The English intended to pass the river at Poissy, but found the French army encamped on the opposite banks, and the bridge at that place, as well as all others over the Seine, broken down by orders from Philip. Edward now saw that the French meant to enclose him in their country, in hopes of attacking him with advantage on all sides: but he saved himself by a stratagem from this perilous situation. He gave his army orders to dislodge, and to advance farther up the Seine; but immediately returning by the same road, he arrived at Poissy, which the enemy had already quitted, in order to attend his motions. He repaired the bridge with incredible celerity, passed over his army, and having thus disengaged himself from the enemy, advanced by quick marches towards Flanders. His vanguard, commanded by Harcourt, met with the townsmen of Amiens, who were hastening to reënforce their king, and defeated them with great slaughter;[*] he passed by Beauvais, and burned the suburbs of that city: but as he approached the Somme, he found himself in the same difficulty as before; all the bridges on that river were either broken down or strongly guarded: an army, under the command of Godemar de Faye, was stationed on the opposite banks: Philip was advancing on him from the other quarter, with an army of a hundred thousand men; and he was thus exposed to the danger of being enclosed, and of starving in an enemy’s country. In this extremity, he published a reward to any one that should bring him intelligence of a passage over the Somme. A peasant, called Gobin Agace, whose name has been preserved by the share which he had in these important transactions, was tempted on this occasion to betray the interests of his country; and he informed Edward of a ford below Abbeville, which had a sound bottom, and might be passed without difficulty at low water.[**] The king hastened thither, but found Godemar de Faye on the opposite banks. Being urged by necessity, he deliberated not a moment; but threw himself into the river, sword in hand, at the head of his troops; drove the enemy from their station; and pursued them to a distance on the plain.[***] The French army under Philip arrived at the ford, when the rearguard of the English were passing: so narrow was the escape which Edward, by his prudence and celerity, made from this danger! The rising of the tide prevented the French king from following him over the ford, and obliged that prince to take his route over the bridge at Abbeville; by which some time was lost.
* Froissard, liv, i. chap. 125. ** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 126,127 *** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 127.
It is natural to think that Philip, at the head of so vast an army, was impatient to take revenge on the English, and to prevent the disgrace to which he must be exposed if an inferior enemy should be allowed, after ravaging so great a part of his kingdom, to escape with impunity. Edward also was sensible that such must be the object of the French monarch; and as he had advanced but a little way before his enemy, he saw the danger of precipitating his march over the plains of Picardy, and of exposing his rear to the insults of the numerous cavalry in which the French camp abounded. He took, therefore, a prudent resolution: he chose his ground with advantage near the village of Crecy; he disposed his army in excellent older; he determined to await in tranquillity the arrival of the enemy; and he hoped that their eagerness to engage, and to prevent his retreat, after all their past disappointments would hurry them on to some rash and ill-concerted action. He drew up his army on a gentle ascent, and divided them into three lines: the first was commanded by the prince of Wales, and under him by the earls of Warwick and Oxford, by Harcourt, and by the lords Chandos, Holland, and other noblemen: the earls of Arundel and Northampton, with the lords Willoughby, Basset, Roos, and Sir Lewis Tufton, were at the head of the second line: he took to himself the command of the third division, by which he purposed either to bring succor to the two first lines, or to secure a retreat in case of any misfortune, or to push his advantages against the enemy. He had likewise the precaution to throw up trenches on his flanks, in order to secure himself from the numerous bodies of the French who might assail him from that quarter; and he placed all his baggage behind him in a wood, which he also secured by an intrenchment.[*]
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 128.
The skill and order of this disposition, with the tranquillity in which it was made, served extremely to compose the minds of the soldiers; and the king, that he might further inspirit them, rode through the ranks with such an air of cheerfulness and alacrity, as conveyed the highest confidence into every beholder. He pointed out to them the necessity to which they were reduced, and the certain and inevitable destruction which awaited them, if, in their present situation, enclosed on all hands in an enemy’s country, they trusted to any thing but their own valor, or gave that enemy an opportunity of taking revenge for the many insults and indignities which they had of late put upon him. He reminded them of the visible ascendant which they had hitherto maintained over all the bodies of French troops that had fallen in their way; and assured them, that the superior numbers of the army which at present hovered over them, gave them not greater force, but was an advantage easily compensated by the order in which he had placed his own army, and the resolution which he expected from them. He demanded nothing, he said, but that they would imitate his own example, and that of the prince of Wales: and as the honor, the lives, the liberties of all, were now exposed to the same danger, he was confident that they would make one common effort to extricate themselves from the present difficulties, and that their united courage would give them the victory over all their enemies.
It is related by some historians,[*] that Edward, besides the resources which he found in his own genius and presence of mind, employed also a new invention against the enemy, and placed in his front some pieces of artillery, the first that had yet been made use of on any remarkable occasion in Europe. This is the epoch of one of the most singular discoveries that has been made among men; a discovery which changed by degrees the whole art of war, and by consequence many circumstances in the political government of Europe. But the ignorance of that age in the mechanical arts, rendered the progress of this new invention very slow. The artillery first framed were so clumsy, and of such difficult management, that men were not immediately sensible of their use and efficacy and even to the present times improvements have been continually making on this furious engine, which, though it seemed contrived for the destruction of mankind, and the overthrow of empires, has in the issue rendered battles less bloody, and has given greater stability to civil societies. Nations, by its means, have been brought more to a level: conquests have become less frequent and rapid: success in war has been reduced nearly to be a matter of calculation: and any nation, overmatched by its enemies, either yields to their demands or secures itself by alliances against their violence and invasion.
The invention of artillery was at this time known in France as well as in England;[**] but Philip, in his hurry to overtake the enemy, had probably left his cannon behind him, which he regarded as a useless encumbrance. All his other movements discovered the same imprudence and precipitation. Impelled by anger, a dangerous counsellor, and trusting to the great superiority of his numbers, he thought that all depended on forcing an engagement with the English; and that if he could once reach the enemy in their retreat, the victory on his side was certain and inevitable. He made a hasty march, in some confusion, from Abbeville; but after he had advanced above two leagues, some gentlemen, whom he had sent before to take a view of the enemy, returned to him, and brought him intelligence that they had seen the English drawn up in Bombarda great order, and awaiting his arrival.
* Jean Villani, lib. xii. cap. 66. ** Du Cange, Glass, in verb.
They therefore devised him to defer the combat till the ensuing day, when his army would have recovered from their fatigue, and might be disposed into better order than their present hurry had permitted them to observe. Philip assented to this counsel; but the former precipitation of his march, and the impatience of the French nobility, made it impracticable for him to put it in execution. One division pressed upon another: orders to stop were not seasonably conveyed to all of them: this immense body was not governed by sufficient discipline to be manageable; and the French army, imperfectly formed into three lines, arrived, already fatigued and disordered, in presence of the enemy. The first line, consisting of fifteen thousand Genoese cross-bow men, was commanded by Anthony Doria and Charles Grimaldi: the second was led by the count of Alençon, brother to the king: the king himself was at the head of the third. Besides the French monarch, there were no less than three crowned heads in this engagement; the king of Bohemia, the king of the Romans, his son, and the king of Majorca; with all the nobility and great vassals of the crown of France. The army now consisted of above one hundred and twenty thousand men, more than three times the number of the enemy. But the prudence of one man was superior to the advantage of all this force and splendor.
The English, on the approach of the enemy, kept their ranks firm and immovable; and the Genoese first began the attack. There had happened, a little before the engagement, a thunder shower, which had moistened and relaxed the strings of the Genoese cross-bows; their arrows for this reason fell short of the enemy. The English archers, taking their bows out of their cases, poured in a shower of arrows upon this multitude who were opposed to them, and soon threw them into disorder. The Genoese fell back upon the heavy-armed cavalry of the count of Alençon;[*] who, enraged at their cowardice, ordered his troops to put them to the sword.
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 130.
The artillery fired amidst the crowd; the English archers continued to send in their arrows among them; and nothing was to be seen in that vast body but hurry and confusion, terror and dismay. The young prince of Wales had the presence of mind to take advantage of this situation, and to lead on his line to the charge. The French cavalry, however, recovering somewhat their order, and encouraged by the example of their leader, made a stout resistance; and having at last cleared themselves of the Genoese runaways, advanced upon their enemies, and by their superior numbers began to hem them round. The earls of Arundel and Northampton now advanced their line to sustain the prince, who, ardent in his first feats of arms, set an example of valor which was imitated by all his followers. The battle became for some time hot and dangerous, and the earl of Warwick, apprehensive of the event, from the superior numbers of the French, despatched a messenger to the king, and entreated him to send succors to the relief of the prince. Edward had chosen his station on the top of the hill; and he surveyed in tranquillity the scene of action. When the messenger accosted him, his first question was, whether the prince were slain or wounded. On receiving an answer in the negative, “Return,” said he, “to my son, and tell him that I reserve the honor of the day to him: I am confident that he will show himself worthy of the honor of knighthood which I so lately conferred upon him: he will be able, without my assistance, to repel the enemy.”[*] This speech, being reported to the prince and his attendants, inspired them with fresh courage: they made an attack with redoubled vigor on the French, in which the count of Alençon was slain: that whole line of cavalry was thrown into disorder: the riders were killed or dismounted: the Welsh infantry rushed into the throng, and with their long knives cut the throats of all who had fallen; nor was any quarter given that day by the victors.[**]
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 130. ** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 130.
The king of France advanced in vain with the rear to sustain the line commanded by his brother: he found them already discomfited; and the example of their rout increased the confusion which was before but too prevalent in his own body. He had himself a horse killed under him: he was remounted; and, though left almost alone, he seemed still determined to maintain the combat; when John of Hainault seized the reins of his bridle, turned about his horse, and carried him off the field of battle. The whole French army took to flight, and was followed and put to the sword without mercy by the enemy, till the darkness of the night put an end to the pursuit. The king, on his return to the camp, flew into the arms of the prince of Wales, and exclaimed, “My brave son persevere in your honorable course: you are my son! for valiantly have you acquitted yourself to-day: you have shown yourself worthy of empire.”[*]
This battle, which is known by the name of the battle of Crecy, began after three o’clock in the afternoon, and continued till evening. The next morning was foggy; and as the English observed that many of the enemy had lost their way in the night and in the mist, they employed a stratagem to bring them into their power: they erected on the eminences some French standards which they had taken in the battle, and all who were allured by this false signal were put to the sword, and no quarter given them. In excuse for this inhumanity, it was alleged that the French king had given like orders to his troops; but the real reason probably was, that the English, in their present situation, did not choose to be encumbered with prisoners. On the day of battle, and on the ensuing, there fell, by a moderate computation, one thousand two hundred French knights, one thousand four hundred gentlemen, four thousand men at arms, besides about thirty thousand of inferior rank:[**] many of the principal nobility of France, the dukes of Lorraine and Bourbon, the earls of Flanders, Blois, Vaudemont, Aumale, were left on the field of battle. The kings also of Bohemia and Majorca were slain: the fate of the former was remarkable: he was blind from age; but being resolved to hazard his person, and set an example to others, he ordered the reins of his bridle to be tied on each side to the horses of two gentlemen of his train; and his dead body, and those of his attendants, were afterwards found among the slain, with their horses standing by them in that situation.[***] His crest was three ostrich feathers; and his motto these German words, Ich dien,—“I serve;” which the prince of Wales and his successors adopted in memorial of this great victory. The action may seem no less remarkable for the small loss sustained by the English, than for the great slaughter of the French: there were killed in it only one esquire and three knights,[****] and very few of inferior rank; a demonstration that the prudent disposition planned by Edward, and the disorderly attack made by the French, had rendered the whole rather a rout than a battle, which was indeed the common case with engagements in those times.
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 131. ** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 131. Knyghton, p. 2588. *** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 130. Walsing. p. 166. **** Knyghton, p. 2588.
The great prudence of Edward appeared not only in obtaining this memorable victory, but in the measures which he pursued after it. Not elated by his present prosperity so far as to expect the total conquest of France, or even that of any considerable provinces, he purposed only to secure such an easy entrance into that kingdom, as might afterwards open the way to more moderate advantages. He knew the extreme distance of Guienne: he had experienced the difficulty and uncertainty of penetrating on the side of the Low Countries, and had already lost much of his authority over Flanders by the death of D’Arteville, who had been murdered by the populace themselves, his former partisans, on his attempting to transfer the sovereignty of that province to the prince of Wales.[*] The king, therefore, limited his ambition to the conquest of Calais; and after the interval of a few days, which he employed in interring the slain, he marched with his victorious army, and presented himself before the place.
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