Infantry - A Summary

The French men-at-arms charged through the crossbowmen by the king’s orders, spearing and trampling them, but they were themselves shot down by English arrows, or overthrown by one another in the press. As King Edward wrote, there died more than 1500 knights and esquires in the part of the field where the armies first came together. Nevertheless “the battle was very tough and lasted long, for it lasted from before the hour of vespers till evening, and the enemy bore themselves very nobly and often rallied.”  They made three main attacks, directing their efforts against the English, and apparently neglecting the archors. The Prince’s ” battle ” was so hard pressed that Northampton moved up to its assistance, and the king also sent some twenty or thirty knights in reply to an urgent appeal. But the “battles” remained unbroken, the English losses were trifling, and in the course of the night the French army melted away, leaving many thousands on the field.

It was not the first time that crossbow and longbow had been pittied one against the other, but the conditions at Crecy made the most of the advantages which bel opged to the lat ter. The six-foot bow had longer range than the ordinary crossbow, and three or four times tEielrate15T Hre. A good archer could shoot two arrows . in a minute ; he would seldom miss at 2:0 yards (the standard practice range) and could send his arrows twice that distance. On the other hand, the crossbow required less strength and skill; it could be used lying down or Uadeir cover; its bolts were much cheaper than arrows, and much more plentiful. The archer in the field had only his sheaf of twenty-four arrows, and in provisioning a place for a siege the allowance of bolts for each crossbow was ten times that of arrows for each longbow. At .short ranges the crossbow was reckoned the more accurate weapon, and Edward III. told the Sherifi’s of London in 1349 to encourage the use of it, as well as the use of the longbow.

The French learnt at Crecy that they must be ready to fight on foot; but they did not learn to choose the defensive, nor did they provide themselves with better shot. In the army of 50,000 men with which Philip’s successor, John, attacked the Black Prince near Poitiers (September 19, 1356) there seem to have been only 2000 crossbowmen, and their shooting had no great fi-o.t Fdward was returning from his raid to the loS: Hetad only BOOO men (English d Gas.n of whom 3000 were men-at-arms and 2000 archers Findtg himself overtaken, he chose a strong position on the richt bank of the Miosson, ” among hedges, vines ad bush;.” The English were short of food and migh Tave been starved out, if John had sent a force to he left side of the stream to bar their hne of retreat. Appth n ive of this, they were in the act of crossing the r’am when the battle began, and the rearguard was continuous hedge along front of  position except for one gap where the road o the ford pa sed trough it. The hedge was lined with archer . Td a stone-rthrow behind the gap Salisbury’s men-at ..0.S were drawn up on foot, with their archers n f.n of them ” in manner of a herse.” On the left was War ik’ “battle,” while that of the Prince was held m eserve The French army was also in three mam bod es the right under Orleans, the left under Normandy, afd L reserve under the king. Most of the men arms were dismounted, but mounted corps of a few Tndred men on barded horses were sent aW t “, th. archers The horse-armour proved ot httle eTvL r he :hers extended and struck the horses rrnk They became unmanageable, and caused conLion n the rinks of foot behind them The Prince made better use of his cavalry, sending -a 1 corps f to charge the enemy in flank and rear, while they were en.ageS There were collisions between the bodies of UsXntecl men-at-arms, but on a narrow front where personal strength told for more than  English were nearly worn out by repeated assaults and many of the archers had spent all their arrows, before the battle was won.’

According to Baker of Swynbrook, the archers were placed, not in front of the men-at-arms, but at the sides of the king’s army, like wings, so that they might not get in the way of the men-at-arms, nor meet the enemy face to face, but discharge their arrows at his flanks. Similarly a Valenciennes chronicler says that King Edward “ne fist que deux batailles d’archiers a deux costes en la maniere d’un escut ; et au milieu d’eulx se tenoit le prince de Galles.”  Froissart, on the contrary, says of the Prince’s “battle” that the archers were placed in front in the form of a “herse,” and the men-at-arms at the back. He mentions that in the course of the fight some of the French knights went round the archers, and others broke through them, and fought hand to hand with the Prince’s men-at-arms. King Philip would gladly have done the same, but there was such a great hedge of archers and men-atarms in front that he could not.

Sir John Smythe, who wrote when archers were still to be seen in the field, and described how they were drawn up by “our most skilful and warlike ancestors,” helps us to reconcile these conflicting statements. He says they were formed ” into hearses  that is broad in front and narrow in flank, as for example if there were 25, 30, 35, or more or fewer archers in front, the flanks did consist but of seven or eight ranks at the most. . . . They placed their hearses of archers either before the front of their armed footmen, or else in wings upon the corners of their battles, and sometimes both in front and wings.”  A contemporary plate of the battle of Pinkie (1547) shows the archers extended across the whole front of the three corps which are advancing to attack the Scots. George Monk, writing during the Civil War, shows how musketeers forming wings to a body of pikemen should be moved forward and spread out across its front for more eft’ective fire. We may conclude that the archers at Crecy were formed by companies of 100 men in oblongs not more than eight men deep, with open ranks and files, that their normal position was on the flanks of the men-at-arms and a little in advance of them, but that they may also have formed a continuous screen in their front, at all events at the beginning of the action. Shallow pits were dug in front of the line of battle, and would give the archers some protection from charging horsemen. ‘

It was late in the afternoon when the French army came up, but the impetuosity of the lords, each eager to be foremost, disregarded Philip’s orders to halt. The Genoese crossbowmen were sent forward, weary from a long march, and their bowstrings wet from rain, for they could not be taken off’ and put under cover like the string of the longbow. As they came on they gave great shouts at intervals to scare the English, and when they reckoned themselves within range they shot fiercely; but their bolts fell short. ” Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down their crossbows and did cut their strings and returned discomfited.”