A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 2

by François Guizot

For a month Edward marched his army over Normandy, “finding on his road,” says Froissart, “the country fat and plenteous in everything, the garners full of corn, the houses full of all manner of riches, carriages, wagons and horses, swine, ewes, wethers, and the finest oxen in the world.” He took and plundered on his way Barfleur, Cherbourg, Valognes, Carentan, and St. Lo. When, on the 26th of July, he arrived before Caen, “a city bigger than any in England save London, and full of all kinds of merchandise, of rich burghers, of noble dames, and of fine churches,” the population attempted to resist. Philip had sent to them the constable, Raoul d’Eu, and the Count of Tancarville; but, after three days of petty fighting around the city and even in the streets themselves, Edward became master of it, and on the entreaty, it is said, of Godfrey d’Harcourt, exempted it from pillage. Continuing his march, he occupied Louviers, Vernon, Verneuil, Mantes, Meulan, and Poissy, where he took up his quarters in the old residence of King Robert; and thence his troops advanced and spread themselves as far as Ruel, Neuilly, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Bourg-la-Reine, and almost to the gates of Paris, whence could be seen “the fire and smoke from burning villages.” “We ourselves,” says a contemporary chronicler, “saw these things; and it was a great dishonor that in the midst of the kingdom of France the King of England should squander, spoil, and consume the king’s wines and other goods.” Great was the consternation at Paris. And it was redoubled when Philip gave orders for the demolition of the houses built along by the walls of circumvallation, on the ground that they embarrassed the defence. The people believed that they were on the eve of a siege. The order was revoked; but the feeling became even more intense when it was known that the king was getting ready to start for St. Denis, where his principal allies, the King of Bohemia, the Dukes of Hainault and of Lorraine, the Counts of Flanders and of Blois, “and a very great array of baronry and chivalry,” were already assembled. “Ah! dear sir and noble king,” cried the burghers of Paris as they came to Philip and threw themselves on their knees before him, “what would you do? Would you thus leave your good city of Paris? Your enemies are already within two leagues, and will soon be in our city when they know that you are gone; and we have and shall have none to defend us against them. Sir, may it please you to remain and watch over your good city.” “My good people,” answered the king, “have ye no fear; the English shall come no nigher to you; I am away to St. Denis to my men-at-arms, for I mean to ride against these English, and fight them, in such fashion as I may.” Philip recalled in all haste his troops from Aquitaine, commanded the burgher-forces to assemble, and gave them, as he had given all his allies, St. Denis for the rallying-point. At sight of so many great lords and all sorts of men of war flocking together from all points, the Parisians took fresh courage. “For many a long day there had not been seen at St. Denis a king of France in arms and fully prepared for battle.”

Edward began to be afraid of having pushed too far forward, and of finding himself endangered in the heart of France, confronted by an army which would soon be stronger than his own. Some chronicles say that Philip, in his turn, sent a challenge either for single combat or for a battle on a fixed day, in a place assigned, and that Edward, in his turn also, declined the proposition he had but lately made to his rival. It appears, further, that at the moment of commencing his retreat away from Paris, he tried ringing the changes on Philip with respect to the line he intended to take, and that Philip was led to believe that the English army would fall back in a westerly direction, by Orleans and Tours, whereas it marched northward, where Edward flattered himself he would find partisans, counting especially on the help of the Flemings, who, in fulfilment of their promise, had already advanced as far as Bethune to support him. Philip was soon better informed, and moved with all his army into Picardy in pursuit of the English army, which was in a hurry to reach and cross the Somme, and so continue its march northward. It was more than once forced to fight on its march with the people of the towns and country through which it was passing; provisions were beginning to fall short; and Edward sent his two marshals, the Earl of Warwick and Godfrey d’Harcourt, to discover where it was practicable to cross the river, which, at this season of the year and so near its mouth, was both broad and deep. They returned without having any satisfactory information to report; “whereupon,” says Froissart, “the king was not more joyous or less pensive, and began to fall into a great melancholy.” He had halted three or four days at Airaines, some few leagues from Amiens, whither the King of France had arrived in pursuit with an army, it is said, more than a hundred thousand strong. Philip learned through his scouts that the King of England would evacuate Airaines the next morning, and ride to Abbeville in hopes of finding some means of getting over the Somme. Philip immediately ordered a Norman baron, Godemar du Fay, to go with a body of troops and guard the ford of Blanche-Tache, below Abbeville, the only point at which, it was said, the English could cross the river; and on the same day he himself moved with the bulk of his army from Amiens on Airaines. There he arrived about midday, some few hours after that the King of England had departed with such precipitation that the French found in it “great store of provisions, meat ready spitted, bread and pastry in the oven, wines in barrel, and many tables which the English had left ready set and laid out.” “Sir,” said Philip’s officers to him, as soon as he was at Airaines, “rest you here and wait for your barons and their folk, for the English cannot escape you.” It was concluded, in point of fact, that Edward and his troops, not being able to cross the Somme, would find themselves hemmed in between the French army and the strong places of Abbeville, St. Valery, and Le Crotoi, in the most evil case and perilous position possible. But Edward, on arriving at the little town of Oisemont, hard by the Somme, set out in person in quest of the ford he was so anxious to discover. He sent for some prisoners he had made in the country, and said to them, “right courteously,” according to Froissart, “‘Is there here any man who knows of a passage below Abbeville, where-by we and our army might cross the river without peril?’ And a varlet from a neighboring mill, whose name history has preserved as that of a traitor, Gobin Agace, said to the king, ‘Sir, I do promise you, at the risk of my head, that I will guide you to such a spot, where you shall cross the River Somme without peril, you and your army.’ ‘Comrade,’ said the king to him, ‘if I find true that which thou tellest us, I will set thee free from thy prison, thee and all thy fellows for love of thee, and I will cause to be given to thee a hundred golden nobles and a good stallion.’” The varlet had told the truth; the ford was found at the spot called Blanche-Tache, whither Philip had sent Godemar du Fay with a few thousand men to guard it. A battle took place; but the two marshals of England, “unfurling their banners in the name of God and St. George, and having with them the most valiant and best mounted, threw themselves into the water at full gallop, and there, in the river, was done many a deed of battle, and many a man was laid low on one side and the other, for Sir Godemar and his comrades did valiantly defend the passage; but at last the English got across, and moved forward into the fields as fast as ever they landed. When Sir Godemar saw the mishap, he made off as quickly as he could, and so did a many of his comrades.” The King of France, when he heard the news, was very wroth, “for he had good hope of finding the English on the Somme and fighting them there. ‘What is it right to do now?’ asked Philip of his marshals. ‘Sir,’ answered they, ‘you cannot now cross in pursuit of the English, for the tide is already up.’” Philip went disconsolate to lie at Abbeville, whither all his men followed him. Had he been as watchful as Edward was, and had he, instead of halting at Airaines “by the ready-set tables which the English had left,” marched at once in pursuit of them, perhaps he would have caught and beaten them on the left bank of the Somme, before they could cross and take up position on the other side. This was the first striking instance of that extreme inequality between the two kings in point of ability and energy which was before long to produce results so fatal for Philip.

When Edward, after passing the Somme, had arrived near Crecy, five leagues from Abbeville, in the countship of Ponthieu which had formed part of his mother Isabel’s dowry, “‘Halt we here,’ said he to his marshals; ‘I will go no farther till I have seen the enemy; I am on my mother’s rightful inheritance which was given her on her marriage; I will defend it against mine adversary, Philip of Valois;’ and he rested in the open fields, he and all his men, and made his marshals mark well the ground where they would set their battle in array.” Philip, on his side, had moved to Abbeville, where all his men came and joined him, and whence he sent out scouts “to learn the truth about the English. When he knew that they were resting in the open fields near Crecy and showed that they were awaiting their enemies, the King of France was very joyful, and said that, please God, they should fight him on the morrow [the day after Friday, August 25, 1346]. He that day bade to supper all the high-born princes who were at Abbeville. They were all in great spirits and had great talk of arms, and after supper the king prayed all the lords to be all of them, one toward another, friendly and courteous, without envy, hatred, and pride, and every one made him a promise thereof. On the same day of Friday the King of England also gave a supper to the earls and barons of his army, made them great cheer, and then sent them away to rest, which they did. When all the company had gone, he entered into his oratory, and fell on his knees before the altar, praying devoutly that God would permit him on the morrow, if he should fight, to come out of the business with honor; after which, about midnight, he went and lay down. On the morrow he rose pretty early, for good reason, heard mass with the Prince of Wales, his son, and both of them communicated. The majority of his men confessed and put themselves in good ease. After mass the king commanded all to get on their arms and take their places in the field according as he had assigned them the day before.” Edward had divided his army into three bodies; he had put the first, forming the van, under the orders of the young Prince of Wales, having about him the best and most tried warriors; the second had for commanders earls and barons in whom the king had confidence; and the third, the reserve, he commanded in person. Having thus made his arrangements, Edward, mounted on a little palfrey, with a white staff in his hand and his marshals in his train, rode at a foot-pace from rank to rank, exhorting all his men, officers and privates, to stoutly defend his right and do their duty; and “he said these words to them,” says Froissart, “with so bright a smile and so joyous a mien that whoso had before been disheartened felt reheartened on seeing and hearing him.” Having finished his ride, Edward went back to his own division, giving orders for all his folk to eat their fill and drink one draught: which they did. “And then they sat down all of them on the ground, with their head-pieces and their bows in front of them, resting themselves in order to be more fresh and cool when the enemy should come.”

Philip also set himself in motion on Saturday, the 26th of August, and, after having heard mass, marched out from Abbeville with all his barons. “There was so great a throng of men-at-arms there,” says Froissart, “that it were a marvel to think on, and the king rode mighty gently to wait for all his folk.” When they were two leagues from Abbeville, one of them that were with him said, “Sir, it were well to put your lines in order of battle, and to send three or four of your knights to ride forward and observe the enemy and in what condition they be.” So four knights pushed forward to within sight of the English, and, returning immediately to the king, whom they could not approach without breaking the host that encompassed him, they said by the mouth of one of them, “Know, sir, that the English be halted, well and regularly, in three lines of battle, and show no sign of meaning to fly, but await your coming. For my part, my counsel is that you halt all your men, and rest them in the fields throughout this day. Before the hindermost can come up, and before your lines of battle are set in order, it will be late; your men will be tired and in disarray; and you will find the enemy cool and fresh. To-morrow morning you will be better able to dispose your men and determine in what quarter it will be expedient to attack the enemy. Sure may you be that they will await you.” This counsel was well pleasing to the King of France, and he commanded that thus it should be. “The two marshals rode one to the front and the other to the rear with orders to the bannerets, ‘Halt, banners, by command of the king, in the name of God and St. Denis!’ At this order those who were foremost halted, but not those who were hindermost, continuing to ride forward and saying that they would not halt until they were as much to the front as the foremost were. Neither the king nor his marshals could get the mastery of their men, for there was so goodly a number of great lords that each was minded to show his own might. There was, besides, in the fields, so goodly a number of common people that all the roads between Abbeville and Crecy were covered with them; and when these folk thought themselves near the enemy, they drew their swords, shouting, ‘Death! death!’ And not a soul did they see.”

“When the English saw the French approaching, they rose up in fine order and ranged themselves in their lines of battle, that of the Prince of Wales right in front, and the Earls of Northampton and Arundel, who commanded the second, took up their place on the wing, right orderly and all ready to support the prince, if need should be. Well, the lords, kings, dukes, counts, and barons of the French came not up all together, but one in front and another behind, without plan or orderliness. When King Philip arrived at the spot where the English were thus halted, and saw them, the blood boiled within him, for he hated them, and he said to his marshals, ‘Let our Genoese pass to the front and begin the battle, in the name of God and St. Denis.’ There were there fifteen thousand of these said Genoese bowmen; but they were sore tired with going a-foot that day more than six leagues and fully armed, and they said to their commanders that they were not prepared to do any great feat of battle. ‘To be saddled with such a scum as this that fails you in the hour of need!’ said the Duke d’Alencon on hearing those words. Whilst the Genoese were holding back, there fell from heaven a rain, heavy and thick, with thunder and lightning very mighty and terrible. Before long, however, the air began to clear and the sun to shine. The French had it right in their eyes and the English at their backs. When the Genoese had recovered themselves and got together, they advanced upon the English with loud shouts, so as to strike dismay; but the English kept quite quiet, and showed no sign of it. Then the Genoese bent their cross-bows and began to shoot. The English, making one step forward, let fly their arrows, which came down so thick upon the Genoese that it looked like a fall of snow. The Genoese, galled and discomfited, began to fall back. Between them and the main body of the French was a great hedge of men-at-arms who were watching their proceedings. When the King of France saw his bowmen thus in disorder he shouted to the men-at-arms, ‘Up now and slay all this scum, for it blocks our way and hinders us from getting forward.’” Then the French, on every side, struck out at the Genoese, at whom the English archers continued to shoot.

“Thus began the battle between Broye and Crecy, at the hour of vespers.” The French, as they came up, were already tired and in great disorder: “howbeit so many valiant men and good knights kept ever riding forward for their honor’s sake, and preferred rather to die than that a base flight should be cast in their teeth.” A fierce combat took place between them and the division of the Prince of Wales. Thither penetrated the Count d’Alencon and the Count of Flanders with their followers, round the flank of the English archers; and the King of France, who was foaming with displeasure and wrath, rode forward to join his brother D’Alencon, but there was so great a hedge of archers and men-at-arms mingled together that he could never get past. Thomas of Norwich, a knight serving under the Prince of Wales, was sent to the King of England to ask him for help. “‘Sir Thomas,’ said the king, ‘is my son dead or unhorsed, or so wounded that he cannot help himself?’ ‘Not so, my lord, please God; but he is fighting against great odds, and is like to have need of your help.’ ‘Sir Thomas,’ replied the king, ‘return to them who sent you, and tell them from me not to send for me, whatever chance befall them, so long as my son is alive, and tell them that I bid them let the lad win his spurs; for I wish, if God so deem, that the day should be his, and the honor thereof remain to him and to those to whom I have given him in charge.’ The knight returned with this answer to his chiefs; and it encouraged them greatly, and they repented within themselves for that they had sent him to the king.” Warlike ardor, if not ability and prudence, was the same on both sides. Philip’s faithful ally, John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, had come thither, blind as he was, with his son Charles and his knights; and when he knew that the battle had begun he asked those who were near him how it was going on. “‘My lord,’ they said, ‘the Genoese are discomfited, and the king has given orders to slay them all; and all the while between our folk and them there is so great disorder that they stumble one over another and hinder us greatly.’ ‘Ha!’ said the king, ‘that is an ill sign for us; where is Sir Charles, my son?’ ‘My lord, we know not; we have reason to believe that he is elsewhere in the fight.’ ‘Sirs,’ replied the old king, ‘ye are my liegemen, my friends, and my comrades; I pray you and require you to lead me so far to the front in the work of this day that I may strike a blow with my sword; it shall not be said that I came hither to do nought.’ So his train, who loved his honor and their own advancement,” says Froissart, “did his bidding. For to acquit themselves of their duty, and that they might not lose him in the throng, they tied themselves all together by the reins of their horses, and set the king, their lord, right in front, that he might the better accomplish his desire, and thus they bore down on the enemy. And the king went so far forward that he struck a good blow, yea, three and four; and so did all those who were with him. And they served him so well and charged so well forward upon the English, that all fell there and were found next day on the spot around their lord, and their horses tied together.”

“The King of France,” continues Froissart, “had great anguish at heart when he saw his men thus discomfited and falling one after another before a handful of folk as the English were. He asked counsel of Sir John of Hainault, who was near him and who said to him, ‘Truly, sir, I can give you no better counsel than that you should withdraw and place yourself in safety, for I see no remedy here. It will soon be late; and then you would be as likely to ride upon your enemies as amongst your friends, and so be lost.’ Late in the evening, at nightfall, King Philip left the field with a heavy heart—and for good cause; he had just five barons with him, and no more! He rode, quite broken-hearted, to the castle of Broye. When he came to the gate, he found it shut and the bridge drawn up, for it was fully night, and was very dark and thick. The king had the castellan summoned, who came forward on the battlements and cried aloud, ‘Who’s there? who knocks at such an hour?’ ‘Open, castellan,’ said Philip; ‘it is the unhappy King of France.’ The castellan went out as soon as he recognized the voice of the King of France; and he well knew already that they had been discomfited, from some fugitives who had passed at the foot of the castle. He let down the bridge and opened the gate. Then the king, with his following, went in, and remained there up to midnight, for the king did not care to stay and shut himself up therein. He drank a draught, and so did they who were with him; then they mounted to horse, took guides to conduct them, and rode in such wise that at break of day they entered the good city of Amiens. There the king halted, took up his quarters in an abbey, and said that he would go no farther until he knew the truth about his men, which of them were left on the field and which had escaped.”

Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with his army as disheartened as its king, and more disorderly in retreat than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardor and intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory. In the difficult war of conquest he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance to him was to possess on the coast of France, as near as possible to England, a place which he might make, in his operations by land and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of provisioning, and of secure refuge. Calais exactly fulfilled these conditions. It was a natural harbor, protected, for many centuries past, by two huge towers, of which one, it is said, was built by the Emperor Caligula and the other by Charlemagne; it had been deepened and improved, at the end of the tenth century, by Baldwin IV., Count of Flanders, and in the thirteenth by Philip of France, called Toughskin (Hurepel), Count of Boulogne; and, in the fourteenth, it had become an important city, surrounded by a strong wall of circumvallation, and having erected in its midst a huge keep, furnished with bastions and towers, which was called the Castle. On arriving before the place, September 3, 1346, Edward “immediately had built all round it,” says Froissart, “houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry, and arranged in streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and whatever trouble he must spend and take. He called this new town Villeneuve la Hardie; and he had therein all things necessary for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of a market on Wednesday and Saturday; and therein were mercers’ shops, and butchers’ shops, and stores for the sale of cloth, and bread, and all other necessaries. King Edward did not have the city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time it might cost him, if King Philip of France did not come to fight him again, and raise the siege.”

Calais had for its governor John de Vienne, a valiant and faithful Burgundian knight, “the which, seeing,” says Froissart, “that the King of England was making every sacrifice to keep up the siege, ordered that all sorts of small folk, who had no provisions, should quit the city without further notice. They went forth on a Wednesday morning, men, women, and children, more than seventeen hundred of them, and passed through King Edward’s army. They were asked why they were leaving; and they answered, because they had no means of living. Then the king permitted them to pass, and caused to be given to all of them, male and female, a hearty dinner, and after dinner two shillings apiece, the which grace was commended as very handsome; and so indeed it was.” Edward probably hoped that his generosity would produce, in the town itself which remained in a state of siege, a favorable impression; but he had to do with a population ardently warlike and patriotic, burghers as well as knights. They endured for eleven months all the sufferings arising from isolation and famine; though, from time to time, fishermen and seamen in their neighborhood, and amongst others two seamen of Abbeville, the names of whom have been preserved in history, Marant and Mestriel, succeeded in getting victuals in to them. The King of France made two attempts to relieve them. On the 20th of May, 1347, he assembled his troops at Amiens; but they were not ready to march till about the middle of July, and as long before as the 23d of June a French fleet of ten galleys and thirty-five transports had been driven off by the English. John de Vienne wrote to Philip, “Everything has been eaten, cats, dogs, and horses, and we can no longer find victual in the town unless we eat human flesh. . . . If we have not speedy succor, we will issue forth from the town to fight, whether to live or die, for we would rather die honorably in the field than eat one another. . . . If a remedy be not soon applied, you will never more have letter from me, and the town will be lost as well as we who are in it. May our Lord grant you a happy life and a long, and put you in such a disposition that, if we die for your sake, you may settle the account therefor with our heirs!” On the 27th of July Philip arrived in person before Calais. If Froissart can be trusted, “he had with him full two hundred thousand men, and these French rode up with banners flying as if to fight, and it was a fine sight to see such puissant array; and so, when they of Calais who were on the walls saw them appear and their banners floating on the breeze, they had great joy, and believed that they were going to be soon delivered! But when they saw camping and tenting going forward they were more angered than before, for it seemed to them an evil sign.” The marshals of France went about everywhere looking for a passage, and they reported that it was nowhere possible to open a road without exposing the army to loss, so well all the approaches to the place, by sea and land, were guarded by the English. The pope’s two legates, who had accompanied King Philip, tried in vain to open negotiations. Philip sent four knights to the King of England to urge him to appoint a place where a battle might be fought without advantage on either side; but, “Sirs,” answered Edward, “I have been here nigh upon a year, and have been at heavy charges by it; and having done so much that before long I shall be master of Calais. I will by no means retard my conquest which I have so much desired. Let mine adversary and his people find out a way, as they please, to fight me.”

Other testimony would have us believe that Edward accepted Philip’s challenge, and that it was the King of France who raised fresh difficulties in consequence of which the proposed battle did not take place. Froissart’s account, however, seems the more truth-like in itself, and more in accordance with the totality of facts. However that may be, whether it were actual powerlessness or want of spirit both on the part of the French army and of the king, Philip, on the 2d of August, 1347, took the road back to Amiens, and dismissed all those who had gone with him, men-at-arms and common folk.