The battle was to be fought on foot, as at Agincourt, without giving any quarter to the enemy. The army of King Charles VII. was, it was said, superior in numbers to that of the English.
On arriving before Crevant, the assailants found themselves arrested by the river Yonne, and remained there two days; when the English had at length forced a passage, they attacked the Scots, leaving the French troops to the Burgundians. "There is no other antidote for the English than the Scots," said Pope Martin V. after the battle of Baugê, but at Crevant the Scots were defeated. The French had promptly yielded, only the bravest knight had supported their allies; Lord Buchan and the Count of Ventadour had both lost an eye, and were taken prisoners, as well as Saintrailles, a famous Armagnac knight; subsequently the English re-entered Paris in triumph. Scotland, however, was not exhausted of knights in search of adventure. Archibald Douglas had disembarked at La Rochelle with five thousand men, and King Charles VII., in his gratitude, conferred upon him the title of Duke of Touraine; he loaded with honors the other Scottish noblemen, of whom several finally became naturalized in France; the barons began to complain of the favours which the king lavished upon his foreign allies. The Duke of Milan sent him a large reinforcement of Italians.
The Duke of Bedford was uneasy concerning the relief which arrived from Scotland for his adversaries, and he hoped to dry up the source of it by sending back King James into his dominions; negotiations had been opened up; the marriage of the captive prince with Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and niece of the Bishop of Winchester, had been celebrated; the ransom was settled and James I. had returned to Scotland after nineteen years of captivity, there to govern with an honest firmness to which his people had not been accustomed; but the tide of emigration towards France, although slightly slackened had not ceased in the meanwhile; the justice of the king was rigorously exercised upon the old enemies of his family, and a large number of Scottish knights, flying from his anger, took refuge in the army of Charles VII.; it was with their assistance that the royalist noblemen marched, in the month of August, against Ivry, in Normandy, which the Duke of Bedford was attacking. { 43} But the position of the English was strong, discord reigned in the French army, deprived of a chief by the indolence of Charles VII. Douglas and Buchan wished to make the attack; the Count of Alençon and the Count of Aumale refused their consent, and drew the army with them. In withdrawing they surprised Verneuil; the town was important, and the duke of Bedford followed the French thither. A tumultuous council resolved to repulse him in the open plain; the royalists, all on foot, quitted Verneuil; the Milanese alone remained on horseback. The English awaited the attack from behind the stakes of their archers. "Let us allow them to come," said Douglas; but the French noblemen despised the adventurers, as they called their valiant allies, and they made the attack. The combat was terrible; at one moment La Hire and Saintrailles, at the head of the Milanese, broke the reserve of the archers; but the reinforcements of the principal body repulsed them, and they were completely routed. Douglas had been slain, as well as his son. Lord Buchan lay upon the field of battle with the Counts of Narbonne, Tonnerre, and Ventadour; the Count of Alençon and the Marshall de la Fayette were prisoners. On his side, the Duke of Bedford had suffered; but the army of King Charles VII. was destroyed; the town of Verneuil surrendered immediately, and the Duke of Bedford caused to be beheaded those of the prisoners who, having sworn allegiance to his nephew, had not kept their oaths.