Bataille de Poitiers - MÉMORIAL HISTORIQUE CHAMP DE BATAILLE

This commemorative site on a park-like terrain south of Poitiers marks the battlefield of 19 September 1356, where Edward the Black Prince led an outnumbered Anglo-Gascon force to a decisive victory over the French in a pivotal episode of the Hundred Years' War. The French King John II was captured during the rout — a political earthquake that plunged France into years of ransom negotiations and reshaped the balance of power in the conflict. Like the earlier Battle of Crécy in 1346, the engagement demonstrated how disciplined English longbowmen could neutralize a numerically superior heavy cavalry. Visitors today walk a network of woodland paths and meadows tracing the approximate extent of the medieval battlefield, with information panels reconstructing troop movements and the key phases of the fight on-site.