A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [59]
The French too used archers and crossbowmen, usually hired companies of Genoese who made the crossbow a specialty, but when their blood was up, they hated to give the crossbow the scope for action that would take the edge off the clash of knights. Chivalry maintained that the combat of warriors must be personal and bodily; missiles that permitted combat at a distance were held in scorn. The first archer, according to a 12th century song, was “a coward who dared not come close to his foe.” Nevertheless, when it came to fighting commoners as at Cassel in 1328, the French had given their crossbowmen the tactical scope that accounted for that victory.
The crossbow, made of wood, steel, and sinew, and pulled by aid of the archer’s foot in a stirrup and a hook or winding handle attached to his belt, or by a complicated arrangement of winches and pulleys, shot a bolt of great penetrating power, but the bow was slow and cumbersome to wield and heavy to carry. The crossbowman usually carried about fifty bolts with him into action, and his equipment en route had to be transported by wagon. Owing to the long wind-up, the crossbow was in fact more useful in static situations such as clearing ramparts in sieges than in open battle. A charge of knights willing to take some losses could generally shatter the crossbowmen’s line. Although its mechanical power when first invented had been frightening so that it was banned by the Church in 1139, the crossbow had continued in use for 200 years without threatening the knights’ mailed dominion.
Protected by plate armor and the pride of chivalry, the noble felt himself invulnerable and invincible and became increasingly contemptuous of the foot soldier. He believed that commoners, being excluded from chivalry, could never be relied upon in war. As grooms, baggage attendants, foragers, and road-builders—the equivalent of engineer corps—they were necessary, but as soldiers in leather jerkins armed with pikes and billhooks, they were considered an encumbrance who in a sharp fight would “melt away like snow in sunshine.” This was not simple snobbism but a reflection of experience in the absence of training. The Middle Ages had no equivalent of the Roman legion. Towns maintained trained bands of municipal police, but they tended to fill up their contingents for national defense with riff-raff good for nothing else. Abbeys had better use for their peasants than to employ their time in military drill. In any epoch the difference between a rabble and an army is training, which was not bestowed on foot soldiers called up by the arrière-ban. Despised as ineffective, they were ineffective because they were despised.
On August 26, 1346, the English and French armies met at Crécy in Picardy 30 miles inland from the coast. Like the clash in another August in 1914, the battle opened an era of augmenting violence and disintegrating control. It had not been planned by the victors. Informed of the great host that was gathering around the French King in answer to his summons, Edward showed no desire for a confrontation, or at least not without first securing his retreat. Turning away from Paris, he marched northwestward toward the Channel coast, presumably making for Flanders, where he could be sure of ships. If that was his objective, it was not likely to make him King of France.
The French army by forced marches caught up with the English before they could reach the sea, but not before Edward, realizing he would have to fight, took up a good defensive position on a broad hill above the village of Crécy. So confident were the