"Crecy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... style me, what those who loved or who flattered me did when I was happier, cousin to the Fair Maid of Kent. Joanna, those days are over! But no enemy, no law, no eternity can take away from me, or move further off, my affinity in blood to the conqueror in the field of Crecy, of Poitiers, and Najera. Edward was my brother when he was but your cousin; and the edge of my shield has clinked on his in many a battle. Yes, we were ever near—if not in worth, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sea.'[37] It is impossible to make intelligible the course of the many wars which the English waged with the French in the Middle Ages unless the true naval position of the former is rightly appreciated. Why were Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt—not to mention other combats—fought, not on English, but on continental soil? Why during the so-called 'Hundred Years' War' was England in reality the invader and not the invaded? We of the present generation ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... following Pierre de Savoy to England there established a noble line of Grandisson. These Grandissons were intimately related with the kings of England through the Savoyard Queen Eleanor. The glorious progress of the English armies, the fame of Crecy, the capture of the King of France resounding through all Europe, inflamed with chivalric ardor, young Othon de Grandson, and in his company Jean de Gruyere, to set out in the spring of 1372 for England. Warmly received at Windsor, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... amassed a royal fortune, buying the magnificent estate of Crecy for six hundred and fifty thousand livres; "La Celle," near Versailles, for twenty-six thousand livres; the Hotel d'Evreaux, at Paris, for seventy-five thousand livres—and these were her minor expenses; ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... figures. Give him, however, a martial subject—let his eye but once kindle, and his cheek flush at the call of the trumpet, and we defy you to find his equal. Read—O ye poetasters who are now hammering at Crecy—read the "Bonnets of Dundee," and then, if you have a spark of candour left, you will shove your foolscap into the fire. Or tell us if you really flatter yourselves that, were your lives prolonged to the perpetuity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the books she carries, laying them on one of the tea-tables]. This is Burke's Peerage, and this is Froissart's Chronicles. I've been reading it all over again—the St. Aubyns at Crecy and Agincourt [with an exalted expression], and St. Aubyn ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... of the victories of Crecy and Agincourt, as well they may be; for, though gained in the course of as unjust and unprovoked and cruel wars as ever were waged even by Englishmen, they are as splendid specimens of slaughter-work as can be found in the history of "the Devil's code of honor." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... and Mr Winston thinks that it may have been erected by Thomas, Lord Bradeston, to the memory of Sir Maurice Berkeley, who was killed at the siege of Calais, and to commemorate the glories of the campaign in France, which culminated with the Battle of Crecy. The date, therefore, of the original glass would be between ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... is another of the lively battle-pieces from the Percy Folio, put into modern spelling, and no other version is known or needed. The battle of Durham, which the minstrel says (27.1, 64.2) was fought on a morning of May, and (64.3,4) within a month of Crecy and Poictiers,[1] actually took place on October 17, 1346. Stanza 18 makes the king say to Lord Hamilton that they are of 'kin full nigh'; and this provides an upper limit for the date of the ballad, as James Hamilton was married to Princess Mary, sister of James ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... bowed his head in the bitterness of his sorrow, for he came of a proud stock. About him hung the portraits of his ancestors. Here on the right an Oxhead who had broken his lance at Crecy, or immediately before it. There McWhinnie Oxhead who had ridden madly from the stricken field of Flodden to bring to the affrighted burghers of Edinburgh all the tidings that he had been able to gather in passing the battlefield. Next him hung ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... archers acquired in the use of their famous bows. "Alas, alas for Scotland when English arrows fly!" was the sad lament of many a Highland clan, and Frenchmen often learnt to their cost the force of our bowmen's arms. The accounts of the fights of Crecy and Poitiers tell of the prowess of our archers; and the skill which they acquired by practising at the butts at home has gained many a victory. Archery was so useful in war that several royal proclamations were issued to encourage the sport, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... dinners with the men best worth knowing at the various colleges. Interesting was a visit to All Souls College, which, having been founded as a place where sundry "clerks" should pray for the souls of those killed at the battle of Crecy, had, as Sir William Anson, its present head, showed me, begun at last doing good work after four hundred years of uselessness. In the chapel was shown me the restored reredos, which was of great size, extending from floor to ceiling, taking the place ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... —— and apologizing prettily inside in case I am by now a colonel; in drawing-rooms I am sometimes called "Captain-er"; and up at the Fort the other day a sentry of the Royal Defence Corps, wearing the Crecy medal, mistook me for a Major, and presented crossbows to me. This is all wrong. As Mr. Garvin well points out, it is important that we should not have a false perspective of the War. Let me, then, make it perfectly ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... itself boasted nothing more than one or two estaminets. Auxi-le-Chateau, the home of the Third Army Training School, had a few shops and was rather more lively, while, for those who could get there, St. Riquier was quite interesting, and the battlefield of Crecy was not far off. Abbeville some distance away, was patronised only ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... indomitable man belonged to that middle-class of self-governing, self-respecting yeomanry that has been the glory of free England and free America. He was one of the sturdy race that overthrew French chivalry at Crecy and twice drove the soldiery of a tyrant down the slope of Bunker Hill. In boyhood he worked on his father's farm and helped his mother to milk the thirty kine; he practised archery on the village green, studied ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... one has heard of the famous battles of Crecy and Poitiers, which were so much alike in all that made them remarkable that they are generally coupled together,—one always reminding us of the other. Yet there is one point they had in common which has not been especially remarked, but which ought to link them ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... discovered in a Neolithic sepulchre near Crecy-sur-Morin, where lay no less than thirty skeletons, remarkable for the strongly defined section of the tibiae, whilst around were strewn hatchets, flint knives, bones, stilettos and picks of siliceous ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... here the portrait effigy of the effeminate young King, whose hand used to be clasped in that of his young foreign bride, but the arms are both gone. The robes are stamped with Richard's badges, the rising sun of Crecy and Poictiers, which was his father's favourite emblem, the broomscods of the Plantagenets, the fleurs-de-lis of France, symbolic of the constant claim of our sovereigns to the French crown, and many others. Beneath the canopy are traces of the two-headed eagle, the arms of Bohemia, and also ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... of France, Edward III. raised the martial glory of England by his splendid victories at Crecy, Poictiers, and other places; and he kept Christmas right royally with his soldiers on French soil. After the battle of Crecy, at which the Prince of Wales gained the celebrated title of the Black Prince, Edward marched upon Calais, and laid siege to it; and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Philip, the cousin of Charles IV., who occupied the throne, so he proceeded to vindicate himself against King Philip in the usual way. He destroyed the French fleet in 1340, defeated Philip, though with inferior numbers, at Crecy, and demonstrated for the first time that cannon could be used with injurious results ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... lots of 'body' The world was then not up to 'shoddy.' Blanket of Bristol in this year Invented blankets for our cheer; And since that time its been our boast Our beds have been as warm as toast. Edward 'Black Prince' One-three-four-six, A brave and noble warrior, 'licks' Crecy The valiant French in Crecy's fray; 1346 Cannon first used upon this day, Causing panic with their rattle; But the Yeomen win the battle, For, flicking arrows from their bows They 'filled the air as ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... II. So strong was the Scottish party that Balliol had to flee to England for assistance, and, in 1336, Edward III again appeared in Scotland. It was not a very heroic effort for the future victor of Crecy; he marched northwards to Elgin, and, on his way home, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... loose and irregular array was capable of acting with effect against the solid masses and well-ordered movements of disciplined troops. They acquired by their use of the bow a fame like that which the English archers obtained for the employment of the same weapon at Crecy and Agincourt. They forced the arrogant Romans to respect them, and to allow that there was at least one nation in the world which could meet them on equal terms and not be worsted in the encounter. They henceforth obtained recognition from Graeco-Roman writers—albeit ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... eloquence," but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... covered with works of art—Sidney Cooper, George Frip, Mueller, J. B. Pyne (who was Mueller's master), Absalon (who designed the grand curtain for Her Majesty's Theatre), and Brittan Willis are all well represented. Absalon gives "Crecy" and "Agincourt" as they are to-day. In the latter picture the mill is shown where it is said the King stood while the Black Prince won the battle. A striking portrait of Lady Blessington is by Shalon, and there are no fewer than three valuable portraits of the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Domme was first taken by the English in 1346, but not without the help of 'quelques traistres.' From this stronghold they harassed the surrounding country, 'while the armies of one and the other party were in Normandy and Picardy, and that battle of Cressi (Crecy) was fought to the disadvantage of the party of France. Towards the end of the year a truce was accorded, but it was in no way observed in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... depended upon it for his prowess, as did Allan a Dale and Little John. In the early battles it was the chief weapon, and did effective service. In the battle of Hastings it decided the issue for William the Conqueror; at Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers victory depended on its use. Skilled archers became famous all over the land, and many were their doughty ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... he, "dost thou think that here is Crecy field toward, that ye bring all this artillery? Turn back, my girl, and set the pot on the fire; for that shall we need when we come home, ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... troublesome politics of that day. Discreetly obscure, it attended to its own fortunes, and felt small interest in Magna Charta. During the reigns of the Plantagenet Edwards, who were great encouragers of mercantile adventure, the House of Vipont, shunning Crecy, Bannockburn, and such profitless brawls, intermarried with London traders, and got many a good thing out of the Genoese. In the reign of Henry IV. the House of Vipont reaped the benefit of its past forbearance and modesty. Now, for the first time, the Viponts appear as belted knights; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fought, like that of Crecy, or Agincourt, or Poitiers, qua nescio (saith Froissart) an vetustas ullam proferre possit clariorem. To see one of Caesar's triumphs in old Rome revived, or the like. To be present at an interview, [3260]as that famous of Henry the Eighth ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... with such courtesy that nothing remained save to thank the speaker from whose serious mouth it issued, though he was a descendant of the conquerors of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt. It was the younger of the two travellers who acknowledged this politeness in that heedless and rather caustic manner which seemed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... people has less of the bloodthirsty craving for glory and an army of 50,000 English soldiers has never been seen in battle) caused Napoleon to exclaim, as he rode away from Waterloo, "It has always been the same since Crecy." ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... General did not think it advisable to attempt a deliberate defence of the Marne. On this, the orders given to the British troops on the night of the 2nd were modified, and they were directed to continue their march to the line Montry—Crecy—Coulommiers. ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... his face, instead of being irate, lowering and furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crecy. He was not angry—not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of clemency; under the real ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... an expensive luxury to Bohemia, and he reigned for thirty-six years, so his country, although rich, yet peopled by a canny and thrifty population, must have been thankful when at last he was knocked on the head at Crecy. The story is well known to us all, so we need not linger on it. John bequeathed his motto to the Black Prince, who could well afford to pay a graceful compliment by accepting it; after all, not he, but Bohemia, had to pay for John's fun. John kept the mint of his ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... not his actual subjects, were few and far between. These were the holders of vast principalities, who maintained a kind of royal state in their own possessions, and kept high courts of judicature over life and limb in the whole extent of their hereditary fiefs. In the long English wars, from Crecy to Agincourt, the great body of them disappeared, and only here and there a great vassal was to be seen, distinguished in nothing from the other nobles, except in the loftiness of his titles and the reverence that still clung to the sound of his historic name. The second aristocracy ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Crecy nor Poitiers nor Azincourt had accomplished, the assassination on the bridge of Montereau did,—it gave the crown of France to a king of England." In the following year, 1420, the treaty of Troyes, concluded between ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Rupert's chivalry to pieces on Naseby field, who had scattered at Worcester the "army of the aliens," and driven into helpless flight the sovereign that now came "to enjoy his own again," who had renewed beyond sea the glories of Crecy and Agincourt, had mastered the Parliament, had brought a king to justice and the block, had given laws to England, and held even Cromwell in awe, became farmers and traders again, and were known among their fellow-men by no other sign ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... that it relied too much upon the citadel. After a tremendous cannonade, which lasted a week, and was heard in Antwerp, the city was taken by assault. Thus the key to the great Norman portal of France, the time-honored key which England had worn at her girdle since the eventful day of Crecy, was at last taken from her. Calais had been originally won after a siege which had lasted a twelvemonth, had been held two hundred and ten years, and was now lost in seven days. Seven days more, and ten thousand discharges from thirty-five great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of Crecy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were directed almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... played some part in our national story. We have sung the praises at Christmas time of the Bohemian Monarch, "Good King Wenceslaus." We have read how John, the blind King of Bohemia, fell mortally wounded at the Battle of Crecy, how he died in the tent of King Edward III., and how his generous conqueror exclaimed: "The crown of chivalry has fallen today; never was the like of this King of Bohemia." We have all read, too, how Richard II. married ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Bradwardine (1290-1349), known as Doctor Profundus, proctor and professor of theology at Oxford, and afterwards Chancellor of St. Paul's and confessor to Edward III. The English ascribed their success at Crecy ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the battle of Flodden field; and King James himself was not taken, but left dead upon the field, while his kingdom went to his poor little baby son. Though there had been a battle in France it was not another Crecy, for the French ran away so fast that it was called the battle of the Spurs. However, Henry's expedition did not come to much, for he did not get all the help he was promised; and he made peace with the French king, giving him in marriage his beautiful young sister ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he knighted the Prince of Wales and made Warwick and Harcourt marshals of his army. They advanced in three divisions—the King and the Prince in the centre, the two marshals on the right and left—ravaging all before them, and not stopping in their victorious course till the great victory at Crecy. Harcourt subsequently met a traitor's fate. A force was sent against him, his army was routed, and, preferring death to being taken, he fought most valiantly until he was struck to the ground by French lances, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... first of nations and has remained the norm of nations, the only one which is a nation and nothing else. But in the collision the English grew equally corporate; and a true patriotic applause probably hailed the victories of Crecy and Poitiers, as it certainly hailed the later victory of Agincourt. The latter did not indeed occur until after an interval of internal revolutions in England, which will be considered on a later page; but as regards the growth of nationalism, the French wars were continuous. And the English ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... battle of Red Hills, or Neville's Cross, as it was afterwards termed, from the above elegant stone cross, erected to record the victory by Lord Ralph Neville. The English sovereign, Edward III., had just achieved the glorious conquest of Crecy; and the Scottish king judged this a fit opportunity for his invasion. However, "the great northern barons of England, Percy and Neville, Musgrave, Scope, and Hastings, assembled their forces in numbers sufficient to show that, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... 15th year of his reign, to the sheriffs of most of the English counties, to provide bows and arrows for the intended war against France: these orders, however, relate to the long-bow. In the famous battle of Crecy, fought in 1346, our chroniclers state that we had 2,800 archers, who were opposed to about the same number of the French; which, together with a circumstance to be immediately mentioned, seems to prove that by this time we used the long-bow whilst the French ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... ground, leap up as you pass over them, stab your horses from below, seize your legs and try to drag you from your saddles, leap up on to the crupper behind you, and stab you to the heart. This is what makes them so dangerous a foe to horsemen, and at Crecy they did terrible execution among the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... was that when, in 1346, Edward III. had beaten Philippe VI. at the battle of Crecy, the first use he made of his victory was to march upon Calais, and lay siege to it. The walls were exceedingly strong and solid, mighty defenses of masonry, of huge thickness and like rocks for solidity, guarded it, and the king ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... retreating halfway up the slope, where they would be beyond the reach of the Rebu, in turn discharged their arrows. The superiority of the Egyptian bowmen was at once manifest. They carried very powerful bows, and standing sideways drew them to the ear, just as the English archers did at Crecy, and therefore shot their arrows a vastly greater distance than did their opponents, who were accustomed to draw their bows ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... August the battle of Crecy was won against a force far outnumbering the English army. The victory was due in large measure to the superiority of the English longbow over the crossbow used by the Genoese mercenaries; but it was also a victory of foot soldiers ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... said, hastily. "We know all about Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; and how well they fought in Holland; but I thought, Kennedy, that you were the enemy of the English, and were here with your brave countrymen ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white horizon—I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!—past another old town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way. What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and hospital camp, which we ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level rain-storm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside out like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... it was her royal house of Capet that rallied Europe to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre and led the greatest of the crusades to Palestine. Yet the France of the last crusades was within a century the France of Crecy, just as the France of Austerlitz was more speedily the France of Waterloo; and men who followed the tricolour at Solferino lived to see it furled in humiliation at Sedan. No other country has had a history as prolific ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... Cressy, which the French term Crecy, or, to give it a true Picard orthography, Creci. Most of the names that have this termination are said to be derived from this province. Many of them have become English, and have undergone several changes in the spelling. Tracy, or Tracey; de Courcy, or de Courcey; Montmorency; ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... attended two womens' rights conventions, three Fenian meetings, had dined at White's, and had danced vis-a-vis to a prince of the blood, and eaten off gold plates at Crecy House. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Edward led his troops across the Channel and at Crecy gained a complete victory over the knighthood of France. Ten years later the English at Poitiers almost annihilated another French force much superior in numbers. These two battles were mainly won by foot soldiers armed with the long bow, in the use of which the English excelled. Ordinary iron ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that I went out with Tom Purdie to cut some trees, the rather that my task was very well advanced. He led me into the wood, as the blind King of Bohemia was led by his four knights into the thick of the battle at Agincourt or Crecy,[252] and then, like the old King, "I struck good strokes more than one," ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... telegram that you, my Lord, read from Glamorgan. ["Hear, hear!"] I should like to see a Welsh Army in the field. [Loud applause.] I should like to see the race that faced the Norman for hundreds of years in a struggle for freedom, the race that helped to win Crecy, the race that fought for a generation under Glendower against the greatest captain in Europe—I should like to see that race give a good taste of its quality in this struggle in Europe; and they are going ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... shaking his head. "There was Sir Henry—at your age he had made the Scottish thieves look about them, I promise you. And to go no further back than Sir Reginald himself—he stood by the Prince's side at Crecy ere he ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it in England or all the Western countries in those days before Crecy was fought, when the third Edward sat upon the throne. There was none to tell them of the doom that the East, whence come light and life, death and the decrees of God, had loosed upon the world. Not one in a multitude in Europe had ever ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... battle of Crecy, one of the most glorious in English History, was won by the common people of England, yeomen and archers, foot soldiers against the knights and squires of France with ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... the Brie champenoise. The Brie forms a plateau with few eminences, varying in altitude between 300 and 500 ft. in the west, and between 500 and 650 ft. in the east. Its scenery is varied by forests of some size—the [v.04 p.0561] chief being the Foret de Senart, the Foret de Crecy and the Foret d'Armainvilliers. The surface soil is clay in which are embedded fragments of siliceous sandstone, used for millstones and constructional purposes; the subsoil is limestone. The Yeres, a tributary of the Seine, and the Grand Morin ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the ancient campaigns of this country were conducted. He is quite an authority upon mediaeval transport, by sea as well as by land, and he can tell you at once the quantities of bowstrings and quarrels 'indented for' during the Crecy and Poictiers campaigns. Not long ago, poring over an ancient roll of parchment in the Record Office, he came across a list of the ships requisitioned for the Agincourt expedition, with their names, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Philip lay with a large army watching him at St. Denis. After a short hesitation Edward crossed the Seine at Poissy, and struck northwards, closely followed by Philip. He got across the Somme safely, and at Crecy in Ponthieu stood at bay to await the French. Though his numbers were far less than theirs, he had a good position, and his men were of good stuff; and when it came to battle, the defeat of the French was crushing. Philip had to fall back with his shattered army; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and was out very early in the morning looking at the ancient town of Espalion, which witnessed both the victory and the defeat of British arms long ere the Maid of Domremy came to the rescue of the golden lilies. Its capture took place soon after the Battle of Crecy. The lords of Espalion were the Calmont d'Olt, who played an active part in the wars with the English. The town deserves a prominent place among the many picturesque old burgs stamped with mediaeval ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Master Guy," said Long Tom, who was in command of the archers. "It was well indeed that I asked to come home to England when I did, else had I been now mewed up at Villeroy while my lord was righting the French in the open field. Crecy was the last time an English king commanded an army in battle against France; think you that we shall ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars—Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners; have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gambling debts, are more binding than debts of honesty. But Jacques Bonhomme's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, it will not bear this last straw. The tidings ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... England, the litter and the footsteps of thirteen hundred years. I was led up past the choir into that lofty and once famous place where for centuries the greatest and holiest shrine in England stood. All about were still grouped the tombs of Princes; Edward, the Black Prince, the hero of Crecy, Henry IV., the usurper, Cardinal Chatillon; but of the shrine itself, of the body it held up to love and honour and worship there was nothing, no word even, no sign at all to tell that ever such a thing had been, only an emptiness and a space ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... all that Mme. Verdurin herself was a thoroughly 'good' woman, and came of a respectable middle-class family, excessively rich and wholly undistinguished, with which she had gradually and of her own accord severed all connection) to a young woman almost of a 'certain class,' a Mme. de Crecy, whom Mme. Verdurin called by her Christian name, Odette, and pronounced a 'love,' and to the pianist's aunt, who looked as though she had, at one period, 'answered the bell': ladies quite ignorant of the world, who in their social ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... had a realistic taste of it, and his songs reflect his experience. Other songs reached my ears each night, above the hissing and pounding of the Channel seas, but the unseen group returned always to this. One thought of Agincourt and Crecy, of Waterloo, of the countless journeys across this same stormy strip of water the ancestors of these man had made in the past, and one wondered whether war were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 6000 archers, and a few thousands of other foot). It is probable that the usual three "battles'' were drawn up in line, each with its archers on the flanks and the dismounted men-at-arms in the centre; the archers being thrown forward in wedge-shaped salients, almost exactly as at Crecy (q.v..) The French, on the other hand, were drawn up in three lines, each line formed in deep masses. They were at least four times more numerous than the English, but restricted by the nature of the ground to the same extent of front, they were unable to use their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... remember the armour of the Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long as they kept firm in their ranks. [Mitford well refers to Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt, as instances of similar disparity of loss between ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the great countries of Europe. For the reign of Edward III was a brilliant one. The knightly, chivalrous King set his country high among the countries of Europe. Men made songs and sang of his victories, of Crecy and of Calais, and France bowed the knee to England. But the wars and triumphs of the King pressed hardly on the people of England, and ere his reign was over misery, pestilence, and famine filled ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... jousting at Crecy a little later, and Gaston went there to deal with certain knights and princes among the tilters, and left the shop in Dickon's charge. Restless with the magic of a summer night after he had barred the little place, he wandered away over the white ancient ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Edward destroyed the French fleet at Sluys and so started his country on its wonderful career of ocean dominance. Moreover, his success established from the start that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... by a mother's benediction, to return with their shields, or on them; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings, she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced the whole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... their incorporation by Edward III. in 1325. They combined the trade of makers of ironwork with that of Dentists and Clockmakers, and were by Queen Elizabeth united with the Spurriers, or makers of spurs. The motto of the Bowyers' Company, "Crecy, Poictiers, Agincourt," tells of the prowess of our English archers when archery was the national pastime of Englishmen, as well as their support in war. Other allied crafts were connected with ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... to England a great tournament was held by him at Windsor in memory of King Arthur. In 1346 he set sail on the expedition which resulted in the great victory of Crecy[15] and the capture of Calais. It was a strong place, and the inhabitants had done much harm to the English and Flemings by their piracies. He built a regular town before the walls, sent for a fleet to blockade the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... in there, as many centuries before other English soldiers, who came out with Edward the Black Prince, by way of Crecy, or with Harry the King, through Agincourt. Five hundred years hence, if Amiens cathedral still stands, undamaged by some new and monstrous conflict in a world of incurable folly, the generation of that ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... them through and through. In two minutes they began to give, in three they were flying back to their main body, those who were left of them, a huddled rout of men and horses. So the French must have fled before the terrible longbows of the English at Crecy and Poitiers, for, in fact, we were taking part in ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... some who fought at Crecy, too, Snored on or scoffed when trumpets blew, And presently were caught; And when the clanking N.C.O.'s Came round to prod them, I suppose They ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... back a little, and consider certain strange and impressive facts. The Hundred Years' War began in 1337. It raged on and on, year after year and year after year; and at last England stretched France prone with that fearful blow at Crecy. But she rose and struggled on, year after year, and at last again she went down under another devastating blow—Poitiers. She gathered her crippled strength once more, and the war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year, decade after decade. Children were born, grew up, married, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... excellence. The historian records that they penetrated the armour of the Earl of Douglas, which had been three years in making; and they were "so sharp and strong that no armour could repel them." The same arrowheads were found equally efficient against French armour on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... tables on this fellow." The soldiers now closed round Harold and the thanes and led them out of the house. Here they were ordered to mount each behind a soldier, and as soon as they had done so they rode out from St. Valery, and crossing the river Somme at Abbeville, and the Authie by a ford near Crecy, reached the fortress of Beaurain on the river Canche near the town of Hesdin before nightfall. On the road Wulf watched anxiously for a chance to escape, but none offered itself. Soldiers rode on both sides of the captives, and had he slipped from the horse he could not have ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... and national politics, but also in the art of war. Edward I discovered in his Welsh wars that the long-bow was more efficient than the weapons of the knight; and his grandson won English victories at Crecy and Poitiers with a weapon which was within the reach of the simple yeoman. The discovery of gunpowder and development of artillery soon proved as fatal to the feudal castle as the long-bow had to the mailed knight; and when the feudal classes ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... wonderful head-dress, large and square. The figures are somewhat mutilated, but the little angels that supported her head can just be distinguished. The tomb is supposed to be that of Sir John Sully and his wife; he, having fought at Crecy and Poictiers, lived to give evidence, at the age of 105, in the great Scrope ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Henry VI.; and Mr. Quaritch possesses another Book of Hours, which the Duke presented to Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, as a wedding gift. The House of Valois was always friendly to literature. King John, who fought at Crecy, began a small collection: he had the story of the Crusades, a tract on the game of chess, and a book containing a French version of Livy, which seems to have belonged afterwards to Duke Humphrey, and to have found its way later into the Abbey of St. Genevieve. His son Charles le ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... much in days gone by to impress the minds of the people, but the plumed and unwieldy champion was no longer an object either of fear or of reverence to men whose fathers and brothers had shot into the press at Crecy or Poitiers, and seen the proudest chivalry in the world unable to make head against the weapons of disciplined peasants. Power had changed hands. The protector had become the protected, and the whole ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were all too tired to note how beautiful the country was. It was lovely weather, and coming down the route from Haute Maison, by La Chapelle, to the old moated town of Crecy-en-Brie at sunset, must have been beautiful; and then climbing by Voulangis to the Forest of Crecy on the way to Fontenay by moonlight even more lovely, with the panorama of Villiers and the valley of the Morin seen through the ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... Europe by the Huns; the Sack of Rome; the Battle of Chalons-sur-Marne; the Battle of Tours; the Crowning of Charlemagne; the Great Crusade; the Fall of Constantinople; Magna Charta; the Battle of Crecy; the Field of the Cloth of Gold; the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; the Spanish Armada; the Execution of King Charles I; the Fall of the Bastile; the Inauguration of George Washington; the Battle of Waterloo; the Louisiana Purchase; the Indian ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... one of the oldest families of England. If I had been the seventh son of the seventh son, I should, by all the laws of juggling, have been a conjurer; but I was a generation too early for fame. My father was an earl, and as proud of his titles as if he had won them at Crecy or Poictiers, and not in the campaigns of Westminster, consummated on the backstairs of Whitehall. He had served his country, as he termed it, in a long succession of Parliaments; and served her still more, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Thomas de Marle was put under ban by the king and excommunicated by the church. Louis raised an army and marched against him. De Marle was helpless with illness, but truculent in temper. He defied the king, and would not listen to his summons. Louis attacked his castles, took two of them, Crecy and Nogent, and in the end forced him to buy pardon by a heavy ransom and an indemnity to the church. As for the burghers who had taken refuge with him, the king showed them no mercy. They had had a hand in the murder of Bishop Gaudri, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... he felt of increasing the fame that belonged to his family. For instance, in the poem written at fourteen, and which is entitled "Verses composed on leaving Newstead Abbey," after having sung the valor of his ancestors displayed on the plains of Palestine, in the valley of Crecy, and at Marston, where four brothers moistened the field with their blood, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... dared to move a step without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lockwood, who was killed at Crecy, down to a certain major in the Carbineers, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... died in the year 1400, and thus was an active and observant contemporary of events in the most remarkable century which had thus far rolled over Europe—the age of Edward III. and the Black Prince, of Crecy and Poitiers, of English bills and bows, stronger than French lances; the age of Wiclif, of reformation in religion, government, language, and social order. Whatever his family antecedents, he was a courtier, and a successful one; his wife was Philippa, a sister of Lady Katherine ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... with fiction; besides the wonders performed by the hero, a destroyer of monsters, we find a great battle mentioned by Gregory of Tours, where the Frenchmen, that were to be, cut to pieces the Englishmen that were to be; the first act of that bloody tragedy continued afterwards at Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, Fontenoy, and Waterloo. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... to Paris; but, being watched from the right bank of the river by the French King and all his army, it came to this at last, that Edward found himself, on Saturday the twenty-sixth of August, one thousand three hundred and forty-six, on a rising ground behind the little French village of Crecy, face to face with the French King's force. And, although the French King had an enormous army—in number more than eight times his—he there resolved to beat ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... regain some of her strength, at least for fighting, in the fourteenth is down in the mire. Look at the truthful picture drawn by Clemangis. The nobles, so proudly arrayed in their new armour, fall all the more heavily at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt. All who survive end by being prisoners in England. What a theme for ridicule! The citizens, the very peasants make merry and shrug their shoulders. This general absence of the lords gave, I fancy, no small encouragement to the Sabbath gatherings ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... daughter of Loys de Nevers, eldest surviving son of Robert the First, Count of Flanders (who predeceased his father), and of Marie or Jeanne, daughter of the Count de Rethel. She had one brother, Count Loys the First of Flanders, who fell at Crecy. Many modern writers call her Jeanne; but her name in the contemporary public records of England is invariably Margareta. Her birth probably took place about 1310, and it may have been about 1335 that she married Jean of Bretagne, Count de Montfort, a younger son ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Black Prince—no one quite knows why, for his hair, like that of all these old English kings, was quite light and his eyes were blue. He was such a spirited young soldier, that when the French army under King Philip came in sight of the English one, near the village of Crecy, King Edward said he should have the honor of the day, and stood under a windmill on a his watching the fight, while the prince led the English army. He gained a very great victory, and in the evening came and knelt before his father, saying the praise was not his own but the king's, ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Squire of Sandal-Side. For dearly he loved the old hall, with its sheltering sycamores and oaks,—oaks which had been young trees when the knights lying in Furness Abbey led the Grasmere bowmen at Crecy and Agincourt. Dearly he loved the large, low rooms, full of comfortable elegance; and the sweet, old-fashioned, Dutch garden, so green through all the snows of winter, so cheerfully grave and fragrant in the summer twilights, so shady and cool ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... French history by defeating the Romans in a world deciding battle at Soissons, and ten years later near the same place the German forces were utterly defeated by the same king. More than five centuries ago the great Battle of Crecy, between the English and French was fought, ending in a great victory for the Black Prince. But none of the ancient battles equalled in importance the series of great victories won by the Allied force ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... service to prolong the resistance of the Armagnacs and the Dauphin, who then appeared mere partisans instead of patriots. As to fighting under the English banner, no subjection was involved in an adventurer king so doing: had not the King of Bohemia thus fought at Crecy? and was not the King of Sicily with the French army? Moreover, James himself felt the necessity of gaining some experience in the art of war. Theoretically he had studied it with all his might, from Caesar, Quintus Curtius, and that favourite modern authority, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... If you collate the remarks and speeches of the knights (as I have had occasion to do) you will find a remarkable uniformity running through them. We may believe then that this really does represent the kind of men who fought at Crecy and at Poictiers, in the age when both the French and the Scottish kings were prisoners in London, and England reached a pitch of military glory which has perhaps never been equalled ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... De Gamelyn the Bowman had summoned to their help the armies of the unconquered dead. They came, the De Gamelyns of all generations from Crecy to Waterloo: they fought by his side, and the machine gun bullets, which fell upon the dusty earth like tropical ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... disaster and discomfiture—is utterly suppressed. The Battles of Ptolemais, of Ivry, of Fontenoy, of Rivoli, of Austerlitz, &c., are here as imposing as paint can make them, but never a whisper of Agincourt, Crecy, Poictiers, Blenheim, or Ramillies, nor yet of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Leipsic, or Waterloo. Even the wretched succession of forays which the French have for the last twenty years been prosecuting in Algerine Africa here shines resplendent, for Vernet has painted, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... instantly you saw a Duke of Lorraine or Bar insisting on having his throat cut in support of France; which favor accordingly was cheerfully granted to them in three great successive battles by the English and by the Turkish sultan, viz., at Crecy, at Nicopolis, and ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Crecy by Somme in Ponthieu High up on a windy hill A mill stands out like a tower; King Edward stands on the mill. The plain is seething below As Vesuvius seethes with flame, But O! not with fire, but gore, Earth ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... his.' You could see by his wife's looks that she disbelieved in these genealogical legends, for she generally endeavoured to turn the conversation when he commenced them. But his little boy believed them to their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis of Crecy, General Pendennis of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real and actual beings for this young gentleman as—whom shall we say?—as Robinson Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of Christendom, whose histories ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Calais. It had long been the sheltering-place for the pirates that preyed on English commerce. But now no ship could leave or enter. The English fleet closed the passage by sea; the English army blocked all approach by land; the French king, whose great army had just been mercilessly slaughtered at Crecy, held aloof, nothing seemed to remain for Calais but death or surrender, and yet the valiant governor held out against ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... form a semicircle, preferring rather a broken line with the center retired, (Fig. 12, bis.) If several writers may be believed, such an arrangement gave the victory to the English on the famous days of Crecy and Agincourt. This order is certainly better than a semicircle, since it does not so much present the flank to attack, whilst allowing forward movement by echelon and preserving all the advantages of concentration of fire. These advantages vanish if the enemy, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Helmon are too full of ardour to act with discretion, and are ready enough to back up the bishop in his hot desire to be doing something. I regret that this army is not, like the army which fought at Crecy and Poictiers, composed of men well inured to war, with a great number of good archers and led by experienced warriors, instead of a hasty gathering of men, who have been fired by the exhortations of the priests and ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... by whom it was ravaged and exhausted. Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better? In 1428, they were but a handful ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Battle of Muhldorf. [Rentsch, p. 313; Pauli; &c.] Battle fought on the 28th of September, 1322:—eight years after BABBOCKBURN; while our poor Edward II. and England with him were in such a welter with their Spencers and their Gavestons: eight years after Bannockburn, and four-and-twenty before Crecy. That will date ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... evening of the fifth day Pop had the last bit of its tangle cut and piled. Of such stuff were warriors of the olden time. Given armor and a battle-ax, and nothing could have stood before him. One could imagine him at Crecy, at Agincourt, at Patay. Joan of Arc would have ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of Europe for Frenchmen to confound men of that country with Hindoos just from Asia. The Bohemians were not strangers in France. Nearly a hundred years before, a king of Bohemia, with a large retinue, was present on the French side at the battle of Crecy, and Ziska himself fought at Agincourt. But writers on the Gypsies treat very slightingly the fact, that the French called the first party that visited Paris, as mentioned above, Bohemians, and merely say that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various |
