With the Black Prince

by William O. Stoddard

Up came the bows along the serried lines, while each man chose his mark as if he were shooting for a prize upon a holiday in merry England.

Those of the enemy who escaped to tell the tale said afterward that then it seemed as if it snowed arrows, so swiftly twanged the strings and sped the white shafts.

With yells of terror the stricken Genoese broke and fled; for by reason of Edward's order of battle they were in a cross fire from the two beams of the harrow, and few shots failed of a target among them.

Some of them even cut the damp strings of their useless crossbows as they went, lest they should be bidden to turn and fight again. They were now, however, only a pell-mell mob, and it was impossible to command them.

Behind the advance of the Genoese had been the splendid array of King Philip's men-at-arms—a forest of lances. In a fair field, and handled well, they were numerous enough to ride down the entire force of King Edward. Against such an attack the English king had cunningly provided. At no great distance in the rear of his knights rode Philip himself, with kings and princes for his company; and fierce was his wrath over the unexpected discomfiture of his luckless cross-bowmen.

"Slay me these cowardly scoundrels!" he shouted to his knights. "Charge through them, smiting as ye go!"

Forward rode the thousands of the chivalry of France and Germany and Bohemia, every mailed warrior among them being full of contempt for the thin barrier of English foot soldiers. All they now needed, it seemed to them, was to disentangle their panoplied war horses from that crowd of panic-stricken Genoese. It would also be well if they could pass the wet ground and avoid plunging against one another in the hurly burly.

But now was to be noted another proof of the wise forethought of the English king. He had had prepared, and the prince had placed at short intervals along the battle line, a number of the new machines called "bombards." These were short, hollow tubes, made either of thick oaken staves, bound together with strong straps of iron, or (as was said of some of them) the staves themselves were bars of iron. Before this day, none knew exactly when, there had been discovered by the alchemists a curious compound that, packed into the bombards, would explode with force when touched by fire, and hurl an iron ball to a great distance. It would hurt whatever thing it might alight upon; but the king's thought was rather that the loud explosions and the flying missiles might affright the mettled horses of the French men-at-arms.

Soon the air was full of the roaring of these bombards, and they served somewhat the king's purpose. But so little was then thought of this use of gunpowder at Crécy that some who chronicled the battle, not having been there to see and hear, failed even to mention it.