Less than a mile separated the two armies, over ploughed land, gently rising towards the French, and soft with the recent rain, the upper part at least doubtless already trodden into mire by the French, who had been stationary thereabouts since the previous afternoon. There was no alternative but to advance, as the French did not: but Henry possessed in his archers a means of stinging them into action, and the class pride of the French nobles had led to the adoption of an order of battle which gave them no means of replying. Towards ten o'clock the king gave the word, "In the name of Almighty God and of St. George, advance banners." For a moment, the English line knelt and touched the earth with their faces: then with a cheer they moved forward. As soon as they were within bowshot of the enemy the line halted, the archers fixed their stakes in the soft ground and began to shoot. Obviously the French could not stand to be riddled with arrows: the horsemen who had been placed on the flanks of the front line on purpose to "over-ride" the archers, were ordered to charge, but were unable even to reach the English and were driven back in confusion. The Constable now led the men-at-arms forwards, separating them apparently into three masses, to attack the three lines of English spearmen. Weighted with armour, they sank to the calf at each step, and the archers took them more and more in flank as they advanced. Still, they managed to reach and even to press back the English men-at-arms: but then the archers, taking to their bills, quitted the protection of the stakes, and closed on to the flanks of the helpless struggling mass, who were far too closely wedged together to use their spears. The Constable was killed: all the other noble personages figure on the list of prisoners: of one of them, the duke of Orleans, it is expressly said that he was taken out after the battle from a pile of dead and wounded; and probably the same fate befell others. Wounded or not, they could not move to escape from the ghastly heap, sunk deeper and deeper in the struggle into the miry soil. Pushing a little forward, Henry attacked the second French line, doubtless in the same manner, and with equally decisive result. The slaughter of the second division was presumably even greater, for all its leaders, with the duke of Brabant, who arrived with reinforcements during the battle, were found among the slain. Most of the third line fled without resistance; the counts at its head made a last desperate charge at the head of a few hundred men, and found the death they expected.