ay there had not been seen at St. Denis a
king of France in arms and fully prepared for battle."

Edward began to be afraid of having pushed too far forward, and of
finding himself endangered in the heart of France, confronted by an army
which would soon be stronger than his own. Some chronicles say that
Philip, in his turn, sent a challenge either for single combat or for a
battle on a fixed day, in a place assigned, and that Edward, in his turn
also, declined the proposition he had but lately made to his rival. It
appears, further, that at the moment of commencing his retreat away from
Paris, he tried ringing the changes on Philip with respect to the line he
intended to take, and that Philip was led to believe that the English
army would fall back in a westerly direction, by Orleans and Tours,
whereas it marched northward, where Edward flattered himself he would
find partisans, counting especially on the help of the Flemings, who, in
fulfilment of their promise, had already advanced as far as Bethune to
support him. Philip was soon better informed, and moved with all his
army into Picardy in pursuit of the English army, which was in a hurry to
reach and cross the Somme, and so continue its march northward. It was
more than once forced to fight on its march with the people of the towns
and country through which it was passing; provisions were beginning to
fall short; and Edward sent his two marshals, the Earl of Warwick and
Godfrey d'Harcourt, to discover where it was practicable to cross the
river, which, at this season of the year and so near its mouth, was both
broad and deep. They returned without having any satisfactory
information to report; "whereupon," says Froissart, "the king was not
more joyous or less pensive, and began to fall into a great melancholy."
He had halted three or four days at Airaines, some few leagues from
Amiens, whither the King of France had arrived in pursuit with an army,
it is said, more than a hundred thousand strong. Philip learned through
his scouts that the King of England would evacuate Airaines the next
morning, and ride to Abbeville in hopes of finding some means of getting
over the Somme. Philip immediately ordered a Norman baron, Godemar du
Fay, to go with a body of troops and guard the ford of Blanche-Tache,
below Abbeville, the only point at which, it was said, the English could
cross the river; and on the same day he himself moved with the bulk of
his army from Amiens o