A chevauchée (French pronunciation: [ʃəvoʃe], "promenade" or "horse charge", depending on context) was a raiding method of medieval warfare for weakening the enemy, primarily by burning and pillaging enemy territory in order to reduce the productivity of a region, in addition to siege warfare most often as part of wars of conquest but occasionally as a punitive raid.
[3] The English used the chevauchée in lieu of a larger standing army, and it was carried out primarily by small groups of mounted soldiers, rarely more than a few thousand men.
The focus was on undermining the enemy government's authority and destroying its resources by taking hostages and other material goods rather than engaging in large-scale military battles.
In medieval Bedouin culture, ghazwa was a form of limited warfare verging on brigandage that avoided head-on confrontations and instead emphasized raiding and looting.
"[4][5] William Montgomery Watt hypothesized that Muhammad found it useful to divert this continuous internecine warfare toward non-Muslims, making it the basis of the Islamic holy war.
[9] A 12th-century Christian chronicler wrote: "Every day large bodies of knights leave castles on what we call algarades and roam far and wide, pillaging all the territory of Seville, Córdoba and Carmona, and setting it all alight.
"[10] A 13th-century Iberian example of a raid called cavalgada is the operation launched at the order of Ferdinand III of Castile in April 1231.
Specific tactics were "a quick cavalry raid through the countryside with the intention of pillaging unfortified villages and towns, destroying crops and houses, stealing livestock, and generally disrupting and terrorizing rural society.
Edward, the Black Prince, took his mounted force into Artois, while Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster burned Fauquembergues to the ground.
Shortly thereafter, Edward III decided to lead a grand chevauchée with his whole army into the heart of France from Calais at the beginning of September.
During the 1370s, the English launched chevauchées led by Robert Knolles and John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, the third surviving son of Edward III, but little was achieved militarily.
The deliberate practice of depriving the French king of troops and taxes by ruining his people and their livelihoods was ended for a lighter approach.
His Anglo-Gascon force, consisting of 2,000 soldiers, marched 160 miles (260 kilometres) north from Gascony and sacked Saint-Jean-d'Angély and Poitiers.
After sacking Poitiers, his force pillaged much of Saintonge, Aunis and Poitou, and captured many towns and castles, including Rochefort and Oléron.
Starting from Bordeaux, the Black Prince traveled south into lands controlled by Jean I, Comte d'Armagnac with Toulouse as the apparent ultimate target.
After the campaign, Armagnac was rebuked by James I, Count of La Marche, Constable of France and lost great favor with the people of Toulouse for his cowardice and lack of generalship.
The result of this chevauchée by the Black Prince was that the important city of Toulouse realized that they were on their own to protect themselves and were forced to become militarily self-reliant.
This chevauchée differed from the first in that, in addition to the raiding, burning and looting, there was also military action taken against objectives away from the main body of the force.
While initially successful as French forces were insufficiently concentrated to oppose them, the English began to meet further resistance as they moved south.
The French refused battle before the walls of Troyes on 25 August, so Buckingham's forces continued their chevauchée and in November laid siege to Nantes.
[20] However, expected support from the Duke of Brittany did not appear and, in the face of heavy losses in both men and horses, Buckingham was forced to abandon the siege in January 1381.
[21] In February 1381 Brittany, reconciled to the regime of the new French king, Charles VI, paid 50,000 franc to Buckingham to abandon the siege and the campaign.
Sir John Fastolf, an experienced English commander, proposed in a 1435 memorandum a return to aggressive chevauchée tactics.