Siege of Breteuil 1356
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
About the battle
The siege of Breteuil was the investment (surrounding) of the Norman town of Breteuil, held by partisans of King Charles II of Navarre, by French forces between April and about 20 August 1356. It was interrupted on 5 July when a small English army commanded by Henry, Earl of Lancaster, relieved and resupplied the town. The French king, John II, attempted to bring Lancaster to battle with the much larger French royal army, but Lancaster avoided this. John then renewed the siege of Breteuil.
The French force attracted praise for its splendour and the high status of many of its participants, but it made little progress as the town was well-garrisoned and had been left by Lancaster with food for a year. John attempted to mine under the walls, to no avail. Meanwhile, Edward the Black Prince, the son and heir of the English king, assembled an Anglo-Gascon army at Bergerac in south-west France. On 4 August this marched into French-held territory, devastating the countryside as it went. At some point in August an unusually large mobile siege tower was pushed up to the walls of Breteuil and an assault launched. The defenders set fire to the tower and repulsed the attack, inflicting many casualties.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Breteuil (revision 1370739780), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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