Battle of Blanchetaque in 1346 (crossing the Somme, engraving)

This illustration by Charles-Joseph Mettais, titled “Battle of Blanchetaque in 1346 (crossing the Somme, engraving),” depicts the crossing of the Somme by the English army during the Battle of Blanchetaque in 1346, in the course of Edward III’s campaign in the Hundred Years’ War. The scene shows the clash in the waters of the ford, where knights and foot soldiers fight in the middle of the river while troops deploy along the banks. The composition emphasizes the violence of the combat, the difficulty of the crossing, and the strategic importance of the episode, which allowed the English to evade the French forces before the Battle of Crécy. Created around 1860 and reproduced in Paul Lehugeur’s Histoire de France en cent tableaux, this engraving belongs to the nineteenth-century tradition of historical illustration, which sought to dramatize the great conflicts of the French past.