their cross-bows and began to shoot. The English, making one step forward, let fly their arrows, which came down so thick upon the Genoese that it looked like a fall of snow. The Genoese, galled ond discomfited, began to fall back. Between them and the main body of the French was a great hedge of men-at-arms who were watching their proceedings. When the king of France saw his bowmen thus in disorder he shouted to the men-at-arms, 'Up now and slay all this scum, for it blocks our way and hinders us getting forward.' Then the French, on every side, struck out at the Genoese, at whom the English archers continued to shoot.

"Thus began the battle between Broye and Crécy, at the hour of vespers." The French, as they came up, were already tired and in great disorder: "howbeit so many valiant men and good knights kept ever riding forward for their honor's sake and preferred rather to die than that a base flight should be cast in their teeth." A fierce combat took place between them and the division of the prince of Wales. Thither penetrated the count d'Alençon and the count of Flanders with their followers, round the flank of the English archers; and the king of France, who was foaming with displeasure and wrath, rode forward to join his brother d'Alençon, but there was so great a hedge of archers and men-at-arms mingled together that he could never get past. Thomas of Norwich, a knight serving under the prince of Wales, was sent to the king of England to ask him for help. "Sir Thomas,' said the king, 'is my son dead or unhorsed or so wounded that he cannot help himself?' 'Not, so, my lord, please God; but he is fighting against great odds and is like to have need of your help.' Sir Thomas,' replied the king, 'return to them who sent you, and tell them from me not to send for me, whatever chance befall them, so long as my son is alive, and tell them that I bid them let the lad win his spurs; for I wish, if God so deem, that the day should be his, and the honor thereof remain to him and to those to whom I have given in his charge.' The knight returned with this answer to his chiefs; and it encouraged them greatly, and they repented within themselves for that they had sent him to the king." Warlike ardor, if not ability and prudence, was the same on both sides. Philip's faithful ally, John of Luxembourg, king of Bohemia, had come thither, blind as he was, with his son Charles and his knights; and when he knew that the battle had begun he asked those who were near him how it was going on. "My lord,' they said,

'Genoese are discomfited and the king has given orders to slay them all; and all the while between our folk and them there is so great disorder that they stumble one over another and hinder us greatly.' 'Ha!' said the king; 'that is an ill sign for us; where is Sir Charles, my son?' 'My lord, we know not; we have reason to believe that he is elsewhere in the fight.' 'Sirs,' replied the old king; 'ye are my liegemen, my friends and my comrades; I pray you and require you to lead me so far to the front in the work of this day that I may strike a blow with my sword; it shall not be said that I came hither to do naught.' So his train, who loved his honor and their own advancement,” says Froissart, did his bidding. For to acquit themselves of their duty and that they might not lose him in the throng they tied themselves all together by the reins of their horses and set the king, their lord, right in front that he might the better accomplish his desire, and thus they bore down on the enemy. And the king went so far forward that he struck a good blow, yea three and four; and so did all those who were with him. And they served him so well and charged so well forward upon the English, that all fell there and were found next day on the spot around their lord, and their horses tied together."

66

were.

The king of France," continues Froissart, "had great anguish at heart when he saw his men thus discomfited and falling one after another before a handful of folk as the English He asked counsel of Sir John of Hainault who was near him and who said to him, 'Truly, sir, I can give you no better counsel than that you should withdraw and place yourself in safety, for I see no remedy here. It will soon be late; and then you would be as likely to ride upon your enemies as amongst your friends, and so be lost.' Late in the evening, at nightfall, King Philip left the field with a heavy heart-and for good cause; he had just five barons with him and no more! He rode, quite broken-hearted, to the castle of Broye. When he came to the gate, he found it shut and the bridge drawn up, for it was fully night and was very dark and thick. The king had the castellan summoned, who came forward on the battlements and cried aloud, 'Who's there? who knocks at such an hour?' 'Open, castellan,' said Philip: 'it is the unhappy king of France.' The castellan went out as soon as he recognized the voice of the king of France; and he well knew already that they had been discomfited, from some fugitives who had passed at the foot of the castle. He let down the bridge and

opened the gate. Then the king, with his following, went in, and remained there up to midnight, for the king did not care to stay and shut himself up therein. He drank a draught and so did they who were with him; then they mounted to horse, took guides to conduct them and rode in such wise that at break of day they entered the good city of Amiens. There the king halted, took up his quarters in an abbey, and said that he would go no farther until he knew the truth about his men, which of them were left on the field and which had escaped."

Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with his army as disheartened as its king, and more disorderly in retreat than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardor and intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory. In the difficult war of conquests he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance to him was to possess on the coast of France, as near as possible to England, a place which he might make, in his operations by land and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of provisioning and of secure refuge. Calais exactly fulfilled these conditions. It was a natural harbor, protected, for many centuries past, by two huge towers, of which one, it is said, was built by the Emperor Caligula and the other by Charlemagne; it had been deepened and improved, at the end of the tenth century, by Baldwin IV., count of Flanders, and in the thirteenth by Philip of France, called Toughskin (Hurepel), count of Boulogne; and, in the fourteenth, it had become an important city, surrounded by a strong wall of circumvallation and having erected in its midst a huge keep, furnished with bastions and towers, which was called the Castle. On arriving before the place, September 3d, 1346, Edward "immediately had built all round it," says Froissart, "houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry and arranged in streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and whatever trouble he must spend and take. He called this new town Villeneuve la Hardie; and he had therein all things necessary for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of a market on Wednesday and Saturday; and therein were mercers' shops and butchers' shops and stores for the sale of cloth and bread and all other necessaries. King Edward did not have the city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time it might cost