Golden Spurs: Flemish militia break French chivalry

July 1302

On muddy ground outside Kortrijk, burghers armed with pikes and goedendags slaughtered the flower of French knighthood. Seven hundred gilded spurs were hung in the local church as trophies. The victory electrified commoners across the Low Countries and proved that disciplined townsmen could stand against mounted nobility. For one afternoon, infantry discipline humiliated feudal cavalry, a preview of Crécy forty-four years off.