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Home The Hundred Years' War with France Crecy and Poitiers; Part 3 |
Crecy and Poitiers; Part 3Edward had completed the drawing up of his force, when the French vanguard, still thinking they were chasing a flying foe, stumbled on it late in the afternoon. Philip ordered a halt; he wished to attack in formal battle-order the next day, but the feudal nobles of his army paid no heed. The vanguard would not retire; the others as they arrived pushed zealously forward. Their only idea of war was to fight the enemy as soon as he was within reach.The result was a disorderly battle, fought without method, purpose, or combination. The Genoese crossbowmen began with volleys of bolts that hardly reached the English lines, but the longbowmen's arrows fell among them with such force as to pierce helmets and mail. In a few moments they were broken, and were falling back in confusion. The first line of French horsemen, led by Alencon, did not wait for them to get clear, but charged, in their impatience, through them, thus entangling themselves hopelessly. On them beat the pitiless arrow storm, scarce a shaft missing its mark. Of this charge hardly a man reached the English line. Meanwhile, fresh French forces had pushed forward and flung themselves into the melee with better success, for the blind King of Bohemia had the "one fair blow at the English" which he desired, and fell among the English spearmen. So the fight raged on, one charge after another as the French pressed on through the midst of their fallen comrades. Late in the afternoon the Black Prince was hard put to it, but not so hard that Edward thought it needful to bring the reserve into action. "Let the boy win his spurs:" thirty knights was all the aid he sent. At dusk the charges still went on and even into the darkness, but all shared the same fate. All night the English lay in their lines unaware of the complete havoc they had wrought. The next day revealed that the French had lost 1500 knights alone; the common soldiers brought up the total to near ten times the number, while the English loss was little over a hundred; only two knights were killed. Crecy is generally reckoned among the decisive battles of the world. If completeness of victory is decisiveness, it deserves its place; it settled, too, the pretensions of the feudal chivalry who had been so long the military bullies of Christendom. But so far as the campaign was concerned, it settled nothing. Edward marched north and starved out Calais, turning out many of the French inhabitants, and putting a large English colony in their place. The survivors of the French nobles went home to wonder at their overthrow, but not to learn from it. |
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