the estuary towards the southern bank, we find ourselves checked before
reaching that bank by the now canalised and artificial straight ditch of
the Somme. There is no bridge, but on the further side leading across the
remaining 700 yards to the southern bank, a village road exactly continues
the direction, and this road, older than the reclamation of the valley, is
the last converging point clinching the argument.
It cannot be doubted that the road leading from Saigneville northward
across the flat to the canal, and continued beyond the canal by the
embankment, is the line of the old Blanchetaque.[12]
Though the French army had been pursuing Edward during his march upon the
left bank of the Somme, the possibility of his getting across the estuary
had not been neglected, and a force had been detached to watch the right
bank at the point where the only passage across the stream, Blanchetaque,
touched that right bank.
Here one of Philip's nobles, Godemard de Fay, was waiting with a
considerable force to oppose the passage. The exact size of this force is
not easy to determine, for it is variously stated, even by contemporary
authorities, but we are fairly safe if we reckon it at more than 2000 and
less than 4000 men, some hundreds of whom were mounted knights. In other
words, it counted in "capital units" from one-sixth to one-eighth of
Edward's army, and, counting all fighting men against all fighting men,
perhaps much the same proportion. There was sharp fighting, but it was
defeated, principally through the action of the Archers. In Godemard's
command was a very considerable body of Genoese cross-bowmen. As we shall
see when we come to the Battle of Crécy itself, this arm was gravely
inferior in rapidity of fire, and possibly in range, to the English
long-bow. The latter weapon could deliver three to the cross-bow's one,
and to this, coupled with the discipline of the English column, the
success must be ascribed. Grave as was the balance of numbers against the
French side, equal armament and equal discipline should have enabled it to
prevail. The holding of a _tête de pont_ with a smaller number properly
deployed should always be possible against a larger column compelled to
debouch from a narrow line, especially a line of such difficulty as a ford
across a broad stream.
The action was a picturesque one, and the sight presented to a spectator
watching it from the heights behind Godemard's command must have been a
picture vivid and well framed. One hundred mounted and armoured knights,
carefully chosen, led the way across the ford. They were met actually in
the water itself by mounted men advancing on to the causeway from
Godemard's side, and the twin banners of Edward's two marshals and the
cries of "God and St George!" with which the English vanguard met the
enemy rose for a few moments from a confused mêlée of men and horses
struggling in the stream. But the issue was decided by the comparative
strength of missile weapons, and not by the sword. The Genoese
cross-bowmen behind the French knights, and upon either side of their
rear, shot into the English mounted ranks with some success, when the
Archers of Edward, who were just behind the knights, and seem to have
deployed somewhat over the marshy land on either side of the ford,
returned their fire with that superiority of the long-bow which helped to
decide this campaign. It was the regular fire of the Archers, the weight
and the rapidity of it, which finally threw the supporting infantry of the
French command into confusion, and permitted the mounted head of the
English column to force its way over the landward end of the ford and
through the now isolated body of French knights. Once the bank was gained,
the English head of the column in its turn held the _tête de pont_, and
the passage of the whole force was only a question of time.
But time was a factor of vast importance at this juncture: how important
what immediately followed will show. A force of anything between
twenty-four and thirty-nine thousand men, combatant and non-combatant,
with its wagons and sumpter horses, the considerable booty of its raid,
its tents, its reserve of armour and of weapons, we cannot reckon, even
upon a front of twelve deep, at less than a couple of miles in length,
even under the best and strictest conditions of marshalling. Indeed, that
estimate is far too low and mechanical. It is more likely that by the time
the head of the column was pouring from the causeway on to the right bank
of the estuary, and there deploying, a good third of the armed men were
still waiting upon the further shore to file over the narrow passage.
At any rate, before the great bulk of the train could have got upon the
ford, the first horse of the King of France's scouts and vanguard appeared
upon the sky-line of the heights above Saigneville, and immediately a
considerable force of the enemy were upon the English wagons with their
insufficient rearguard. The King of France himself, following upon
Edward's track mile by mile, had reached Mons, had learnt that Edward had
doubled back from Boismont, and had detached a body to cut across country
to the ford on the chance of preventing Edward from crossing. He had not
been quick enough to achieve this, but the French appeared in time, as I
have said, to catch the wheeled vehicles behind the English army before
they had got into line upon the causeway. Edward, with that good military
head, which always seized immediate things upon a field, had stayed
somewhat to the rear of the main body to watch for such an accident. He
was not able to save the bulk of his train, but he saved his army. Much of
the booty and of the provision fell to the French.
This mishap, which shows how close a chance permitted the safety of
Edward's fighting force, had no little effect upon the succeeding two
days, for it left the English army in part without food. I say "in part,"
because for some of them the defect was remedied, as we shall see, by the
capture of Crotoy.
So the English army passed with the loss of some of its train, but with
very little loss of men. Pursuit was impossible; the tide now rising
forbade even the thought of it, and somewhere about noon the entire host
was marshalled upon the northern bank of the river, and was safe. The
whole story forms one of the most striking details in the history of
medieval warfare.
What followed the discomfiture of Godemard's command and Edward's passage
with his forces intact, is not easy to gather in the authorities
themselves, though it is easy enough to reconstruct with the aid of the
Kitchen Accounts, and by the help of the analogy of Edward's action
throughout the campaign. The King's tent, his domesticity, and what we
may by an anachronism call his staff, proceeded to the edge of the forest
of Crécy, which lies upon the inland heights north-eastward of the ford, a
distance of five miles. But it did not proceed there directly. In company
with the whole army, it first turned north-westward down the bank of the
estuary to the capture of the castle and town of Noyelles, rather more
than two miles away. This castle it took, and it is characteristic of
these wars that the mistress of it was English in sympathy, and, what is
more, had married her daughter to the nephew of one of Edward's principal
generals. From Noyelles on the same day, Thursday, Edward and the staff
turned back north-eastward towards the forest. There was a skirmish at
Sailly Bray with Godemard's command, which, though defeated, was not yet
broken, and which had hung upon the flanks of the English army. But the
belated struggle was of little importance, and Edward camped that night
upon the edge of the forest in the neighbourhood of Forêt L'Abbye to the
west of the little railway line and station which mark those fields
to-day.
Meanwhile, during the remaining hours of that Thursday, the customary
raiding and pillaging parties which had been characteristic of all this
great raid were being sent out. The chief one under Hugh the Dispenser
took Crotoy and thus provisioned his own force and perhaps some of the
neighbouring detachments, but the bulk of Edward's army "went famished
that day," and, for that matter, were insufficiently provided during the
ensuing Friday as well.
The host camped upon that Thursday night somewhat widely spread around its
King, with foraging parties still distant and appointed to return upon the
morrow.
Upon that morrow, the Friday, the advance north-eastward was continued. It
was organised in a fashion whose exactitude and forethought are worthy of
note, considering the haphazard conditions of most medieval fighting, and
of Edward's own previous conduct of the earlier part of this campaign.
These were the conditions before him: he must get as best he might to the
Straits of Dover, that is, up northward and north-eastward, and he may
already have had a design upon Calais.[13] The force which was pursuing
him had been checked by the tide of the Somme. It was too large to use
Blanchetaque with any rapidity. He knew that it must double back to
Abbeville in order to cross the river before it could turn northward again
and come up with him. From where it lay, or rather where its commander and
staff had lain, between Mons and Saigneville, that morning and noon, back
to Abbeville was a matter of seven or eight miles; a distance nearly as
great separated him from Abbeville upon his side. He had gained a full day
even if the French army had been collected, highly disciplined, and in
column. Instead of that it was scattered over twenty miles of country.
Many of its contingents were still following up, and it was under very
various and loose commands. Even should a large body of French appear upon
the next day, Friday, Edward had the forest at hand with which to cover
his troops long before contact could be established. But good scouting
informed Edward that there was no chance of such contact, at least before
Saturday. The whole of the next day, Friday, would be at his disposal to
bring his troops where he would, and he proposed to get them on the far
side of the forest, that is, in the neighbourhood of Crécy town, during
the interval.
Whether he had already decided on that Thursday to make a stand we cannot
tell, but it is not probable, because he had as yet no knowledge of the
positions beyond the forest, and of the chance the ground would afford him
of meeting an attack. One thing he already knew, which was that his
retreat was secure. The pace of the French pursuit might compel him to a
decision on Saturday at earliest, but, short of complete disaster, he had
a road open behind him across the Authie by the passage of Ponches and
along the great Roman way which led from Picardy to the Straits of Dover.
What he did was this. He sent the bulk of the army round by the main road
whose terminals are Abbeville and Hesdin, and which skirts the forest. His
own household he accompanied through the wood, presumably with the object
of keeping in touch with the foraging parties who would during that Friday
be coming up along the southern edge of the woods to follow the main force
along the high road. A further advantage of so moving through the wood
himself was that he could thus lie upon the flank of his force and let it
march round him until it got in front of him in the open country by Crécy.
Then he could join it, coming up in its rear, that is, upon the side from
which attack was expected, gather his information, study the positions,
learn the approach of the French advance, and in general organise the
coming action, if an action should prove necessary. Edward camped,
therefore, in the forest upon that Friday night, and upon the further side
of it, just above Crécy town; while the whole of his main body was
marching up to the right or east of him by the high road that skirts the
woods. That main force, joined by the foraging parties which had gone
further westward on the day before, easily covered the few miles, and
camped on the evening of the Friday upon the ridge which runs in a level
line eastward and northward from just above the town of Crécy to the
village of Wadicourt, for somewhat over a mile. Leaving his tents and
domestics upon the edge of the wood, he spent the last hours of that day
establishing his forces along the ridge for the night, for it was there
that he had now determined to await the French army and to bring it to
action.
The advantage of that position which upon emerging from the forest Edward
had immediately seized, will be dealt with in the ensuing section;
meanwhile we must return to inquire what was happening to the French
pursuit.
We must not consider the French army as one united body. Had it been that,
it would not have been defeated, and, what is more, the particular place
of Crécy in military history, and its lesson of the contrast between the
older feudal and the newer regular levies, would never have been taken;
for Crécy, as we shall see, was largely a victory of things then new over
things then old. No records give us precisely the positions, number, or
routes of the King of France and his allies, but we know the following
points, from which we can construct a general picture.
First: The commands were various and disunited. That personal system which
had arisen five hundred years before, and more, when the old Roman
tradition of the Frankish monarchy gradually transformed itself into a
series of summonses to lords who should bring their vassals, was still the
method by which a French host was tardily and irregularly summoned. For
general and lengthy expeditions it was sufficient. For the prosecution of
the innumerable local conflicts of the Middle Ages it was actually
necessary. Upon occasion at long distances from home, and after long
companionship in the field, if there were also present a very leading
character among the feudal superiors, and especially if that character
were clothed with titular rank, it could achieve something like unity of
command. But Philip's army, the last contingents of which were still in
act of joining him, enjoyed no such advantages. At least five separate
great bodies, four of which were largely subdivided, were loosely
aggregated over miles of country, gathering as they went chance
reinforcements, and losing by chance defections.
Secondly: A certain proportion of regular paid men, including the foreign
mercenaries, accompanied the King of France. These were in part with the
King himself, in part detached to watch the passages of the river.
Thirdly: The King, with a considerable personal force, and with some of
his mercenaries as well, was up in the neighbourhood of Saigneville upon
the noon and early afternoon of the Thursday. He retraced his steps
towards Abbeville, and recrossed the river there himself either upon the
Thursday evening, or more probably upon the Friday.
Fourthly: Round about Abbeville the bulk of the incongruous force was
gathered when the King reached it, and very considerable bodies lay in the
suburbs to the north of the town.
Finally, we know that on the Saturday morning the King heard Mass and
took Communion at the Church of St Stephen (now demolished).
From all this we can construct a fairly accurate view of the French
advance, especially when we consider where the French forces lay when they
reached the field. From Abbeville to the field of Crécy is, as the crow
flies, ten miles. A great main road (along the further part of which the
English had marched on the Friday) led to the neighbourhood of the field
and past it: the main road which goes from Abbeville to Hesdin. By this
road, breaking up probably rather late upon the Saturday morning, the
largest of the loosely gathered French contingents marched. Far to the
right of them over the countryside would be advancing the other feudal
levies under the King of Bohemia and John of Luxembourg, the exiled Count
of Flanders, the ex-King of Majorca, and other friends, connections, and
vassals whom Philip had summoned with their arrays. It is to be presumed
that certain bodies on the extreme right went up by the Roman road which
misses Abbeville coming from the south, and makes for Ponches, bounding
the battlefield of Crécy on its extreme eastern side.
Following this chaotic advance of the dispersed host, gathered in a
jumble, the wholly untrained peasant levies which had been swept up from
the villages on the advance proceeded in disorder. And it was thus without
regular formation, save among the Genoese mercenaries (some 15,000 in
number at the outset of the campaign, though we do not know of what
strength on the field itself), that the first lines of mounted men caught
sight from the heights of Noyelles[14] and Domvast of the English line on
the ridge of Crécy three miles away.
It was early in the afternoon before that sight was seen. The wind was
from the sea, and gathering clouds promising a storm were coming up before
it, and hiding the sun.
Before these advance lines of the French army, and between it and Edward's
command, the ground fell gradually away in low, very gentle slopes of open
field towards the shallow depression above which a somewhat steeper and
shorter bank defended the line, a mile and a half long, upon which Edward
had stretched his men.
There was an attempt at some sort of deployment, and the first of three
main commands or "battles" were more or less formed under Alençon, the
French King's brother. Immediately before it were deployed the trained
mercenaries, including the Italian cross-bowmen under their own leaders,
Dorio and Grimaldi. Behind was a confused mass of arriving horse and foot,
the King himself to the rear of it, and much of it German and Flemish
separate commands. We do not know their composition at all. Still further
to the rear, and stretched out for miles to the south, straggling up from
Abbeville, came, that late afternoon, the rest of the ill-ordered host at
random. Before the action was begun, the whole sky was darkened by the
approaching storm, and violent pelting rain fell upon either host. The
clouds passed, the sky cleared again, but it was nearly five o'clock
before the first attack was ordered.
In order to explain what followed we must next grasp the nature of the
terrain, and the value of the defensive position upon which Edward had
determined to stand.
[Illustration]
IV
THE TERRAIN OF CRÉCY
The action decided upon the field of Crécy developed wholly within the
central space shown in the frontispiece of this volume.
The general frame within which the battle took place must be regarded as a
parallelogram corresponding to the exterior limits of that map, not quite
four miles in length from east to west, and some 2-1/2 miles in breadth
from north to south, having the town of Crécy a little to the north of the
medial line, and a good deal on the left or western side of the area. But
the emplacement of the troops and the actual fighting, including the
partial pursuit by the victors, is wholly contained within a smaller area,
which lies aslant, with its major axis pointing north-west, its minor axis
pointing north-east, and surrounding the dip called "the Val aux Clercs."
The aspect of this countryside is that of so many in the north-east of
France. The passage of six and a half centuries has not greatly modified
it. The limits of the Royal Forest of Crécy are what they have been
perhaps from Roman, certainly from early medieval, times. The
characteristic hedgeless, rolling, ploughed land, which is the normal
landscape of all French provinces and of many others, has been disturbed
by no growth of modern industrialism, and its contours remain unmodified
by any considerable excavations of the soil. The villages attaching to the
battlefield, Estrées, Wadicourt, Fontaine, are in extent, and even in
appearance, much what they were when the armies of the fourteenth century
occupied them, and the little market-town of Crécy has not appreciably
extended its limits.
Even minor features such as the small groups of woodland and the spinnies
seem, judged by our remaining descriptions of the battle, to be much the
same to-day as they were then.
The terrain of Crécy offers, therefore, an excellent opportunity for the
reconstruction of the medieval scene, and I will attempt to bring it
before the eyes of my readers.
Ponthieu is a district of low, open, and slightly undulating fertile
lands, whose highest ridges touch such contours as 300 feet above the sea,
and the depressions in which, very broad and easy, do not commonly fall
more than a 100 feet or so below the higher rolls of land. In the
particular case of the field of Crécy we shall have to deal with figures
even less marked. The crests from which the opposing armies viewed each
other before the action average full 200 feet above the sea; the broad,
shallow depression between its confronting ridges descends to little more
than sixty feet below them.
All this wide expanse of fertile land, affording from one lift of its
undulations and another great even views for miles and miles, is cut by
streams which run parallel to each other in trenches five to seven miles
apart, and make their way by curiously straight courses north-westward to
the neighbouring sea. These are the Conche, the Authie (the crossing of
whose marshes by the great Roman road formed those _pontes_ which, as we
have seen, give the district its name of Ponthieu), and the Maye.
This last little river alone concerns us. We deal in the matter of the
Battle of Crécy only with the first rising waters of the Maye. Its source
springs just below the village which derives from that river-head its name
of Fontaine, and the Church of Crécy stands not two miles down the young
stream. These two miles of its course, and a slight depression tributary
to this its upper basin, mould the battlefield.
For this shallow depression, called the "Val aux Clercs," among the least
of the many long waves and troughs of land upon which Ponthieu is
modelled, was the centre of the engagement, and, though too short and
shallow to develop the smaller stream, such water as it collects is
tributary to the Maye. This depression runs up from the level exactly
north-eastward, gradually rising until it fades, not quite two miles above
the river, into the upper levels of the plateau.
On either side of this Val aux Clercs lift the soft and inconspicuous
slopes that bound it. The one that bounds it on the north and west, and
from which a man faces the south-east and the direction of Amiens, was the
eminence occupied by the army of Edward III. At its southern end, where it
overlooks the narrow rivulet of the Maye, it descends abruptly to the
meadow level of the stream. The fall at this terminal of the bank is one
of 100 feet. Its slope varies from one in ten to one in twelve, and on
that slope and on the meadow level below it the little town of Crécy
stands. There is the mouth of the Val aux Clercs, and the further one
walks along the road which marks the position of the English line, and the
nearer one approaches Wadicourt, the shallower and less conspicuous and
flatter does the Val aux Clercs appear upon one's right, as its depression
rises towards the general level of the plateau. At last, in the
neighbourhood of Wadicourt itself (the first houses of which stand 2000
yards from the last houses of Crécy) the depression has almost
disappeared.
The bank or fall of land from this crest of the English position down to
the lowest point of the trough, steeper towards its southern, or Crécy,
easier towards its northern, or Wadicourt, end is, upon the average, a
slope of one in thirty; just steep enough to produce its effect upon a
charging crowd (especially over soil drenched by rain), and falling just
sufficiently to give their maximum value to the arrow-shafts of the
long-bow, which was the chief arm of Edward's command.
The opposing slope, that which lies to the south and east of the vale, and
from which the traveller faces the sea-breeze blowing from a shore not
fifteen miles away, is much easier and more gentle even than its
counterpart. The ridge of it stands above the lowest point of the Val aux
Clercs no higher than the corresponding and opposite ridge which the
English King occupied with his army, but the fall covers double the
distance. It is not 400 yards, but more like a mile, and the average of
the decline is one in fifty at the most.