nor the supplies were adequate. The army which
assembled in September in the neighbourhood of Brussels consisted
largely of imperial vassals, hired by the English King, and clamorous
for the regular payment of their wages. Already Edward told his
ministers that, had not "a good friend in Flanders" advanced him a
large sum, he would have been obliged to return with shame to England.
As it was, enough was raised to set the unwieldy host in motion, and on
September 20 he marched from Valenciennes, and thence advanced into the
bishopric of Cambrai, whose lord, though an imperial vassal, had
declared for France and the papacy.

The rolling uplands of the Cambresis were devastated with fire and
sword. One night an English baron took the Cardinal Bertrand, who with
his comrade Peter still accompanied Edward's host, to the summit of a
high tower, whence they could witness the flaming homesteads and
villages of the fertile and populous district. In that woeful spectacle
the churchman saw the futility of his last two years of constant
labour, and fell in a swoon to the ground. But the confederates could
do little more than devastate the open country. Cambrai itself was
besieged to no purpose, and Edward pressed on to the invasion of
France. On October g he spent his first night on French soil at the
abbey of Mont Saint-Martin. He learnt how slender was the tie which
bound his foreign allies to him, for his brother-in-law, William of
Hainault, refused to serve, except on imperial soil, against his uncle
Philip VI. Consoled for this defection by the arrival of the sluggish
Duke of Brabant and of the Elector of Brandenburg, the eldest son of
the emperor, Edward marched through the Vermandois, the Soissonais, and
the Laonnais, burning and devastating, without meeting any serious
resistance. Philip of Valois timidly held aloof in the neighbourhood of
Peronne.

By the middle of October, when Edward was near St. Quentin on the Oise,
the Duke of Brabant suggested the expediency of seeking out winter
quarters. The slow-moving host was almost in mutiny, when the master
crossbowman of the King of France brought a challenge from his lord.
"Let the King of England," ran the message, "seek out a field
favourable for a pitched battle, where there is neither wood, nor
marsh, nor river." Edward cheerfully accepted a day for the combat, and
chose his ground higher up the Oise valley, among the green meadowlands
and hedgerows of the Thierache. Th