(2) They vary among themselves with regard to this particular word, most of them giving “Oisemont,” but one giving “Nysemont.”
(3) Even where all the MSS. agree with regard to a place, and where Froissart certainly mentioned it, he is wildly inaccurate, evidently going by hearsay, and often by a doubtful memory: thus he has no idea on which side of the Seine the town of Gisors stands, and he calls the village of Fontaine a “strong town,” etc.
(4) Even were he an accurate, he is not a contemporary authority. He had to depend entirely upon older accounts which we can prove that he misread, or did not read at all, but only heard spoken of, and very often botched horribly.
(5) In this particular campaign he is particularly haphazard. Thus, upon the all-important point of the order in which the various crossings of the Somme were attempted, he gets them at sixes and sevens, describing the first last and the last first. He was a man always attending to picturesqueness of incident, and one who thought exactitude very negligible.
Those are the five points which weaken any positive evidence which Froissart may give. But it is the evidence independent of Froissart, and of his accuracy or inaccuracy, which is so overwhelming.
(1) Oisemont lies actually ten miles back from Abbeville upon the line of the retreat. To occupy Oisemont was to incur a deliberate running into that danger which it was all Edward’s effort to avoid.
(2) We know, as a matter of fact, that Philip, the King of France, was before the night of the 23rd abreast of Abbeville; a retreat upon Oisemont would therefore have been physically impossible to Edward.
(3) Oisemont would have involved keeping in touch with bodies ten, twelve, fifteen, and twenty miles distant, even if Oisemont had been occupied for two days, whereas the only mention we have of that occupation represents it as taking place on the 23rd.
These three points render it, as to two of them morally impossible, as to one of them physically, that Edward could have been at Oisemont upon that night. But they are negative: we have positive points which clinch the whole matter. These are:—
(1) Edward marched with his whole army to the ford or it could not all have crossed, therefore it was concentrated before he marched. The march was a very short one. Even Froissart says that “he started at the break of day” and reached the ford “a little after sunrise.” It must also have been short because we know as a matter of positive history that the soldiers who took that morning march waited some time for the tide to ebb, then fought a sharp and successful action upon the northern bank of the river, and again on the same day stormed certainly one and possibly two defended places: also that their total march before the night, and beyond the river, was quite ten miles, including the actions just mentioned.