The Black Prince did NOT kill 3000 at Limoges….

 

In this article, about revising the reputation of Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, I wrote of the 2017 biography of the prince by Michael Jones, in which an undoubted stain on the prince’s memory was reconsidered. The prince apparently ordered the sack the city of Limoges, and slaughter of at least 3,000 inhabitants. This number, and the incredible accompanying cruelty, was reported by Froissart, who wrote later of course, and may have had a hidden agenda for blackening the prince’s memory. Whatever his purpose, blacken it he certainly did.

Anyway, the Jones biography mentions evidence in the form of a newly-unearthed French chronicle which reveals the French themselves to have been guilty of what happened at Limoges. See also here for another review of the Michael Jones book, which is now available in paperback.

I have been rambling around on Google, looking for something else, and have come upon this article which  reveals that a French historian, Dr Guilhem Pepin, had discovered in a Spanish archive, a letter (illustrated top above) written by the prince himself, explaining what happened. This letter demonstrates that a maximum of 100 French soldiers and 200 French citizens perished at Limoges. A far cry from 3,000.

In the meantime I am left with the thought that Froissart did to the Black Prince what all that Tudor propaganda did to Richard III.