e Edward's scouts were
vainly seeking for an unguarded passage over the river. If the Somme
could not be crossed, there was every chance of Edward's war-worn army
being driven into a corner at Saint-Valery, between the broad and sandy
estuary of the Somme and the open sea. When affairs had become thus
critical, local guides revealed to the English a way across the
estuary, where a white band of chalk, called the _Blanche taque_,
cropping out of the sandy river bed, forms a hard, practicable ford
from one bank of the river to the other. "Then," writes an official
reporter, "the King of England and his host took that water of the
Somme, where never man passed before without loss, and fought their
enemies, and chased them right up to the gate of Abbeville." That night
Edward and his troops slept on the outskirts of the forest of Crecy.
After traversing this, they took up a strong position on the northern
side of the wood on Saturday, August 26. There, in the heart of his
grandmother's inheritance of Ponthieu, Edward elected to make a stand,
and, for the first time in all their campaigning, Philip felt
sufficient confidence to engage in an offensive battle against his
rival.

Ponthieu is a land of low chalk downs, open fields, and dense woods,
broken by valleys, through which the small streams that water it
trickle down to the sea, and by the waterless depressions
characteristic of a chalk country. The village of Crecy-en-Ponthieu is
situated on the north bank of the little river Maye. Immediately to the
east of the village, a lateral depression, running north and south,
called the _Vallee aux Clercs,_ falls down into the Maye valley, and is
flanked with rolling downs, perhaps 150 to 200 feet in height. On the
summit of the western slopes of this valley, Edward stationed his army.
Its right was held by the first of the three traditional "battles,"
under the personal command of the young Prince of Wales. Its front and
right flank were protected by the hill, while still further to the
right lay Crecy village embowered in its trees, beyond which the dense
forest formed an excellent protection from attack. The second of the
English battles, under the Earls' of Northampton and Arundel, held the
less formidable slopes of the upper portion of the _Vallee aux Clercs,_
their left resting on the enclosures and woods of the village of
Wadicourt. The third battle, commanded by the king himself, and
stationed in the rear as a reserve,