4
When Edward with his army and fleet left the Isle of Wight, he had a number of possible courses open to him. He could have landed in Flanders, where since the Battle of Sluys the inhabitants were firmly allied to the English; or in Aquitaine, where Henry, earl of Derby and Lancaster, was holding out against French depredations; or in Brittany to join Sir Walter Manny and the Montfort party. In all of those locations friendly troops could have ensured an unopposed landing and a secure base whence to advance inland, but in the event Edward chose none of these obvious courses but instead elected to land where there were no friendly troops in a province that was steadfastly French and whose ruler was Philip VI’s son. Edward would, of course, have been well aware that Philip would be expecting an invasion, but, like General Sir Frederick Morgan planning for his D-Day nearly 600 years later, it was imperative that he concealed the actual landing zone and so he headed for Normandy. To land in Normandy was certainly taking a chance, but not so much of a chance as might initially appear. For, while there would be no friendly troops to meet him, there would be no enemy ones either, as most had been sent off to Aquitaine, and, by opening up yet another front, he would force the French to disperse their forces even more and prevent them from concentrating. Added to that, there was the richness of the Norman countryside and of its cities. The former, with the harvest just in, would provide provisions in plenty, while the latter would yield rich pickings in plate, jewels, coin and ransom.
The sea-borne journey from England to Normandy in 1944 was highly unpleasant for the men involved, but it was far worse in 1346. In 1944, the journey took much less time, and, although the men had to try to avoid being sprayed by each other’s vomit – for just about everyone was sea-sick to a greater or lesser degree – at least they were not surrounded by ever larger piles of horse droppings, nor did they have to try to feed and groom the increasingly fractious animals. One consolation in 1346, however, was that horses have no facility to regurgitate. Bad weather blew Edward’s fleet back almost all the way to the coast of Cornwall before the winds changed, and, although the ships had left the English ports on 5 July, it was not until 12 July that they sighted the Norman coast and began to disembark in the bay of La Hougue (now Saint-Vaast la Hougue) on the eastern side of the Cotentin peninsula. It took three days to land the men, horses and stores, and, while unloading was going on, ships that had discharged their cargo moved to Barfleur, three miles up the coast. Here the sailors found and destroyed seven French warships, before setting fire to the town itself, having first removed all portable valuables.35 A few disaffected Norman knights appeared and threw in their lot with the English, and their local knowledge would be useful, for time was now of the essence.
Edward was intending to embark upon a chevauchée, literally a ‘mounted raid’, which involved moving rapidly through enemy territory doing as much damage as possible but avoiding pitched battle. The purpose was partly economic and partly to terrorize. The destruction of property, the levelling of buildings, the reduction of fortifications, the burning of crops, the removal of gold and silver, and the killing of people all damaged the economy by reducing the amount of tax that could be levied, while at the same time enriching the invading army. Terror could persuade the population to change its allegiance and spelled out a message to the enemy ruler: come to terms or this goes on and will be repeated. Particularly relevant too, at this period in history, was the damage to Philip’s honour and reputation if he could be shown to be incapable of defending his subjects. Leaders of such raids usually aimed to start from a secure base and slash and burn their way to another secure area, or to a port where they could re-embark, before an avenging army caught up with them. Edward would have been intending to sweep up from Normandy to the English county of Ponthieu, at the mouth of the River Somme, and then, depending upon the French reaction, either to return to England or to move into friendly Flanders. At the time, there was little distinction between enemy soldiers and enemy civilians – indeed, the line between them was blurred when most males had a military obligation – and, although there was still a vestige of chivalry present in the relations between the nobility of either side, this was rarely extended to their inferiors. The peasants were always the victims in these raids, and nobody, whether English or French, cared very much about them.
By 18 July, the English army was all ashore. That day it moved to Valognes, eleven miles away, and on the next day struck for Carentan, another twenty miles away, but was held up at the River Douvres, where the locals had destroyed the only bridge. Infantry and cavalry could, of course, cross the river without too much of a problem, bridge or no, but, for the baggage train of wheeled vehicles which carried the tentage, stores, rations and accumulated loot, a bridge was needed. Many of the Norman bridges were of stone, which would have taken time and energy to destroy, so many had one span in wood that could easily be demolished when necessary – and as easily repaired. Edward’s engineers rebuilt the bridge during the night, and on 20 July the English were in Carentan, where a large quantity of provisions and wine fell into their hands. They then burned the town, although Edward is said to have attempted to prevent it, and next day reached the River Vire, where again the bridges giving access to Saint-Lô had been torn down. Once more, the engineers repaired one of the bridges, and on 22 July Saint-Lô was in English hands and again was put to the torch, but not before 1,000 butts of wine had been confiscated. Edward made no attempt to save Saint-Lô, for he was particularly infuriated to find the heads of three Norman knights on pikes above the main gate – they had been captured fighting for Edward in Brittany and executed as traitors. Edward’s view was, of course, that they had been fighting for their rightful king – him – and in any event one just did not execute captured knights.
Bayeux escaped the fate of the other towns on the army’s route: its citizens had taken the precaution of sending emissaries pledging allegiance to Edward well before the army got anywhere near the town. By 25 July, the army was approaching Caen, a city bigger than any in England except London, having covered ninety miles in seven days – very fast going when the delays in bridging the rivers and plundering the towns and villages for miles either side of the route are considered. The advance would have been led entirely by mounted knights, men-at-arms and archers, while the foot-borne elements would have followed on, and if the engineers (carpenters and masons) were on foot, as they probably were, then they had made excellent progress indeed. A portion of the dismounted troops had been left behind to support the fleet, which now sailed along the coast with the soldiers moving parallel to it, looting and burning every coastal village and farmstead until from Cherbourg to Ustrem (Ouistreham) there was not a house standing nor a farm animal alive, while any stores of grain or other provisions not loaded onto the ships were burned. The purported reason for this devastation was to destroy French naval power in the Channel, to which it undoubtedly contributed, but there was a personal profit motive too. Discipline in the navy was clearly not what it should have been, for, despite orders that all ships were to remain in Norman waters, some of the crews – some sources say as many as a hundred – loaded their ships to the gunwales with loot, then took off for England to realize their newfound wealth.
Caen was a much more formidable obstacle than the towns captured so far, which had been defended only lightly or not at all. The city itself was centred on William the Conqueror’s castle. This was an immensely strong fortification, but the town below it was not well suited to defence, as its eleventh-century walls were by now in disrepair and in some places falling down. To the north-east and south-west of the castle and about 800 yards from it were respectively the Abbaye aux Dames and the Abbaye aux Hommes, the latter the burial place of William the Conqueror. The commercial heart of the city and its most prosperous suburb lay 600 yards south-west of the castle on the Île Saint-Jean, centred round the church of Saint Jean, which is still there, and was unwalled but entirely surrounded by the waters of the Rivers Odon and Orne and their branches. Those rivers are still there too, but their courses have changed, particularly that of the Odon, which is now underground for much of its traverse of Caen, while the minor branches of both rivers have long dried out. Then the Odon ran from south-west to north-east along what is now the Rue des Alliés, with the church of Saint Pierre, which still survives, on the north side and a bridge, the Porte Saint-Pierre, crossing the river beside the church. The axis of the Île was the road now named the Rue Saint-Jean, which runs, as it did then, south-east to north-west. On the southern side, the Orne ran pretty much as it does now, although the Bassin Saint-Pierre was not built until 1845.
For days, refugees had been pouring into Caen, and by the time the English army had reached Fontenay-le-Pesnel, just east of Tilly-sur-Seulles – about twelve miles from Caen and on a ridge that would become frustratingly familiar to another British army during the Normandy campaign of 1944 – the constable of Caen, the garrison commander, knew that death and destruction was coming his way, and coming soon. He had perhaps 1,200 soldiers, men-at-arms and mercenary crossbowmen recruited from Genoa, and decided to hold only the castle and the Île Saint-Jean. To abandon the old city was sensible enough – its walls would not have withstood an assault even if he had had sufficient men to cover all the approaches, which he did not – and, while both abbeys were stoutly walled, he considered that he could not afford to attempt to hold them. The bishop of Bayeux, with around 200 men-at-arms and 100 crossbowmen, was placed in the castle, while the remainder of the garrison withdrew to the Île and prepared to defend it with the help of those citizens who could bear arms. As the bridge at the Porte Saint-Pierre had been designed to defend against an assault coming towards the castle from the south-east, not away from the castle from the north-west, a barricade of upturned farm carts, church benches and blocks of stone from building sites was constructed on the north bank to prevent the English from crossing the bridge, and barges were moored along the bank of the Odon with crossbowmen on the decks and in the fore and stern castles. That night, an English friar and professor of theology, the Augustinian Geoffrey of Maldon, arrived at the old walls with a letter from Edward. In it the king promised to spare the lives and goods of the citizens if the city would surrender to him. The council of Caen rejected the demand, the bishop of Bayeux tore up the letter, and the wretched Geoffrey was flung into the castle jail.
The English army, divided as was customary into three divisions or batailles (literally, ‘battles’), marched at first light and drew near to Caen at mid-morning. The vanguard, commanded in theory by the Prince of Wales, took possession of the Abbaye aux Dames to the north-east, while the main body, commanded by the king, formed up around the Abbaye aux Hommes, with the third division somewhere north of the castle. Edward was preparing to reconnoitre the city prior to formulating a plan for its capture, when events overtook him. Some soldiers of the Prince of Wales’s division saw an undefended gate in the eastern walls of the old city, made a rush for it and, having got there, realized that beyond it the city itself was deserted, all the garrison and most of the occupants having decamped to the Île Saint-Jean. The earl of Warwick, supposedly the Prince of Wales’s adviser but in reality the commander of the division, led more troops into the old city and was unable to prevent the men from beginning to loot the empty houses and setting on fire those that did not look as if they offered rich pickings. As they advanced further within the old walls, the leading soldiers spotted the French men-at-arms manning the barricade on the north side of the Porte Saint-Pierre and a scuffle developed. At this point, the king, watching from the Abbaye aux Hommes, realized what was happening and sent an aide to tell the earl of Warwick to pull back until a coordinated attack could be mounted. The earl duly had his trumpeter sound the retreat, and, when that was ignored, the earl, on the principle that, if you can’t stop them, you might as well join them, threw himself wholeheartedly into the battle for the bridge.
What had begun as an accidental encounter now developed into a full-scale assault. As the Odon was low at that time of year, archers and Welsh spearmen began to wade across the river and attack the crossbowmen on the barges moored on the opposite bank. That line of defence gave way, the English infantry were in, and the French defenders of the bridge, realizing that they were about to be cut off and attacked from the rear, abandoned the bridge and withdrew back into the Île. Now the slaughter began. Once the bridge was open, the English men-at-arms and spearmen swarmed across and began killing anyone they met, soldier or civilian. The fighting was particularly brutal in the narrow streets and inside houses, and, while the men-at-arms would accept the surrender of a nobleman or an obviously prosperous civilian, the archers and spearmen were in a bloodlust and killed indiscriminately. French knights, conspicuous by their armour and rich trappings, would seek out an English knight to surrender to, knowing that only then would their lives be assured.
The castle was never captured and simply ignored, and by late afternoon it was all over and the looting began. The chronicles differ widely over the casualty list. It was said that 5,000 French were killed; that 2,500 French bodies lay on the streets and in the houses, stripped and disfigured so that they were unrecognizable; that 500 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the grounds of the church of Saint Jean; that 250 knights and esquires and a large number of rich merchants were taken prisoner; and that only one English esquire died of wounds some days later.17 The figure of the French dead is almost certainly too high, although the sources do agree on the number of prisoners taken. The number of English dead is similarly almost certainly too low; there must have been losses among the archers and spearmen who waded across the Odon to get at the crossbowmen on the boats, and the Lanercost Chronicle tells of civilians hurling stones and beams on the advancing English from the upper storeys of their houses.
The English stayed at Caen for five days. Once the army was back under control, after an initial orgy of plunder and rape, it could replenish its baggage train, collect the valuables of Caen, tend to its wounded, bury the dead, and – an opportunity of interest to those of a less rapacious nature – go and gaze at the tomb of the Conqueror. English and later British armies would gain a reputation for misbehaviour on capturing a town – a reputation that would last well into the nineteenth century – but, as English soldiers tended to look for alcohol first and women second, the incidence of rape was generally less than that practised by other nationalities; it was hangovers, rather than the threat of the hangman, that usually brought soldiers back to their allegiance relatively quickly. While pausing at Caen, Edward sent orders back to England for the arraying of 1,200 archers, mainly from East Anglia, and directed that contracts should be placed for 2,450 bows and 6,300 sheaves of arrows. Not all the men and equipment would have been replacements for losses in battle, but some of them surely were.
At the same time, 100 ships were to be impressed to replace those that had deserted, and the prisoners were sent off to England from Ustrem under the guard of the earl of Huntingdon and a detachment of archers. Prisoners of rank were an important asset in medieval warfare and, like the prizes taken by the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gave the captor the chance of making a great deal of money. A man who could afford it was held for ransom and not released until his family or his subjects had paid up. While the practice of holding men for ransom was a very old one, neither the Welsh nor the Scottish wars had produced very much profit for those taking a prisoner – blood and stones, feathers and frogs spring to mind – but the Hundred Years War was a very different matter. Rich burgesses who had little money could buy their freedom with furs, jewels or plate, rich knights could do so with money, poorer ones with horses or armour or land, and knights with nothing at all might actually agree to serve their captor for an agreed period of time. Arrangements for the allocation of ransom money were usually specified in the indentures, and could range from one-third to one-half payable to the man’s lord. In the contract companies, the rule was that the man handed over one-third to his captain, who in turn handed over one-third of his accrued takings to whomsoever he was contracted to (usually the king). Prisoners could also be sold on by a captor who wanted instant cash or who did not want to be responsible for looking after the prisoner through the often years-long process of extracting the ransom. Some of the ransoms demanded, and paid, were very high indeed. At Caen, the constable, the count of Eu, surrendered to Sir Thomas Holland, who then sold his prisoner to the king for £12,000, who ultimately extracted a lot more than that for the release of the count. Sir Thomas Daniel, who took the surrender of the count of Tancarville, the chamberlain of Caen, was less fortunate: as he was a member of the Prince of Wales’s retinue, he had to hand his prisoner over and be content with £666 down and a pension of £26.13.4 (twenty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence) per annum for life – not bad, but hardly beyond the dreams of avarice. The prince eventually received £6,000 to release Tancarville.18
The army was now ready to move on. Edward ordered that the recently impressed 100 ships and archer reinforcements were to rendezvous with him at the port of Le Crotoy, in Ponthieu, which gave him the option of taking the army off should the situation warrant, but Le Crotoy was a good 140 miles away, and first he would have to cross the River Seine, a far greater obstacle than any encountered so far. He might, of course, have moved parallel to the coast, keeping in touch with the fleet, which could have transported the army across the mouth of the Seine to Le Havre (this town posed no threat, its resident warships and the town itself having already been burned by the fleet). But Edward wished to strike inland, to show the French that the Valois usurper could not protect them, so the army marched east, burning and looting as it went. The next obvious target would have been Évreux, but that town had a strongly fortified castle with a garrison and the king did not want to get tied down in siege operations at this stage – he had to keep moving, and so he next took the unfortified but prosperous cloth-making town of Louviers. From here both Froissart and Northburg list the towns on the English army’s route,19 but in an order which makes little sense, involving as it would have done a great deal of doubling back to no discernible purpose.
After Louviers, the intention seems to have been to cross the Seine at Pont-de-l’Arche and to advance on Rouen, then, as now, a major Norman city. Intelligence soon informed Edward that Rouen was well garrisoned by a substantial body of men-at-arms under the count of Harcourt (whose brother, Sir Godfrey Harcourt, was serving in Edward’s army) and the count of Dreux, with a sizeable outpost in Pont-de-l’Arche, and in any case the bridge over the river at Pont-de-l’Arche had been pulled down. The army now moved along the left (south) bank of the Seine, heading for Vernon, looking for a crossing point and moving ever closer to Paris, while a scratch French force (which for a time at least included Philip VI) moved along the north bank destroying the bridges. Vernon was well fortified and, although the English took the fortress of Longueville on the approaches to it, they could not take the town itself and without the town the bridge could not be reached.
The only success to be plucked from the search for a bridge so far was a totally pointless but rather gallant little venture by the thirty-six-year-old Sir Robert de Ferrers, a Staffordshire landowner whose command consisted of one banneret, three knights, twenty-five esquires, thirty-two mounted archers and three foot archers. Ferrers, or some of his men, found a boat on the south side of the Seine. Ferrers packed as many men as he could into it, crossed the river and approached the castle of La Roche-Guyon on the north side of the river. The defence works of the castle were (and are) formidable and Ferrers could not possibly have taken it with the few men he had with him. The commander of the garrison, however, panicked, thought that Ferrers’s little band was the vanguard of the whole English army, and instead of withdrawing into the keep, where he could have held out for months against any attacking force, surrendered the castle and its inhabitants. The only English casualty was Sir Edward Atte Wode, who was killed by a stone thrown from the castle walls. Ferrers agreed not to take the captured nobles prisoner in exchange for a promise that they would pay their ransoms later, recrossed the river and rejoined the army. His escapade was of no military significance whatsoever, but it demonstrated yet again the inability of Philip VI to defend his subjects on his own territory, something that had already been made clear south of the Seine.
Philip had already made a half-hearted attempt to negotiate when a French bishop was sent to offer Edward the county of Ponthieu and the confiscated parts of Aquitaine, provided that he would hold them as a vassal of the (Valois) king of France. This was, of course, quite unacceptable. From Vernon, the English army moved off to the next possible crossing, at Mantes, but having got there they very sensibly ignored the sizeable body of French men-at-arms drawn up outside its walls and continued along the river, bypassing any town or castle that was defended, while razing to the ground anything that was not. The next bridge was at Poissy, only twenty miles from Paris, and Edward got there on the evening of 12 August. That same day, Philip VI ordered the bridge to be broken and left a few soldiers to watch the site, while the main French army marched round the bend of the Seine to the last bridge before the city, at Saint-Cloud. Although the bridge at Poissy had been torn down, the piles were still in place, and Edward ordered the engineers to bridge the river using the piles. While timber was cut and hauled to the river, strong patrols were sent off to lay waste the various palaces and hunting lodges that were scattered among the Parisian suburbs to the south of the river. Within two days there was a whole line of destruction running all the way from Saint-Germain-en-Laye south-east to Boulogne on the outskirts of the city. Inside the capital there was panic, with citizens being formed into hastily organized parties to build barricades across the streets and troops deployed to restore order.
Philip, meanwhile, was at Saint-Denis, the burial place of French kings to the north of the city, where he was assailed by differing advice on what to do next. The tactic of avoiding battle until the English ran out of money or men was not working; the opportunity to cross the Seine and defeat the English south of the river had been missed, another front had just been opened from Flanders, Aquitaine was not subdued, and Philip could never afford to neglect what might be happening in Brittany. Orders were sent out to the cities and towns to send all available troops to Paris, as Edward’s army crossed the Seine by the reconstructed bridge at Poissy and marched north. Its advance guard, commanded by Sir Godfrey Harcourt with 500 men-at-arms and 1,200 archers, all of them mounted, ran into a French army marching south. These were the troops provided by the city of Amiens marching to Paris as ordered, and, although they put up a stout defence, they were no match for the now battle-hardened, or at least massacre-hardened, Englishmen. Many of the Amiens burgesses were killed or taken for eventual ransom, but of more importance was the capture of their baggage train, which was well stocked with rations, wine and clothing.
The next stop for Edward’s army was Beauvais, where the usual looting and burning was entered into with gusto. The Abbey of Saint-Lucien was set on fire – whether deliberately or accidentally is not known, although the former seems more likely – and, as Edward had issued orders that no church buildings were to be damaged, he was not pleased. He ordered the hanging of those responsible, said to number twenty but in all probability a lot less than that – soldiers were expensive assets and could not easily be replaced. It is likely that the punishment was dealt out to one or two known trouble-makers as a warning that, while plundering and burning was officially encouraged, discipline was still required and men were not to overstep the mark.
The army moved on, through Milly (probably Marseilles-en-Beauvais) and Grandvilliers to Poix, taking the lightly held castle at Dargies on the way. At Poix they found not one castle but two, neither garrisoned, and when a deputation of the town’s inhabitants appeared and offered to pay a large sum of money, to be collected and delivered in the morning, if the town was spared being put to the torch, Edward agreed. Alas, when the army moved off the next day leaving a small party behind to collect the ransom, the locals decided not to pay after all and a fight developed. The English were getting the worst of it when a messenger on a fast horse caught up with Edward and recalled the army. Now the town was looted and burned, and those who had taken up arms were hanged.
Edward’s next halt was at Airaines, about three miles from the River Somme, which he would have to cross before he could make contact with the fleet. Here, not only did it seem that all the bridges had again been destroyed, but it was reported that Philip had now assembled an army considerably bigger than Edward’s, had left Paris and by a series of forced marches of up to twenty-five miles a day was close behind. By now, most of Edward’s foot-soldiers were mounted on captured horses, but even so the constant halts to plunder, and the need to forage far and wide for food for the men and fodder for the horses, slowed the English down. It was now imperative to get across the Somme and either join with the fleet or head for Flanders, where an allied army had just taken the town of Béthune. The major bridges were in Amiens and Abbeville, however, both of which were strongly held by French troops, and the main French army commanded by Philip was moving into Amiens.
In just over six weeks, the English army had covered 400 miles – considerably more for the foragers and looters – and was now tired, short of provisions, and for the first time in the campaign beginning to encounter partisans. Civilians, emboldened by the knowledge that the Valois army was closing up, began to ambush small foraging parties and kill any soldier foolish enough to leave the line of march on his own. Like their successors almost six centuries later, during the German occupation, these members of the resistance made little difference to the course of the war, but they were a nuisance and meant that sentries had to be doubled and the size of patrols increased.
Edward halted around Oisemont and scouting parties searched along the banks for a crossing, but from Pont-Rémy, just east of Abbeville, to Picquigny, just west of Amiens, the bridges were down and the fords guarded. All along the north bank French troops swarmed and all attempts by English detachments to get across were repulsed. Then Edward was informed of a ford at Blanchetaque, between Abbeville and the mouth of the Somme, which could apparently be crossed at low tide. It is unclear – the sources vary – whether this information came from a prisoner offered his freedom and that of twenty of his chosen companions, or from an English soldier who had served in the area before. On 23 August, the English army began to move to a concentration area at Acheux, eight miles from the river, and that same day the French army began to move west from Amiens along the south bank of the river. Their hopes were high: the English could not cross the river, and the French would trap them with far superior forces and destroy them.
Sometime during the night of 23/24 August, the English army marched, intending to get to Blanchetaque at low tide. Loading the baggage wagons and the sumpter horses in the dark took longer than it should have, and the army was late. When the troops arrived at the river on the morning of 24 August 1346, the sun was up and the tide in: neither man nor horse could wade across, and they had to wait until the tide turned once again. The deep and fast-flowing water was not the only problem, however, for Philip also knew about Blanchetaque and had sent one of his more competent commanders, Godemar du Fay, with a mixed force of men-at-arms, Genoese crossbowmen and light infantry to hold the north side of the river and prevent a crossing. Froissart, with the chronicler’s usual exaggeration, puts Godemar’s detachment at around 12,000, but it was probably nearer 500 men-at-arms and around 1,000 infantry including the Genoese.20 The French were drawn up in three ranks and it was clear that they were there to stay.
For several hours, the English and the French could do little but stare at each other, but then, some time after Prime (0600 hours), the tide had gone out sufficiently for the earl of Northampton to lead 100 men-at-arms and about the same number of flanking archers into the river. The Genoese crossbowmen began to loose their bolts, which caused some casualties until the archers got within range. Once the archers began to shoot from about 150 yards, gaps began to appear in the French ranks and covering volleys allowed the English men-at-arms to reach the northern bank. Once they were on the bank, they held a narrow bridgehead while more and more of Edward’s soldiers swarmed across, covered by the archers. Then the balance shifted, and the English had more men across than the French had to oppose them. Godemar du Fay, realizing that the day was lost, ordered a retreat which soon became a rout, as the English men-at-arms mounted their horses and pursued the fleeing French almost to the gates of Amiens. By the time that detachments of the main French army arrived at the southern end of Blanchetaque, Edward’s army, with its men, horses, wagons and accumulated loot, was long gone,36 the tide was in again, and pursuit was impossible. On the evening of 24 August, the French army returned to Abbeville to cross the Somme there, while the English camped in the forest of Crécy.
There can be little doubt that Edward III wanted a battle, and he wanted it to be decisive, but he wanted it on his own terms. Ponthieu had been English by inheritance since 1279, even if Philip had confiscated it; there was an escape route if needed, either to Flanders or to the coast, where Edward could have rendezvoused with as much of the navy as had not deserted to realize their plunder;37 and most important of all, there was a possible battlefield that fitted all the requirements of English battle procedure shaped from the experiences of Bannockburn, Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill.
There has, though, been some debate among historians over the exact location of the battlefield of Crécy. On the assumption that everyone knew where a battle took place, the chroniclers tended not to give more than a cursory description of the location – they were more concerned with embellishing tales of knightly chivalry – and archaeological evidence is either not there or impossible to find. Only when firearms appear on the battlefield can archaeology, by finding where a line of musket balls has landed and therefore from where they were fired, work out fairly accurately what happened. Metal-detector enthusiasts are often surprised that arrowheads, broken swords, spurs, discarded helmets and the like are rarely found on a medieval battlefield. But all these were valuable items, even if broken, and if the field was not thoroughly gleaned by the victors, it was by the local inhabitants, so that in a very short space of time no artefacts would be left.38 The only evidence for the traditionally accepted site of the battle – apart from what the chroniclers report, and that can be read in several ways – is in local tradition and in place names. The best argument for accepting the area of the gently sloping valley to the north-east of Crécy-en-Ponthieu as the site of the battle is that, if Edward wanted a battle (and all the available evidence is that he did), then he could not have found a better place to have it – assuming that he wanted to force the French into attacking him, as English tactical doctrine said he should. There is simply nowhere else within a day’s march – and the French were but a day’s march behind – that offers anything like the advantages of the Crécy position.21
Between the villages of Crécy and Wadicourt there is a ridge along which runs the modern D111. The ridge forms the side of a valley that slopes north-east to south-west between the ridge and the village of Estrées-lès-Crécy, just off a Roman road that is now an extension of the Chausée Brunehaut. Behind the ridge was a wood, and running from Crécy south-east along the side of the valley is the River Maye, while on the northern side of the valley was a steep bank. Assuming that the French would approach from the south or the south-east, it was a perfect defensive position. Edward’s army spent the night of 24 August in and around the woods south and west of the ridge of Crécy. On the morning of 25 August, the king and his senior commanders reconnoitred the ground on horseback, looking at every possible line of approach. The plan was simple: the army would take position on the ridge and dare the French to drive them off it.
The strength of Edward’s army at Crécy, like that which landed at La Hougue, is and has been the subject of much debate. No two chroniclers agree and all tend to exaggerate. The historian Andrew Ayton has produced a convincing assessment of numbers and breakdown by arms of the army on landing in Normandy, and this seems the most accurate analysis that we are likely to get. According to him, Edward started off with around 16,500 all ranks, all arms. There had not been a pitched battle so far, and, while the chroniclers repeatedly state that no, or very few, English were killed, there must have been a steady attrition from the storming of small towns, the killing of foragers by grumpy farmers, the battle for Caen, and the crossing at Blanchetaque, to say nothing of men wounded and unable to rejoin the banners, accidents (there are reports of burning houses collapsing on top of the arsonists), disease, sickness and desertion. On top of that, the escort to the prisoners sent back to England under the earl of Huntingdon must be deducted. While it can only be a very rough approximation, it does not seem unreasonable to allow for a reduction in the size of the army of between 10 and 15 per cent. As the knights, esquires and men-at-arms were rather better protected than the rest, we might suggest a reduction of 10 per cent in that category and 15 per cent of the archers and spearmen. Most of the hobelars, not overly involved in skirmishing so far, had probably survived. If the foregoing is anywhere near correct and if the majority of the knights fought as armoured infantrymen with the earls and bannerets commanding sub-units of varying size, then Edward at Crécy could field around 4,500 armoured infantry, perhaps 4,000 light infantry – assuming that the hobelars, whose mounted role would now be in abeyance, fought as spearmen (they were equipped with a lance, sword and helmet) – and rather more than 3,000 archers.
The army was still in its three battles, of roughly the same size, and again there is much debate about how they were formed up. We can probably dismiss the suggestion that the soldiers formed up and fought in their mixed-arm retinues. This would make no military sense, diluting as it would the battle-winning arrow storms and creating weaknesses in the infantry line. It is far more likely that, for all the advantages of fighting alongside men they knew and had marched with, the archers would have been separated from the men-at-arms and the light infantry. The chronicler Jean le Bel, from whom Froissart takes much of his account, has all three battles in line, and even eminent modern scholars, relying on original sources, have the battles deployed either as le Bel describes or one behind the other. It would have certainly been unusual to have all three battles in the front line, for there would then have been no depth to the position – if the enemy had pierced the line, there would have been nothing behind to stop them. Similarly, if all three battles had been engaged simultaneously, there would have been no reserve, and a commander without a reserve is unable to influence the battle once it begins. Conversely, the placing of the battles one behind the other would have reduced fighting power considerably and been unlikely to cover the frontage.
The length of the ridge along which Edward arrayed his army is about 1,500 yards, which, allowing room for the archers and gaps between sub-units, would have needed 2,400 infantrymen if they had formed up two ranks deep, and 4,800 in four ranks. The frontage could only have been covered by one battle if the men were formed in two ranks, and this seems most unlikely: it would not have been sufficient to withstand the shock of an assault by mounted or dismounted men. If the chronicles and the paintings can be relied upon at all (doubtful, I accept), then the description of hand-to-hand fighting would indicate that the men were formed in at least three and probably four ranks, which would predicate two battles forward. If we rely on the theory of inherent military probability, and what we can extract from the sources, then the most likely deployment would seem to have been two battles forward in four ranks – the vanguard of the Prince of Wales on the right as the senior commander after the king, the rearguard under the earl of Arundel on the left, and the centre, commanded by the king, in the rear. While the three battles were given the titles vanguard, centre and rearguard, this did not, rather confusingly, mean that they necessarily occupied those positions. As the king was in overall command, it made sense for him to be in the rear, from where he could control the battle. In the event, he made use of a windmill on the ridge as a command post: in this way he could look over the two forward battles and, if necessary, easily deploy the rear one as a reserve or reinforcement.
As for the archers, here too there is discussion over their deployment. It has been suggested that the archers were formed in line either in front of or behind the infantry. This again makes little sense: they would impede the infantry and cause chaos as they tried to avoid a closing enemy, and the formation would dilute the effect of their shooting. There can be little doubt that the archers were placed as they were at Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill – that is, on the flanks, where their shooting could have prevented any outflanking move, forced an enemy to close into his centre, and so reduced his momentum that, if he did get as far as the infantry line, he could easily have been repulsed.
What is more problematical is whether or not there were archers in the centre as well as on the flanks. For if each battle was allocated its own archers, then it is perfectly likely that archers were positioned on the flanks of each battle, and in that case some would be in the centre of the English line. In most paintings and in many of the original sources, the archers are shown or described as being in a wedge shape, and, as the commander or commanders of the archers would have to balance concentration of arrows with the area over which they fell, then a square formation would seem best. If there were 1,500 or so archers on each flank, then they could have been formed into two squares each of thirty-eight men across and the same deep. If each man occupied a circle with a radius of two yards – enough room for him to place his arrows on the ground and draw his bow – then each square would need a frontage of around seventy-five yards, and in the heat of battle the square might well have become a lozenge or a wedge. If archers were deployed on the flanks of the battles, rather than on the flanks of the army, then each battle would have been flanked by squares each of around fifty yards across, and to an oncoming enemy it would have appeared that the mass of archers was in the centre of the front line. On balance, it would seem likely that the archers were on the flanks of the army only, but one cannot dismiss the possibility that there were some in the centre as well.
Having ridden around the area and decided upon his plan of action, Edward ordered pits and holes to be dug across the cavalry approaches and had the baggage wagons drawn into the woods of Crécy-Grange on the north side of the ridge, where they were used to form a laager inside which the army’s horses were put. As there may still have been as many as 20,000 horses, any lost having been more than compensated for by those captured or plundered, the stabling area would have been enormous. There was neither time nor material to build stalls, so hitching rails would have been put up; and, in order to prevent horses fighting or kicking each other, they would have had to be tied up a good twelve feet apart, with each line of rails eight feet behind the one in front of it. This indicates an area of 500 yards by 400 yards for stabling alone, and the animals would have had to be fed and watered – a labour-intensive task which would have been partly undertaken by non-combatants, although it is probable that numbers of hobelars were detached to guard the laager and look after the horses at the same time. By morning on 26 August, all was ready. The soldiers heard mass and the priests heard confessions. The men were then told to sit or lie down in their positions while breakfast was cooked by fatigue parties and brought up to the lines.
Meanwhile, the French army under Philip spent the night of 25 August at Abbeville. As with the English army, we can only make an educated guess at its strength. All sources, English and French, agree that the French were far more numerous than the English. Their heavy cavalry (composed of the nobility) is variously reported as numbering from 12,000 to 30,000, the (mounted) men-at-arms from 60,000 to 100,000, and the crossbowmen from 2,000 to 15,000. The lowest multiple given by any of the chronicles is that of le Bel, who says that there were four times as many French as there were English. If we err on the conservative side and take a multiple of three, and if we accept that it is most unlikely that Genoa and northern Italy could have produced more than 2,000 crossbowmen at Crécy, given that they also provided garrisons in other parts of the French lands, then we might hazard a guess at the French army consisting of around 30,000 heavy cavalry and mounted men-at-arms in the probable proportion of one noble to four men-at-arms, plus those 2,000 crossbowmen. Not all those men would have been at Abbeville on the evening of 25 August: units and retinues kept arriving during the night and into the next day.
Philip knew that the English were somewhere in the vicinity of Crécy, and on the morning of 26 August the French army began to move north in that direction. Ahead of them went a small reconnaissance party of four knights to report the location, strength and intentions of the English. They reported back that the English army was deployed on the ridge between Crécy and Wadicourt, that they looked as if they were prepared for a battle, and that there were no indications that they might move off. Furthermore, the leader of the reconnaissance party suggested that it would be a sensible idea for the French army to concentrate and rest until the following day, when they would be in a much better position to destroy the English upstart. This very sound advice was echoed by Philip’s senior commanders and accepted by him. Many French units were still on the march from Abbeville, others were still coming in from other parts of the country, and a large allied contingent from Savoy would not arrive until sometime the next day. Philip was always a cautious commander – in hindsight too cautious perhaps – but he was absolutely right to heed the advice given and to issue orders that the army was to advance no farther but to bivouac and be prepared for battle the next day. By now, the leading French units had reached the valley, about 1,000 yards from the English position. They could see the English and the English could see them. It was late in the day (probably not as late as Froissart thought – Vespers or dusk – but perhaps 1700 or 1800 hours), and the English would have been watching more and more French soldiers of various types crowd onto the field. Even the greenest Welsh spearman could do the maths, but, as Edward rode along the lines shouting words of encouragement, his men were quite confident in their ability to hold off the French host.
As Philip’s orders to hold hard were delivered to the troops in the vanguard, they obediently halted, but, as the orders were relayed farther back, the recipients were unhappy: they wanted to get forward where they could see the enemy, and then they might halt. The result was a scrum of major proportions, as those behind pushed and shoved to get forward and those in front tried to hold their positions. In an aristocracy-heavy army, where every man felt himself the equal of every other and instant obedience to orders was an extraordinary concept, there was a general feeling of wanting to get on with the battle – at least among the mounted element who had let their horses do the work of the march from Abbeville. It was soon apparent to Philip and his marshals that the task of holding the army back was an impossibility, and so the battle might as well start now.
The crossbowmen were ordered forward to lead the French advance. Unlike archers, who except at very close range shot their arrows at a high angle and so could be arrayed in ranks all shooting at the same time, crossbowmen fired on a flat trajectory and, as they could only reload standing up, were obliged to shoot one rank at a time. Tactically, the intention was that volleys of bolts from the crossbowmen would so disorganize the enemy line, not least by killing large numbers of men in it, that those who remained would become easy prey for a charge by the mounted knights and men-at-arms. While we do not know exactly how the crossbowmen were deployed, it is logical to suppose that they would have acted in the same way as did men armed with matchlocks in a later age. If the rate of discharge was two quarrels a minute, the front rank could discharge its weapons and then move to the rear to reload while the next rank stepped forward and did the same. A formation three ranks deep could therefore loose a volley every ten seconds. If the French army’s crossbowmen did advance in this way, then, allowing a yard of front per man, the 2,000 crossbowmen would have covered a frontage of around 700 yards. In view of what happened to them, it is likely that they did not bring their pavises with them. These may have still been in the baggage train; alternatively, given that the crossbowmen were ordered to move forward rather than shoot from a defensive line, they may have found their shields too cumbersome to bring with them.
The trumpets sounded and the drums pounded as the crossbowmen began to move towards the English line. Crossing the floor of the valley and beginning to climb the gentle slope, they would have halted as soon as they were within range, perhaps 200 or 250 yards away. The English probably allowed them to discharge their first one or two volleys, but, shooting uphill and with the setting sun in their eyes, they cannot have hit very much. Then the English archers replied. The captains and the vintenars would have bellowed ‘Nock – draw – loose!’ and the deadly arrow storm began. Within thirty seconds, the astonishing number of 15,000 arrows would have come raining down from the sky. The archers did not have to hit a specific target; they simply had to ensure that their arrows landed within what a later age would describe as a beaten zone – an area that encompassed the lines of crossbowmen. Relatively densely packed as the Genoese would have been, it is not unreasonable to posit that one in three arrows hit something; and that being so, it would not have taken very long before the crossbowmen were thrown into confusion – some dead, many wounded, and with no cover and no escape except backwards.
The crossbowmen would not have been helped by the arrival of one of those sudden and violent summer thunderstorms common in this part of France, which would have wet their bowstrings and caused them to stretch, thus reducing considerably the propulsive power of their weapons.39 For them to stand where they were and shoot back would plainly have been suicide, but even those at the rear who were more able to move would have found their retreat blocked by the packed lines of mounted knights. As it was, the obvious chaos and, to French eyes, cowardice of these despised foreign and low-born mercenaries encouraged the commander of the leading French battle, the count of Alençon, to order a charge. Whether he actually ordered his men to ride over the crossbowmen, as some of the chronicles allege, or whether what happened was simply collateral, is irrelevant: the wretched crossbowmen could not get out of the way of big heavy men on heavy horses, and many were trampled underfoot or knocked flying.
A horse will go to almost any lengths to avoid stepping on anything alive,40 but, packed closely as they were and with head and face armour restricting their vision, the animals had little option. Allowing three feet of frontage per horse, that first French charge may have begun with 300 or 400 riders. After they had negotiated their way past the fleeing crossbowmen or galloped through them, their cohesion was lost and, instead of coming on in a controlled line at the canter, they were now a mob of individuals, all anxious to strike the first blow. And then the arrow storm began again. Clouds of arrows coming down at an angle out of the sky might not have killed many riders, but it would have unnerved them and it would certainly have panicked their horses. Again, an arrow whacking into a horse’s unprotected quarters would not kill it, but it would very likely make it rear and dump its rider, or whip round, bolt and take him into the next county, and that is exactly what happened. Those riders who managed to stay aboard and keep their horses pointing in the right direction then had to face archers shooting directly at them. At 100 yards or less, a bodkin point – the needle-like arrowhead designed for just this purpose – would go through armour or, with just a bit of luck, could penetrate through the slit in a visor and kill its wearer.
The French launched charge after charge, and the archers shot volley after volley, with runners replenishing their arrows from the baggage train. As more and more Frenchmen fell and more and more terrified loose horses galloped screaming hither and thither, what had originally been a smooth and open approach to the English line became an obstacle course of dead and wounded men and horses. Welsh spearmen, meanwhile, laid down their lances to come out and kill the wounded. Some French men-at-arms did get as far as the English lines, and occasionally fighting was fierce, but the defensive line held, and the pole arms – halberds and short lances – wrought great slaughter among those unlucky enough to be hooked by them. Edward had specifically said that the dead were not to be looted and that no prisoners were to be taken: he did not want to risk men leaving the line tempted by fat ransoms.
We can probably dismiss the tale of a knight of the Prince of Wales’s retinue coming to the king and asking for help, as his son was hard pressed, to be met by a refusal and the admonition: ‘Let the boy win his spurs.’ It is surely inconceivable that the king would refuse to support the sixteen-year-old heir to the throne when he had an uncommitted reserve to hand. On the French side, we can probably also dismiss the blindness of the king of Bohemia, whose badge of three feathers and motto Ich dien was adopted by the Prince of Wales and has been the crest of Princes of Wales ever since. John, count of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, claimant to the thrones of Poland and Hungary and elector of the Holy Roman Empire, lost one eye from disease in 1336, but it is almost certain that he could see perfectly well with the other. He was killed at Crécy, aged fifty, supposedly having demanded that his household knights take him into the thick of the battle so that he could strike a blow with his sword. His son was also present but survived, having wisely scarpered when it was evident that all was lost, to become the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV.
The furious battle went on through the evening, but, by the time darkness fell, there were precious few French knights or men-at-arms left. Those who had not been killed were slipping away, and even Philip had to accept the hopelessness of the cause when his advisers insisted that he too should quit the field. He went, leaving the oriflamme of Saint-Denis – the royal banner of the kings of France, only taken out of the Abbey of Saint-Denis in time of war – abandoned on the ground.41 He paused first at the château of La Broye, where he is said to have hammered on the gate shouting (according to Froissart): ‘Ouvrez, ouvrez, chastelain – ç’est l’infortuné roi de France’ (‘Open, open, it is the unfortunate king of France’). Now, in the gloaming of that August night, the heralds and the priests moved down into the valley to identify the dead – hence the name later bestowed on it: the Vallée des Clercs.
It was a great and glorious victory. The flower of French chivalry lay dead on the field, and, while numbers are imprecise, it is clear that at least 1,500 and perhaps as many as 2,000 of the nobility were killed, and many thousands of the infantry levies and crossbowmen. Among the dead were at least eight members of the extended royal family, including the count of Alençon, whose impetuosity was a major contribution to the disaster, the counts of Blois, Harcourt (whose brother was one of the senior commanders in the English army) and Flanders, and the duke of Lorraine. Only the figures for the dead English men-at-arms have survived – forty – and we might extrapolate that to perhaps 150 archers and spearmen as well. It was certainly a remarkably cost-effective battle.
It is easy to say that, rather than the English winning the battle, the French lost it. Certainly, their lack of cohesion, the confused command arrangements, the failure to allow the whole army to assemble out of sight of the English lines, the misuse of the crossbowmen, and the impetuosity of individual commanders and knights were major factors in the result of the battle. Having said that, the English had deliberately selected a position which allowed them to fight the battle in the way they did best: protected flanks, a narrow frontage, the use of missile weapons to break up the enemy assault, and a dismounted infantry defence (and commanders who could not depart the field because they had dismounted could only boost the morale of the soldiers under their command). These principles were vital, and significant, for they formed the basis of English tactical doctrine for the whole of the war. English armies moved on horseback but fought on foot; provided they could do so on ground of their choosing, they were unbeatable until, very late in the day, the French were able to develop field artillery that could counteract the hitherto overwhelming firepower of the longbow. Above all, perhaps, it was the discipline and teamwork of a professional or quasi-professional army under a respected and charismatic leader that won the day – and would have won the day even if the French had had a coherent plan and had been commanded as they should have been. Crécy was a seminal battle. It proved that an English army properly deployed and well led could defeat a far larger host that clung to the now-outmoded feudal system. The lessons were there for the French to see; that they failed to do so would cost them dear in the years ahead.
The tomb of ‘blind’ King John of Bohemia in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Luxembourg. Erected in the mid-seventeenth century over the original grave, the inscription points out that John was the son of the [Holy Roman] Emperor Henry VII, the father of Emperor Charles IV and the grandfather of Emperors Wenceslas and Sigismund. He was, of course, killed at Crécy in 1346, not in 1340 as shown.