The Battle of Gisors was fought on 27 September 1198, when Richard I of England routed a French army led by King Philip II Augustus on the frontier of Normandy near Gisors. It was among the last significant victories of Richard's reign, coming less than a year before his death in 1199.
Richard's men broke Philip's relief march and drove the French back towards Gisors. As the beaten army streamed across the bridge over the river Epte, the bridge collapsed under their weight; about twenty knights drowned, and Philip himself was thrown into the water, saved only when his men dragged him out.
By tradition, the watchword Richard gave his troops before the fight was 'Dieu et mon droit', meaning 'God and my right', a defiant denial that he owed homage to the French king. The phrase later became, and remains, the motto of the English crown.
Writing afterwards to the Bishop of Durham, Richard could not resist boasting of the day. He claimed to have unhorsed three men with a single lance, and reported that his troops had taken around a hundred knights and two hundred warhorses, a hundred and forty of them clad in iron armour. Of his rival he wrote, with grim satisfaction, that the king of France 'had to drink of the river' when the bridge gave way beneath his fleeing army.
Kingdom of England *Duchy of Normandy: Unknown number of casualties | Kingdom of France: At least 100 knights captured
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