Qualla: Battle of Cassel (1328)

Battle of Cassel (1328): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Loyset Liédet, Public domain. The royal accountants made an inventory afterwards. Of the 3,185 Flemings killed at Cassel that day, 2,294 had owned property worth seizing for the Crown - houses, fields, looms, a few animals, the small accumulated work of provincial lives. The remaining 891 owned nothing. They had come up Mount Cassel anyway, with their leader Nicolaas Zannekin, a farmer from the village of Lampernisse on the Flemish coast. They were not knights. They were farmers and weavers and brewers from the bailiwicks of Veurne and Bergues and Bailleul and Poperinge, towns whose names today are just dots on the map of French Flanders. For five years they had refused to pay French taxes and they had won every battle they fought - Nieuwpoort, Ypres, Kortrijk. On 23 August 1328 they came down off the hill in fury and met King Philip VI of France in his first major battle as king. By nightfall they were almost all dead, and the rising was over.

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Image: Loyset Liédet | Public domain

Battle of Cassel (1328): Why a Farmer Led an Army

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Velvet, CC BY-SA 3.0. It began with money. The Count of Flanders, Louis I, was collecting taxes on behalf of Charles IV of France - too much tax, on Flemish towns that already chafed at French control. Around 1323, residents of the coastal bailiwicks simply refused to pay. The count threatened reprisa...

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Image: Velvet | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Cassel (1328): The Lessons of 1302

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robinet Testard, Public domain. Both sides knew the story of the Battle of the Golden Spurs. In 1302, at Courtrai, Flemish town militia armed with pikes - the same weavers and farmers who were now Zannekin's people - had butchered the French aristocracy. So many gilded spurs were collected from dead knights tha...

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Image: Robinet Testard | Public domain

Battle of Cassel (1328): Mount Cassel

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wernervc, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cassel is a high hill rising abruptly from the flat lands of French Flanders - one of the few real elevations between Dunkirk and Lille. From its summit you can see for fifty kilometres in clear weather. On 23 August 1328, Zannekin's army was dug in on top, and his men watched th...

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Image: Wernervc | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Cassel (1328): Elbow to Elbow

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robinet Testard, Public domain. It might have ended in another Courtrai. But Philip VI did something the chroniclers thought remarkable: in a blue tunic embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis, wearing only a leather coif, he personally rallied his knights and led the counter-charge. The chroniclers said the army...

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Image: Robinet Testard | Public domain