Battle of Honnecourt
1642 CE.
Shown on the map at 50.038°, 3.196°.
The Battle of Honnecourt took place on 26 May 1642, during the 1635 to 1659 Franco-Spanish War. A Spanish army led by Francisco de Melo defeated and largely destroyed a French force under the Comte de Guiche. With the bulk of French forces committed to the Siege of Perpignan in Catalonia, Melo launched an offensive into Artois, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. After retaking Lens and La Bassée in early May, he moved to attack Guiche's "Army of Champagne", based near Honnecourt-sur-Escaut. Guiche placed his troops in a strong position but they proved no match for the veteran Army of Flanders and both wings collapsed after seven hours of fighting. With their retreat blocked by the River Scheldt directly behind them and only one bridge, most of the French were either killed or captured. Guiche was one of the last to leave the battlefield and only 1,600 of his troops escaped. One of the relatively few decisive battles in a war of attrition that lasted 24 years, the result was greeted with euphoria by the Spanish court and caused panic in Paris, which seemed open to a Spanish invasion.
Text from the Wikipedia article Battle of Honnecourt, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.