WEBVTT - The French Knight’s Guide to Corporate Culture 0:00:15.370 --> 0:00:26.490 Pushkin. On the north bank of the estuary were assembled 0:00:26.570 --> 0:00:31.370 the English army, a little over two thousand knights, supported 0:00:31.410 --> 0:00:36.090 by five thousand archers. On the south bank the larger 0:00:36.130 --> 0:00:39.450 force of the French eight thousand knights and thousands of 0:00:39.490 --> 0:00:43.650 crossbowmen alongside them. The French army had been chasing the 0:00:43.770 --> 0:00:47.370 English for weeks, but wisely decided not to try to 0:00:47.410 --> 0:00:52.610 cross the salty marshes within range of those English archers. Instead, 0:00:53.570 --> 0:00:58.010 between the opposing armies, a single French knight, like a 0:00:58.170 --> 0:01:03.170 hero from Arthurian legend, galloped out towards the English, a 0:01:03.170 --> 0:01:06.250 tiny figure in the middle of the tidal flats, he 0:01:06.370 --> 0:01:10.650 shouted out his challenge. Following the traditions of courtly love. 0:01:10.930 --> 0:01:13.890 The French knight was carrying the token of some fair 0:01:13.970 --> 0:01:16.610 lady and wanted to prove that he was worthy of her. 0:01:17.650 --> 0:01:21.610 Did any Englishman dare thrice to joust with him? In 0:01:21.690 --> 0:01:26.810 full view of both armies. There was a moment of silence, 0:01:28.090 --> 0:01:30.650 broken only by the flapping of the pennants in the 0:01:30.690 --> 0:01:36.810 sea breeze, and then an English knight roared out his acceptance. 0:01:40.930 --> 0:01:43.170 The two men took up their position on the damp 0:01:43.410 --> 0:01:48.490 salty sands, in front of the cheering soldiers. They jousted 0:01:48.530 --> 0:01:55.370 once picked fresh lances, wheeled around, and jousted a second time. 0:01:57.210 --> 0:02:01.250 In the second exchange, the English Knight's shield was broken. 0:02:02.530 --> 0:02:06.610 To joust again would be to court defeat and death. 0:02:07.970 --> 0:02:11.650 Yet the English Knight seized another lance and prepared for battle. 0:02:12.850 --> 0:02:19.250 His French opponent instead dismounted and walked towards him, chivalrously, 0:02:19.370 --> 0:02:26.130 refusing to take advantage. The fight was over. The English 0:02:26.170 --> 0:02:30.130 Knight and the French Knight became lifelong friends. It's a 0:02:30.210 --> 0:02:34.050 charming story beloved by the chroniclers, and one which reminds 0:02:34.090 --> 0:02:37.450 us of the chivalric code of honor they loved to celebrate. 0:02:38.890 --> 0:02:43.690 Two days later, the armies would meet again. The result 0:02:43.770 --> 0:02:49.250 would be remembered for a very different reason. I'm Tim 0:02:49.290 --> 0:03:15.730 Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales. Nearly seven hundred 0:03:15.810 --> 0:03:18.610 years ago, the English King Edward the third and the 0:03:18.650 --> 0:03:22.170 French King Philip sixth were at war. It doesn't really 0:03:22.210 --> 0:03:24.770 matter why. All you need to know is that King 0:03:24.930 --> 0:03:27.650 Edward was claiming to be the rightful ruler not only 0:03:27.690 --> 0:03:32.450 of England but of France. His richer, larger, more powerful neighbor. 0:03:32.970 --> 0:03:36.250 He had destroyed King Philip's French navy. He had spent 0:03:36.370 --> 0:03:39.690 six weeks cutting a bloody sway the cross northern France, 0:03:40.570 --> 0:03:45.370 his soldiers raping, murdering, and pillaging their way through French cities, 0:03:45.850 --> 0:03:48.770 in a demonstration that the French King Philip wasn't much 0:03:48.770 --> 0:03:50.930 of a king at all if he couldn't protect his 0:03:50.970 --> 0:03:55.690 own subjects from the English invaders. It had taken time 0:03:55.730 --> 0:03:59.370 for King Philip to assemble his response, but eventually a 0:03:59.570 --> 0:04:03.850 mighty army of French knights was chasing Edward's smaller English 0:04:03.850 --> 0:04:08.730 force across France, gathering strength as they went. Philip's knights 0:04:08.770 --> 0:04:13.050 were terrifying shock troops, heavily armored men on powerful horses, 0:04:13.330 --> 0:04:17.290 able to charge en mass with crushing force while being 0:04:17.330 --> 0:04:20.770 impervious to all but the fiercest or most accurate blows. 0:04:21.770 --> 0:04:25.810 They were also rich, powerful men to afford the horse, 0:04:26.170 --> 0:04:29.010 the armor, and the support crew he had to be. 0:04:31.250 --> 0:04:34.370 The English archers weren't rich or powerful, and there was 0:04:34.410 --> 0:04:37.450 no tidal estuary to protect them from the French cavalry 0:04:37.490 --> 0:04:42.290 this time, just a long, steady, grassy slope stretching away 0:04:42.330 --> 0:04:45.450 beneath where they were sitting resting from digging themselves some 0:04:45.570 --> 0:04:49.930 fortifications and waiting for the French to show up. The 0:04:50.050 --> 0:04:52.650 view was even better from the windmill behind them, from 0:04:52.690 --> 0:04:55.810 where the English King Edward would survey the battlefield in 0:04:55.930 --> 0:04:59.970 between giving pep talks to his men. Those pep talks 0:05:00.010 --> 0:05:02.970 were sorely needed. They knew that when the French army 0:05:03.010 --> 0:05:06.290 caught up with them, the enemy would be thirsty for revenge. 0:05:07.050 --> 0:05:09.810 And although the English had picked the battle field, the 0:05:09.890 --> 0:05:14.690 French had home advantage, better equipment, and vastly superior numbers. 0:05:15.690 --> 0:05:19.690 Both sides had reason to be confident. For one of them, 0:05:19.770 --> 0:05:24.770 that confidence was utterly misplaced. I'm fascinated by the battle 0:05:24.850 --> 0:05:27.570 that was about to unfold. In some ways, it was 0:05:27.730 --> 0:05:31.010 very much of its time. In other ways, it offers 0:05:31.090 --> 0:05:37.850 us a very modern cautionary tale. Having crossed the river 0:05:37.970 --> 0:05:41.490 in pursuit of the retreating English army, King Philip sent 0:05:41.490 --> 0:05:45.530 out scouts to assess the situation. The scouts reported back 0:05:46.490 --> 0:05:49.170 the English had taken up position on a low ridge 0:05:49.330 --> 0:05:53.770 near the village of Cracy. The French, remember, had more 0:05:53.770 --> 0:05:56.970 than three times as many nights, the medieval equivalent of 0:05:57.010 --> 0:06:00.890 having three times as many tanks. The heavily armored French 0:06:00.930 --> 0:06:04.370 cavalry had been the dominant military force in Western Europe 0:06:04.690 --> 0:06:08.690 for the last five hundred years. The French also had 0:06:08.730 --> 0:06:14.170 several all thousand crossbowmen from Genoa. These were experienced mercenary troops. 0:06:14.850 --> 0:06:18.290 The Genoese were a deadly strike force, equipped not only 0:06:18.330 --> 0:06:23.010 with the murderously effective crossbow, but with large, specialized shields 0:06:23.050 --> 0:06:26.450 with spiked bottoms. The crossbow men would jam the spike 0:06:26.490 --> 0:06:30.450 into the ground, letting the shield serve as cover behind 0:06:30.530 --> 0:06:34.250 this portable wall. This unit of hired killers was a 0:06:34.330 --> 0:06:40.490 well equipped, well drilled machine. But despite his advantages, King 0:06:40.530 --> 0:06:43.850 Philip of France had reason to be wary. The English 0:06:43.930 --> 0:06:48.050 Knights were supported by five thousand well trained archers armed 0:06:48.050 --> 0:06:51.410 with longbows. The longbow was a simple weapon, but it 0:06:51.450 --> 0:06:55.170 took skill to make and skill to use. Longbows were 0:06:55.170 --> 0:06:58.410 crafted from a single piece of u with the strong 0:06:58.690 --> 0:07:03.090 golden heartwood facing the archer and the buttery, stretchy sapwood 0:07:03.250 --> 0:07:07.210 facing the enemy. Not as complex or as powerful as 0:07:07.210 --> 0:07:10.770 a crossbow, perhaps, but easy to carry and quick to draw, 0:07:11.210 --> 0:07:13.570 and the English archers had had all day to prepare 0:07:13.570 --> 0:07:17.650 the ground. Philip scouts reported that the archers were standing 0:07:17.690 --> 0:07:20.410 behind a line of spikes that would break up any 0:07:20.450 --> 0:07:25.170 cavalry charge. What's more, the French army was spread out, 0:07:25.770 --> 0:07:29.530 marching in a long column towards the English, with latecomers 0:07:29.570 --> 0:07:33.850 and supplies miles behind the special spikes. Shields for the 0:07:33.890 --> 0:07:37.890 Genoese crossbowmen, for example, were back with the baggage, and 0:07:37.970 --> 0:07:41.690 after marching all that long summer's day alongside rich French 0:07:41.770 --> 0:07:45.570 nobles relaxing on their horses, one could only speculate about 0:07:45.610 --> 0:07:49.970 the mood amongst the Genoese. So as his sprawling army 0:07:50.050 --> 0:07:54.210 continued its rapid march towards the battlefield, King Philip sought 0:07:54.250 --> 0:07:58.970 the advice of his most trusted counselor, Henrie Lemoyne. Your majesty, 0:07:59.650 --> 0:08:02.570 your soldiers have been on the road all day. Let 0:08:02.650 --> 0:08:05.770 us not now charge into the setting sun. We should 0:08:05.770 --> 0:08:10.450 halt and eat and rest. To morrow we shall attack 0:08:10.490 --> 0:08:14.170 in the name of God and Saint George. King Philip agreed. 0:08:14.850 --> 0:08:20.050 He gave the order to halt, and what followed was chaos. 0:08:20.970 --> 0:08:24.690 Here's a French author, Jean Froissart, writing a few years 0:08:24.730 --> 0:08:28.810 after the event. At this command, the front ranks halted, 0:08:29.170 --> 0:08:32.290 but those behind continued to advance, saying they would not 0:08:32.370 --> 0:08:34.610 stop until they had caught up with the leaders. And 0:08:34.730 --> 0:08:37.330 when the leaders saw the others coming, they went on also. 0:08:38.010 --> 0:08:42.170 So pride and vanity took charge of events. Each wanted 0:08:42.170 --> 0:08:45.250 to outshine his companions, regardless of the advice of the 0:08:45.370 --> 0:08:51.170 gallant Lamoine. Remember that joust, Remember the spirit of chivalry. 0:08:51.930 --> 0:08:55.250 No French knight wanted to get a reputation for cowardice. 0:08:55.690 --> 0:08:58.650 No French knight wanted to have his honor question because 0:08:58.770 --> 0:09:02.570 he had hung back while others had forged ahead. King 0:09:02.610 --> 0:09:07.770 Philip wanted his army to rest before the battle. The army, however, 0:09:08.410 --> 0:09:15.610 had its own ideas. Was the French army determined to 0:09:15.650 --> 0:09:20.090 ignore King Philip's orders? It certainly acted that way, but 0:09:20.170 --> 0:09:24.010 there was something more subtle going on. In the nineteen 0:09:24.090 --> 0:09:28.490 sixties and seventies, the economist Thomas Shelling became fascinated by 0:09:28.490 --> 0:09:32.210 the connections between the motivations of individuals and the group 0:09:32.290 --> 0:09:36.290 dynamics that emerged from those motivations. He had been struck 0:09:36.330 --> 0:09:39.210 by a strange experience when he had been invited to 0:09:39.250 --> 0:09:42.370 give a prestigious lecture in front of a large audience. 0:09:42.930 --> 0:09:45.490 As he stood in the wings with a microphone being 0:09:45.530 --> 0:09:49.250 clipped to his lapel, he couldn't see a single person 0:09:49.290 --> 0:09:54.330 in the lecture theater. Row after row was empty. I 0:09:54.450 --> 0:09:57.890 was puzzled when my host walked on stage. No added 0:09:57.930 --> 0:10:00.010 to the rows of empty seats and went through the 0:10:00.050 --> 0:10:05.170 motions of introducing me. Resisting slightly, I was pushed gently 0:10:05.250 --> 0:10:08.610 out of the wings and toward the rostra. There were 0:10:08.650 --> 0:10:11.930 eight hundred people in the hall, densely packed from the 0:10:11.970 --> 0:10:16.690 thirteenth row to the distant rear. War Afterwards, I asked 0:10:16.690 --> 0:10:19.570 my hosts why they had arranged the seating that way. 0:10:20.210 --> 0:10:24.210 They hadn't. There were no seating arrangements and no ushers. 0:10:24.810 --> 0:10:28.610 The arrangement was voluntary and could only reflect the preferences 0:10:28.610 --> 0:10:33.170 of the audience. What were those preferences, Shelling could only guess. 0:10:33.930 --> 0:10:37.010 Perhaps people wanted to be seated as far as possible 0:10:37.050 --> 0:10:39.530 away from the stage, in which case the result was 0:10:39.570 --> 0:10:43.650 just fine. But more likely people didn't actually want to 0:10:43.690 --> 0:10:46.730 be so far away from the stage. They merely wanted 0:10:46.770 --> 0:10:49.610 to be closer than others to the exit so they 0:10:49.610 --> 0:10:53.610 could make a quick getaway, or fearing that Professor Shelling 0:10:53.730 --> 0:10:57.250 might start calling on audience members to answer questions, about 0:10:57.290 --> 0:11:01.850 economic theory. They simply preferred not to be conspicuously out 0:11:01.890 --> 0:11:05.890 in front of the crowd. In those cases, everyone would 0:11:05.930 --> 0:11:08.890 be happier if the rear twelve rows were roped off, 0:11:09.170 --> 0:11:14.530 forcing the entire audience closer to the stage. Shelling's point 0:11:14.570 --> 0:11:18.010 was not about the optimal seating arrangements for academic lectures. 0:11:18.330 --> 0:11:22.810 That was trivial. It was the realization that perfectly ordinary 0:11:22.930 --> 0:11:27.170 individual motives can lead to the emergence of quite unexpected 0:11:27.210 --> 0:11:31.290 group behavior. Nobody planned for Shelling to be speaking to 0:11:31.330 --> 0:11:35.250 his audience across a moat of empty seats, but that's 0:11:35.290 --> 0:11:40.770 what happened. So in what other circumstances might strange outcomes 0:11:40.810 --> 0:11:47.170 emerge from apparently innocuous individual decisions. This question was not 0:11:47.450 --> 0:11:51.450 a trivial one. Shelling served as a senior advisor to 0:11:51.490 --> 0:11:54.770 the US government, thinking hard about the problem of nuclear 0:11:54.810 --> 0:11:58.170 deterrance and all the ways in which deterrance could backfire, 0:11:58.770 --> 0:12:04.130 for example, when leaders lose control of events. Shelling's work 0:12:04.130 --> 0:12:08.970 had inspired Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy of Nuclear Armaged 0:12:09.130 --> 0:12:13.650 and Doctor Strangelove. Shelling had even spent an afternoon brainstorming 0:12:13.690 --> 0:12:18.090 with Kubrick about how a war might accidentally begin. If 0:12:18.090 --> 0:12:20.450 you've seen the film, you may recall that the trouble 0:12:20.530 --> 0:12:24.370 is started by a belligerent mid ranking officer, despite the 0:12:24.450 --> 0:12:27.450 best efforts of the leaders of the USA and Soviet 0:12:27.530 --> 0:12:32.930 Union to slow things down. The command structure of a 0:12:33.010 --> 0:12:36.170 cold war nuclear strike force is very different from the 0:12:36.170 --> 0:12:40.410 command structure of a fourteenth century feudal army, but still 0:12:41.130 --> 0:12:47.650 King Philip might have recognized the same energy. Tom Shelling 0:12:47.690 --> 0:12:51.570 eventually won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his ideas, 0:12:51.810 --> 0:12:56.690 which were collected in a book titled Micromotives and Macro Behavior. 0:12:57.690 --> 0:13:01.490 The links between micromotives and macro behavior can be complex, 0:13:01.930 --> 0:13:04.250 but it's a good idea to try to understand them 0:13:04.330 --> 0:13:07.450 if you want to lead an army. When the French 0:13:07.530 --> 0:13:11.530 chronicler Jean Froissar wrote his account of the chaotic French March, 0:13:11.930 --> 0:13:15.290 it could have come right out of Shelling's book. King 0:13:15.330 --> 0:13:19.090 Philip Recoll had ordered his army to stop and rest overnight, 0:13:19.730 --> 0:13:24.450 and the army had not stopped yet. Frassar didn't say 0:13:24.490 --> 0:13:28.010 that the French army wanted to fight at once. In fact, 0:13:28.090 --> 0:13:30.810 the army as a whole didn't have any coherent desire 0:13:30.890 --> 0:13:36.570 at all, Frassar instead focused on individuals. The rear ranks 0:13:36.770 --> 0:13:40.050 refused to stop until they had caught the leaders, while 0:13:40.050 --> 0:13:44.410 the leading ranks refused to be caught. Nobody wanted to 0:13:44.530 --> 0:13:48.450 charge unprepared at an entrenched enemy. They just didn't want 0:13:48.490 --> 0:13:51.650 to be vulnerable to the accusation of cowardice, of hanging 0:13:51.690 --> 0:13:56.890 back while their peers advanced. At Tom Shelling's lecture, nobody 0:13:56.890 --> 0:14:00.490 had wanted to sit at the front. This time, nobody 0:14:00.570 --> 0:14:04.730 wanted to stop at the back. Because of the individual 0:14:04.770 --> 0:14:08.210 behavior of French nights. The French army as a whole 0:14:08.450 --> 0:14:12.970 simply would not and could not stop. It ended up 0:14:13.010 --> 0:14:16.490 at the bottom of the hill, milling around in plain 0:14:16.690 --> 0:14:21.050 view of the bemused English archers. So King Philip decided 0:14:21.250 --> 0:14:26.730 he had no alternative to give the order to attack. 0:14:40.490 --> 0:14:44.410 As the summer afternoon began to cool, the English gazed 0:14:44.450 --> 0:14:47.970 down the hill at the French army, gradually assembling. With 0:14:48.090 --> 0:14:51.490 the French knights still gathering, King Philip sent forth his 0:14:51.570 --> 0:14:56.290 elite Genoese crossbowmen to soften up the English archers. The 0:14:56.370 --> 0:15:00.010 Genoese can't have been impressed. They'd been carrying their heavy 0:15:00.010 --> 0:15:03.130 crossbows all day, they hadn't had a chance to rest 0:15:03.250 --> 0:15:07.370 or eat, and now their employers, the French nobility, wanted 0:15:07.410 --> 0:15:09.770 them to wipe out the English long so that the 0:15:09.810 --> 0:15:12.570 French knights could get down to the real business of 0:15:12.650 --> 0:15:16.490 fighting the English knights. Worst of all, they hadn't had 0:15:16.490 --> 0:15:19.130 a chance to retrieve their shields from back in the 0:15:19.210 --> 0:15:24.130 French army's baggage wagons. As the English warily watched the 0:15:24.210 --> 0:15:29.690 Genoese approach, a sudden, spectacular summer shower passed across the battlefield. 0:15:30.610 --> 0:15:32.650 It was a bit of luck for the English archers, 0:15:32.690 --> 0:15:36.930 who could easily unstring and restring their simple longbows, keeping 0:15:36.930 --> 0:15:41.810 their bowstrings dry under their hats. The Genoese crossbows, far 0:15:41.890 --> 0:15:46.250 more complex tools, could not be so easily dismantled. Their 0:15:46.290 --> 0:15:50.490 strings got wet, loosening them and reducing their range. And 0:15:50.530 --> 0:15:54.450 as the Genoese continued their approach across the softened earth, 0:15:54.930 --> 0:15:57.930 the English archers must have been delighted when they noticed 0:15:57.970 --> 0:16:03.610 that the crossbowmen hadn't brought their shields. The English archers 0:16:03.650 --> 0:16:08.050 watched them halt and load their crossbows, perhaps because of 0:16:08.050 --> 0:16:12.170 the wet bowstring, or perhaps because the shieldless Genoese were 0:16:12.250 --> 0:16:16.210 slightly shy of getting too close. The crossbowmen stopped just 0:16:16.290 --> 0:16:20.210 a little too far away. The first volley of several 0:16:20.290 --> 0:16:24.010 clouds and crossbow bolts fell short of the English lines. 0:16:25.130 --> 0:16:31.290 There was no second volley. His froass off. The English 0:16:31.410 --> 0:16:34.890 archers took one pace forward and poured out their arrows 0:16:34.930 --> 0:16:38.490 on the Genoese so thickly and evenly that they fell 0:16:38.610 --> 0:16:42.890 like snow. When they felt those arrows piercing their arms, 0:16:42.930 --> 0:16:46.090 their heads, their faces. The Genoese, who had never met 0:16:46.130 --> 0:16:50.890 such archers before, were thrown into confusion. Many threw down 0:16:50.930 --> 0:16:58.050 their crossbows. They began to fall back. King Philip was enraged, 0:16:58.530 --> 0:17:01.810 although he only had himself to blame. He never took 0:17:01.850 --> 0:17:04.850 the crossbow men seriously, hadn't thought about how to use 0:17:04.850 --> 0:17:08.090 them effectively, and doesn't seem to have been surprised that 0:17:08.170 --> 0:17:11.610 they failed. He decided that it was time for the 0:17:11.690 --> 0:17:16.570 real fighting to start, which meant a cavalry charge. The 0:17:16.690 --> 0:17:21.370 contemptible crossbowmen had outlived their usefulness. Quick now kill all 0:17:21.410 --> 0:17:25.370 that rabble they're only getting in our way. Hundreds of 0:17:25.370 --> 0:17:28.770 the most eager French knights charged up the hill towards 0:17:28.810 --> 0:17:32.210 the English hacking their way through the retreating Genoese as 0:17:32.250 --> 0:17:36.610 they did, showing murderous scorn for their own allies. They 0:17:36.690 --> 0:17:40.770 got what they exerned. Their charge was slowed by the chaos, 0:17:41.050 --> 0:17:44.970 the rain soaked ground, the uphill slope, and foot deep 0:17:45.050 --> 0:17:48.050 potholes that the English soldiers had been digging all day, 0:17:49.090 --> 0:17:53.890 All the while five thousand English archers deluged with arrows. 0:17:54.610 --> 0:17:58.570 The armored Knights were fairly well protected that their horses 0:17:58.610 --> 0:18:03.970 were not. The charge faltered, then disintegrated just as it 0:18:04.010 --> 0:18:08.490 reached the English lines. The English knights, fighting on foot, 0:18:08.690 --> 0:18:12.130 drove the French back across the muddy battlefield, which was 0:18:12.170 --> 0:18:17.250 already littered with dying horses and helpless men. By now, 0:18:17.290 --> 0:18:20.690 the August sun was low in the sky. The English 0:18:20.730 --> 0:18:24.090 position was still perilous. They were on foreign soil and 0:18:24.210 --> 0:18:28.450 heavily outnumbered. It still wasn't too late for the French 0:18:28.490 --> 0:18:31.930 to withdraw, regroup and plan a fresh attack in the morning. 0:18:32.890 --> 0:18:38.730 But where was the glory in that forward road? King 0:18:38.890 --> 0:18:42.490 John of Bohemia, he was one of King Philip's great 0:18:42.530 --> 0:18:46.290 allies and a veteran of many battles. He was also 0:18:46.650 --> 0:18:49.930 fifty years old and an infection had taken away his 0:18:50.010 --> 0:18:53.290 eyesight more than a decade before. He wasn't going to 0:18:53.370 --> 0:18:58.250 let that stop him. Here's Jean Froissar's account of the 0:18:58.330 --> 0:19:02.970 great charge of the blind King of Bohemia. He said 0:19:02.970 --> 0:19:05.410 to them about him, I require you to bring me 0:19:05.530 --> 0:19:08.570 so far forward that I may strike one stroke with 0:19:08.730 --> 0:19:12.490 my sword. They said they would do his commandment, and 0:19:12.650 --> 0:19:14.930 to the intent that they should not lose him in 0:19:14.930 --> 0:19:17.970 the press, they tied all their reins of their bridles 0:19:18.090 --> 0:19:21.570 each to other, and so they went on their enemies. 0:19:23.010 --> 0:19:27.250 King John's doomed charge onto the blades of an enemy 0:19:27.450 --> 0:19:32.130 he couldn't even see it perfectly embodied both the courage 0:19:32.730 --> 0:19:38.690 and the stupidity of the entire French cavalry. His frossart again. 0:19:39.330 --> 0:19:42.290 The king was so far forward that he made many 0:19:42.370 --> 0:19:45.970 strokes with his sword and fought violantly. And his company 0:19:46.050 --> 0:19:50.090 ventured so far forward that they were there all slain. 0:19:50.890 --> 0:19:53.010 And the next day they were found in the place 0:19:53.050 --> 0:19:56.970 about the king, and all their horses tied to each other. 0:19:59.410 --> 0:20:02.810 The fighting had been ferocious on both sides, but the 0:20:02.850 --> 0:20:05.930 story had been the same. By the time the second 0:20:06.010 --> 0:20:10.130 French charge had been struck, with twenty or thirty thousand 0:20:10.250 --> 0:20:14.370 arrows and crossed the soft ground and the spikes and holes, 0:20:14.570 --> 0:20:18.210 and the fallen men and horses. The impetus had been 0:20:18.210 --> 0:20:22.610 completely lost. The English knights, fighting on foot around the 0:20:22.690 --> 0:20:26.650 King's son, the Black Prince, repelled what was left of 0:20:26.690 --> 0:20:31.570 the French. The French still had plenty of cavalry left. 0:20:32.050 --> 0:20:34.290 Much of the French army was still in the process 0:20:34.330 --> 0:20:37.290 of arriving on the battlefield, and in total the French 0:20:37.330 --> 0:20:40.610 had eight thousand knights while the English had just over 0:20:40.650 --> 0:20:44.970 two thousand. Each knight was eager for battle and glory, 0:20:45.450 --> 0:20:48.890 and so a fresh attack emerged from the chaos, with 0:20:49.050 --> 0:20:52.530 knights skillfully swinging their horses around at the bottom of 0:20:52.530 --> 0:20:55.570 the hill to charge once more up through the mud, 0:20:55.930 --> 0:20:58.730 over the bodies of the dying, and into the teeth 0:20:58.890 --> 0:21:04.090 of five thousand English archers. The result was no different 0:21:04.170 --> 0:21:09.890 to the first two charges, chaos, dead horses, armored then helpless, 0:21:10.250 --> 0:21:13.930 and the faltering French charge thrown back by the English knights. 0:21:14.090 --> 0:21:18.650 After some tough hand to hand fighting across the battlefield, 0:21:19.210 --> 0:21:24.450 unhorsed French knights slipped and floundered in the mud. Some 0:21:24.650 --> 0:21:32.490 drowned as the slime filled their helmets. The French kept 0:21:32.570 --> 0:21:36.490 ignoring the archers, partly because they were protected by pits 0:21:36.530 --> 0:21:40.530 and spikes, but partly because the rules of chivalry demanded 0:21:40.530 --> 0:21:45.050 that night fight with night. The first charge had failed, 0:21:45.850 --> 0:21:52.010 the second charge had failed, the third charge had failed. 0:21:53.210 --> 0:21:57.610 What next? King John of Bohemia may have perished, but 0:21:57.770 --> 0:22:02.930 his stubborn spirit lived on. The French knights charged again. 0:22:05.210 --> 0:22:10.570 In the historical graphic novel Crasy, one English archer sums 0:22:10.610 --> 0:22:14.210 up the madness in a short sentence, They're just not 0:22:14.330 --> 0:22:29.850 getting it. Six hundred and seventy two years after the 0:22:29.850 --> 0:22:34.290 Battle of Kracy, the Harvard Business Review twenty eighteen published 0:22:34.290 --> 0:22:38.610 a long article titled The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture. 0:22:39.730 --> 0:22:42.770 In many ways, it's the kind of beige corporate speak 0:22:42.810 --> 0:22:45.930 you might expect with a two by two matrix, a 0:22:46.010 --> 0:22:49.610 list of the eight distinctive styles of corporate culture, and 0:22:49.850 --> 0:22:54.770 over eighty mentions of leader or leadership. It feels a 0:22:54.810 --> 0:22:57.530 long way from the mud and the blood, and the 0:22:57.610 --> 0:23:01.130 dead horses and the dead men on the battlefield of Cracy. 0:23:02.690 --> 0:23:06.250 But the management gurus in the Harvard Business Review actually 0:23:06.330 --> 0:23:11.850 pinpoint the French problem with uncanny accuracy. What is culture? 0:23:12.130 --> 0:23:16.730 They ask first, it's a group phenomenon. Culture is something 0:23:16.770 --> 0:23:21.610 you share with other people. Second, it's pervasive, it's all 0:23:21.650 --> 0:23:25.770 around you, like water is all around a fish. Third, 0:23:26.090 --> 0:23:32.330 it's enduring. Culture doesn't change quickly. And fourth, it's implicit. 0:23:32.850 --> 0:23:36.170 People say stuff and think stuff and do stuff without 0:23:36.450 --> 0:23:41.570 articulating why. The French and the English nobility had a 0:23:41.610 --> 0:23:45.290 common culture in many ways, just think of that celebrated 0:23:45.410 --> 0:23:50.010 chivalric joust. But the English were proving that given enough time, 0:23:50.650 --> 0:23:55.490 culture can change. For example, the English had once shared 0:23:55.570 --> 0:23:58.810 the French view that bows were the weapons of craven whimps. 0:23:59.290 --> 0:24:02.570 An old song mocked the archer as a coward who 0:24:02.690 --> 0:24:05.850 dare not come close to his foe, and the Catholic 0:24:05.930 --> 0:24:10.690 Church had condemned the murderous crossbow. The French had brought 0:24:10.730 --> 0:24:13.290 bowmen to the battle, but they didn't take them seriously. 0:24:13.890 --> 0:24:16.490 If they had, King Philip would never have sent them 0:24:16.490 --> 0:24:19.490 into battle without their special shields, and he would never 0:24:19.530 --> 0:24:22.050 have sent a cavalry charge right over the top of them. 0:24:22.970 --> 0:24:26.410 In contrast, King Edward the Third built his tactics at 0:24:26.450 --> 0:24:30.170 Kracy around the longbow, but that wasn't a decision made 0:24:30.210 --> 0:24:32.570 on the spur of the moment. He had long seen 0:24:32.610 --> 0:24:37.210 the longbow as his best chance to defeat France, a richer, larger, 0:24:37.370 --> 0:24:42.770 more populous neighbor, and to embrace the longbow meant reshaping 0:24:42.810 --> 0:24:46.810 the culture. Edward forgave the debts of the crafters who 0:24:46.850 --> 0:24:50.610 made the longbows and their arrows symbolically that was much 0:24:50.650 --> 0:24:53.850 more important than just paying them a bonus, and he 0:24:53.890 --> 0:24:57.210 commanded that all men over the age of twelve should 0:24:57.250 --> 0:25:01.770 practice archery for two hours after church each Sunday, on 0:25:01.930 --> 0:25:07.530 pain of death. King Edward made that law nine years 0:25:07.770 --> 0:25:11.010 before the Battle of Crazy. The French attitude to their 0:25:11.010 --> 0:25:14.690 crossbow men was one of contempt. The English attitude to 0:25:14.730 --> 0:25:19.290 their longbowmen was one of respect, but that respect had 0:25:19.330 --> 0:25:23.290 been carefully cultivated by the king. As I say, culture 0:25:23.450 --> 0:25:28.970 can change, but it takes time. The French nobility didn't 0:25:28.970 --> 0:25:33.930 have that time. After five centuries of proven success in 0:25:33.970 --> 0:25:38.530 which heavily armored charges had smashed enemy after enemy, they 0:25:38.530 --> 0:25:43.530 were suddenly having to rethink. That's not easy because the 0:25:43.650 --> 0:25:47.930 chivalric culture constrained the way the French nobles saw the 0:25:48.050 --> 0:25:51.890 situation and their reactions to what they saw. And like 0:25:52.010 --> 0:25:55.610 any culture, it was so deeply ingrained that it was 0:25:55.690 --> 0:26:00.810 hard even to perceive those constraints, let alone discuss them. 0:26:00.930 --> 0:26:04.930 They were focused on acts of individual valor, noble knight 0:26:05.130 --> 0:26:09.050 against noble knight, that didn't leave much room for deep 0:26:09.410 --> 0:26:13.570 with archers hiding behind spikes, or opponents who let their 0:26:13.570 --> 0:26:17.290 horses graze while they fought on foot, or even for 0:26:17.370 --> 0:26:22.090 a coordinated approach to combat. Nobody on the French side 0:26:22.130 --> 0:26:25.930 seems to have said, maybe we shouldn't keep charging up 0:26:25.930 --> 0:26:30.410 that mudslide. Nobody seems to have said, if they keep 0:26:30.490 --> 0:26:34.050 shooting the horses from under us, shouldn't we attack on foot. 0:26:35.130 --> 0:26:39.090 Nobody seems to have said, these guys are outnumbered and isolated. 0:26:39.410 --> 0:26:42.810 Times on our side, what's the hurry to attack at all? 0:26:43.810 --> 0:26:46.530 It wasn't that the French knights had the wrong answers. 0:26:47.330 --> 0:26:50.730 It was that they weren't even able to ask the 0:26:50.850 --> 0:26:58.010 right questions. The French tactics were disastrous, and it's natural 0:26:58.050 --> 0:27:00.650 to leap to the conclusion that the French culture of 0:27:00.810 --> 0:27:05.290 chivalry and feudalism that produced those tactics was a foolish culture. 0:27:06.250 --> 0:27:10.210 That's too easy. After all, French heavy cavalry had been 0:27:10.210 --> 0:27:14.250 dominant for hundreds of years. Until that moment, the entire 0:27:14.330 --> 0:27:17.010 feudal culture had grown up around the need to meet 0:27:17.050 --> 0:27:20.650 the cost of putting these expensively equipped warriors in the field. 0:27:21.570 --> 0:27:24.810 If your shock troops are also the nobleman, the richest 0:27:24.810 --> 0:27:27.850 members of your society, you need a way to motivate 0:27:27.890 --> 0:27:31.410 them to put themselves in harm's way. Hence the chivalric 0:27:31.450 --> 0:27:35.050 code of honor and French knights who would quite literally 0:27:35.250 --> 0:27:40.010 rather die than lose their reputation. In the nineteen sixties, 0:27:40.050 --> 0:27:44.210 the historian Lynn White Junior famously argued that the entire 0:27:44.450 --> 0:27:48.450 edifice of feudalism rested on the appearance of the stirrup, 0:27:48.970 --> 0:27:52.970 a technology which made cavalry more effective. You don't need 0:27:53.010 --> 0:27:55.330 to go quite that far to see that the French 0:27:55.410 --> 0:27:58.850 culture of chivalry was bound up with a French reliance 0:27:58.930 --> 0:28:03.090 on heavily armored knights, and that for five hundred years, 0:28:03.170 --> 0:28:07.610 that culture and that reliance had delivered success after success. 0:28:10.090 --> 0:28:14.130 It didn't because, as the Harvard Business Review could tell you, 0:28:14.570 --> 0:28:18.290 the thing about culture is that it isn't easy to change. 0:28:22.250 --> 0:28:25.330 It's tempting to think that this story is only relevant 0:28:25.330 --> 0:28:29.050 to a bunch of stupid, rich French nobles seven centuries ago, 0:28:30.010 --> 0:28:34.530 but is it? In twenty eighteen, I attended a barn 0:28:34.610 --> 0:28:38.530 storming lecture given by a fellow journalist, the then editor 0:28:38.570 --> 0:28:42.770 in chief of the Washington Post, Marty Baron. I write 0:28:42.770 --> 0:28:45.930 for another great old newspaper, the Financial Times, and I 0:28:45.970 --> 0:28:48.250 wanted to hear what mister Baron would say about the 0:28:48.330 --> 0:28:54.490 challenges newspapers were facing. Those challenges were immense. New technology 0:28:54.570 --> 0:28:58.130 had changed everything. New rivals, who didn't have to pay 0:28:58.170 --> 0:29:01.810 for the old print infrastructure, were offering cheap viral news. 0:29:01.850 --> 0:29:07.130 Online advertising revenues critical for any newspaper, and especially for 0:29:07.210 --> 0:29:12.610 a newspaper with a strong local had been cannibalized by Craigslist, Google, 0:29:12.890 --> 0:29:17.330 and Facebook. Cranks and extremists could find a large and 0:29:17.490 --> 0:29:22.650