Battle of Fréteval

[2] There, Philip was forced into a hasty retreat, and, foreshadowing his losses at Fréteval, abandoned his siege engines and other valuable matériel.

'[6] In what was most likely an ambush by the English,[5] Philip appears to have abandoned his baggage train in a wood as Richard approached, and escaped to a Saint-Hilaire[3] chapel on Whitsun Eve.

Philip's 'sudden departure', wrote historian John Gillingham, was 'the last straw for his troops, already demoralized by the threat to their supplies.

[9] One of the reasons kings of the period were so often adverse to pitched battles was the fact that they travelled as an itinerant government and nomadic treasury, which were too valuable to lose on the battlefield.

[10] And since kings of this period often travelled as peripatetic courts, Philip's baggage train contained not just personal effects, such as household furniture[11] but the necessary paraphernalia for government and tax collecting.

[12] Among the French king's luggage, captured by the English, were his personal seal,[13] and important archival documents such as financial records, domanial charters, payment inventories, and rent and toll receipts.

[19] The archives, it has been claimed, gave Richard the names and details of all of Philip's spies and agents in the duchy of Aquitane,[3] as well as Angevin deserters to the French.