 2, 1370 in Morthemer, Poitou), lieutenant of Edward III responsible for taking possession of the lands ceded to the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais (1361-1362), then constable of Aquitaine (1363-1370); Thomas Felton, seneschal of the principality of Aquitaine (1363-1377); Gascon Johan de Greilly, Captal de Buch († September 7, 1376, prisoner of the King of France in Paris) (see Jean de Grailly), Constable of Aquitaine from 1370 until his capture by the French in 1372; the Poitevin Guichard d'Angle († 1380, London), one of the two Marshals of Aquitaine (1363-1372), guardian of the future King Richard II, named Count of Huntingdon (1377-1380) or even the great Poitevin lords Guillaume VII Larchevêque, lord of Parthenay and Louis d'Harcourt, viscount of Châtellerault, forced to submit in December 1372 to the king of France after the siege of Thouars.
The prince died of illness in 1376, a year before his father Edward III.
He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral in England where you can still admire his magnificent and famous recumbent figure.