But though we have no space for any full discussion, it is worth the reader's while to be informed of the general process by which scholarship attempts to reconstitute an engagement, upon which it has such insufficient testimony; and as the Battle of Crécy is the first in this series which challenges this sort of research, I will beg leave to sketch briefly the process by which it proceeds. The first thing to be done, then, in attempting to discover what exactly happened during such a battle as that of Crécy, is to tabulate our sources. These are of three kinds--tradition, monuments, and documents. Of these three, tradition is by far the most valuable in most research upon affairs of the Dark or Middle Ages, and it is nothing but a silly intellectual prejudice, the fruit of a narrow religious scepticism, now fast upon the wane, which has offered to neglect it. Unfortunately, however, tradition is a particularly weak guide in this one department of knowledge. In estimating the character of a great man it is invaluable. It plays a great part in deciding us upon the nature of social movements, in helping us to locate the sites of buildings that have disappeared, and particularly of shrines; it gives us ample testimony (too often neglected) to the authenticity of sacred documents, and to the origin of laws. It is even of some assistance in establishing certain main points upon a military action, if documents are in default. For instance, a firm tradition of the site of a battle is evidence not only in the absence of documents, but in negation of doubtful or vague ones, and so is a firm tradition concerning the respective strength of the parties, if that tradition can be stated in general terms. But for the particular interest of military history it is worthless because it is silent. Even the civilian to-day, and, for that matter, the soldier as well, who is not accustomed to this science, would find it tedious to note, and often impossible to recognise, those points which form the salient matters for military history. There can be no tradition of the exact moments in which such and such a development in a battle occurred, of contours, of range, etc., save where here and there some very striking event (as in the case of the projectile launched into the midst of Acre during the Third Crusade) startles the mind of the onlooker, and remains unforgotten. In the particular case of Crécy, tradition fixes for us only two points--though these have proved of considerable importance in modern discussion--the point where the King of Bohemia fell, and the point from which Edward III. watched the battle. Of monuments, again, we have a very insufficient supply, and in the case of Crécy, hardly any, unless the point already alluded to, where the blind king was struck down, and the cross marking it be counted, as also the foundations of the mill, which was the view-point of the English commander.