n Airaines. There he arrived about midday, some
few hours after that the King of England had departed with such
precipitation that the French found in it "great store of provisions,
meat ready spitted, bread and pastry in the oven, wines in barrel, and
many tables which the English had left ready set and laid out." "Sir,"
said Philip's officers to him, as soon as he was at Airaines, "rest you
here and wait for your barons and their folk, for the English cannot
escape you." It was concluded, in point of fact, that Edward and his
troops, not being able to cross the Somme, would find themselves hemmed
in between the French army and the strong places of Abbeville, St.
Valery, and Le Crotoi, in the most evil case and perilous position
possible. But Edward, on arriving at the little town of Oisemont, hard
by the Somme, set out in person in quest of the ford he was so anxious to
discover. He sent for some prisoners he had made in the country, and
said to them, "right courteously," according to Froissart, "'Is there
here any man who knows of a passage below Abbeville, where-by we and our
army might cross the river without peril?' And a varlet from a
neighboring mill, whose name history has preserved as that of a traitor,
Gobin Agace, said to the king, 'Sir, I do promise you, at the risk of my
head, that I will guide you to such a spot, where you shall cross the
River Somme without peril, you and your army.' 'Comrade,' said the king
to him, 'if I find true that which thou tellest us, I will set thee free
from thy prison, thee and all thy fellows for love of thee, and I will
cause to be given to thee a hundred golden nobles and a good stallion.'"
The varlet had told the truth; the ford was found at the spot called
Blanche-Tache, whither Philip had sent Godemar du Fay with a few thousand
men to guard it. A battle took place; but the two marshals of England,
"unfurling their banners in the name of God and St. George, and having
with them the most valiant and best mounted, threw themselves into the
water at full gallop, and there, in the river, was done many a deed of
battle, and many a man was laid low on one side and the other, for Sir
Godemar and his comrades did valiantly defend the passage; but at last
the English got across, and moved forward into the fields as fast as ever
they landed. When Sir Godemar saw the mishap, he made off as quickly as
he could, and so did a many of his comrades." The King of France, when
he h