ts turn held the _tete de pont_, and
the passage of the whole force was only a question of time.

But time was a factor of vast importance at this juncture: how important
what immediately followed will show. A force of anything between
twenty-four and thirty-nine thousand men, combatant and non-combatant,
with its wagons and sumpter horses, the considerable booty of its raid,
its tents, its reserve of armour and of weapons, we cannot reckon, even
upon a front of twelve deep, at less than a couple of miles in length,
even under the best and strictest conditions of marshalling. Indeed, that
estimate is far too low and mechanical. It is more likely that by the time
the head of the column was pouring from the causeway on to the right bank
of the estuary, and there deploying, a good third of the armed men were
still waiting upon the further shore to file over the narrow passage.

At any rate, before the great bulk of the train could have got upon the
ford, the first horse of the King of France's scouts and vanguard appeared
upon the sky-line of the heights above Saigneville, and immediately a
considerable force of the enemy were upon the English wagons with their
insufficient rearguard. The King of France himself, following upon
Edward's track mile by mile, had reached Mons, had learnt that Edward had
doubled back from Boismont, and had detached a body to cut across country
to the ford on the chance of preventing Edward from crossing. He had not
been quick enough to achieve this, but the French appeared in time, as I
have said, to catch the wheeled vehicles behind the English army before
they had got into line upon the causeway. Edward, with that good military
head, which always seized immediate things upon a field, had stayed
somewhat to the rear of the main body to watch for such an accident. He
was not able to save the bulk of his train, but he saved his army. Much of
the booty and of the provision fell to the French.

This mishap, which shows how close a chance permitted the safety of
Edward's fighting force, had no little effect upon the succeeding two
days, for it left the English army in part without food. I say "in part,"
because for some of them the defect was remedied, as we shall see, by the
capture of Crotoy.

So the English army passed with the loss of some of its train, but with
very little loss of men. Pursuit was impossible; the tide now rising
forbade even the thought of it, and somewhere about noon the en