ask for more troops. Her great spirit roused another lady, the
wife of another French lord (whom the French King very barbarously
murdered), to distinguish herself scarcely less. The time was fast
coming, however, when Edward, Prince of Wales, was to be the great
star of this French and English war.
It was in the month of July, in the year one thousand three hundred
and forty-six, when the King embarked at Southampton for France,
with an army of about thirty thousand men in all, attended by the
Prince of Wales and by several of the chief nobles. He landed at
La Hogue in Normandy; and, burning and destroying as he went,
according to custom, advanced up the left bank of the River Seine,
and fired the small towns even close to Paris; but, being watched
from the right bank of the river by the French King and all his
army, it came to this at last, that Edward found himself, on
Saturday the twenty-sixth of August, one thousand three hundred and
forty-six, on a rising ground behind the little French village of
Crecy, face to face with the French King’s force. And, although
the French King had an enormous army – in number more than eight
times his – he there resolved to beat him or be beaten.
The young Prince, assisted by the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of
Warwick, led the first division of the English army; two other
great Earls led the second; and the King, the third. When the
morning dawned, the King received the sacrament, and heard prayers,
and then, mounted on horseback with a white wand in his hand, rode
from company to company, and rank to rank, cheering and encouraging
both officers and men. Then the whole army breakfasted, each man
sitting on the ground where he had stood; and then they remained
quietly on the ground with their weapons ready.
Up came the French King with all his great force. It was dark and
angry weather; there was an eclipse of the sun; there was a
thunder-storm, accompanied with tremendous rain; the frightened
birds flew screaming above the soldiers’ heads. A certain captain
in the French army advised the French King, who was by no means
cheerful, not to begin the battle until the morrow. The King,
taking this advice, gave the word to halt. But, those behind not
understanding it, or desiring to be foremost with the rest, came
pressing on. The roads for a great distance were covered with this
immense army, and with the common people from the villages, who
were flourishing their rude weapons, and making a great noise.
Owing to these circumstances, the French army advanced in the
greatest confusion; every French lord doing what he liked with his
own men, and putting out the men of every other French lord.
Now, their King relied strongly upon a great body of cross-bowmen
from Genoa; and these he ordered to the front to begin the battle,
on finding that he could not stop it. They shouted once, they
shouted twice, they shouted three times, to alarm the English
archers; but, the English would have heard them shout three
thousand times and would have never moved. At last the crossbowmen
went forward a little, and began to discharge their bolts;
upon which, the English let fly such a hail of arrows, that the
Genoese speedily made off – for their cross-bows, besides being
heavy to carry, required to be wound up with a handle, and
consequently took time to re-load; the English, on the other hand,
could discharge their arrows almost as fast as the arrows could
fly.
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
When the French King saw the Genoese turning, he cried out to his
men to kill those scoundrels, who were doing harm instead of
service. This increased the confusion. Meanwhile the English
archers, continuing to shoot as fast as ever, shot down great
numbers of the French soldiers and knights; whom certain sly
Cornish-men and Welshmen, from the English army, creeping along the
ground, despatched with great knives.
The Prince and his division were at this time so hard-pressed, that