Battle of Pontvallain

Battle of Pontvallain (and Anointing of Pope Gregory XI on the left)

Date	4 December 1370
Location	Pontvallain
Result	Decisive French victory

Belligerents

France

Brittany

England

Commanders and leaders

Strength

5200

6000 mounted men

Casualties and losses

a few hundred

more than 5000

The Battle of Pontvallain was an important battle in the Hundred Years' War between France and England. It was fought on the 4 December 1370 in the Sarthe region between English forces that had broken away from the army commanded by the English knight Sir Robert Knolles and a French army under the newly appointed Constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin.

The battle was in fact two separate engagements, one at Pontvallain and a smaller one at the nearby town of Vaas; they are sometimes named as separate battles. Though the engagements were comparatively small-scale, they were significant because the English were routed, bringing to an end their 30-year reputation for invincibility in open battle.

Robert Knolles landed at Calais in August 1370 with an army of about 6,000 mounted men and undertook a campaign in the style of a plundering raid through northern France. He approached Paris on 24 September and tried to draw out the French to battle, but they did not take the bait and by October Knolles had moved south and was marching towards Vendôme. He captured and garrisoned castles and monasteries between the rivers Loir and Loire and positioned himself to be able to march into Poitou or alternatively into southern Normandy if his King, Edward III, concluded an agreement with Charles II of Navarre, who was offering his lands in Northern Normandy as a base for the English. Many of the subordinate captains, who considered themselves better-born than Knolles, deplored his apparent lack of martial spirit. They found a leader in Sir John Minsterworth, an ambitious and unstable knight from the Welsh Marches who mocked Knolles as "the old freebooter".

Meanwhile, Charles V of France had invested his best knight, Bertrand du Guesclin, with the office of Constable of France, and tasked him with the mission of destroying Knolles’s army. In November du Guesclin concentrated his forces at Caen where he was joined by reinforcements under the Marshals Mouton de Blainville and Arnoul d'Audrehem as well as a Breton contingent under Olivier de Clisson. He was thus able to raise about 4,000 men. A second army of about 1,200 men was formed in Knolles’s rear at Châtellerault under Marshal Sancerre, which then moved towards Knolles from the East while Du Guesclin began to move on him from the north. Knolles, aware that the French were closing in, now proposed to withdraw westward into Brittany before he could be surrounded, but his captains violently disagreed, preferring to find winter quarters where they were and to continue to raid the surrounding countryside, confident they could defeat any French attack. As a result, the army divided; Knolles took a contingent including his own retinue west towards Brittany. The remainder, numbering about 4,000 men, stayed in the region of the Loire valley in three groupings, one commanded jointly by Sir Thomas Grandison and Sir Hugh Calveley, the other two by Walter, Lord Fitzwalter and by Minsterworth.

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