Crecy Part 2

The halts of the King himself on the 31st of July and the 1st of August were made at two places which read in the MS. as "Treward," and an abbreviated name which stands for "Leopurtuis." The first of these is Troarn at the crossing of the Dives river. Other forces halted on that night at Agences, four miles to the south. The second is Leaupartie, a mile or so from Rumenise, where one other column halted, while a second column camped about five miles to the south. Lisieux was entered upon the 2nd of August after a march of ten miles on the part of the King, and of eleven and twelve on the part of the other two bodies.

At Lisieux two Cardinals who were despatched to offer terms met King Edward and proposed this arrangement to complete the war: that he should have the Duchy of Aquitaine upon the same tenure as his ancestors had held it. He refused those terms, and, after wasting a day at Lisieux, continued his march eastward.

Leaving Lisieux on the morning of the 4th, he pitched his tent that evening at Duramelle, a march of nine miles, with at least one column a mile ahead at Le Teil. On Sat.u.r.day the 5th he got something better out of his troops, or at any rate out of the vanguard, and made something like seventeen miles to Neubourg.

I confess here to a very considerable doubt. The entry in the Accounts of the Kitchen is hopelessly misspelt, but the "Lineubourg" does not correspond to any other possible place, and Le Neubourg would be a very convenient halting-place for the King himself, well provisioned and lodged. We cannot believe, of course, that the army covered the full distance, but there is no reason why the King and his household should not have pushed on ahead with mounted troops. What makes it more probable is that the King spent the whole day of Sunday the 6th at Le Neubourg, presumably for the bulk of the army to come up and make two days' march of the twenty odd miles which the most distant contingents had to cover.

It was on the next day, Monday the 7th, that he reached the Seine, and approached that river, as we may presume, with the object of crossing it.

It was a ten-mile march, and the whole force could be on the banks before evening at Elboeuf.[3] But the bridges were broken and it was impossible. It was from this point of Elboeuf that the raid turned to follow the valley of the Seine up towards Paris, always seeking some crossing-place, and always finding the bridges broken. The nearer he got to Paris the more dangerous became Edward's position, and the larger grew the forces of the French King in the neighbourhood of the capital which threatened him.

Tuesday the 8th was spent in ravaging the country. Pont de L'Arche was burnt in revenge for the destruction of its bridge; a detachment went round by Louviers, which was looted, but the King himself went forward by the river bank and lodged that night at Vaudreuil, ten miles on from Elboeuf (which the Clerk of the Kitchen calls "Pount-Vadreel").[4] The bulk of the force halted at Lery, a mile or two behind.

Upon Wednesday, August 9th, Edward lay at Angreville[5] (the "Langville"

of the accounts), just south of Gaillon, and on Thursday the 10th, having burnt Vernon, where _again_ he found the bridge cut, at Jeufose, rather more than eleven miles march up the river. ("Frevose," as I read it in the MS.) His next hope for a bridge was at Mantes, and he was getting perilously near the heart of the country and the gathering French forces.

That bridge was nine or ten miles along the road. He found it cut like all the others.

He was already across the borders of Normandy, and anxiety must have been growing upon him. He seized Mantes after some resistance. It was useless to his purpose, and he hurried on another six miles to Epone ("Appone" in the Accounts), making that day a really long march in his natural haste and compelling his escort to the same--sixteen miles. But he both fatigued his main army in that attempt, and it also lost some time in storming a fortified house on "the White Rock,"[6] because the next day he evidently had to wait for stragglers to come up, advancing but a couple of miles to Aubergenville,[7] where we find him upon Sat.u.r.day the 12th. Upon the 13th, the Sunday, he got his opportunity. A march of only eight miles[8] brought the host to Poissy, and there, though the bridge was cut, the stone piles upon which its trestles had stood were uninjured. Edward at once began to take advantage of this and to put his artificers to work.

All that Sunday and all the Monday the task proceeded, and during this delay parties were despatched to ravage. They burnt St Germain and St Cloud. An advance party entered the Bois de Boulogne. But there could, of course, be no thought of an attack on Paris with so small a force and without base or provision.

By Tuesday the 15th of August these ravaging parties were recalled, and the whole host was streaming across the repaired bridge at Poissy.

This day, Tuesday the 15th, is strategically the turning point of the campaign. In an attempt to note in history no more than the great raid of Edward up to the very walls of the Capital, and his rapid and successful retreat, the crossing of Poissy would form the central term of our story.

As it happened, however, the great chance which occurred to Edward in that retreat upon the field of Crecy, and his magnificent use of it, has eclipsed the earlier story, and for many the interest of the campaign as a whole, and the importance of this rapid seizure and repair of Poissy, is missed.

While his army was crossing the river, Edward received the challenge of the King of France. It was native indeed to the time: a sort of tournament-challenge, offering the English monarch battle upon any one of five days, in that great plain between Paris and St Germains which the last siege of the French capital has rendered famous in military history.

The French feudal levies for which Philip had been waiting were now fast gathering, especially those for which he had had to wait longest, the main forces which had been away down south in Guienne. Edward most wisely refused the challenge, for it would have been against great odds, and to accept, though consonant to the spirit of the time, would have been a ludicrously unmilitary proceeding. In place of such acceptation he sent back false news that he would meet Philip far to the south. He then proceeded to cross the river and make the best haste he could back northwards to the sea. The French King found out the trick; a day and a half late he started in pursuit with his large and increasing host. That host was gathered at St Denis when on the Wednesday night, the 16th, Edward had got his men to Grisy, well north of Pontoise, and something like seventeen miles by cross roads from his hastily repaired bridge across the Seine. What followed was a fine feat of marching.

On the next day, the 17th, he had got his forces more than another seventeen miles north and had camped them by Auneuil. In two more days, by the evening of Sat.u.r.day the 19th, they were yet twenty-five miles further north as the crow flies (and more like thirty by the roads), at Sommereux.

Edward halted at Troussures (of which the clerk makes "Trusserux") to see it file by, and on the morrow, Sunday, August the 20th, he was at Camps in the upland above Moliens Vidame, another push of fifteen miles for ma.s.s of the force, and of more than twenty for himself and his staff.

At this point came the crux of his danger. All during that tremendous feat of marching (and what it meant anyone who has covered close on fifty miles in three days under military conditions will know--there are few such) the great host of Philip was pounding at his heels.

Now, if the reader will glance at the map at the beginning of this section, he will see that just as Edward had been under a necessity to cross the Seine in the first part of his raid, he was now under a still greater necessity of crossing the Somme. A force much larger than his own was pressing him against that river into a sort of corner, and his only chance of safety lay in reaching the Straits of Dover through the county of Ponthieu, which lay beyond the stream. Every effort had been made to press the march. The force appears to have been divided for this purpose and to have marched in parallel columns, and the single case of marauding (the burning of the Abbey of St Lucien outside Beauvais) had been punished with the death of twenty men.

To turn and meet his pursuers (who were evidently in contact with him through their scouts) would have meant, so long as he was on this side of the Somme, no chance of retreat in case of defeat.

Every mile he went to the north the Somme valley, already a broad expanse of marsh upon his flank, grew broader and more difficult. The decision, therefore, which Edward took at this critical moment, at once perilous and masterly, showed that rapid grasp of a situation which, for all his lack of a general plan during this campaign, this great soldier could boast. In the first place, he himself rides forward no less than twenty full miles to the village of Acheux. He has behind him the whole army strung out in separate bodies parallel to the Somme. Himself, from the head of that long line of twenty miles, commands all that should be done along it. He next orders separate bodies to approach the valley and seek a crossing, first, if possible, up river, then, as they fail, lower and lower down, and each to be ready as it is foiled at each bridge to fall back north in concentration, and to group in gathering numbers further and further down the stream, and near to his place at the head of the line, Acheux.

The whole thing is a fine piece of sudden decision, and is at once a combination of the rapidity of the retreat and of the attempt to force the river, in this the fourth week of August 1346, which so nearly brought disaster to the English force.

Three days, the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, were taken up in this manoeuvre.

The English flung themselves successively against the bridges: Picquigny, Long Pre, Pont Remy. The hardest and first push was at Picquigny at the beginning or southernmost of the effort. The body detached for that effort was beaten back.

It was the same with the next blow lower down at Long Pre: the same lower down still at Pont Remy. At no bridge were the English successful.

Everywhere the valley was impa.s.sable to them, and as they attempted one place after another down the stream with its broadening marshland and now tidal water, to find a traverse seemed impossible.

At last, then, upon Wednesday the 23rd of August the whole host was gathered, foiled, round its King at Acheux. He marched on a few miles to BOISMONT, going on his way through Mons, and there, as it chanced, picking up a prisoner who proved invaluable: for that prisoner betrayed the ford.

As the English army lay at Boismont that night of the 23rd, the broad estuary of the Somme stretched to the north of them with no more bridges across it, cut or uncut, and apparently no fate but a choice between a desperate action against superior numbers (nor any retreat open) and surrender.

Edward's only chance lay in the discovery across that mile of land (flooded at high tide, and at low tide a mora.s.s) of some kind of ford.

Such a ford existed. With difficulty, but in the nick of time, it was discovered and used; the French force defending it upon the further side was overthrown, and the retreat and its dependent victory of Crecy were made possible.

Edward had had good faith that "G.o.d and Our Lady, and St George would find him a pa.s.sage," and a pa.s.sage he found.

The crossing of that ford and the advance to Crecy field must form the matter of our next section, "The Preliminaries of the Action."

The reader will note that in the latter part of the above I have wholly abandoned the more usual account of the last three days of the retreat from Poissy to the Somme, and that the reconstruction I have attempted includes several matters. .h.i.therto not suggested in any recent history, and is in contradiction with the view which has. .h.i.therto been most generally accepted.

The evidence upon which I rely for this description of the retreat on Acheux and subsequently on Boismont will I hope be found set out in detail in the number of the _English Historical Review_ for October 1912. Meanwhile, I owe it to my readers, who may use this book for purposes of school or university work, to state briefly the way in which the matter has. .h.i.therto been set forth, and my reason for adopting this new version.

Most Froissart MSS., which have misled history in this regard, say that King Edward was at _Oisemont_ upon the evening of the 23rd.

Lingard, the father of all modern English historical writing, and a man whom every historian begins by reading (though very few go on by acknowledging him), expanded this mere reference into a whole phrase, and wrote that Edward "had the good fortune to capture the town of Oisemont, and so find a night's lodging." A neglect of military conditions, or of the map, or of both, has perpetuated the error.

Edward was never at Oisemont. The argument against it, and in favour of _Boismont_, is dependent upon a number of converging proofs, which I will very briefly recapitulate.

(1) The MSS. of Froissart are none of them original.

(2) They vary among themselves with regard to this particular word, most of them giving "Oisemont," but one giving "Nysemont."

(3) Even where all the MSS. agree with regard to a place, and where Froissart certainly mentioned it, he is wildly inaccurate, evidently going by hearsay, and often by a doubtful memory: thus he has no idea on which side of the Seine the town of Gisors stands, and he calls the village of Fontaine a "strong town," etc.

(4) Even were he an accurate, he is not a contemporary authority. He had to depend entirely upon older accounts which we can prove that he misread, or did not read at all, but only heard spoken of, and very often botched horribly.

(5) In this particular campaign he is particularly haphazard. Thus, upon the all-important point of the order in which the various crossings of the Somme were attempted, he gets them at sixes and sevens, describing the first last and the last first. He was a man always attending to picturesqueness of incident, and one who thought exact.i.tude very negligible.

Those are the five points which weaken any positive evidence which Froissart may give. But it is the evidence independent of Froissart, and of his accuracy or inaccuracy, which is so overwhelming.

(1) Oisemont lies actually ten miles _back_ from Abbeville upon the line of the retreat. To occupy Oisemont was to incur a deliberate running into that danger which it was all Edward's effort to avoid.

(2) We know, as a matter of fact, that Philip, the King of France, was before the night of the 23rd abreast of Abbeville; a retreat upon Oisemont would therefore have been physically impossible to Edward.

(3) Oisemont would have involved keeping in touch with bodies ten, twelve, fifteen, and twenty miles distant, even if Oisemont had been occupied for two days, whereas the only mention we have of that occupation represents it as taking place on the 23rd.

These three points render it, as to two of them morally impossible, as to one of them physically, that Edward could have been at Oisemont upon that night. But they are negative: we have positive points which clinch the whole matter. These are:--

(1) Edward marched with his _whole_ army to the ford or it could not all have crossed, therefore it was concentrated before he marched.

The march was a very short one. Even Froissart says that "he started at the break of day" and reached the ford "a little after sunrise."

It must also have been short because we know as a matter of positive history that the soldiers who took that morning march waited some time for the tide to ebb, _then_ fought a sharp and successful action upon the northern bank of the river, and again on the same day stormed certainly one and possibly two defended places: also that their total march before the night, and beyond the river, was quite ten miles, including the actions just mentioned.

(2) We also know that there was an a.s.sault on St Valery, which was actually _twenty_ miles from Oisemont by the nearest roads!

(3) We know that the traitor was captured at Mons, which, if Edward had been at Oisemont, would have meant that someone had not only caught him at that great distance from Oisemont, but had brought him back (a total ride of twenty-four miles) without previous knowledge that he was capable of the valuable information he only gave later and after offers.

(4) There is no contemporary mention of Oisemont, but we do positively know from contemporary evidence that the King's household was, and had been for three days, at Acheux.

Now all this combined is quite conclusive. Oisemont is impossible.