The action was a picturesque one, and the sight presented to a spectator watching it from the heights behind Godemard's command must have been a picture vivid and well framed. One hundred mounted and armoured knights, carefully chosen, led the way across the ford. They were met actually in the water itself by mounted men advancing on to the causeway from Godemard's side, and the twin banners of Edward's two marshals and the cries of "God and St George!" with which the English vanguard met the enemy rose for a few moments from a confused mêlée of men and horses struggling in the stream. But the issue was decided by the comparative strength of missile weapons, and not by the sword. The Genoese cross-bowmen behind the French knights, and upon either side of their rear, shot into the English mounted ranks with some success, when the Archers of Edward, who were just behind the knights, and seem to have deployed somewhat over the marshy land on either side of the ford, returned their fire with that superiority of the long-bow which helped to decide this campaign. It was the regular fire of the Archers, the weight and the rapidity of it, which finally threw the supporting infantry of the French command into confusion, and permitted the mounted head of the English column to force its way over the landward end of the ford and through the now isolated body of French knights. Once the bank was gained, the English head of the column in its turn held the _tête de pont_, and the passage of the whole force was only a question of time. But time was a factor of vast importance at this juncture: how important what immediately followed will show. A force of anything between twenty-four and thirty-nine thousand men, combatant and non-combatant, with its wagons and sumpter horses, the considerable booty of its raid, its tents, its reserve of armour and of weapons, we cannot reckon, even upon a front of twelve deep, at less than a couple of miles in length, even under the best and strictest conditions of marshalling. Indeed, that estimate is far too low and mechanical. It is more likely that by the time the head of the column was pouring from the causeway on to the right bank of the estuary, and there deploying, a good third of the armed men were still waiting upon the further shore to file over the narrow passage.