1346.J

THE BATTLE.

461

describes this battle as "the battle between La Broye and Cressy." On the road from Abbeville to La Broye the table-land of Cressy is to the northwest, as seen from Froyelles. As we saw it from that point at five o'clock of a summer afternoon, when the sun was westering, we felt the accuracy of Froissart's narrative, that when the air began to wax clear, and the sun shone fair and bright, "it was right in the Frenchmen's eyen and on the Englishmen's backs." With this disadvantage the Genoese approached, with their cross-bows wound up. They made a great leap and cry; but the English stirred not. A second and a third time they leapt and uttered a fell cry; but the English stirred not. The Genoese at last shot fiercely. Then stepped forth the English archers one pace, and their arrows flew so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow. The cross-bow men fled; and the French king crying out, "slay these rascals," the men of arms dashed in amongst them, and cut them down. Again the English yeomen drew their bow-strings; and the terrible shafts slew horse and men, the French knights and the poor Italians, and the press was so thick that one over-threw another. Some order at length was restored in the French ranks. The English archers stirred not from their position. At whatever point the French came on they saw "a great hedge before them." The earl of Alençon and the earl of Flanders led their men in some order to skirt the archers, and

cross-bow.

they joined battle with the Prince of Genoese archer winding up, or bending, his Wales's battalion. The king of France tried to reach them when he saw their banners, but there was the great hedge of archers to interrupt his progress. Once only was the issue of this dread fight doubtful. The king, says Froissart, stood "on a little windmill hill" with his reserve. On the highest point of the ridge is a knoll about fifteen feet above the general level, with an ancient circular stone windmill upon it. Tradition says it is the spot where Edward stood; and there is nothing in the character of the ground to make one doubt the accuracy of this tradition. There is no other "little windmill hill," though there are many windmills around. The one window of the mill commands the road from Abbeville to La Broye.* There then, when the battle was at the hottest, a knight came to the king, and said that Warwick, and Oxford, and the prince of Wales, were fiercely fought withal, and were sore handled, and they desired aid from him and his men. Then the king asked if his son

*The mill itself, though damaged by long exposure, is of that peculiar fine circular masonry which may be seen in towers of the fourteenth century, of which the Caesar's tower, now the Bell tower, at Windsor is an example.

462

THE VICTORY.

[1346.

were dead or hurt, or felled to the earth; and the knight answered "No." "Say then to them that sent you," replied the king, "that they suffer him this day to win his spurs, and ask me not for aid while my son is alive.”

This was the spirit of chivalry rather than the caution of sound generalship. It was in the same spirit that the king of Bohemia, who was nearly blind,

told his men to lead him so far forward that he might strike one stroke with his sword; and they all tied the reins of their bridles each to the other, that they should not lose him in the press; and they were all slain, the king in the midst. On a crossroad from Cressy to Fontaines-surMaye, which was probably in the midst of the battle-field, is a rude cross, where tradition says the blind old man was buried. Before that autumn sun was set the work was done. Alençon was killed, and the count of Flanders; Aumarle, and Loraine, and Louis of Blois, and Auxerre, and St. Pol. Earls and knights, who had come out of the gates of Abbeville that morning in gallant array, with trumpet and But "the Englishmen never departed man, but kept still their field, and ever

banner, were slaughtered or had fled. from their battles for chasing of any

1346.]

CRESSY THE VICTORY OF THE YEOMEN.

463

defended themselves against all such as came to assail them." Before evensong time the French king had not threescore men about him. And then John of Hainault took the king's horse by the bridle, and led him away, till he came to the castle of La Broye; and the king called out in the darkness that they should "open the gate quickly, for this is the fortune of France." There the king stayed not, but rode through the night to Amiens. Upon the field of Cressy torches were lighted, for it was very dark; and Edward the king came down from the little hill, and went to his son, and kissed him, and said, "Fair son, God give you good perseverance. Ye are my good son, that have thus acquitted you nobly. Ye are worthy to keep a realm." And

the prince inclined himself to the earth, honouring the king his father. Thus ended the great day of Cressy-a day of terrible slaughter-preceded by weeks of devastation, and followed up by years of contest and suffering. But it was a day on which the steady courage that was the result of the comparatively free condition of the yeomen of England, was first asserted on a great scale. From that time the feudal pretension of the iron-clad knights to be the only soldiers was practically at an end. The battles of England were thenceforth to be won by bow and bill. When the ancient weapons were exchanged for the matchlock and the pike, and these again for the rifle

464

SCOTLAND-BATTLE OF NEVILL'S CROSS.

[1346.

and the bayonet, the same spirit which made every yeoman in that field of Cressy stir not one foot, whilst the great plain before them was filled with

ten times their number of men at arms, has carried their descendants through many a desperate struggle, and showed from age to age "the majesty with which the British soldier fights."

The slaughter of Cressy was not completed on that last Saturday evening of August, 1346. On the Sunday morning there was a heavy fog; and an English detachment of five hundred lances and two thousand archers went out to scour the country. They fell in with two separate French forces, which they almost annihilated. The heralds of the English went over the great battlefield, and reported that they had found the bodies of eleven princes, eighty bannerets, twelve hundred knights, and thirty thousand inferior per

sons. On Monday the king departed for Montreuil; and on Thursday the 31st his army sat down before Calais, to commence the memorable siege, which lasted till the August of 1347.

The absence of king Edward in France presented a favourable opportunity to the Scots for a hostile demonstration against England of a formidable character. David II., the son of the great Bruce, had been four years in Scotland, after his long residence at the court of France. He was ready to attend to the suggestions of his friend king Philip as his truest policy. He resolved, therefore, upon an invasion of England, whilst Edward was besieging Calais, and Derby was winning battles in Gascony. In the beginning of October David entered Cumberland; took the fortress called "the pyle of Liddell;" and, with no exception to the ordinary course of cruelty and devastation, beheaded its governor, and went on into the bishopric of Durham, slaughtering and plundering. But an English army had assembled at Auckland, under the great Norman barons and the military prelates, with which army was queen Philippa. She went from rank to rank "desiring them to do their devoir-to defend the honour of her lord." At Nevill's Cross the armies met. The battle was won by the English archers. The Scots, with their "great axes, sharp and hard," presented in their close array a fatal mark for the unerring bowmen, of whom, according to Roger Ascham, there was a Scottish proverb, "That every English archer beareth under his girdle twentyfour Scots." David fought with great bravery, and was at last taken prisoner

1847.]

THE SIEGE OF CALAIS.

465

by John Coupland, a squire of Northumberland. He was conducted to London, and lodged in the Tower.

Three days before the festival of All Saints, queen Philippa joined her lord at Calais. She took with her a great company of ladies; and there was feast and revelry around those beleaguered walls. King Edward was conducting his operations by the slow but certain process of blockade. He warred not against the devoted town with scaling ladder and catapult, nor with the formidable machines which the discovery of gunpowder is held to have called into use at this period. The French king was approaching with a great host to raise the siege. The nobles, and knights, and men-at-arms that had escaped the slaughter or captivity of Cressy, had been re-organised. Edward would not put the issue of the war upon another battle in the open field. He rendered Calais inaccessible. His fleet blockaded the coast; he established his army in a new town of huts, which rose outside the wall; he threw up entrenchments strongly guarded. The French governor had turned out of the town every inhabitant who had not an independent supply of provisions for several months. Seventeen hundred men, women, and children, thus dispossessed of their homes, approached the English camp. They received each a meal, and two pieces of silver, and went their forlorn course into the highways. Five hundred more unhappy beings were afterwards thrust out, and perished between the walls of Calais and the English lines. At the Whitsuntide of 1347, king Philip hoisted the oriflamme, and led a hundred and fifty thousand men to Whitsand. The approach to Calais by the coast was a dangerous undertaking; for a large fleet, with archers in every vessel, was ready to guard the shore. The other road through the marshes was secured by strong defences, especially at the bridge at Neuillet. For six weeks Philip remained inactive, having sent a cartel to Edward to come forth and fight; and he then took his way to Amiens, and gave every man leave to depart. The governor of Calais immediately hung out the flag of England and asked to capitulate. The garrison had suffered every extremity of misery, having eaten their horses and their dogs. All hope of relief was gone. Edward demanded that they should surrender at discretion. The scene which followed is one which dwells on the mind of every reader of history, when the details of battles and negociations are passed away, and have left no impression. The story of the six burgesses of Calais and queen Philippa has been told by Froissart with surpassing dramatic power; and no scepticism of those who fancy that history should reject whatever has the interest of romance, ought to prevent us repeating it, as closely as we can in his own words, with needful condensation.

Sir John of Vienne, the governor of Calais, stands upon the wall of the town, and makes a sign that he would speak with some one of the English host. Thither come to him Sir Walter Manny, and another knight; and the governor makes his request that king Edward would take the town and castle, and all the goods therein, and let them depart. But Sir Walter Manny said that he knew something of the king's mind, which was, that all should submit themselves to his pure will, to ransom such as he pleaseth, and to put to death such as he listeth. Sir John of Vienne answered, that though they had endured much pain, they would endure as much more, rather than consent that the worst lad in the town should have any more evil than the