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Speaker 1: Pushkin. On the north bank of the estuary were assembled

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Speaker 1: the English army, a little over two thousand knights, supported

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Speaker 1: by five thousand archers. On the south bank the larger

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Speaker 1: force of the French eight thousand knights and thousands of

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Speaker 1: crossbowmen alongside them. The French army had been chasing the

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Speaker 1: English for weeks, but wisely decided not to try to

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Speaker 1: cross the salty marshes within range of those English archers. Instead,

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Speaker 1: between the opposing armies, a single French knight, like a

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Speaker 1: hero from Arthurian legend, galloped out towards the English, a

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Speaker 1: tiny figure in the middle of the tidal flats, he

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Speaker 1: shouted out his challenge. Following the traditions of courtly love.

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Speaker 1: The French knight was carrying the token of some fair

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Speaker 1: lady and wanted to prove that he was worthy of her.

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Speaker 1: Did any Englishman dare thrice to joust with him? In

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Speaker 1: full view of both armies. There was a moment of silence,

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Speaker 1: broken only by the flapping of the pennants in the

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Speaker 1: sea breeze, and then an English knight roared out his acceptance.

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Speaker 1: The two men took up their position on the damp

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Speaker 1: salty sands, in front of the cheering soldiers. They jousted

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Speaker 1: once picked fresh lances, wheeled around, and jousted a second time.

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Speaker 1: In the second exchange, the English Knight's shield was broken.

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Speaker 1: To joust again would be to court defeat and death.

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Speaker 1: Yet the English Knight seized another lance and prepared for battle.

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Speaker 1: His French opponent instead dismounted and walked towards him, chivalrously,

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Speaker 1: refusing to take advantage. The fight was over. The English

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Speaker 1: Knight and the French Knight became lifelong friends. It's a

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Speaker 1: charming story beloved by the chroniclers, and one which reminds

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Speaker 1: us of the chivalric code of honor they loved to celebrate.

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Speaker 1: Two days later, the armies would meet again. The result

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Speaker 1: would be remembered for a very different reason. I'm Tim

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Speaker 1: Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. Nearly seven hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago, the English King Edward the third and the

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Speaker 1: French King Philip sixth were at war. It doesn't really

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Speaker 1: matter why. All you need to know is that King

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Speaker 1: Edward was claiming to be the rightful ruler not only

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Speaker 1: of England but of France. His richer, larger, more powerful neighbor.

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Speaker 1: He had destroyed King Philip's French navy. He had spent

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Speaker 1: six weeks cutting a bloody sway the cross northern France,

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Speaker 1: his soldiers raping, murdering, and pillaging their way through French cities,

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Speaker 1: in a demonstration that the French King Philip wasn't much

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Speaker 1: of a king at all if he couldn't protect his

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Speaker 1: own subjects from the English invaders. It had taken time

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Speaker 1: for King Philip to assemble his response, but eventually a

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Speaker 1: mighty army of French knights was chasing Edward's smaller English

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Speaker 1: force across France, gathering strength as they went. Philip's knights

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Speaker 1: were terrifying shock troops, heavily armored men on powerful horses,

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Speaker 1: able to charge en mass with crushing force while being

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Speaker 1: impervious to all but the fiercest or most accurate blows.

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Speaker 1: They were also rich, powerful men to afford the horse,

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Speaker 1: the armor, and the support crew he had to be.

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Speaker 1: The English archers weren't rich or powerful, and there was

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Speaker 1: no tidal estuary to protect them from the French cavalry

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Speaker 1: this time, just a long, steady, grassy slope stretching away

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Speaker 1: beneath where they were sitting resting from digging themselves some

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Speaker 1: fortifications and waiting for the French to show up. The

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Speaker 1: view was even better from the windmill behind them, from

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Speaker 1: where the English King Edward would survey the battlefield in

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Speaker 1: between giving pep talks to his men. Those pep talks

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Speaker 1: were sorely needed. They knew that when the French army

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Speaker 1: caught up with them, the enemy would be thirsty for revenge.

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Speaker 1: And although the English had picked the battle field, the

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Speaker 1: French had home advantage, better equipment, and vastly superior numbers.

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Speaker 1: Both sides had reason to be confident. For one of them,

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Speaker 1: that confidence was utterly misplaced. I'm fascinated by the battle

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Speaker 1: that was about to unfold. In some ways, it was

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Speaker 1: very much of its time. In other ways, it offers

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Speaker 1: us a very modern cautionary tale. Having crossed the river

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Speaker 1: in pursuit of the retreating English army, King Philip sent

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Speaker 1: out scouts to assess the situation. The scouts reported back

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Speaker 1: the English had taken up position on a low ridge

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Speaker 1: near the village of Cracy. The French, remember, had more

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Speaker 1: than three times as many nights, the medieval equivalent of

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Speaker 1: having three times as many tanks. The heavily armored French

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Speaker 1: cavalry had been the dominant military force in Western Europe

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Speaker 1: for the last five hundred years. The French also had

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Speaker 1: several all thousand crossbowmen from Genoa. These were experienced mercenary troops.

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Speaker 1: The Genoese were a deadly strike force, equipped not only

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Speaker 1: with the murderously effective crossbow, but with large, specialized shields

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Speaker 1: with spiked bottoms. The crossbow men would jam the spike

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Speaker 1: into the ground, letting the shield serve as cover behind

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Speaker 1: this portable wall. This unit of hired killers was a

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Speaker 1: well equipped, well drilled machine. But despite his advantages, King

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Speaker 1: Philip of France had reason to be wary. The English

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Speaker 1: Knights were supported by five thousand well trained archers armed

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Speaker 1: with longbows. The longbow was a simple weapon, but it

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Speaker 1: took skill to make and skill to use. Longbows were

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Speaker 1: crafted from a single piece of u with the strong

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Speaker 1: golden heartwood facing the archer and the buttery, stretchy sapwood

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Speaker 1: facing the enemy. Not as complex or as powerful as

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Speaker 1: a crossbow, perhaps, but easy to carry and quick to draw,

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Speaker 1: and the English archers had had all day to prepare

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Speaker 1: the ground. Philip scouts reported that the archers were standing

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Speaker 1: behind a line of spikes that would break up any

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Speaker 1: cavalry charge. What's more, the French army was spread out,

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Speaker 1: marching in a long column towards the English, with latecomers

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Speaker 1: and supplies miles behind the special spikes. Shields for the

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Speaker 1: Genoese crossbowmen, for example, were back with the baggage, and

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Speaker 1: after marching all that long summer's day alongside rich French

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Speaker 1: nobles relaxing on their horses, one could only speculate about

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Speaker 1: the mood amongst the Genoese. So as his sprawling army

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Speaker 1: continued its rapid march towards the battlefield, King Philip sought

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Speaker 1: the advice of his most trusted counselor, Henrie Lemoyne. Your majesty,

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Speaker 1: your soldiers have been on the road all day. Let

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Speaker 1: us not now charge into the setting sun. We should

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Speaker 1: halt and eat and rest. To morrow we shall attack

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Speaker 1: in the name of God and Saint George. King Philip agreed.

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Speaker 1: He gave the order to halt, and what followed was chaos.

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Speaker 1: Here's a French author, Jean Froissart, writing a few years

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Speaker 1: after the event. At this command, the front ranks halted,

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Speaker 1: but those behind continued to advance, saying they would not

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Speaker 1: stop until they had caught up with the leaders. And

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Speaker 1: when the leaders saw the others coming, they went on also.

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Speaker 1: So pride and vanity took charge of events. Each wanted

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Speaker 1: to outshine his companions, regardless of the advice of the

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Speaker 1: gallant Lamoine. Remember that joust, Remember the spirit of chivalry.

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Speaker 1: No French knight wanted to get a reputation for cowardice.

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Speaker 1: No French knight wanted to have his honor question because

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Speaker 1: he had hung back while others had forged ahead. King

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Speaker 1: Philip wanted his army to rest before the battle. The army, however,

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Speaker 1: had its own ideas. Was the French army determined to

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Speaker 1: ignore King Philip's orders? It certainly acted that way, but

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Speaker 1: there was something more subtle going on. In the nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the economist Thomas Shelling became fascinated by

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Speaker 1: the connections between the motivations of individuals and the group

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Speaker 1: dynamics that emerged from those motivations. He had been struck

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Speaker 1: by a strange experience when he had been invited to

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Speaker 1: give a prestigious lecture in front of a large audience.

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Speaker 1: As he stood in the wings with a microphone being

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Speaker 1: clipped to his lapel, he couldn't see a single person

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Speaker 1: in the lecture theater. Row after row was empty. I

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Speaker 1: was puzzled when my host walked on stage. No added

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Speaker 1: to the rows of empty seats and went through the

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Speaker 1: motions of introducing me. Resisting slightly, I was pushed gently

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Speaker 1: out of the wings and toward the rostra. There were

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Speaker 1: eight hundred people in the hall, densely packed from the

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Speaker 1: thirteenth row to the distant rear. War Afterwards, I asked

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Speaker 1: my hosts why they had arranged the seating that way.

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Speaker 1: They hadn't. There were no seating arrangements and no ushers.

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Speaker 1: The arrangement was voluntary and could only reflect the preferences

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Speaker 1: of the audience. What were those preferences, Shelling could only guess.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps people wanted to be seated as far as possible

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Speaker 1: away from the stage, in which case the result was

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Speaker 1: just fine. But more likely people didn't actually want to

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Speaker 1: be so far away from the stage. They merely wanted

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Speaker 1: to be closer than others to the exit so they

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Speaker 1: could make a quick getaway, or fearing that Professor Shelling

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Speaker 1: might start calling on audience members to answer questions, about

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Speaker 1: economic theory. They simply preferred not to be conspicuously out

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Speaker 1: in front of the crowd. In those cases, everyone would

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Speaker 1: be happier if the rear twelve rows were roped off,

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Speaker 1: forcing the entire audience closer to the stage. Shelling's point

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Speaker 1: was not about the optimal seating arrangements for academic lectures.

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Speaker 1: That was trivial. It was the realization that perfectly ordinary

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Speaker 1: individual motives can lead to the emergence of quite unexpected

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Speaker 1: group behavior. Nobody planned for Shelling to be speaking to

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Speaker 1: his audience across a moat of empty seats, but that's

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Speaker 1: what happened. So in what other circumstances might strange outcomes

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Speaker 1: emerge from apparently innocuous individual decisions. This question was not

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Speaker 1: a trivial one. Shelling served as a senior advisor to

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Speaker 1: the US government, thinking hard about the problem of nuclear

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Speaker 1: deterrance and all the ways in which deterrance could backfire,

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Speaker 1: for example, when leaders lose control of events. Shelling's work

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Speaker 1: had inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy of Nuclear Armaged

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Speaker 1: and Doctor Strangelove. Shelling had even spent an afternoon brainstorming

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Speaker 1: with Kubrick about how a war might accidentally begin. If

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Speaker 1: you've seen the film, you may recall that the trouble

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Speaker 1: is started by a belligerent mid ranking officer, despite the

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Speaker 1: best efforts of the leaders of the USA and Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union to slow things down. The command structure of a

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Speaker 1: cold war nuclear strike force is very different from the

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Speaker 1: command structure of a fourteenth century feudal army, but still

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Speaker 1: King Philip might have recognized the same energy. Tom Shelling

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Speaker 1: eventually won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his ideas,

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Speaker 1: which were collected in a book titled Micromotives and Macro Behavior.

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Speaker 1: The links between micromotives and macro behavior can be complex,

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Speaker 1: but it's a good idea to try to understand them

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Speaker 1: if you want to lead an army. When the French

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Speaker 1: chronicler Jean Froissar wrote his account of the chaotic French March,

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Speaker 1: it could have come right out of Shelling's book. King

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Speaker 1: Philip Recoll had ordered his army to stop and rest overnight,

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Speaker 1: and the army had not stopped yet. Frassar didn't say

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Speaker 1: that the French army wanted to fight at once. In fact,

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Speaker 1: the army as a whole didn't have any coherent desire

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Speaker 1: at all, Frassar instead focused on individuals. The rear ranks

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Speaker 1: refused to stop until they had caught the leaders, while

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Speaker 1: the leading ranks refused to be caught. Nobody wanted to

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Speaker 1: charge unprepared at an entrenched enemy. They just didn't want

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Speaker 1: to be vulnerable to the accusation of cowardice, of hanging

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Speaker 1: back while their peers advanced. At Tom Shelling's lecture, nobody

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Speaker 1: had wanted to sit at the front. This time, nobody

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Speaker 1: wanted to stop at the back. Because of the individual

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Speaker 1: behavior of French nights. The French army as a whole

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Speaker 1: simply would not and could not stop. It ended up

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Speaker 1: at the bottom of the hill, milling around in plain

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Speaker 1: view of the bemused English archers. So King Philip decided

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Speaker 1: he had no alternative to give the order to attack.

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Speaker 1: As the summer afternoon began to cool, the English gazed

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Speaker 1: down the hill at the French army, gradually assembling. With

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Speaker 1: the French knights still gathering, King Philip sent forth his

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Speaker 1: elite Genoese crossbowmen to soften up the English archers. The

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Speaker 1: Genoese can't have been impressed. They'd been carrying their heavy

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Speaker 1: crossbows all day, they hadn't had a chance to rest

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Speaker 1: or eat, and now their employers, the French nobility, wanted

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Speaker 1: them to wipe out the English long so that the

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Speaker 1: French knights could get down to the real business of

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Speaker 1: fighting the English knights. Worst of all, they hadn't had

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Speaker 1: a chance to retrieve their shields from back in the

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Speaker 1: French army's baggage wagons. As the English warily watched the

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Speaker 1: Genoese approach, a sudden, spectacular summer shower passed across the battlefield.

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Speaker 1: It was a bit of luck for the English archers,

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Speaker 1: who could easily unstring and restring their simple longbows, keeping

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Speaker 1: their bowstrings dry under their hats. The Genoese crossbows, far

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Speaker 1: more complex tools, could not be so easily dismantled. Their

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Speaker 1: strings got wet, loosening them and reducing their range. And

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Speaker 1: as the Genoese continued their approach across the softened earth,

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Speaker 1: the English archers must have been delighted when they noticed

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Speaker 1: that the crossbowmen hadn't brought their shields. The English archers

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Speaker 1: watched them halt and load their crossbows, perhaps because of

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Speaker 1: the wet bowstring, or perhaps because the shieldless Genoese were

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Speaker 1: slightly shy of getting too close. The crossbowmen stopped just

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Speaker 1: a little too far away. The first volley of several

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Speaker 1: clouds and crossbow bolts fell short of the English lines.

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Speaker 1: There was no second volley. His froass off. The English

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Speaker 1: archers took one pace forward and poured out their arrows

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Speaker 1: on the Genoese so thickly and evenly that they fell

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Speaker 1: like snow. When they felt those arrows piercing their arms,

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Speaker 1: their heads, their faces. The Genoese, who had never met

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Speaker 1: such archers before, were thrown into confusion. Many threw down

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Speaker 1: their crossbows. They began to fall back. King Philip was enraged,

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Speaker 1: although he only had himself to blame. He never took

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Speaker 1: the crossbow men seriously, hadn't thought about how to use

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Speaker 1: them effectively, and doesn't seem to have been surprised that

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Speaker 1: they failed. He decided that it was time for the

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Speaker 1: real fighting to start, which meant a cavalry charge. The

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Speaker 1: contemptible crossbowmen had outlived their usefulness. Quick now kill all

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Speaker 1: that rabble they're only getting in our way. Hundreds of

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Speaker 1: the most eager French knights charged up the hill towards

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Speaker 1: the English hacking their way through the retreating Genoese as

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Speaker 1: they did, showing murderous scorn for their own allies. They

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Speaker 1: got what they exerned. Their charge was slowed by the chaos,

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Speaker 1: the rain soaked ground, the uphill slope, and foot deep

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Speaker 1: potholes that the English soldiers had been digging all day,

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Speaker 1: All the while five thousand English archers deluged with arrows.

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Speaker 1: The armored Knights were fairly well protected that their horses

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Speaker 1: were not. The charge faltered, then disintegrated just as it

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Speaker 1: reached the English lines. The English knights, fighting on foot,

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Speaker 1: drove the French back across the muddy battlefield, which was

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Speaker 1: already littered with dying horses and helpless men. By now,

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Speaker 1: the August sun was low in the sky. The English

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Speaker 1: position was still perilous. They were on foreign soil and

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Speaker 1: heavily outnumbered. It still wasn't too late for the French

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Speaker 1: to withdraw, regroup and plan a fresh attack in the morning.

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Speaker 1: But where was the glory in that forward road? King

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Speaker 1: John of Bohemia, he was one of King Philip's great

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Speaker 1: allies and a veteran of many battles. He was also

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Speaker 1: fifty years old and an infection had taken away his

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Speaker 1: eyesight more than a decade before. He wasn't going to

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Speaker 1: let that stop him. Here's Jean Froissar's account of the

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Speaker 1: great charge of the blind King of Bohemia. He said

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Speaker 1: to them about him, I require you to bring me

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Speaker 1: so far forward that I may strike one stroke with

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Speaker 1: my sword. They said they would do his commandment, and

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Speaker 1: to the intent that they should not lose him in

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Speaker 1: the press, they tied all their reins of their bridles

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Speaker 1: each to other, and so they went on their enemies.

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Speaker 1: King John's doomed charge onto the blades of an enemy

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Speaker 1: he couldn't even see it perfectly embodied both the courage

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Speaker 1: and the stupidity of the entire French cavalry. His frossart again.

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Speaker 1: The king was so far forward that he made many

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Speaker 1: strokes with his sword and fought violantly. And his company

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Speaker 1: ventured so far forward that they were there all slain.

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Speaker 1: And the next day they were found in the place

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Speaker 1: about the king, and all their horses tied to each other.

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Speaker 1: The fighting had been ferocious on both sides, but the

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Speaker 1: story had been the same. By the time the second

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Speaker 1: French charge had been struck, with twenty or thirty thousand

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Speaker 1: arrows and crossed the soft ground and the spikes and holes,

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Speaker 1: and the fallen men and horses. The impetus had been

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Speaker 1: completely lost. The English knights, fighting on foot around the

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Speaker 1: King's son, the Black Prince, repelled what was left of

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Speaker 1: the French. The French still had plenty of cavalry left.

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Speaker 1: Much of the French army was still in the process

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Speaker 1: of arriving on the battlefield, and in total the French

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Speaker 1: had eight thousand knights while the English had just over

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Speaker 1: two thousand. Each knight was eager for battle and glory,

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Speaker 1: and so a fresh attack emerged from the chaos, with

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Speaker 1: knights skillfully swinging their horses around at the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the hill to charge once more up through the mud,

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Speaker 1: over the bodies of the dying, and into the teeth

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Speaker 1: of five thousand English archers. The result was no different

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Speaker 1: to the first two charges, chaos, dead horses, armored then helpless,

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Speaker 1: and the faltering French charge thrown back by the English knights.

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Speaker 1: After some tough hand to hand fighting across the battlefield,

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Speaker 1: unhorsed French knights slipped and floundered in the mud. Some

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Speaker 1: drowned as the slime filled their helmets. The French kept

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Speaker 1: ignoring the archers, partly because they were protected by pits

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Speaker 1: and spikes, but partly because the rules of chivalry demanded

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Speaker 1: that night fight with night. The first charge had failed,

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Speaker 1: the second charge had failed, the third charge had failed.

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Speaker 1: What next? King John of Bohemia may have perished, but

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Speaker 1: his stubborn spirit lived on. The French knights charged again.

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Speaker 1: In the historical graphic novel Crasy, one English archer sums

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Speaker 1: up the madness in a short sentence, They're just not

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Speaker 1: getting it. Six hundred and seventy two years after the

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Speaker 1: Battle of Kracy, the Harvard Business Review twenty eighteen published

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Speaker 1: a long article titled The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture.

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Speaker 1: In many ways, it's the kind of beige corporate speak

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Speaker 1: you might expect with a two by two matrix, a

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Speaker 1: list of the eight distinctive styles of corporate culture, and

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Speaker 1: over eighty mentions of leader or leadership. It feels a

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Speaker 1: long way from the mud and the blood, and the

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Speaker 1: dead horses and the dead men on the battlefield of Cracy.

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Speaker 1: But the management gurus in the Harvard Business Review actually

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Speaker 1: pinpoint the French problem with uncanny accuracy. What is culture?

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Speaker 1: They ask first, it's a group phenomenon. Culture is something

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Speaker 1: you share with other people. Second, it's pervasive, it's all

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Speaker 1: around you, like water is all around a fish. Third,

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Speaker 1: it's enduring. Culture doesn't change quickly. And fourth, it's implicit.

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Speaker 1: People say stuff and think stuff and do stuff without

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Speaker 1: articulating why. The French and the English nobility had a

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Speaker 1: common culture in many ways, just think of that celebrated

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Speaker 1: chivalric joust. But the English were proving that given enough time,

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Speaker 1: culture can change. For example, the English had once shared

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Speaker 1: the French view that bows were the weapons of craven whimps.

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Speaker 1: An old song mocked the archer as a coward who

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Speaker 1: dare not come close to his foe, and the Catholic

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Speaker 1: Church had condemned the murderous crossbow. The French had brought

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Speaker 1: bowmen to the battle, but they didn't take them seriously.

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Speaker 1: If they had, King Philip would never have sent them

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Speaker 1: into battle without their special shields, and he would never

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Speaker 1: have sent a cavalry charge right over the top of them.

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Speaker 1: In contrast, King Edward the Third built his tactics at

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Speaker 1: Kracy around the longbow, but that wasn't a decision made

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Speaker 1: on the spur of the moment. He had long seen

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Speaker 1: the longbow as his best chance to defeat France, a richer, larger,

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Speaker 1: more populous neighbor, and to embrace the longbow meant reshaping

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Speaker 1: the culture. Edward forgave the debts of the crafters who

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Speaker 1: made the longbows and their arrows symbolically that was much

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Speaker 1: more important than just paying them a bonus, and he

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Speaker 1: commanded that all men over the age of twelve should

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Speaker 1: practice archery for two hours after church each Sunday, on

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Speaker 1: pain of death. King Edward made that law nine years

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Speaker 1: before the Battle of Crazy. The French attitude to their

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Speaker 1: crossbow men was one of contempt. The English attitude to

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Speaker 1: their longbowmen was one of respect, but that respect had

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Speaker 1: been carefully cultivated by the king. As I say, culture

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Speaker 1: can change, but it takes time. The French nobility didn't

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Speaker 1: have that time. After five centuries of proven success in

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Speaker 1: which heavily armored charges had smashed enemy after enemy, they

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Speaker 1: were suddenly having to rethink. That's not easy because the

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Speaker 1: chivalric culture constrained the way the French nobles saw the

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Speaker 1: situation and their reactions to what they saw. And like

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Speaker 1: any culture, it was so deeply ingrained that it was

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Speaker 1: hard even to perceive those constraints, let alone discuss them.

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Speaker 1: They were focused on acts of individual valor, noble knight

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Speaker 1: against noble knight, that didn't leave much room for deep

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Speaker 1: with archers hiding behind spikes, or opponents who let their

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Speaker 1: horses graze while they fought on foot, or even for

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Speaker 1: a coordinated approach to combat. Nobody on the French side

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Speaker 1: seems to have said, maybe we shouldn't keep charging up

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Speaker 1: that mudslide. Nobody seems to have said, if they keep

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Speaker 1: shooting the horses from under us, shouldn't we attack on foot.

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Speaker 1: Nobody seems to have said, these guys are outnumbered and isolated.

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Speaker 1: Times on our side, what's the hurry to attack at all?

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Speaker 1: It wasn't that the French knights had the wrong answers.

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Speaker 1: It was that they weren't even able to ask the

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Speaker 1: right questions. The French tactics were disastrous, and it's natural

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Speaker 1: to leap to the conclusion that the French culture of

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Speaker 1: chivalry and feudalism that produced those tactics was a foolish culture.

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Speaker 1: That's too easy. After all, French heavy cavalry had been

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Speaker 1: dominant for hundreds of years. Until that moment, the entire

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Speaker 1: feudal culture had grown up around the need to meet

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Speaker 1: the cost of putting these expensively equipped warriors in the field.

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Speaker 1: If your shock troops are also the nobleman, the richest

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Speaker 1: members of your society, you need a way to motivate

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Speaker 1: them to put themselves in harm's way. Hence the chivalric

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Speaker 1: code of honor and French knights who would quite literally

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Speaker 1: rather die than lose their reputation. In the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: the historian Lynn White Junior famously argued that the entire

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Speaker 1: edifice of feudalism rested on the appearance of the stirrup,

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Speaker 1: a technology which made cavalry more effective. You don't need

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Speaker 1: to go quite that far to see that the French

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Speaker 1: culture of chivalry was bound up with a French reliance

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Speaker 1: on heavily armored knights, and that for five hundred years,

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Speaker 1: that culture and that reliance had delivered success after success.

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Speaker 1: It didn't because, as the Harvard Business Review could tell you,

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Speaker 1: the thing about culture is that it isn't easy to change.

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Speaker 1: It's tempting to think that this story is only relevant

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Speaker 1: to a bunch of stupid, rich French nobles seven centuries ago,

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Speaker 1: but is it? In twenty eighteen, I attended a barn

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Speaker 1: storming lecture given by a fellow journalist, the then editor

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Speaker 1: in chief of the Washington Post, Marty Baron. I write

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Speaker 1: for another great old newspaper, the Financial Times, and I

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00:28:45,970 --> 00:28:48,250
Speaker 1: wanted to hear what mister Baron would say about the

395
00:28:48,330 --> 00:28:54,490
Speaker 1: challenges newspapers were facing. Those challenges were immense. New technology

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Speaker 1: had changed everything. New rivals, who didn't have to pay

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Speaker 1: for the old print infrastructure, were offering cheap viral news.

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Speaker 1: Online advertising revenues critical for any newspaper, and especially for

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Speaker 1: a newspaper with a strong local had been cannibalized by Craigslist, Google,

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Speaker 1: and Facebook. Cranks and extremists could find a large and

401
00:29:17,490 --> 00:29:22,650
Speaker 1: profitable audience armed only with the social media platform, and

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00:29:22,810 --> 00:29:26,130
Speaker 1: many of the public had lost faith in the mainstream media.

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Speaker 1: Nearly half of American voters thought the news media fabricated

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Speaker 1: stories about the then president. A substantial minority opposed the

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Speaker 1: freedom of the press and considered accurate but unwelcome stories

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Speaker 1: to be fake news, just like the French Nights in

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Speaker 1: thirteen forty six. Newspapers were facing new competitors using new

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Speaker 1: technologies and new tactics. So what did mister Barons suggest? Simple,

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Speaker 1: he said, just do our job. He cited The Washington

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Speaker 1: Post's core principles, principles which date back to the nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirties when the present incarnation of the newspaper was launched.

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Speaker 1: As I sat there, I was genuinely moved, absolutely back

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Speaker 1: to basics. Charge once again. But then I was part

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Speaker 1: of the same culture. It was only after I took

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Speaker 1: some time to think that I realized mister Baron had

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Speaker 1: simply said, in the face of disasters, let's keep doing

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Speaker 1: exactly what we're doing. And I, a fellow newspaper journalist,

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Speaker 1: had thought this to be an inspirational message. The flower

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00:30:41,250 --> 00:30:44,050
Speaker 1: of the French nobility would have been proud of us both.

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Speaker 1: But culture, remember, is pervasive, shared and implicit. No wander,

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Speaker 1: it's slow to change. When they encountered the English Longbow,

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00:30:58,850 --> 00:31:02,570
Speaker 1: the French discovered, over the course of a disastrous summer evening,

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Speaker 1: that their basic military approach had become obsolete. It was

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Speaker 1: time for an instant rethink. But our own culture couldn't

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00:31:13,410 --> 00:31:22,090
Speaker 1: change that quickly, why would dairs? As twilight deepened over

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00:31:22,130 --> 00:31:28,170
Speaker 1: the battlefield, the French knights charged again and again and again,

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00:31:29,530 --> 00:31:34,370
Speaker 1: fifteen times in total. Each attempt was more hopeless than

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00:31:34,410 --> 00:31:38,850
Speaker 1: the last. When darkness fell, King Edward set fire to

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00:31:38,890 --> 00:31:43,490
Speaker 1: the windmill that had served as his observation post. As

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00:31:43,490 --> 00:31:48,090
Speaker 1: the building burned, the English archers pulled out long daggers

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00:31:48,810 --> 00:31:53,530
Speaker 1: and roamed the battlefield in the flickering orange light, slipping

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00:31:53,570 --> 00:31:59,730
Speaker 1: the blades into the vulnerable armpits or islets of fallen nights.

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00:32:01,490 --> 00:32:06,370
Speaker 1: When they found any in difficulty, whether they were counts, barons, knights,

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00:32:06,450 --> 00:32:11,370
Speaker 1: or squires, they killed them without mercy. Because of this,

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00:32:12,010 --> 00:32:17,930
Speaker 1: many were slaughtered that evening, regardless of their rank. At cracy,

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00:32:18,570 --> 00:32:22,970
Speaker 1: a glimpse of a ruthless, impersonal future, fought a glimpse

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00:32:23,010 --> 00:32:27,570
Speaker 1: of a heroic, mythical past, and left it bleeding out

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00:32:27,610 --> 00:32:33,290
Speaker 1: into the mud. Thousands of French soldiers died. Then the

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00:32:33,410 --> 00:32:36,530
Speaker 1: day after the battle, the English army killed another four

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00:32:36,610 --> 00:32:40,130
Speaker 1: thousand French, many of who may have been civilians who

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00:32:40,130 --> 00:32:43,290
Speaker 1: got too close to the battlefield or presumed that the

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00:32:43,370 --> 00:32:48,010
Speaker 1: victorious soldiers were French not English. From the ranks of

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00:32:48,170 --> 00:32:53,690
Speaker 1: eight thousand French knights, fifteen hundred noblemen were slain, nine

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00:32:53,730 --> 00:32:59,610
Speaker 1: of them princes. All over France noble families began murderous

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00:32:59,610 --> 00:33:04,850
Speaker 1: squabbles over succession. The English are generally reckoned to have

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00:33:04,970 --> 00:33:09,050
Speaker 1: lost fewer than a hundred men. The scale of their

447
00:33:09,250 --> 00:33:13,530
Speaker 1: victory and of the French defeat was so colossal, so total,

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00:33:13,890 --> 00:33:17,650
Speaker 1: that they could hardly comprehend it. They set off to

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00:33:17,690 --> 00:33:20,610
Speaker 1: conquer the port of Calais, which they were to hold

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00:33:20,650 --> 00:33:25,250
Speaker 1: for the next two hundred and twelve years. King Philip

451
00:33:25,370 --> 00:33:29,690
Speaker 1: himself fled the battlefield, wounded in the jaw by an arrow,

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00:33:30,010 --> 00:33:34,970
Speaker 1: and appalled at the disaster. Accompanied by just five knights,

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00:33:35,010 --> 00:33:37,970
Speaker 1: he knocked on the door of Labrory Castle a few

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00:33:37,970 --> 00:33:45,050
Speaker 1: miles away. Open your gate quickly, it is the unfortunate

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00:33:45,130 --> 00:33:51,050
Speaker 1: King of France. Unfortunate. Indeed, King Philip's reputation did not recover.

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00:33:52,130 --> 00:33:55,770
Speaker 1: Three years later. He was dead, and the French nobility

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00:33:55,850 --> 00:33:59,090
Speaker 1: did not much miss him. But they should have blamed

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00:33:59,130 --> 00:34:04,930
Speaker 1: themselves for the catastrophe. The French knights were no angels,

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00:34:05,690 --> 00:34:09,650
Speaker 1: just as the Genoese crossbowmen the Allies. They act down,

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00:34:10,850 --> 00:34:16,210
Speaker 1: but their culture emphasized valor and courage. Five hundred years

461
00:34:16,210 --> 00:34:19,330
Speaker 1: of success had led them to forget that the chief

462
00:34:19,410 --> 00:34:26,690
Speaker 1: aim of battle isn't honor its victory. Their English opponents

463
00:34:26,730 --> 00:34:31,090
Speaker 1: brought new technology and new tactics, and the French Knights

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00:34:31,290 --> 00:34:57,490
Speaker 1: just couldn't adapt in time. For a list of our sources,

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00:34:57,730 --> 00:35:12,410
Speaker 1: please see the show notes at Tim Harford dot com.

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00:35:12,530 --> 00:35:16,570
Speaker 1: Portionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

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00:35:17,170 --> 00:35:20,690
Speaker 1: It's produced by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino

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00:35:20,890 --> 00:35:24,410
Speaker 1: and Emily Vaughan. The sound design and original music is

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00:35:24,450 --> 00:35:28,050
Speaker 1: the work of Pascal Wise. It features the voice talents

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00:35:28,090 --> 00:35:32,370
Speaker 1: of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Harford, and Rufus Wright.

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00:35:32,850 --> 00:35:35,770
Speaker 1: The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work

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00:35:35,810 --> 00:35:40,930
Speaker 1: of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John schnars, Julia Barton,

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00:35:41,290 --> 00:35:46,570
Speaker 1: Kylie mcgliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano,

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00:35:46,930 --> 00:35:51,610
Speaker 1: Danielle Lakhan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a production

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00:35:51,730 --> 00:35:55,410
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember

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00:35:55,450 --> 00:35:59,090
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review, tell a friend, tell two friends,

477
00:35:59,250 --> 00:36:01,290
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear the show, adds free

478
00:36:01,330 --> 00:36:05,690
Speaker 1: and listen to four exclusive Cautionary Tales shorts. Then sign

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00:36:05,810 --> 00:36:09,410
Speaker 1: up for Pushkin Plus on the show page and Apple Podcast,

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00:36:09,650 --> 00:36:12,570
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus,