w the main force
along the high road. A further advantage of so moving through the wood
himself was that he could thus lie upon the flank of his force and let it
march round him until it got in front of him in the open country by Crecy.
Then he could join it, coming up in its rear, that is, upon the side from
which attack was expected, gather his information, study the positions,
learn the approach of the French advance, and in general organise the
coming action, if an action should prove necessary. Edward camped,
therefore, in the forest upon that Friday night, and upon the further side
of it, just above Crecy town; while the whole of his main body was
marching up to the right or east of him by the high road that skirts the
woods. That main force, joined by the foraging parties which had gone
further westward on the day before, easily covered the few miles, and
camped on the evening of the Friday upon the ridge which runs in a level
line eastward and northward from just above the town of Crecy to the
village of Wadicourt, for somewhat over a mile. Leaving his tents and
domestics upon the edge of the wood, he spent the last hours of that day
establishing his forces along the ridge for the night, for it was there
that he had now determined to await the French army and to bring it to
action.

The advantage of that position which upon emerging from the forest Edward
had immediately seized, will be dealt with in the ensuing section;
meanwhile we must return to inquire what was happening to the French
pursuit.

We must not consider the French army as one united body. Had it been that,
it would not have been defeated, and, what is more, the particular place
of Crecy in military history, and its lesson of the contrast between the
older feudal and the newer regular levies, would never have been taken;
for Crecy, as we shall see, was largely a victory of things then new over
things then old. No records give us precisely the positions, number, or
routes of the King of France and his allies, but we know the following
points, from which we can construct a general picture.

First: The commands were various and disunited. That personal system which
had arisen five hundred years before, and more, when the old Roman
tradition of the Frankish monarchy gradually transformed itself into a
series of summonses to lords who should bring their vassals, was still the
method by which a French host was tardily and irregularly summoned. For
ge