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.
Moreover, this opposing ridge is neither as cleanly marked as the
Crécy-Wadicourt line nor parallel to it. It is impossible to fix upon
it, with any definition, a true crest. The slope undulates very
gradually into the general level of the plateau, and is so formed that
the Val aux Clercs is funnel-shaped, much wider at the mouth on the
Maye than towards its upper end.
The depression, therefore, which was the theatre of the action, is
in the main V-shaped, and its mouth is a full mile in breadth, while
its last faint upper portion is not half that width.
Such, in detail, is the field of Crécy.
I have attempted in the cut opposite p. 91 to express graphically
its main features as they would appear upon a model carved in wood and
plotted to show the actual relief of the soil.
I will conclude by pointing out to the English reader a curious
parallel. The field of Crécy has many analogies to the field of
Waterloo. In both cases two opposing ridges roughly determine the
general plan. In both a depression, double and complex in the modern,
single in the medieval, instance, lies between the two lines. That of
Crécy, as was suitable for a day in which no missiles of long range
were available, is somewhat more marked and affords somewhat more of an
obstacle to the offensive than that of Waterloo. In both the French
formed the attacking force and in both the defensive position was
chosen with singular mastery. Indeed, an eye for a defensive position
marks Edward's plan most strongly, and is, quite apart from the
successful result of his action, his best title to repute in military
history.
* * * * *
At the close of this section the plainest duty of an historian,
as
well as the satisfaction of common humour, compels me to
allude to a
characteristic production of the University of Oxford. There
has
proceeded from this university a school-book, perhaps the most
universally used in the public schools of this country, known
as
Bright's History of England. I was myself brought up on
it. It is
taken, I suppose (like much other Oxford matter), as something
hall-marked and official. This text-book has upon page 226 of
its
first volume a full-page map of the Battle of Crécy. It is
fair to
say that such a production could not have proceeded, I do not
say
from any university upon the Continent of Europe, but from the
humblest schoolmaster in a French, Swiss, or German village.
The
features marked upon it are wholly and unreservedly imaginary.
There
is not even the pretence of a remote similarity between this
grotesque thing and the terrain of the famous battle: it is a
pure
invention. It is almost impossible to express in words the
difference
between this product of fancy, and even the most inaccurate
map
sketched from memory, or the merest jottings set down by
someone who
had no more to guide him than some vague recollection of an
account
of the battle. There is nothing in it bearing the remotest
resemblance to any hill, river, road, wood, village, or point
of the
compass concerned with the field of Crécy, and to this
astonishing
abortion is modestly added in the left-hand bottom corner,
“From
Sprüner.” I have not by me as I write Sprüner's collection of
historical maps which were given us at the University, but if
that
eminent authority was the model for such a masterpiece, it is
a
sufficient commentary upon the rest of his work. I have
before me
as I write the flabbergasting plan in Bright's History
which I have
treasured ever since my boyhood, and I trust that this note
may be
read by many who still believe that the function of our
universities
is to train the governing class of the nation, not so much in
learning as in “character.”
Contrast the excellent and accurate little map in the
first-rate
manual which Mr Barnard published twelve years ago from the
Clarendon Press. The whole of this book is to be most highly
recommended. I believe that this map, the only doubtful
features of
which are the angular formation of the English Archers and the
concentration of the French rear upon the Roman road, is from
the
pencil of Mr Oman.