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 impassable 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 morass) 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 "God and Our Lady, and St George would find
him a passage," and a passage he found.

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