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[Creeperopolis]

English offensives in 1345–1347, during the Hundred Years' War, resulted in repeated defeats of the French, the loss or devastation of much French territory and the capture by the English of the port of Calais. The war had broken out in 1337 and flared up in 1340 when the king of England, Edward III, laid claim to the French crown and campaigned in northern France. There was then a lull in the major hostilities, although much small-scale fighting continued.

Edward determined early in 1345 to renew full-scale war. He despatched a small force to Gascony in south-west France under Henry, Earl of Derby and personally led the main English army to northern France. Edward delayed the disembarkation of his army and his fleet was scattered by a storm, rendering this offensive spectacularly successful. The following spring a large French army, led by the heir to the French throne, John, Duke of Normandy, counter-attacked Derby's forces.

Edward responded by landing an army of 10,000 men in northern Normandy. The English devastated much of Normandy and stormed and sacked Caen, slaughtering the population. They cut a swath along the left bank of the Seine to within 20 miles (32 km) of Paris. The English army then turned north and inflicted a heavy defeat on a French army led by their king, Philip VI, at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. They promptly exploited this by laying siege to Calais. The period from Derby's victory outside Bergerac in late August 1345 to the start of the siege of Calais on 4 September 1346 became known as Edward III's annus mirabilis (year of marvels).

After an eleven-month siege, which stretched both countries' financial and military resources to the limit, the town fell. Shortly afterwards, the Truce of Calais was agreed; it ran for nine months to 7 July 1348, but was extended repeatedly until it was formally set aside in 1355. The war eventually ended in 1453 with the English expelled from all French territory except Calais, which served as an English entrepôt into northern France for more than two hundred years.