ninjured. 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 o