When he edged out of the melee, many knights came with him, and more followed, and suddenly, all the Frenchmen on the left, facing Warwick, were retreating. After more than an hour of stalemate, they fell back down the hill in surly disorder — not a rout, just a retreat. They still outnumbered us, and the Count of Anjou — we saw his banner — gathered half a thousand men and came at us on the flank.
The archers emptied their quivers and we fell back, all the way to the marsh. The archers scampered away from the French knights, who must have been exhausted. But not too exhausted to have a go at the Earl.
Anjou himself ran at our line, and the men-at-arms with him charged us hard. We’d been backpedalling, and we had to halt about fifty paces from the protection of the marsh, or be cut down running.
I was in the second rank, about five men from the Earl. I used my new sword over my cousin’s head. He fought with a sword and buckler, and I used my longsword as a spear, with my left hand halfway along the blade, thrusting over his shoulder or under his right armpit. I don’t think I killed anyone, but neither was I hit, nor was Sir Edward. We held, and held — Christ, how did they do this for an hour? Then Edward knocked a man flat with a backhanded blow, and the man waved weakly and cried, ‘Me rendre!’
Fair enough. The Earl pushed forward, but Anjou had pulled back and was reforming his conroy — his company. I pushed forward past my cousin, who was accepting the surrender and ransom of his noble adversary. There was a knot of Frenchmen still fighting — one had hacked the Earl’s banner pole in half. Hawkwood put his pommel in the man’s face — almost no one had a visor in those days — and the man fell back.
I cut hard with my new sword. The second man was just turning to face me, and my first cut — a rising cut — knocked his sword aside, and my descending cut was very strong. Strong and, by luck, perfect. He had a quilted linen aventail, and my blade went past his guard, through his aventail and beheaded him.
Blood gouted from his neck.
Men around me cheered.
And the other Frenchman fell to his knees and made himself my prisoner.
Friends, I think I laughed aloud. Grown men thumped me on the back.
Anjou’s company backed away.
Once again, I thought the battle was over.
And once again, I was wrong.
At the top of the Cardinal’s ridge — well, that’s what I called it all day — we saw the lilies of France and the flaming red silk of the Oriflamme. Even while I received a guerdon — my first — a token of my captive’s surrender, the King started down the ridge towards us. He had about 3,000 men, the cream of his army. His men were fresh, and they walked quickly down the hill.
Our archers loosed their next-to-last shafts at point-blank range, and knocked over a few men.
Warwick’s archers, and Salisbury’s, loosed whatever they had left. But archers, even master archers, tire, and we were nearly out of arrows. The density of the French meant they’d trampled the ground into which we’d shot all day, and when some of the younger men, like Monk John, ran forward to retrieve shafts, they came back with very few, because the rest were broken.
The French King’s Italian crossbowmen went up the hill first. About 200 of them broke off to face us under their master archer. I heard his voice yelling orders, and they wheeled off like old Romans. They were good.
Unfortunately, you cannot move forward with a pavise and a spanned crossbow. So having faced off against us, they had to halt and span. I think they thought our veterans were shot dry.
Master Peter was a canny devil. Every one of his archers had three shafts under his right foot, where they couldn’t be seen.
They loosed them.
Just like that, the Italians were gone. They ran. The English shafts punched right through their great pavises. I saw it happen in Italy, too, and it broke their morale. I doubt we killed ten of them, because they had good armour, but as soon as they took hits, they ran. They were mercenaries, not patriots.
And, thank God, we didn’t have to stand their return volley.
Then the King’s division was past us, walking quickly up the hill, with ten great banners and the Oriflamme in the centre. From where I stood, I could see de Charny’s arms — at this distance, his arms appeared to be three red dots on gleaming white.
The greatest knight in the world.
I was watching when the royal messenger came to the Earl. I didn’t hear a word through my helmet, but I knew what he was asking. He was asking that the Earl send every man-at-arms who could walk to the top of the hill, to try and hold the King of France and the best knight in the world. Sir Edward was already trotting, in full armour, up the hill, going the long way round Warwick’s archers.
He was my hero — and my knight. What could I do but follow?
By the sweet saviour, I was tired. There is a special fatigue — some of you will know it — when some parts hurt, and other parts are so far gone that it seems they might just refuse their service to the rest of the body. I had no leg armour, and still my left thigh muscles were exhausted. I was more hobbling than running. Sir Edward drew ahead of me as he reached Warwick’s men, and then he turned in behind them and I lost him.
The King reached the top of the hill, and his division slammed into the Prince. Even as I hobbled along, I saw the centre of the English line stagger back from the hedge for the first time, losing five paces in as many breaths of air. Fresh, expert fighters in the very best armour money could buy, facing tired men who had braved two attacks that day, and who were usually none too well armoured to start with.
I started to run, and be damned to my left leg. John Hawkwood caught me up and I was determined not to let an old man like him pass me. Other men-at-arms from Oxford and Warwick’s division pounded along with us — about sixty men-at-arms in all, and only three or four belted knights among us, I swear.
The English centre gave another step or two. A handful of French knights spilled around the edge of the melee and began hacking at the end of the English line. All the English men-at-arms who could stand were committed in the centre, and the French still outnumbered us — even with their third line alone.
But they didn’t outnumber our archers.
John Hawkwood started calling, ‘On me! On me!’ as he ran. Perhaps he meant to raise the spirits of the men fighting, but to the archers of Warwick’s division, with no foes in front of them, his call meant something different.
Friends, in the main, archers don’t go toe-to-toe with men-at-arms. There are excellent reasons, and the greatest is that no good archer wears iron gauntlets or arm armour — you cannot wear an arm harness and shoot a bow well. Yet in a melee, your hands and arms are the likeliest to draw a blow — even a sloppy, amateurish blow.
But-
But this was for everything. All of us knew it. Every Englishman — and every Welshman, Irishman, Scotsman, Gascon and man of Artois and Brittany — in our army knew that we’d stopped two French attacks, and that if we stopped this one. .
Well. If we didn’t, we’d lose and be dead.
The archers began to cheer, ‘God and St George!’
George and England.
George and England!
Par dieu, gentles, I can still hear it — because when 6,000 men pick up a cheer, it is loud. It is a weapon of its own. It grew louder, and men broke ranks and charged into the flanks of the French line or ran down the hill to envelop them. It wasn’t planned.
It was devastating.
Even then, the French knights were, in fact, the best fighters in the world. And I was far enough behind to watch what happened to one group of archers who separated themselves from the pack and ran behind the French line. Then Marshal Clermont, with perhaps five other knights, turned on them like lions on hyenas, and they died. I knew Clermont by his arms — trust me, war was a business to me even then, and where other boys spent the summer learning Latin verbs or how to plough, I knew which coat of arms was worth a ransom, and who was the most dangerous to face, and Clermont scored well in both lines.