No Retreat, No Surrender: 5 Incredible Last Stands

4 – Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302)

Also known as the Battle of Courtrai or the Battle of Kortrijk, this fight was, in many ways, a classic David vs. Goliath contest. Although the Flemish army slightly outnumbered the French, it was primarily made up of untrained infantry militia. On the other side of the battlefield were trained French knights consisting of nobles, crossbowmen, infantry, and pikemen. The Flemish army should have been slaughtered, but it had other ideas.

The Franco-Flemish War (1297 – 1305) involved a three-year truce which began a few months after the start of the conflict and ended in 1300. The French were in total control of Flanders by this stage, but in 1302, an armed rebellion broke out in Bruges. In what became known as the ‘Bruges Matins’ the group murdered every French person they could find. The French King, Philip IV, assembled an army to deal with the insurgents and nominated Robert II of Artois as the commander.

When the two armies met at Kortjik on July 11, the Flemish army of just over 9,000 consisted of guild members. Flemish interests depended on barbers, decorators, glove makers, fishermen and people from other guilds. There were only a couple of hundred mounted knights to support the group. The Flemish fighters carried wooden pikes to fend off cavalry charges while a number of them used a weapon called a ‘Goedendag,’ a heavy wooden spear. There was a metal rim where the spear was attached to the timber so the wielder could use it as a club or a spear.

Facing them was a professional army consisting of approximately 8,000 Frenchmen including thousands of Knights and nobles in the finest armor. Robert was renowned throughout France as a capable commander, so it had all the makings of a mismatch. Perhaps the French were overconfident, but they soon realized they had a real battle on their hands. The Flemish cleverly dug trenches to cause chaos to any enemy cavalry charge. It appeared as if the French would have an easy time of it when their crossbowmen enjoyed initial success and allowed them to move into enemy formations.

Then Robert made an idiotic decision; instead of allowing the light troops to continue their push, he pulled them out of the firing line. He didn’t want to prevent the nobles from having the honor of winning, and he was also mindful of the thousands of Knights who would be angry because they marched and didn’t fight. As the heavily armored mounted Knights moved forward, they found the rough terrain difficult to move in. They were unable to form coherent charges so when they came up against the Flemish pikemen; they were forced to pause.

Suddenly, the Knights were surrounded by thousands of lightly armed but extremely fast men. The hopelessly outnumbered Knights were bludgeoned to death by Flemish Goedendags. The French Knights in the center avoided the horrible fate of those on the flanks and broke through enemy lines to wound one of the main Flemish commanders, William of Jurich. The loss of William would have proved very damaging to Flemish morale, so his servant took his master’s armor and rode into battle pretending to be the lead commander.

Flemish reinforcements arrived, and well-placed troops prevented the French from fleeing. Robert led a charge to try and turn the tide of battle, but he was killed in the fighting. The leaderless French capitulated as they lost at least 1,000 men. The battle gets its name from the fact that the victorious Flemish collected approximately 500 golden spurs from the dead to show the number of wealthy enemies they killed. In many ways, the Battle of the Golden Spurs was the beginning of the end of the dominance of Knights on the battlefield. Ultimately, France won the war in 1305, and while Flanders remained independent, it was forced to pay a high financial cost.