ABSTRACT
The details of the tactics of Cocherel and Auray serve to show that the day of the horsemen was now considered to be at an end. After Creçy and Poictiers cavalry ceased to be the preponderant arm in Western Europe for some century and a half. For the future French and Netherlanders, as well as English and Scots, dismount as a general rule for battle. But the new tactics had still to be learned by the nations of the Iberian peninsula; the lessons which taught the Spaniards and Portuguese the importance of the dismounted man-at-arms were both given by English teachers. In the first, the battle of Navarette (1367), the Black Prince himself showed the Spaniards the same tactics which his father had used against the French at Creçy. In the second, the battle of Aljubarotta (1385), the Portuguese king João (John I.) was directed by English officers of experience, and assisted by a considerable English contingent, so that we may fairly look upon his victory as another of the great series which commenced at Dupplin and Halidon Hill.
