Note 193 — Chapter VI

This description will bring to the reader’s recollection the skill of our own ancestors in the use of this destructive weapon, which mainly contributed to many of their most celebrated victories. The following extract relates to the battle of Crecy. “Ther were of the genowayes(a) crosbowes about a fiftene thousand, but they were so wery of goying a fote that day, a six leages, armed with their crosbowes, that they sayde to their constables, we be nat well ordred to fyght this day, for we be nat in the case to do any grete dede of arms, we have more nede of rest:—these wordes came to the erle of Alencon, who sayd, a man is well at ease to be charged with such a sort of raskalles, to be faynt, and fayle nowe at most nede.... When the genowayes were assembled toguyder, and beganne to approche, they made a grete leape, and crye, to abasshe thenglysshemen, but they stode styll, and styredde nat for all that: than the genowayes agayne the second tyme made another leape, and a fell crye, and stepped forward a lyttell, and thenglysshemen remeued nat one fote: thirdly agayne they leapt, and cryed, and went forth tyll they came within shotte; than they shotte feersly with their crosbowes; than thenglysshe archers stept forth one pase, and lette fly their arowes so holly and so thycke, that it seemed snow: when the genowayes felte the arowes persynge through heedes, armes, and brestes, many of them cast downe their crosbowes, and dyde cut their strings, and retourned dyscomfited. When the French kynge sawe them flye away, he sayd, slee these raskalles, for they shall let and trouble us without reason: than ye shulde have seen the men at armes dasshe in amonge them, and kylled a grete nombre of them: and ever styll the englysshemen shot whereas they saw thickest preace; the sharp arowes ranne into the men of armes, and into their horses, and many fell, horse and men, amonge the genowayes: and whan they were downe, they coulde nat relyve again, the preace was so thicke that one overthrewe another.”—Froissart, chap. 130. So at the battle of Homildoun, Percy wished to charge the Scots, who were drawn up upon a hill, but the Earl of March retained him, and bid him open their ranks by archery. “Then the English archers marching against the Scots, stitched them together with arrows, and made them bristle like a hedgehog, as it were with thorns and prickles; the hands and arms of the Scots they nailed to their own lances, so that with that sharp shower of arrows some they overthrew, others they wounded, and very many they slew. Upon which the valiant Sir John Swinton exclaimed, as with the voice of a herald, ‘My noble fellow–soldiers, what has bewitched you, that you give not way to your wonted gallantry: that you rush not to the mellay, hand to hand, nor pluck up heart like men, to attack those who would slaughter you with arrows, like hinds in a park. Let such as will go down with me, and in God’s name we will break into the enemy and so either come off with life, or else fall knightly with honour.’”—(Fordun, Scotichr. lib. xv. cap. 14.) One manuscript adds, “I have never heard nor read that the English in fair field beat an equal number of Scots by charge of lance, but very often by the thunder–shower (fulminatione) of their arrows. Let the latter therefore beware of waiting the flight of archery, but hasten to close combat, even as Sir John Swinton then did.” This is the story which Sir Walter Scott has worked up into his poem of Halidon Hill.