Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
crossing of the Dives river. Other forces halted on that night at Agences, four miles to the south. The second is Léaupartie, a mile or so from Rumenise, where one other column halted, while a second column camped about five miles to the south. Lisieux was entered upon the 2nd of August after a march of ten miles on the part of the King, and of eleven and twelve on the part of the other two bodies.
At Lisieux two Cardinals who were despatched to offer terms met King Edward and proposed this arrangement to complete the war: that he should have the Duchy of Aquitaine upon the same tenure as his ancestors had held it. He refused those terms, and, after wasting a day at Lisieux, continued his march eastward.
Leaving Lisieux on the morning of the 4th, he pitched his tent that evening at Duramelle, a march of nine miles, with at least one column a mile ahead at Le Teil. On Saturday the 5th he got something better out of his troops, or at any rate out of the vanguard, and made something like seventeen miles to Neubourg.
I confess here to a very considerable doubt. The entry in the Accounts of the Kitchen is hopelessly misspelt, but the “Lineubourg” does not correspond to any other possible place, and Le Neubourg would be a very convenient halting-place for the King himself, well provisioned and lodged. We cannot believe, of course, that the army covered the full distance, but there is no reason why the King and his household should not have pushed on ahead with mounted troops. What makes it more probable is that the King spent the whole day of Sunday the 6th at Le Neubourg, presumably for the bulk of the army to come up and make two days’ march of the twenty odd miles which the most distant contingents had to cover.
It was on the next day, Monday the 7th, that he reached the Seine, and approached that river, as we may presume, with the object of crossing it. It was a ten-mile march, and the whole force could be on the banks before evening at Elbœuf.3 But the bridges were broken and it was impossible. It was from this point of Elbœuf that the raid turned to follow the valley of the Seine up towards Paris, always seeking some crossing-place, and always finding the bridges broken. The nearer he got to Paris the more dangerous became Edward’s position, and the larger grew the forces of the French King in the neighbourhood of the capital which threatened him.
Tuesday the 8th was spent in ravaging the country. Pont de L’Arche was burnt in revenge for the destruction of its bridge; a detachment went round by Louviers, which was looted, but the King himself went forward by the river bank and lodged that night at Vaudreuil, ten miles on from Elbœuf (which the Clerk of the Kitchen calls “Pount-Vadreel”).4 The bulk of the force halted at Léry, a mile or two behind.
Upon Wednesday, August 9th, Edward lay at Angreville5 (the “Langville” of the accounts), just south of Gaillon, and on Thursday the 10th, having burnt Vernon, where again he found the bridge cut, at Jeufose, rather more than eleven miles march up the river. (“Frevose,” as I read it in the MS.) His next hope for a bridge was at Mantes, and he was getting perilously near the heart of the country and the gathering French forces. That bridge was nine or ten miles along the road. He found it cut like all the others.
He was already across the borders of Normandy, and anxiety must have been growing upon him. He seized Mantes after some resistance. It was useless to his purpose, and he hurried on another six miles to Epone (“Appone” in the Accounts), making that day a really long march in his natural haste and compelling his escort to the same—sixteen miles. But he both fatigued his main army in that attempt, and it also lost some time in storming a fortified house on “the White Rock,”6 because the next day he evidently had to wait for stragglers to come up, advancing but a couple of miles to Aubergenville,7 where we find him upon Saturday the 12th. Upon the 13th, the Sunday, he got his opportunity. A march of only eight miles8 brought the host to Poissy, and there, though the bridge was cut, the stone piles upon which its trestles had stood were uninjured. Edward at once began to take advantage of this and to put his artificers to work. All that Sunday and all the Monday the task proceeded, and during this delay parties were despatched to ravage. They burnt St. Germain and St. Cloud. An advance party entered the Bois de Boulogne. But there could, of course, be no thought of an attack on Paris with so small a force and without base or provision.
By Tuesday the 15th of August these ravaging parties were recalled, and the whole host was streaming across the repaired bridge at Poissy.
This day, Tuesday the 15th, is strategically the turning point of the campaign. In an attempt to note in history no more than the great raid of Edward up to the very walls of the Capital, and his rapid and successful retreat, the crossing of Poissy would form the central term of our story. As it happened, however, the great chance which occurred to Edward in that retreat upon the field of Crécy, and his magnificent use of it, has eclipsed the earlier story, and for many the interest of the campaign as a whole, and the importance of this rapid seizure and repair of Poissy, is missed.
While his army was crossing the river, Edward received the challenge of the King of France. It was native indeed to the time: a sort of tournament-challenge, offering the English monarch battle upon any one of five days, in that great plain between Paris and St. Germains which the last siege of the French capital has rendered famous in military history. The French feudal levies for which Philip had been waiting were now fast gathering, especially those for which he had had to wait longest, the main forces which had been away down south in Guienne. Edward most wisely refused the challenge, for it would have been against great odds, and to accept, though consonant to the spirit of the time, would have been a ludicrously unmilitary proceeding. In place of such acceptation he sent back false news that he would meet Philip far to the south. He then proceeded to cross the river and make the best haste he could back northwards to the sea. The French King found out the trick; a day and a half late he started in pursuit with his large and increasing host. That host was gathered at St. Denis when on the Wednesday night, the 16th, Edward had got his men to Grisy, well north of Pontoise, and something like seventeen miles by cross roads from his hastily repaired bridge across the Seine. What followed was a fine feat of marching.
On the next day, the 17th, he had got his forces more than another seventeen miles north and had camped them by Auneuil. In two more days, by the evening of Saturday the 19th, they were yet twenty-five miles further north as the crow flies (and more like thirty by the roads), at Sommereux. Edward halted at Troussures (of which the clerk makes “Trusserux”) to see it file by, and on the morrow, Sunday, August the 20th, he was at Camps in the upland above Moliens Vidame, another push of fifteen miles for mass of the force, and of more than twenty for himself and his staff.
At this point came the crux of his danger. All during that tremendous feat of marching (and what it meant anyone who has covered close on fifty miles in three days under military conditions will know—there are few such) the great host of Philip was pounding at his heels.
Now, if the reader will glance at the map at the beginning of this section, he will see that just as Edward had been under a necessity to cross the Seine in the first part of his raid, he was now under a still greater necessity of crossing the Somme. A force much larger than his own was pressing him against that river into a sort of corner, and his only chance of safety lay in reaching the Straits of Dover through the county of Ponthieu, which lay beyond the stream. Every effort had been made to press the march. The force appears to have been divided for this purpose and to have marched in parallel columns, and the single case of marauding (the burning of the Abbey of St. Lucien outside Beauvais) had been punished with the death of twenty men.
To turn and meet his pursuers (who were evidently in contact with him through their scouts) would have meant, so long as he was on this side of the Somme, no chance of retreat in case of defeat.
Every mile he went to the north the Somme valley, already a broad expanse of marsh upon his flank, grew broader and more difficult. The decision, therefore, which Edward took at this