ck Prince's banner disappearing down into the valley
on the right rear, rightly decided the French vanguard that their enemy
had determined upon a retreat, and had actually begun it. The force in
front of them, behind the hedge, large as it was, they rightly conceived
to be the rearguard left to protect that retreat. They determined to
attack at once; and the nature of the attack, which had carefully been
planned beforehand under the advice of Douglas, the Scotchman who was
fighting on King John's side, and who had experience of the new
Plantagenet tactics, must next be grasped.

The experience and the memory of Crecy ten years before had left with the
Valois a clear though very general idea that the novel and overwhelming
superiority of the English long-bow could not be met by the old-fashioned
dense feudal cavalry charge. Any attempt to attack the front of a line
sufficiently defended by long-bowmen in this fashion meant disaster, many
horses would be shot long before their riders could come within lance
thrust, the dense packed line of feudal knights, thousands in number,
would be thrown into confusion by the maddened and fallen animals, the
weight of the remainder as they pressed forward would only add to that
confusion, and the first "battle," delivering the regular traditional
first-charge with which every old feudal battle had opened, would in a few
minutes degenerate into a wild obstacle of welter and carnage stretched
in front of the defensive line, and preventing anything behind them from
coming up.

It was to avoid misfortune of this kind that the vanguard of which I have
spoken was formed. Its orders were these:--The picked three hundred
knights of that vanguard were to ride straight at the English archers, and
almost certainly to sacrifice themselves in so doing. But as their numbers
were few, their fall would not obstruct what was to follow. It was their
business in this immolation of their bodies to make it possible for the
mass of infantry, especially those armed with missile weapons, to come
close in behind and tackle the English line. That infantry, aided by the
mounted German mercenaries and meeting missile with missile by getting
hand to hand with the English bowmen at last, would prevent those English
bowmen from effective action against the next phase of the offensive. This
next phase was to be the advance of the first "battle," that of the
Dauphin, the Duke of Normandy. His men-at-arms were to go