Episode #66, "The Battle of the Golden Spurs" Maps and Sources

SOURCES

DeVries, Kelly. Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006.

Nicholas, David. Medieval Flanders. London: Longman, 1992. Verbruggen, J. F. The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302 . Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1952.

MAPS

It's actually kinda hard to find a good map of Flanders in the 14th Century! Here are a few.

Here's Flanders as part of the Kingdom of France in 1180; it's at the top of the map. You can see the locations of Bruges, Ghent (Gand), Courtrai (Kortrijk) and Ypres if you look closely. This just helps to see where Flanders is in comparison to the rest of France.

Here's Flanders the medieval county (the stripes) in comparison to modern-day Belgium and the modern-day "Flanders Region." The geography doesn't quite match up; the "Flanders Region" is less the old historical territory of Flanders and more the whole Dutch-speaking area of modern Belgium. The Walloon region to the south is the French-speaking "Wallonia."

Here's a close-up of medieval Flanders. Due to the language differences, it's harder to tell Bruges (Brugge), Ghent (Gent), Ypres (Ieper), and Courtrai (Kortrijk), the site of the Battle of Courtrai.

And here's a good map of the Battle of Courtrai/the Battle of the Golden Spurs. Note the two brooks/"beeks" in front of the Flemish formation, their U-shape, the fact that their back was to a river, and the critical reserve unit behind the lines that came to the rescue of the Flemish center at the height of the battle.