The Crecy War by Burne Alfred Higgins;

Author:Burne, Alfred Higgins;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Ancient / General
ISBN: 9781848328877
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2016-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

APPENDIX

FRENCH NUMBERS AT CRECY

The last word, but not, it is to be hoped, the final word, comes from the historian Ferdinand Lot, writing in 1946 in his L’Art Militaire et les Armées au Moyen Age.13 After computing the English army at fewer than 9,000 effectives, he writes:

“Everything leads us to believe that the French army was inferior in numbers to the English.”

By what channels does he reach this rather startling conclusion–so utterly at variance with all the written evidence and the consensus of opinion from the day of the battle until the present time? The Professor produces two reasons. He prepares the ground by arguing that when Edward wrote that the French army numbered “more than 12,000 men-at-arms, of whom 8,000 were gentlemen, knights and squires” he meant that 12,000 was the whole French total. This would leave only 4,000 for the Genoese and infantry, country levies and allies, making the gentlemen-at-arms more than half the army. Edward was an experienced soldier, and he can never have believed that: when he said “men-at-arms” he meant “men-at-arms”. It is to be noted that his confessor, Wynkeley, gives the same figure, 12,000 men-at-arms, as his master.

But let that pass, it matters not, for even were we to concede the point it would still leave the French superior in numbers according to Lot (12,000 French to “less than 9,000 English”). How does Professor Lot pare down the French numbers to fewer than “less than 9,000”? Philip had sent the bulk of his troops under the duke of Normandy to Gascony, “Philip could therefore only bring against Edward III improvised levies. The slowness of mobilization of the feudal contingents was such in those times that it is impossible that the king of France could assemble serious forces in the short time that elapsed between the landing of his enemy at St. Vaast, July 12, and the battle.”

Let us see. The great English expeditionary force must have been signalled by French ships, who were on the look-out all along the coast. It might take them two or three days to put into Harfleur with the news, which should reach Paris within a week of the landing. As a matter of fact we know that Philip must have heard by July 19, for he returned from his country residence to his capital on that day, and presumably ordered what Ferdinand Lot calls “mobilization”. This mobilization proceeded so rapidly that only ten days later he was in possession of an army so numerous that he dared confront his opponent with it. As we know, the battle did not take place for another four weeks, by which time considerable accessions had been made to the French army, notably in Amiens, whereas the English army had diminished in size owing to casualties and sickness. The probability is therefore a priori that the French army by August 26 was markedly superior in numbers to the English, quite apart from the written evidence pointing to that, both explicitly and by the

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