Silently yet swiftly the white-surcoated lines of bowmen sprang to their feet and took up their allotted stations in the formation of a harrow. With feet planted firmly, and with arrows notched to their six-foot bows, they stood ready for action.
At length the Genoese came within bowshot, the clicking of their windlacs as they drew the cords of their crossbows sounding like the chirping of myriad crickets. Then with a loud shout they leaped from the ground. Another shout, and the leap was repeated.
"Do they take us for a crowd of yokels at a country fair?" asked one archer of his fellow. "They prance for all the world like a dog-baited bear."
"They'll dance higher ere long, I'll warrant," replied his comrade grimly.
Once more the Genoese leapt, then levelling their crossbows, they let fly a volley of short bolts.
A shout of derision greeted this discharge, for, without exception, the bolts fell far short of the proper distance, sticking in the ground at a sharp angle and rendering the advance of the French cavalry, when it should take place, full of additional peril.
"That shows what the rain did for the strings of their crossbows," said Sir John Hacket to the Constable of Lewes, who had joined him at the beginning of the advance. "Steady, men. At the word, loose wholly together."
The long-drawn tension was broken by the voice of the great Lord Chandos. "In the name of God and St. George—shoot!"
The twang of two thousand longbows reverberated along the line. The intervening space between the armies was white with a sleet of arrows. Looking towards the Genoese, Raymond saw a dense mass of men bending over their crossbows and working their windlacs in desperate haste to reload their cumbersome weapons. The next moment the Genoese were literally swept away. Hardly an arrow failed to find a mark; heads, breasts, arms, and legs were transfixed by stinging shafts. Dead, wounded, and unscathed were mixed in a writhing, struggling mass, and the confusion was increased by the unwounded striving to fall back upon the main body of the French host.
All the while the English archers shot straight and true at the disorganised Genoese. The squire, though unable to see the faces of the bowmen in front of him, was astonished at the quiet, collected manner in which they loosed their bows.