According to Jean Froissart, when the Prince heard of the surrender of Limoges to the French, he swore "by the soul of his father" that he would have the place again and would make the inhabitants pay dearly for their treachery. He set out from Cognac with an army of about 4,000 men. Due to his sickness he was unable to mount his horse, and was carried in a litter. During the siege of Limoges the Prince determined to take the town ordered the undermining the walls. On 19th September, his miners succeeded in demolishing a large piece of wall which filled the ditches with its ruins. The town was then stormed, with much destruction and loss of life. Although Froissart recorded that a massacre took place of 3,000 persons of all ranks and ages, modern scholarship, drawing on a wider range of evidence, places casualties much lower, around 300 garrison Soldiers and civilians in total. When the bishop was brought before him, he told him that his head should be cut off, but Lancaster begged him of his brother, and so, while innocent persons were slain, the life of the chief offender was spared. The city was pillaged and burnt.

In his last moments he was attended by the Bishop of Bangor, who urged him to ask forgiveness of God and of all those whom he had injured. For a while he would not do this, but at last joined his hands and prayed that God and man would grant him pardon, and so died in his forty-sixth year. His death took place at the palace of Westminster. He was buried with great state in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 September, and the directions contained in his will were followed at his funeral, in the details of his tomb. It has a bronze effigy beneath a tester depicting the Holy Trinity, with his heraldic achievements—his surcoat, helmet, shield and gauntlets—hung over the tester (they have been replaced with replicas, and the originals now reside in a glass fronted cabinet within the cathedral). The famous epitaph inscribed around his effigy reads: