It was a good position to hold. From the top of the small hill the archers gazed around them, noting with professional eyes its defensive merits – they liked the long and gradual slope that dropped away in their front, remarked that its tangled undergrowth and stony surface would handicap the horses. The patches of soggy marshland on either flank formed a comforting guard and there was a nice convenient wood right behind them to hold the baggage-train. Yes, it had been well chosen.
Amid the bustle and preparation that ensued on all sides, the bowmen appeared calm and confident as they methodically new-strung their bows and made sure that they were firm at the nocks. From his steel skull-cap each archer removed a carefully coiled bowstring, unrolling it gently so as not to twist it more or less than the natural twist already in it. The bow end was placed against the inside of the left foot to prevent it digging into the ground, the handle grasped with the left hand so that the bow sloped away to the right, with the back uppermost. Then the top loop of the string was slipped over the upper end of the bow and allowed to drop a few inches down the stave; the lower loop put safely home in the bottom nock on the bow. Against the back of the bow, a few inches from the top, each bowman placed the palm of a horny hand, with the first finger and thumb on either side of the string about halfway down the loop, taking care that no finger got round the underside of the bow or between the string and bow. Next, he pulled on the handle with his left hand and pushed at the top with the right, sliding the right hand and the loop of the string upwards until the loop slipped into the nock. With a studied and practised nonchalance he relaxed gradually, just in case the bottom loop had slipped out of place.
Bows ready for action, the peeled six-foot poles, roughly sharpened at each end, were picked from the ground where they had been dropped by each man when they halted. Using daggers, holes were dug in front of them, and one end of the pole dropped into the small pit. Maules were then used to hammer home the stakes, the pointed ends being re-sharpened when the poles were firm. In a short time there was a barrier of threatening stakes pointing obliquely upwards, in a solid fence that undulated with the rise and fall of ground across the front of the position.
Whilst the archers worked, their officers and file-leaders moved among them, giving an instruction here, a word of advice there. The senior of the master bowmen raised his voice so that those around him could hear:
‘Now listen, me lads! Make sure you’ve got all you need … a bracer on your left hand, a shooting glove on your right … have your wax handy too. Remember, bend your bow well … nock your stave properly and lock your string well!’
‘My old dad told me them things afore I was knee-high to him!’
A roar of laughter greeted the sally, growled out by a tanned and grizzled veteran, looking up from checking string-height by his own ‘fist-mele’. The master bowman glowered at him; turning away he muttered:
‘I’ll remember you … if we get out of this alive!’ One of the older bowmen called after him: ‘Don’t pay him no heed, Master Robin! He’s a good lad at heart! Remember him an’ his mates at Crécy? Little Hal Watridge, and Perkin of Winchester … an’ Wat Purkiss who brought down the big plumed lord? God in heaven … they were men we won’t see the like of no more! I dare say they could beat any we got here at long butts or short, hoyles, rounds or rovers!’
A trumpet shrilled loud and clear above the clamour. Still buckling armour and testing weapons, the soldiers flowed into familiar formations, to stand at ease. The archers fell into four lines with under-officers and file-leaders in front and on the flanks; in a ripple of movement that ran down their ranks they removed the skull-caps and bowed their heads. All men stood silent, alone with their thoughts, as their leaders harshly muttered a prayer; then in a rustling monotone all repeated the Pater, the Ave and the Credo. The men-at-arms, in their dull, leaden-hued armour, the ruddy visages, craggy features and hard bearded faces joined together in a sudden hush; some of the men drew amulets and relics from their tunics, to be kissed and carefully replaced. The last ‘Amen’, deep and resonant, had barely rolled through the still air when the reverent silence was broken by the distant squeal of trumpets, the deep rolling of drums, backed by the dull monotone of footsteps and many thousands of voices.
All eyes turned towards the crest of the ridge, three-quarters of a mile distant across the valley, that lay at the foot of their own hill; it was now topped with countless lance pennons, glittering steel points, colourful surcoats and waving plumes.
‘It’s them … ’ere they are, lads!’
‘Jist got ‘ere in time, din’ we?’
They stood in silence, watching the enemy mass in their thousands, saw their formations ripple and shudder as the impatient knights tried to fight their way to the front, jealous of any others who might take from them the honour of opening the battle. In spite of the confidence that they felt, many of the English archers and men-at-arms were unable to prevent their eyes from travelling quickly over their own small force and comparing it with that of the enemy – at least four times as numerous. By now they were close enough to be individually distinguished, but still just out of bowshot. In response to murmured orders, short arrows were nocked to perhaps a thousand bowstrings, to be loosed to fall far short of the opposing army in an effort to encourage it to come closer. The challenge was accepted and now the battle was about to begin in earnest.
‘Think they’re within range?’
‘Dunno … it’s near twenty score paces. Still, we oughter be able to notch a mark at that distance. Come on, Perkin, Watkin of Fareham and Big John … let’s show ‘em they’ve got English bowmen to deal with!’
‘I’ll take the lord with the white-and-red plume.’
‘An’ I him with the gold headpiece!’
From his stock of two dozen bodkin-pointed arrows planted in the ground before him, each archer drew one, nocked it, bent his bow, and, on the order: ‘Loose!’, let it fly with thousands of others up, up into the air above the approaching enemy. It climbed swiftly with a soul-shrivelling howl and whip, like a gale in the tops of tall trees. As the enemy fearfully gazed upwards to watch them, the shafts turned, to become a swarm of black specks against the sky, plummeting down towards them. Then, together with a hundred others, the knights wearing the red-and-white plume and the gold headpiece crashed to the ground in a clanking, tumbling heap of horses and men.
‘Higher, Wat, higher!’
Tut thy body into it, Will!’
‘Forget not the wind, Arnold!’
On all sides rose a muttered chorus of advice: shrewd professional comments on their craft of skilfully using a stave of wood and a string such as they had never been used before. Above all could be heard the sharp twanging of the strings, the hiss and howl of the shafts, mingled with orders and advice from the officers and the master bowman:
‘Draw your arrow!’
‘Nick your arrow!’
‘Shoot wholly together!’
None of the enemy cavalry got closer to them than fifty yards; most remained in their crumpled heaps on the muddy, bloodstained and scuffled slope of the hill. The archers ceased firing and rested on their bows, exultantly talking among themselves.
‘I’ve got thirteen arrows left... an’ I’ll sink every one of ’em in French flesh or my name ain’t what it is!’
‘Dickon, did ye see the black-armoured lord? I took both him and his horse with but one shaft!’
The enemy grouped, massed into an even larger formation than the first; the trumpets sounded, the horses were spurred into a trot and then cumbrously they lurched upwards towards the English position once again. The bowmen were ready, feet firmly planted, sleeves rolled back to give free play to their arms, long yellow bow-staves held out in front of them, they waited in the four-deep harrow formation which gave strength to their array and permitted every man to draw his arrow freely without harm to the men in front of him. Some of the bowmen threw light tufts of grass into the air to gauge the wind force; hoarse whispers ran down the ranks from the file-leaders:
‘Hold your arrows! Don’t loose outside fifteen score paces! We’ll need all our shafts before we’ve beaten this lot!’
‘Don’t undershoot, lads! Better to hit a man in their rear than have your shaft feather in the earth!’
‘Loose quick and sharp when they get near.’
The master bowman, passing behind, heard this last remark; he quickly answered:
‘Keep your eye to the string and the string to the shaft and it will find its mark!’
The glittering enemy squadrons tossed and heaved, they surged forward, trotting, now cantering, then galloping – the whole vast array was hurtling forward, line after line, the air full of the thunder of their hooves and the ground shaking. The valley was choked with the rushing torrent of steel, topped by waving plumes, slanting lances and fluttering pennons. On they swept over the level and then up the slope, to be met with a blinding drift of English arrows that brought down whole ranks in a whirl of mad confusion; horses plunging and kicking, bewildered and stunned men rising or wallowing like upturned turtles in their heavy armour. But new lines forced their way through the fallen, crushing and riding down wounded men and horses; spurring through the gaps in the mounds of dead, new lines of horsemen urged themselves up the slope.
On all sides could be heard the shrill, stern, short orders of the master bowmen and file-leaders; the air was filled with the keen twanging of their bowstrings and the swish, howl and patter of their shafts.
‘Right between the eyes, by heavens! But I meant it for his throat!’
‘Now … who’s next? Ah, the lord with the leopard on his surcoat!’
‘That’s it! To the inch!’
‘Good shot for you, Arnold!’
‘Thank ’ee. When my eye is in I’m better at rovers than at long butts or hoyles!’
‘Loose gently! Loose gently, lads! Don’t pluck with the drawing hand! ’Tis a trick that has marred many a good bowman!’
Across the foot of their hill a wall of struggling men and horses had built up, which grew higher as fresh men and horses added to it. Led by a big knight on a grey destrier, a body of the enemy pushed resolutely onward until they reached the English line. As they forced their way through the pointed stakes, their leader fell within a spear-length of the English position, the feathers of arrows thrusting out from every crevice and joint of his armour.
The battle was now a fierce, tumbling hand-to-hand conflict that surged and flowed in and around the now beaten-down stakes in front of the English position. Their arrows gone, the archers drew swords, clutched axes or fearsome five-foot maules and nimbly ran to the outskirts of the clanging, roaring, desperate mêlée. Lightly creeping under horses’ bellies, dancing around ponderous, heavily armoured men-at-arms, they slashed, stabbed, clubbed and hewed until they were as bloody as the red-mottled heap amidst which they fought. Slowly, remorselessly, the enemy were forced back down the hill; they fought fiercely, but here and there wounded and faint-hearted men lurched from the tangled mob and made their struggling way down the hill, to be chased and fallen upon by the fast-moving archers like dogs on a rabbit. Once down, the heavily armoured men were helpless and easy prey to the judiciously inserted long knife through a crevice or joint in their armour. The enemy wavered, trembled, and then turned and fled on all sides.
‘They run!’
’Tis a trick!’
‘Nay, you fool! They’re beaten … we’ve won!’
‘Thank God.’
‘Hooray for England, Edward and St. George!’