The manoeuvres of the French and English armies preliminary to the
Battle of Crécy are so instructive upon many points, involved movements
so hazardous and so complex, gave rise to so sharp a series of
engagements, and form in general so large a part of our subject, that
they merit a far larger study than do the approaches to most battles.
They illustrate the comparative lack of thought-out plan which
characterised medieval warfare; they afford a contrast between the
compact and fairly well organised command of Edward III., and the
chaotic host of the King of France. They show the effect upon the
military profession of a time without maps and without any properly
managed system of intelligence; and, above all, they show the
overwhelming part which chance plays in all armed conflict between
forces of the same civilisation and approximately the same aptitudes.
The situation upon Wednesday the 23rd of August (at which point we
concluded the survey of Edward III.'s great raid through Normandy, and
of his retreat down the line of the Somme) is already known to the
reader, and will be the clearer if he will look at the map upon page
28.
Edward had made a very fine march indeed, not only averaging
something like twelve miles a day, or more, but arranging for
expeditions to leave the main host during the latter part of this rapid
retreat, and attempt to force, at various points, the passages of the
River Somme. We have seen that he was compelled, if possible, to force
a passage because he would otherwise find himself shut up between the
Somme and the sea, with a much superior force cutting him off to the
south. In case of defeat he would have no line of retreat, and even in
case of success, unless that success were overwhelming, he would find
himself strategically stalemated, still caught in a trap, and still
doomed to await the next onslaught of the enemy. We have further seen
that with every mile that he proceeded towards the sea his ability to
cross the Somme decreased. The river runs through a marshy valley
which, even to-day, is a mass of ponds and water meadows, and which
then was a belt of marsh. It is bounded on either side by fairly steep
banks, rising to heights of 60, 70, and 100 feet, and inland to 150,
between which the flat swamped land grows broader and broader as one
approaches the sea. At Picquigny this level belt of swamp through which
the Somme twines is quite 500 yards across. At Long Pré it is nearer
800, below Abbeville it is 1000, and at the point whence Edward
overlooked it when he was halted at bay on the evening of that 23rd of
August, it is well over 2000 yards in width and nearer 2500.
Boismont, a village climbing the southern bank of the estuary, was
the spot on which the King had gathered the army upon the evening of
that Wednesday, and, not a day's march behind him, the most advanced
mounted men of his pursuers, with the King of France among them, were
camping. The peril was extreme, and an issue from that peril as
extremely doubtful.
It was hopeless for the army to attempt to retrace its steps to the
upper river. To have done so would have been to march with the flank of
its march exposed to an immediate advance of French forces, and almost
certainly to be caught in column; and Edward had already suffered such
repulses before Long Pré, Pont Rémy, and Picquigny as left him no hope
for success should he attempt these bridges again. His only chance was
to find, if it were possible, some practicable ford across the broad
estuary itself that lay before him.
The moon was within a few hours of the full that night, the highest
of the spring-tides was making—in the open sea they were at their full
height of 25 feet, an hour before midnight,—and though where he would
strike the estuary he might hope for a tide more tardy, Edward had
before him as he watched, his only avenue of escape, a great flood that
appeared to deny him all access to the further shore.
Every effort was made to discover from local knowledge whether any
passage existed. The highest rewards were offered, in vain, for in all
that countryside a feeling which if not national was at least strongly
opposed to the invader, forbade treason, and the near presence of the
French King's great force was an active reminder of the punishment that
would attend it. Late in this period of suspense a guide was found.
A man of the name of Gobin Agache, who had been taken prisoner by
the army, was that guide. His was that “invaluable” capture which I
mentioned in the last section. He was a peasant of those parts, and a
native of Mons-en-Vimieux, through which the army had marched from
Acheux to Boismont. He yielded to temptation when all others had
refused. He was promised a hundred pieces of gold (say £500 of our
money), his own liberty, and that of twenty of his companions. For that
price he sold himself, and promised to discover to the King and to his
army the only practicable ford across the estuary.
Just at the end of the night the host set out and marched during the
first hours of the moonlit Wednesday morning along the old road which
still leads over the hills that separate Boismont from Saigneville and
marked the southern bank of the valley. The marshalling was long; the
full ordering of the force, now that it was all gathered together and
marching along one narrow way, inexpeditious; and the two miles that
separated the head of its column from the neighbouring village were not
traversed by its last units, nor was the whole body drawn up at the
foot of the hills against the water until the sun of that late August
day was beginning to rise, and to show more clearly the great sheet of
flood-water and the steep distant bank beyond it.
The place to which their guide had led them was the entry to the
ford of Blanchetaque, a name famous in the military history of this
country. Hidden beneath the waters which, though now ebbing strongly,
were still far too deep for any attempt at a crossing, ran the
causeway. By it, upon the faith of the traitor, they could trust to
gaining the opposite shore. As the racing ebb lowered more and more,
the landward approaches of that causeway appeared in a lengthening
white belt pointing right across towards the further bank, and assured
them that they had not been betrayed. It was built of firm marl in the
midst of that grassy slime which marks the edges of the Somme valley,
and they had but to wait for low water to be certain that they could
make the passage. Beyond, upon the northern shore which showed in a
high, black band (for it was steep) against the broadening day, they
could distinguish a force that had been gathered to oppose them.
It was mid-morning before the ebb was at its lowest,[9] and they
could begin to march “twelve abreast, and with the water no more than
knee-high,” across the dwindled stream now at its lowermost of slack
water, and running near the further bank with a breadth not a fifth of
what it had been at the flood. But before proceeding further and
describing the assault shore, I would lay before my readers the process
by which I have established the exact locality of this famous ford. It
has been a matter of considerable historical debate. It is and will
always remain a matter of high historical interest, and this must be my
excuse for digressing upon the evidence which, I think it will be
admitted, finally establishes the exact trajectory of Blanchetaque.
The site of Blanchetaque is one which nature and art have combined
to render obscure: nature, because a ford when its purpose disappears
and it is no longer kept up, that is, an artificial ford, tends to
disappear more rapidly than any other monument; art, because the old
estuary of the Somme has of recent years been further and further
reclaimed. It was, when I first began studying this district, already
banked across below Boismont, and, if I am not mistaken, the great
railway bridge right across the very mouth of the river has, in the
last few months, been made the boundary of the reclaimed land.
Now, Blanchetaque was an artificial ford. We know this because there
is no marl formation near by, and could be none forming a narrow rib
across the deep alluvial mud of the estuary; the marl, then, can only
have been brought from some little distance. It is not only an
artificial hardening which we have to deal with, but one in the midst
of a tidal estuary where a violent current swept the work for
centuries. Finally, the cause for keeping the ford in some sort of
repair early disappeared in modern times before the process of
reclaiming the land of the estuary began. Numerous modern bridges,
coupled with the great development of modern roads, permitted the
crossing of the Somme at and below Abbeville: notably the Bridge of
Cambron. The railway, the growth of the tonnage of steamers, and other
causes, led to the decline of the little riverside town of
Port—formerly the secure head of marine navigation upon the river and
largely the cause that Blanchetaque was kept in repair.
Again, the reclamation of the land has been carried out with a
French thoroughness only too successful in destroying the contours of
the old river bed. In the sketch map on p. 60 I have indicated to the
best of my ability the channel of the river at low tide as it appears
to have been before reclamation began, but even this can barely be
traced upon the levelled, heightened, and now fruitful pastures.
It is all this which has made the exact emplacement of Blanchetaque
so difficult to ascertain, and has led to the controversies upon its
site.
Now, if we will proceed to gather all forms of evidence, we shall
find that they converge upon one particular line of trajectory which in
the end we can regard as completely established.
We have in the first place (and most valuable of all, of course)
tradition. Local traditions luckily carefully gathered as late as
1840,[10] but the indications of the peasants pointing out the
traditional site of the then ruined way were, unfortunately, not marked
on a map. What was done was to give an indication unfortunately
not too precise, and to leave it on record that the northern end of the
ford was “from 1200 to 1500 metres below Port.” This gives us a margin
of possible error, not of 300 yards as might be supposed, but of more
than double that distance, for Port itself is 500 yards in length from
east to west. We can be certain, however, that so far as tradition goes
we need not look more than a mile below Port for the ford, nor less
than say half a mile from its last houses.
Fortunately, we have other convergent indications which can guide us
with greater precision.
We must remember that, apart from the bringing of merchandise over
to the neighbourhood of Port, the ford, which may, and most probably
did, exist before Port became of any importance, led all the central
traffic of the Vimieux country (which is the district on the left bank
of the Somme) towards the Straits of Dover and their principal port at
Boulogne.
Now, the way from the right bank of the Somme to Boulogne is
interrupted by several streams, much the most marshy and broad of which
is the Authie. The Romans bridged the Authie at Ad Pontes in the
course of their great Trunk Road to Britain, and any way which led from
the lowest ford over the Somme to Boulogne would have to join that
great Trunk Road before or at the bridge if it were to take advantage,
as commerce would have to do, of that sole passage of the very
difficult and marshy Authie valley which can nowhere be crossed save
upon a causeway. I have in a former page remarked upon the importance
of Ad Pontes (the modern Ponches), and pointed out that it gives the
whole county its name of Ponthieu. We must expect, therefore, any
direct commercial way northward from the ford to make directly for
Ponches. To strike the great Trunk Road higher up would be to go out of
one's way; to strike it lower down would be to strike the Authie Valley
at an impassable point.
When an ancient way has disappeared, certain indications of its
track, especially as that track may be presumed to be direct, survive,
and among these are wayside tombs, parish boundaries, and mills or
other places which, for the conveyance of heavy merchandise, are placed
near such a road if possible. All these three kinds of indications are
available in this particular case. The medieval mill which was so
important a monopoly of the medieval community was not built in the
most natural place for it, on the summit of the hill just above Port,
but some thousand yards and more away down the river bank, and over
against it is a group of tombs. Moreover, between the two runs the long
north-western boundary of the parish or commune of Port which is
prolonged in the boundary of the parish of Sailly.[11] We have here,
then, a convergence of proof which confirms the vaguer traditional
site, for the end of this line upon the river, passing between the
tombs and the old mill, strikes the bank within the limits of distance
from Port which were set down in the local notes printed in 1840.
But there is more. The forming of successive embankments one below
the other for the gradual reclamation of land in the Somme estuary was
not an easy matter. They had to be strong to withstand a strong tide,
and there was no good bottom to be found in the deep mud of the valley
floor. It is a significant evidence of this difficulty that the
embankments stand so far apart, and that the last has had to take
advantage of the long-established work of the railway viaduct. It is
therefore a legitimate conjecture that the hard bottom afforded by the
old Blanchetaque would be made use of, and as a fact we find the
principal embankment between Port and the sea coinciding exactly with
the line established by the tombs, the parish boundaries, and the site
of the mill.
There is even more than this. If we follow the present embankment
across 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.