suit a damp
string, for instance, and if your ratchet caught, or your trigger jammed,
the complicated thing held you up; but delivery from the long-bow was,
from the hands of the strong and trained man, the simplest and most
calculable of shots, variable to every condition of the moment. Its
elasticity of aim was far superior, and, most important of all, its rate
of fire was something like three to one of the arbalest.

(4) Douglas and the French king rightly decided that horses were so
vulnerable to the long-bow as to prevent a mounted charge from having a
chance of success, if it were undertaken in a great mass. They decided,
upon that account, to dismount their men-at-arms, and to attack on foot.
But what they did not allow for was the effect of the new armour upon foot
tactics of that kind. It was one thing for a line holding the defensive,
and not compelled to any forward movement, to dismount its armoured
knights and bid them await an attack. It was quite another thing for such
armoured knights to have to make a forward movement of half a mile or more
on foot, and to engage with the sword or the shortened lance at the end of
it. Armour was at that moment in transition. To the old suit of chain
mail, itself quite ponderous enough to burden a man on foot, there had
been added in that generation plate in various forms. Everyone had plate
armour at least upon the elbows, knees, and shoulders, many had it upon
all the front of the legs and all the front of the arms, some had adopted
it as a complete covering; and to go on foot thus loaded over open fields
for the matter of eight hundred yards was to be exhausted before contact
came. But of this men could not judge so early in the development of the
new tactics. They saw that if they were to attack the bowmen successfully
they must do so on foot, and they had not appreciated how ill-suited the
armoured man of the time was for an unmounted offensive, however well he
might serve in a defensive "wall."

These four misconceptions between them determined all that was to follow.

* * * * *

It was a little before nine when the vanguard of the Valois advanced
across the depression and began to approach the slight slope up towards
the vineyards and the hedge beyond. In that vineyard, upon either side of
the hollow road, stood, in the same "harrow" formation as at Crecy, the
English long-bowmen.

The picked three hundred knights under the two