to be presumed
that certain bodies on the extreme right went up by the Roman road which
misses Abbeville coming from the south, and makes for Ponches, bounding
the battlefield of Crecy on its extreme eastern side.

Following this chaotic advance of the dispersed host, gathered in a
jumble, the wholly untrained peasant levies which had been swept up from
the villages on the advance proceeded in disorder. And it was thus without
regular formation, save among the Genoese mercenaries (some 15,000 in
number at the outset of the campaign, though we do not know of what
strength on the field itself), that the first lines of mounted men caught
sight from the heights of Noyelles[14] and Domvast of the English line on
the ridge of Crecy three miles away.

It was early in the afternoon before that sight was seen. The wind was
from the sea, and gathering clouds promising a storm were coming up before
it, and hiding the sun.

Before these advance lines of the French army, and between it and Edward's
command, the ground fell gradually away in low, very gentle slopes of open
field towards the shallow depression above which a somewhat steeper and
shorter bank defended the line, a mile and a half long, upon which Edward
had stretched his men.

There was an attempt at some sort of deployment, and the first of three
main commands or "battles" were more or less formed under Alencon, the
French King's brother. Immediately before it were deployed the trained
mercenaries, including the Italian cross-bowmen under their own leaders,
Dorio and Grimaldi. Behind was a confused mass of arriving horse and foot,
the King himself to the rear of it, and much of it German and Flemish
separate commands. We do not know their composition at all. Still further
to the rear, and stretched out for miles to the south, straggling up from
Abbeville, came, that late afternoon, the rest of the ill-ordered host at
random. Before the action was begun, the whole sky was darkened by the
approaching storm, and violent pelting rain fell upon either host. The
clouds passed, the sky cleared again, but it was nearly five o'clock
before the first attack was ordered.

In order to explain what followed we must next grasp the nature of the
terrain, and the value of the defensive position upon which Edward had
determined to stand.

[Illustration]

IV

THE TERRAIN OF CRECY

The action decided upon the field of Crecy developed wholly within the
central space