Crecy Part 3

Boismont satisfies every part of the evidence. An hour's riding from it permits the attack on St Valery. Mons, where the traitor comes from, is only two miles off; the march from Boismont to the Ford is just such an advance as would take the dawn and sunrise of a day--whereas the advance from Oisemont, impossible for all those other reasons, would involve fourteen to fifteen miles of marching, and is utterly incompatible with the idea of two or possibly three heavy fights, and the long march succeeding it.

One last piece of evidence would be conclusive even if we had not all the rest. There is contemporary record of the Mayor of Abbeville watching from the heights of Caubert Hill the English army streaming northward to concentrate round the advanced position of the King.

From that height such an advance could be discerned crossing the plateau which leads to Acheux, to Mons, and to Boismont. You could no more see a concentration on Oisemont from it than you could see a concentration on Greenwich from Camden Hill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch showing Estuary of the Somme at BLANCHETAQUE in 1346]

III

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE BATTLE

The manoeuvres of the French and English armies preliminary to the Battle of Crecy are so instructive upon many points, involved movements so hazardous and so complex, gave rise to so sharp a series of engagements, and form in general so large a part of our subject, that they merit a far larger study than do the approaches to most battles.

They ill.u.s.trate the comparative lack of thought-out plan which characterised medieval warfare; they afford a contrast between the compact and fairly well organised command of Edward III., and the chaotic host of the King of France. They show the effect upon the military profession of a time without maps and without any properly managed system of intelligence; and, above all, they show the overwhelming part which chance plays in all armed conflict between forces of the same civilisation and approximately the same apt.i.tudes.

The situation upon Wednesday the 23rd of August (at which point we concluded the survey of Edward III.'s great raid through Normandy, and of his retreat down the line of the Somme) is already known to the reader, and will be the clearer if he will look at the map upon page 28.

Edward had made a very fine march indeed, not only averaging something like twelve miles a day, or more, but arranging for expeditions to leave the main host during the latter part of this rapid retreat, and attempt to force, at various points, the pa.s.sages of the River Somme. We have seen that he was compelled, if possible, to force a pa.s.sage because he would otherwise find himself shut up between the Somme and the sea, with a much superior force cutting him off to the south. In case of defeat he would have no line of retreat, and even in case of success, unless that success were overwhelming, he would find himself strategically stalemated, still caught in a trap, and still doomed to await the next onslaught of the enemy. We have further seen that with every mile that he proceeded towards the sea his ability to cross the Somme decreased. The river runs through a marshy valley which, even to-day, is a ma.s.s of ponds and water meadows, and which then was a belt of marsh. It is bounded on either side by fairly steep banks, rising to heights of 60, 70, and 100 feet, and inland to 150, between which the flat swamped land grows broader and broader as one approaches the sea. At Picquigny this level belt of swamp through which the Somme twines is quite 500 yards across. At Long Pre it is nearer 800, below Abbeville it is 1000, and at the point whence Edward overlooked it when he was halted at bay on the evening of that 23rd of August, it is well over 2000 yards in width and nearer 2500.

Boismont, a village climbing the southern bank of the estuary, was the spot on which the King had gathered the army upon the evening of that Wednesday, and, not a day's march behind him, the most advanced mounted men of his pursuers, with the King of France among them, were camping. The peril was extreme, and an issue from that peril as extremely doubtful.

It was hopeless for the army to attempt to retrace its steps to the upper river. To have done so would have been to march with the flank of its march exposed to an immediate advance of French forces, and almost certainly to be caught in column; and Edward had already suffered such repulses before Long Pre, Pont Remy, and Picquigny as left him no hope for success should he attempt these bridges again. His only chance was to find, if it were possible, some practicable ford across the broad estuary itself that lay before him.

The moon was within a few hours of the full that night, the highest of the spring-tides was making--in the open sea they were at their full height of 25 feet, an hour before midnight,--and though where he would strike the estuary he might hope for a tide more tardy, Edward had before him as he watched, his only avenue of escape, a great flood that appeared to deny him all access to the further sh.o.r.e.

Every effort was made to discover from local knowledge whether any pa.s.sage existed. The highest rewards were offered, in vain, for in all that countryside a feeling which if not national was at least strongly opposed to the invader, forbade treason, and the near presence of the French King's great force was an active reminder of the punishment that would attend it. Late in this period of suspense a guide was found.

A man of the name of Gobin Agache, who had been taken prisoner by the army, was that guide. His was that "invaluable" capture which I mentioned in the last section. He was a peasant of those parts, and a native of Mons-en-Vimieux, through which the army had marched from Acheux to Boismont. He yielded to temptation when all others had refused. He was promised a hundred pieces of gold (say 500 of our money), his own liberty, and that of twenty of his companions. For that price he sold himself, and promised to discover to the King and to his army the only practicable ford across the estuary.

Just at the end of the night the host set out and marched during the first hours of the moonlit Wednesday morning along the old road which still leads over the hills that separate Boismont from Saigneville and marked the southern bank of the valley. The marshalling was long; the full ordering of the force, now that it was all gathered together and marching along one narrow way, inexpeditious; and the two miles that separated the head of its column from the neighbouring village were not traversed by its last units, nor was the whole body drawn up at the foot of the hills against the water until the sun of that late August day was beginning to rise, and to show more clearly the great sheet of flood-water and the steep distant bank beyond it.

The place to which their guide had led them was the entry to the ford of Blanchetaque, a name famous in the military history of this country.

Hidden beneath the waters which, though now ebbing strongly, were still far too deep for any attempt at a crossing, ran the causeway. By it, upon the faith of the traitor, they could trust to gaining the opposite sh.o.r.e.

As the racing ebb lowered more and more, the landward approaches of that causeway appeared in a lengthening white belt pointing right across towards the further bank, and a.s.sured them that they had not been betrayed. It was built of firm marl in the midst of that gra.s.sy slime which marks the edges of the Somme valley, and they had but to wait for low water to be certain that they could make the pa.s.sage. Beyond, upon the northern sh.o.r.e which showed in a high, black band (for it was steep) against the broadening day, they could distinguish a force that had been gathered to oppose them.

It was mid-morning before the ebb was at its lowest,[9] and they could begin to march "twelve abreast, and with the water no more than knee-high," across the dwindled stream now at its lowermost of slack water, and running near the further bank with a breadth not a fifth of what it had been at the flood. But before proceeding further and describing the a.s.sault sh.o.r.e, I would lay before my readers the process by which I have established the exact locality of this famous ford. It has been a matter of considerable historical debate. It is and will always remain a matter of high historical interest, and this must be my excuse for digressing upon the evidence which, I think it will be admitted, finally establishes the exact trajectory of Blanchetaque.

The site of Blanchetaque is one which nature and art have combined to render obscure: nature, because a ford when its purpose disappears and it is no longer kept up, that is, an artificial ford, tends to disappear more rapidly than any other monument; art, because the old estuary of the Somme has of recent years been further and further reclaimed. It was, when I first began studying this district, already banked across below Boismont, and, if I am not mistaken, the great railway bridge right across the very mouth of the river has, in the last few months, been made the boundary of the reclaimed land.

Now, Blanchetaque was an artificial ford. We know this because there is no marl formation near by, and could be none forming a narrow rib across the deep alluvial mud of the estuary; the marl, then, can only have been brought from some little distance. It is not only an artificial hardening which we have to deal with, but one in the midst of a tidal estuary where a violent current swept the work for centuries. Finally, the cause for keeping the ford in some sort of repair early disappeared in modern times before the process of reclaiming the land of the estuary began. Numerous modern bridges, coupled with the great development of modern roads, permitted the crossing of the Somme at and below Abbeville: notably the Bridge of Cambron. The railway, the growth of the tonnage of steamers, and other causes, led to the decline of the little riverside town of Port--formerly the secure head of marine navigation upon the river and largely the cause that Blanchetaque was kept in repair.

Again, the reclamation of the land has been carried out with a French thoroughness only too successful in destroying the contours of the old river bed. In the sketch map on p. 60 I have indicated to the best of my ability the channel of the river at low tide as it appears to have been before reclamation began, but even this can barely be traced upon the levelled, heightened, and now fruitful pastures.

It is all this which has made the exact emplacement of Blanchetaque so difficult to ascertain, and has led to the controversies upon its site.

Now, if we will proceed to gather all forms of evidence, we shall find that they converge upon one particular line of trajectory which in the end we can regard as completely established.

We have in the first place (and most valuable of all, of course) tradition. Local traditions luckily carefully gathered as late as 1840,[10] but the indications of the peasants pointing out the traditional site of the then ruined way were, unfortunately, not marked on a map. What _was_ done was to give an indication unfortunately not too precise, and to leave it on record that the northern end of the ford was "from 1200 to 1500 metres below Port." This gives us a margin of possible error, not of 300 yards as might be supposed, but of more than double that distance, for Port itself is 500 yards in length from east to west. We can be certain, however, that so far as tradition goes we need not look more than a mile below Port for the ford, nor less than say half a mile from its last houses.

Fortunately, we have other convergent indications which can guide us with greater precision.

We must remember that, apart from the bringing of merchandise over to the neighbourhood of Port, the ford, which may, and most probably did, exist before Port became of any importance, led all the central traffic of the Vimieux country (which is the district on the left bank of the Somme) towards the Straits of Dover and their princ.i.p.al port at Boulogne.

Now, the way from the right bank of the Somme to Boulogne is interrupted by several streams, much the most marshy and broad of which is the Authie.

The Romans bridged the Authie at _Ad Pontes_ in the course of their great Trunk Road to Britain, and any way which led from the lowest ford over the Somme to Boulogne would have to join that great Trunk Road before or at the bridge if it were to take advantage, as commerce would have to do, of that sole pa.s.sage of the very difficult and marshy Authie valley which can nowhere be crossed save upon a causeway. I have in a former page remarked upon the importance of Ad Pontes (the modern Ponches), and pointed out that it gives the whole county its name of Ponthieu. We must expect, therefore, any direct commercial way northward from the ford to make directly for Ponches. To strike the great Trunk Road higher up would be to go out of one's way; to strike it lower down would be to strike the Authie Valley at an impa.s.sable point.

When an ancient way has disappeared, certain indications of its track, especially as that track may be presumed to be direct, survive, and among these are wayside tombs, parish boundaries, and mills or other places which, for the conveyance of heavy merchandise, are placed near such a road if possible. All these three kinds of indications are available in this particular case. The medieval mill which was so important a monopoly of the medieval community was not built in the most natural place for it, on the summit of the hill just above Port, but some thousand yards and more away down the river bank, and over against it is a group of tombs.

Moreover, between the two runs the long north-western boundary of the parish or commune of Port which is prolonged in the boundary of the parish of Sailly.[11] We have here, then, a convergence of proof which confirms the vaguer traditional site, for the end of this line upon the river, pa.s.sing between the tombs and the old mill, strikes the bank within the limits of distance from Port which were set down in the local notes printed in 1840.

But there is more. The forming of successive embankments one below the other for the gradual reclamation of land in the Somme estuary was not an easy matter. They had to be strong to withstand a strong tide, and there was no good bottom to be found in the deep mud of the valley floor. It is a significant evidence of this difficulty that the embankments stand so far apart, and that the last has had to take advantage of the long-established work of the railway viaduct. It is therefore a legitimate conjecture that the hard bottom afforded by the old Blanchetaque would be made use of, and as a fact we find the princ.i.p.al embankment between Port and the sea coinciding exactly with the line established by the tombs, the parish boundaries, and the site of the mill.

There is even more than this. If we follow the present embankment across the estuary towards the southern bank, we find ourselves checked before reaching that bank by the now ca.n.a.lised and artificial straight ditch of the Somme. There is no bridge, but on the further side leading across the remaining 700 yards to the southern bank, a village road exactly continues the direction, and this road, older than the reclamation of the valley, is the last converging point clinching the argument.

It cannot be doubted that the road leading from Saigneville northward across the flat to the ca.n.a.l, and continued beyond the ca.n.a.l by the embankment, is the line of the old Blanchetaque.[12]

Though the French army had been pursuing Edward during his march upon the left bank of the Somme, the possibility of his getting across the estuary had not been neglected, and a force had been detached to watch the right bank at the point where the only pa.s.sage across the stream, Blanchetaque, touched that right bank.

Here one of Philip's n.o.bles, G.o.demard de Fay, was waiting with a considerable force to oppose the pa.s.sage. The exact size of this force is not easy to determine, for it is variously stated, even by contemporary authorities, but we are fairly safe if we reckon it at more than 2000 and less than 4000 men, some hundreds of whom were mounted knights. In other words, it counted in "capital units" from one-sixth to one-eighth of Edward's army, and, counting all fighting men against all fighting men, perhaps much the same proportion. There was sharp fighting, but it was defeated, princ.i.p.ally through the action of the Archers. In G.o.demard's command was a very considerable body of Genoese cross-bowmen. As we shall see when we come to the Battle of Crecy itself, this arm was gravely inferior in rapidity of fire, and possibly in range, to the English long-bow. The latter weapon could deliver three to the cross-bow's one, and to this, coupled with the discipline of the English column, the success must be ascribed. Grave as was the balance of numbers against the French side, equal armament and equal discipline should have enabled it to prevail. The holding of a _tete de pont_ with a smaller number properly deployed should always be possible against a larger column compelled to debouch from a narrow line, especially a line of such difficulty as a ford across a broad stream.

The action was a picturesque one, and the sight presented to a spectator watching it from the heights behind G.o.demard's command must have been a picture vivid and well framed. One hundred mounted and armoured knights, carefully chosen, led the way across the ford. They were met actually in the water itself by mounted men advancing on to the causeway from G.o.demard's side, and the twin banners of Edward's two marshals and the cries of "G.o.d and St George!" with which the English vanguard met the enemy rose for a few moments from a confused melee of men and horses struggling in the stream. But the issue was decided by the comparative strength of missile weapons, and not by the sword. The Genoese cross-bowmen behind the French knights, and upon either side of their rear, shot into the English mounted ranks with some success, when the Archers of Edward, who were just behind the knights, and seem to have deployed somewhat over the marshy land on either side of the ford, returned their fire with that superiority of the long-bow which helped to decide this campaign. It was the regular fire of the Archers, the weight and the rapidity of it, which finally threw the supporting infantry of the French command into confusion, and permitted the mounted head of the English column to force its way over the landward end of the ford and through the now isolated body of French knights. Once the bank was gained, the English head of the column in its turn held the _tete de pont_, and the pa.s.sage of the whole force was only a question of time.

But time was a factor of vast importance at this juncture: how important what immediately followed will show. A force of anything between twenty-four and thirty-nine thousand men, combatant and non-combatant, with its wagons and sumpter horses, the considerable booty of its raid, its tents, its reserve of armour and of weapons, we cannot reckon, even upon a front of twelve deep, at less than a couple of miles in length, even under the best and strictest conditions of marshalling. Indeed, that estimate is far too low and mechanical. It is more likely that by the time the head of the column was pouring from the causeway on to the right bank of the estuary, and there deploying, a good third of the armed men were still waiting upon the further sh.o.r.e to file over the narrow pa.s.sage.

At any rate, before the great bulk of the train could have got upon the ford, the first horse of the King of France's scouts and vanguard appeared upon the sky-line of the heights above Saigneville, and immediately a considerable force of the enemy were upon the English wagons with their insufficient rearguard. The King of France himself, following upon Edward's track mile by mile, had reached Mons, had learnt that Edward had doubled back from Boismont, and had detached a body to cut across country to the ford on the chance of preventing Edward from crossing. He had not been quick enough to achieve this, but the French appeared in time, as I have said, to catch the wheeled vehicles behind the English army before they had got into line upon the causeway. Edward, with that good military head, which always seized immediate things upon a field, had stayed somewhat to the rear of the main body to watch for such an accident. He was not able to save the bulk of his train, but he saved his army. Much of the booty and of the provision fell to the French.

This mishap, which shows how close a chance permitted the safety of Edward's fighting force, had no little effect upon the succeeding two days, for it left the English army in part without food. I say "in part,"

because for some of them the defect was remedied, as we shall see, by the capture of Crotoy.

So the English army pa.s.sed with the loss of some of its train, but with very little loss of men. Pursuit was impossible; the tide now rising forbade even the thought of it, and somewhere about noon the entire host was marshalled upon the northern bank of the river, and was safe. The whole story forms one of the most striking details in the history of medieval warfare.

What followed the discomfiture of G.o.demard's command and Edward's pa.s.sage with his forces intact, is not easy to gather in the authorities themselves, though it is easy enough to reconstruct with the aid of the Kitchen Accounts, and by the help of the a.n.a.logy of Edward's action throughout the campaign. The King's tent, his domesticity, and what we may by an anachronism call his staff, proceeded to the edge of the forest of Crecy, which lies upon the inland heights north-eastward of the ford, a distance of five miles. But it did not proceed there directly. In company with the whole army, it first turned north-westward down the bank of the estuary to the capture of the castle and town of Noyelles, rather more than two miles away. This castle it took, and it is characteristic of these wars that the mistress of it was English in sympathy, and, what is more, had married her daughter to the nephew of one of Edward's princ.i.p.al generals. From Noyelles on the same day, Thursday, Edward and the staff turned back north-eastward towards the forest. There was a skirmish at Sailly Bray with G.o.demard's command, which, though defeated, was not yet broken, and which had hung upon the flanks of the English army. But the belated struggle was of little importance, and Edward camped that night upon the edge of the forest in the neighbourhood of Foret L'Abbye to the west of the little railway line and station which mark those fields to-day.

Meanwhile, during the remaining hours of that Thursday, the customary raiding and pillaging parties which had been characteristic of all this great raid were being sent out. The chief one under Hugh the Dispenser took Crotoy and thus provisioned his own force and perhaps some of the neighbouring detachments, but the bulk of Edward's army "went famished that day," and, for that matter, were insufficiently provided during the ensuing Friday as well.

The host camped upon that Thursday night somewhat widely spread around its King, with foraging parties still distant and appointed to return upon the morrow.

Upon that morrow, the Friday, the advance north-eastward was continued. It was organised in a fashion whose exact.i.tude and forethought are worthy of note, considering the haphazard conditions of most medieval fighting, and of Edward's own previous conduct of the earlier part of this campaign.

These were the conditions before him: he must get as best he might to the Straits of Dover, that is, up northward and north-eastward, and he may already have had a design upon Calais.[13] The force which was pursuing him had been checked by the tide of the Somme. It was too large to use Blanchetaque with any rapidity. He knew that it must double back to Abbeville in order to cross the river before it could turn northward again and come up with him. From where it lay, or rather where its commander and staff had lain, between Mons and Saigneville, that morning and noon, back to Abbeville was a matter of seven or eight miles; a distance nearly as great separated him from Abbeville upon his side. He had gained a full day even if the French army had been collected, highly disciplined, and in column. Instead of that it was scattered over twenty miles of country.

Many of its contingents were still following up, and it was under very various and loose commands. Even should a large body of French appear upon the next day, Friday, Edward had the forest at hand with which to cover his troops long before contact could be established. But good scouting informed Edward that there was no chance of such contact, at least before Sat.u.r.day. The whole of the next day, Friday, would be at his disposal to bring his troops where he would, and he proposed to get them on the far side of the forest, that is, in the neighbourhood of Crecy town, during the interval.

Whether he had already decided on that Thursday to make a stand we cannot tell, but it is not probable, because he had as yet no knowledge of the positions beyond the forest, and of the chance the ground would afford him of meeting an attack. One thing he already knew, which was that his retreat was secure. The pace of the French pursuit might compel him to a decision on Sat.u.r.day at earliest, but, short of complete disaster, he had a road open behind him across the Authie by the pa.s.sage of Ponches and along the great Roman way which led from Picardy to the Straits of Dover.

What he did was this. He sent the bulk of the army round by the main road whose terminals are Abbeville and Hesdin, and which skirts the forest. His own household he accompanied through the wood, presumably with the object of keeping in touch with the foraging parties who would during that Friday be coming up along the southern edge of the woods to follow the main force along the high road. A further advantage of so moving through the wood himself was that he could thus lie upon the flank of his force and let it march round him until it got in front of him in the open country by Crecy.

Then he could join it, coming up in its rear, that is, upon the side from which attack was expected, gather his information, study the positions, learn the approach of the French advance, and in general organise the coming action, if an action should prove necessary. Edward camped, therefore, in the forest upon that Friday night, and upon the further side of it, just above Crecy town; while the whole of his main body was marching up to the right or east of him by the high road that skirts the woods. That main force, joined by the foraging parties which had gone further westward on the day before, easily covered the few miles, and camped on the evening of the Friday upon the ridge which runs in a level line eastward and northward from just above the town of Crecy to the village of Wadicourt, for somewhat over a mile. Leaving his tents and domestics upon the edge of the wood, he spent the last hours of that day establishing his forces along the ridge for the night, for it was there that he had now determined to await the French army and to bring it to action.