Even the magnificent Edward, with all his Round Table and his Order of the Garter, was forced to recognize clearly that war is above all things a business. In the earlier days he did indeed defy Philippe de Valois to single combat; but during the campaign of Crécy he made light of the laws of chivalry. He had penetrated close to Paris; his army was melting away; provisions were scarce; and the French had broken the bridges in his rear. At this point Philip sent him a regular chivalric challenge in form to meet him with his army on a field and a day to be fixed at his own choice, within certain reasonable limits. Edward returned a misleading answer, made a corresponding feint with his troops, rapidly rebuilt the bridge of Poissy, and had crossed to a place of safety before Philip realized that a clever piece of strategy had been executed under his very nose and behind the forms of chivalry. Then only did Edward throw off the mask, and declare his intention of choosing his own place and time for battle. His Royal great-grandson was even more business-like. When the French nobles asked Henry V. to give a great tourney in honour of his marriage, as had always been the custom, he refused in the bluntest and most soldierly fashion. He and his men, he replied, would be engaged for the next few weeks at the siege of Sens; if any gallant Frenchman wished to break a lance or two, he might come and break them there. While this mimic warfare was at its highest favour in France, the three Edwards had always kept jealous control over it in England, and constantly forbidden tournaments without Royal licence. This policy is, no doubt, partly explained by some deference to ecclesiastical prohibitions, and partly by the disorders to which jousts constantly gave rise; but we may pretty safely infer (with Luce) that our kings had little belief in the direct value of the knightly tournament as a school of warfare, and that here, as on so many other points, the practical genius of the race broke even through class prejudices.[229]
It is impossible better to sum up the results of English business methods in warfare than in the words which are forced reluctantly from M. Luce's impartial pen. "In my opinion, five or six thousand English archers, thus drilled and equipped, and supported by an equal number of knifemen, would always have beaten even considerably larger forces of the bravest chivalry in the world--at least in a frontal attack and as a matter of sheer hard fighting. Such, moreover, seems to have been the opinion of Bertrand du Guesclin, the most renowned captain of the Middle Ages, who never fought a great pitched battle against a real English army if he could possibly help it. At Cocherel his adversaries were mostly Gascons, and at Pontvallain he crushed Knolles's rear-guard by one of those startling marches of which he had the secret; but he was beaten at Auray and Navarette." Gower might complain without too poetical exaggeration that the vortex of war swept away not only the serf from his plough but the very priest from his altar; yet even Chaucer's Poor Parson may well have conceded that, if we must have an army at all, we might as well have it as efficient and as truly national as possible.