We crossed; but an army does not cross like one, and before our rearward troops were over the French vanguard was on the hill-tops we had just quitted, while the tide was flowing in strong again from the outer sea.
“Now, God be praised for this!” said King Edward, as he sat his charger and saw the strong salt water come gushing in as the last man toiled through. “The kind heavens smile upon our arms—see! they have given us a breathing space! You, good Sir Andrew Kirkaby, who live by pleasant Sherwood, with a thousand archers stand here among the willow bushes and keep the ford for those few minutes till it will remain. Then, while Philip watches the gentle sea fill up this famous channel, and waits, as he must wait, upon his opportunity, we will inland, and on yonder hill, by the grace of God and sweet St. George, we will lay a supper-place for him and his!”
So spoke the bold King, and turned his war-horse, and, with all his troops—seeming wondrous few by comparison of the dusky swarms gathering behind us—rode north four hundred yards from Crecy. He pitched upon a gentle ridge sloping down to a little brook, while at top was woody cover for the baggage train, and near by, on the right, a corn-mill on a swell. ’Twas from that granary floor, sitting stern and watchful, his sword upon his knees, his impatient charger armed and ready at the door below, that the King sat and watched the long battle.
Meanwhile, we strengthened the slopes. We dug a trench along the front and sides, and, with the glitter of the close foeman’s steel in our eyes, lopped the Crecy thickets. And, working in silence (while the Frenchman’s song and laughter came to us on the breeze), set the palisades, and bound them close as a strong fence against charging squadrons, and piled our spears where they were handy, and put out the archers’ arrows in goodly heaps. Jove! we worked as though each man’s life depended on it, the Prince among us, sweating at spade and axe, and then—it was near four o’clock on that August afternoon—a hush fell upon both hosts, and we lay about and only spoke in whispers. And you could hear the kine lowing in the valley a mile beyond, and the lapwing calling from the new-shorn stubble, and the whimbrels on the hill-tops, and the river fast emptying once again, now prattling to the distant sea. ’Twas a strange pause, a sullen, heavy silence, no longer than a score of minutes. And then, all in a second, a little page in the yellow fern in front of me leaped to his feet, and, screaming in shrill treble that scared the feeding linnets from the brambles, tossed his velvet cap upon the wind and cried:
“They come! they come, St. George! St. George for merry England!”
And up we all sprang to our feet, and, while the proud shout of defiance ran thundering from end to end of our triple lines, a wondrous sight unfolded before us. The vast array of France, stretching far to right and left and far behind, was loosed from its roots, and coming on down the slope—a mighty frowning avalanche—upon us, a flowing, angry sea, wave behind wave, of chief and mercenary—countless lines of spear and bowmen and endless ranks of men-at-arms behind—an overwhelming flood that hid the country as it marched shot with the lurid gleam of light upon its billows, and crested with the fluttering of endless flags that crowned each of those long lines of cheering foemen.
That tawny fringe there in front a furlong deep and driven on by the host behind like the yellow running spume upon the lip of a flowing tide was Genoese crossbowmen, selling their mean carcasses to manure the good Picardy soil for hireling pay. Far on the left rode the grim Doria, laughing to see the little band set out to meet his serried vassals, and, on the right, Grimaldi’s olive face scowled hatred and malice at the hill where the English lay.
There, behind these tawny mercenaries in endless waves of steel, D’Alençon rode, waving his princely baton, and marshaled as he came rank upon rank of glittering chivalry—a fuming, foamy sea of spears and helmets that flashed and glittered in the sun, and tossed and chafed, impatient of ignoble hesitance, and flowed in stately pride toward us, the white foam-streaks of twenty thousand plumed horsemen showing like breakers on a shallow sea, as that great force, to the blare of trumpets, swept down.
And, as though all these were not enough to smother our desperate valor even with the shadow of their numbers, behind the French chivalry again advanced a winding forest of spearmen stooping to the lie of the ground, and now rising and now falling like water-reeds when the west wind plays among them. Under that innumerable host, that stretched in dust and turmoil two long miles back to where the gray spires of Abbeville were misty on the sky, the rasp of countless feet sounded in the still air like the rain falling on a leafy forest.
Never did such a horde set out before to crush a desperate band of raiders. And, that all the warlike show might not lack its head and consummation, between their rearguard ranks came Philip, the vassal monarch who held the mighty fiefs that Edward coveted. Lord! how he and his did shine and glint in the sunshine! How their flags did flutter and their heralds blow as the resplendent group—a deep, strong ring of peers and princes curveting in the flickering shade of a score of mighty blazons—came over the hill crest and rode out to the foremost line of battle and took places there to see the English lion flayed. With a mighty shout—a portentous roar from rear to front which thundered along their van and died away among the host behind—the French heralded the entry of their King upon the field, and, with one fatal accord, the whole vast baying pack broke loose from order and restraint and came at us.