The Black Prince
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
As a child he was given his own suit of armor; at the age of sixteen, he helped defeat the French at Crécy. At Poitiers, in 1356, his victory over King John II of France forced the French into a humiliating surrender that marked the zenith of England’s dominance in the Hundred Years War. As lord of Aquitaine, he ruled a vast swathe of territory across the west and southwest of France, holding a magnificent court at Bordeaux that mesmerized the brave but unruly Gascon nobility and drew them like moths to the flame of his cause. He was Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of Edward III, and better known to posterity as “the Black Prince.” His military achievements captured the imagination of Europe: heralds and chroniclers called him “the flower of all chivalry” and “the embodiment of all valor.” But what was the true nature of the man behind the chivalric myth, and of the violent but pious world in which he lived?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With a knack for storytelling, Jones (Bosworth 1485) describes how England's Edward of Woodstock (1330 1376) embodied the idealized chivalrous warrior prince both a successful military leader and a fair ruler while governing large areas of what is now France. Jones's accounts of Prince Edward's military prowess shine with clear explanations of military movements and strategy; medieval-era concepts of chivalry and good governance are also explained. Much attention is devoted to Edward's close but complicated relationship with his father, King Edward III, which allowed the prince to "earn his spurs" at an early age but also led to some of his greatest crises. While the prince wrestled with gambling debts and disagreements with his father, his role as a founding member in the Order of the Garter personified the intense belief in duty and honor he retained down to his last military campaign, during which he had to be carried, weak but determined, on a stretcher. Jones combines easy prose with annotated accounts from many sources of the era that exemplify the English point of view and that of the other European powers at the time. In Jones's strong portrait, the Black Prince towers as a potentially great king whose illness-shortened life devastated English hopes, leaving him to become a potent legend and reminder of what could have been. Illus.
