Chapter 5
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.
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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.
V
THE ACTION
King Edward, upon that Saturday morning before he had yet caught sight of the French, of whose advance his scouts informed him, rode on a little horse slowly up and down the ranks encouraging his army, as it sat and lay at rest, with shield and helm and bow upon the grass before each man, along the crest of the slight hill.
In his hand the King bore a white wand and no weapon, and this visitation of his lasted until nearly ten o'clock. His last orders were that all his men should eat and drink heartily, and he himself conveyed that order to his own division, which lay behind the main line. He had organised the defence upon a very simple pattern.
That battalion which was called the First Battalion consisted of 1200 men-at-arms, that is, fully armoured knights upon horseback, with 4000 Archers and 4000 Welshmen. They occupied that turn or shoulder of the slope which runs round from the town of Crécy itself into the beginning of the Val aux Clercs, and were under the nominal command of the lad the Prince of Wales. But at his side the real orderers of that force were Warwick and Oxford. Such was the English right.
Next, in the centre, and back from the first battalion, was the line of English Archers. It was very carefully organised, with the object of a purely defensive action. Small pits were dug before each man's station, and this infantry was arranged in "harrow" formation, much as trees are planted in an orchard in _quincunx_, so that any five of them formed a figure somewhat like the five in a pack of cards. It is evident that this formation, if the men were sufficiently dispersed, as they were, gave the freest play to their missiles, all of which could be shot through the intervals; and when we remember the rate of fire, three to one of the cross-bow, we shall understand how formidable was this infantry, and how well able it was to break any cavalry charge prepared by nothing more than the shots of the Genoese. All the tradition and sentiment of medieval warfare gave to the mounted knight the glory of battle, but, as I shall have occasion to remark in the sequel, the great feature of Crécy was the presence of an ordered, highly trained infantry, expected to await, and capable of awaiting, a rush of horse until that cavalry should receive at, say, fifty to eighty yards the whole weight of a furious and sustained discharge of missiles. Beyond the Archers, some 3000 in number at this point, were 1200 mounted knights, who, together with the Archers at the centre, were under the command of Northampton.
There may have been a certain number of Archers to the left again of these knights, but, at any rate, Northampton's command covered the rest of the ridge and reposed upon Wadicourt. Here, lest it should be turned, the left flank of the English line was protected by a park of wagons drawn up close together, vehicles taken from such of the train as had been saved from the French attack upon the rearguard at the ford two days before.
The remainder of the wagons, provisions, and impedimenta were drawn up in the rear near the wood, and in front of them and between them and the defensive line upon the ridge was a strong reserve of over 10,000 men under Edward himself. Taking no account of non-combatants, we must reckon Archers, armoured men and spear-men together at perhaps 25,000 men, and certainly not more than 30,000; but we must remember, as I said upon a former page, that every Archer was served by aides, that a man-at-arms needed a squire, and that drivers and domestics of various kinds, and many recruits from Normandy, swelled the host.
The large force against which this defensive was drawn up has been variously estimated. Its dispersion over the countryside, the lack of any cohesive command, the absence of all precise figures, the considerable bodies of wholly untrained country folk who were straggling up behind the army, make an estimate of the actual forces engaged on the French side extremely difficult. We do not know how many Germans, Luxemburgians, and others had been brought up with the feudal levy. The rough guess of contemporaries at the whole numbers present and arriving during this confused marshalling of Philip's host, calls it 100,000. A recent and very careful English authority has estimated the enemy actually in line at 60,000. If we say that Edward met forces more than double his own, but not three times his own, we are as near the truth as we can hope to get. But the right way to estimate the disproportion between the offensive and the defensive upon this famous day is to contrast the fully armoured mounted men of either side, and, further, to contrast
1. The trained infantry, armed with missile weapons.
2. The infantry, trained or untrained, armed only with spear, dagger, or sword.
Upon such an analysis we get some such result as follows:--
Some 4000 fully armoured mounted men in Edward's command, of whom only 3000 or less were out of the reserve and in the line. Some 7000 Archers actually in the defensive line, with a much smaller number (unknown) in the reserve. Add 4000 Spearmen, for the most part Welsh. Against these on the offensive you may set, at the very least, quite four times their number of fully mounted armoured men and probably six times their number, or even more. As against the English Archers, we must count for the missile arm upon the French side somewhat less. The only contemporary authority, Villani, who gives us any exact figures, names 6000 as their number.
When we come to the few trained non-missile infantry of the English forces--some 4000 in the line, not counting the reserve,--and contrast them with the rabble of untrained and scattered French countrymen, most of whom were still coming up in the rear and did not take part in the action (save to suffer slaughter in the darkness after it was over), we can take any multiple we choose. They may have been five, six or eight times as numerous as the Welshmen with whom they did not come into contact at all.
It will be seen from the above that the real point of the battle, and that which decided it, was the power of the trained missile infantry of Edward (1) to await a charge of horse in no matter what numerical superiority it might arrive, confident that they could always check it before it reached their line or broke it; and inspired by that confidence, because (2) the only missile infantry that could be brought against them to prepare such a cavalry charge was armed with a weapon which delivered only one shot to their three. That was the deciding element of the Battle of Crécy: the power of the long-bow to stop horse upon any front equivalent to the front of the Archers, and the confidence of the bowman in that power.
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The action opened regularly enough with the advance of the French missile infantry, the Genoese mercenaries, at the hour, as I have said, of about five o'clock. They proceeded down the slight slope into the Val aux Clercs, followed at a foot's pace by a strong body of the first battalion of the French mounted knights under Alençon.
Advancing thus deployed, a body of 6000 men had difficulty in keeping its line, a thing essential to the simultaneous effect of short-range weapons. Twice they were halted to correct their alignment, and though perhaps at the second halt they were at the lowest point of the valley and just in extreme range of the English arrows from the height above, those arrows did not yet come. The English had been ordered to reserve their fire. They began to climb the opposing slope, shouting as was their custom, and after a third halt had been called, and a third strict alignment made so near to the English front as to be certainly in range for their cross-bows, the order to shoot was given. With the first flight of the Genoese bolts, the English Archers took each man his step forward and began pouring in that terrible fire, sustained, accurate, and rapid, to which they were so admirably trained, and of which hitherto, save in the fight at the ford, no example had been given in continental warfare.
Under that murderous and unceasing rain of missiles the Italian mercenaries, whose weapon compelled them to a complicated process of winding and ratcheting and laying, very ill-suited to such a strain, fell into disorder. A sufficient proportion of them broke, and their confusion at once angered and churned up the great body of mounted French knights, which awaited impatiently immediately behind their line. They were ridden down in the eagerness of these armoured horsemen to retrieve this first check by a charge, and Alençon's men spurred hard (badly hampered by that obstacle of their own men fallen into confusion before them) upon the English right and the Prince of Wales's battalion. Some of them got home, especially those who found themselves opposite the most advanced section of the Prince of Wales's command, where it stood thrust forward in a semicircle upon the shoulder and last slopes of the hill. The boy himself was unhorsed, and for a moment the pressure was severe.[15] But the effect of the arrow fire upon all the rest of the charging line told heavily. It never got home. Indeed, it must have been apparent to Edward at that moment that for all the fixed tradition of chivalry and that overwhelming atmosphere of military religion which in every age, according to its traditions, confuses the soldier, had he kept all his men at arms in reserve and put Archers only in the front line, they would have sufficed to win his battle.
There stands upon the Crécy end of the ridge a great mound to this day. It is the foundation of an old stone windmill which stood there for centuries, and which has been shamefully pulled down within living memory. From that mill it was that Edward watched the whole action proceeding upon the slope beneath him. He saw the head of the French charge get home but its extended line wavering, checked, and broken up on the Val aux Clercs as a continuous rain of arrows poured in. He saw all the front ranks of horses broken: the animals lashing out or fallen stampeding rearward, mounted or riderless: the heavily armoured knights fallen helpless and trampled, the whole thing a vast confusion.
It was near six o'clock. The westering sun was within an hour of its setting, and shone right up the vale, coming aslant upon the burnished armour of the charge. Had this kind of warfare already established a tradition, and had men learned by experience what unshaken infantry could do against horse, it would already have been apparent that the action was decided. But there was no such experience and no such knowledge. Over the long slopes of open field which fronted the English ridge, line after line of knights were coming forward in successive waves, as though mere weight of horses and men could win home in spite of the increasing welter of flying, dead, and maddened mounts, and of fallen men and iron that now lined all the front with a belt of obstacle more formidable than earth or wall. And of those, such few as could struggle through to within range might hope to escape the deadly and now converging fire which struck horse after horse as the foot of the ridge was reached. By gaps in the deadly confusion of the stampede and the corpses, round to their right further and further up the valley (upon their left the marshes of the Maye forbade a turning movement), the French charges followed and spread. A dozen or more were counted, and each as it came met the missile defence and was broken, with no counter missile offensive to tame that fire.
The sun was setting, but one effort was made which should have been made far earlier in the short crisis. It was an effort of the French right to turn the English left by Wadicourt.
Due, we may imagine, to no regular order, an occasion seized upon by some one commander who saw his chance, a charge of horse was led right up to that end of the English line, the barricade of wagons prevented its getting home, and, though the struggle was violent, the obstacle was never pierced or overcome. Well after sunset, and as the light was fading, the King of France himself led a great body to the centre, and seems to have come into range of the arrows, but he, no more than any of his lieges, could force horse against steady infantry and an unremitting fire. The darkness came, the late moon rose, and still were desultory and sporadic charges continued, haphazard and blindly. They had not even a hazard of success. These last efforts of the failing battle were repelled with ease, but even up to midnight the final pulses of the fight throbbed, with lesser and lesser pulsations; until after these seven hours of it--most of it by darkness, and all the while the line of Archers standing unbroken, and all the while supplied with their unexhausted ammunition, and finding strength to draw and to discharge--the thing was over.
Throughout that night great bodies of disordered peasantry, half-armed, the militia of the Communes, fled or wandered aimlessly southward over the bare, rolling land. The mounted knights had ridden away from a field where all was utterly lost, and the English line broke up to move forward by the light of lanterns over the face of the countryside, to despatch or to capture the wounded, to loot, to search for the faces and the ensigns of the greater dead. But in that darkness the magnitude of the result was not seen. The English army seems to have guessed the issue mainly by the dying down of the noise, and the ceasing of the cries of men rallying to their lords' banners.
This was the end of the Battle of Crécy, in the night of Saturday the 26th of August, 1346.
Early upon the Sunday morning, Edward's forces stood to arms again, not knowing whether even yet a new attack might not be made. Mist covered all the landscape, through which fog, dimly, bodies of men seemed to be advancing upon them from the south. They were reinforcements of Philip's come up in ignorance of what had passed the day before, or at any rate not appreciating how decisive the day had been. Five hundred knights riding out easily dispersed them. Further bodies straggling up in similar fashion were dealt with in detail, and all that morning the English soldiers going at large over the fields found and put to the sword lost fragments of militia, came, as they tracked the flight, upon dead and wounded lords, and cut off bewildered remnants, making they knew not whither over the land.
The total French losses will never be known. The legend of disaster calls them now ten, now twenty thousand. Of the mounted and armoured men of rank the heralds made a precise account, and returned a list to King Edward of 1542 fallen and dead upon the front of the battle and in the first fields of the retreat. To these due sepulchre was given. The mass of the fallen were buried in common trenches, marks of which may be seen to this day; and it is said that fires were lit to rid the ground of the dead.