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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
During the reign of Edward III (1327–77), England underwent a genuine and dramatic revolution in military affairs. The country's abrupt transformation from a third-rate military power into the strongest and most admired martial nation in Europe was obvious even to contemporaries. The great humanist Francesco Petrarca observed in 1360 that
In my youth the Britons … were taken to be the meekest of the [non-Italians]. Today they are a fiercely bellicose nation. They have overturned the ancient military glory of the French by victories so numerous that they, who were once inferior to the wretched Scots, have reduced the entire kingdom of France by fire and sword.
At about the same time, the Liégeois knight—cleric—chronicler Jean le Bel, who had served on Edward III's first campaign against the Scots in 1327 and had followed the English monarch's later military career with great interest, remarked that
When the noble king Edward [III] first reconquered England in his youth [in 1326], the English were generally not held in high regard, and no one spoke of their prowess or their boldness … [but] they have learned skill-at-arms so well in the time of this noble King Edward … that they are [now] … the best fighters known.
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