From all this we can construct a fairly accurate view of the French advance, especially when we consider where the French forces lay when they reached the field. From Abbeville to the field of Crécy is, as the crow flies, ten miles. A great main road (along the further part of which the English had marched on the Friday) led to the neighbourhood of the field and past it: the main road which goes from Abbeville to Hesdin. By this road, breaking up probably rather late upon the Saturday morning, the largest of the loosely gathered French contingents marched. Far to the right of them over the countryside would be advancing the other feudal levies under the King of Bohemia and John of Luxembourg, the exiled Count of Flanders, the ex-King of Majorca, and other friends, connections, and vassals whom Philip had summoned with their arrays. It is to be presumed that certain bodies on the extreme right went up by the Roman road which misses Abbeville coming from the south, and makes for Ponches, bounding the battlefield of Crécy on its extreme eastern side. Following this chaotic advance of the dispersed host, gathered in a jumble, the wholly untrained peasant levies which had been swept up from the villages on the advance proceeded in disorder. And it was thus without regular formation, save among the Genoese mercenaries (some 15,000 in number at the outset of the campaign, though we do not know of what strength on the field itself), that the first lines of mounted men caught sight from the heights of Noyelles[14] and Domvast of the English line on the ridge of Crécy three miles away. It was early in the afternoon before that sight was seen. The wind was from the sea, and gathering clouds promising a storm were coming up before it, and hiding the sun. Before these advance lines of the French army, and between it and Edward's command, the ground fell gradually away in low, very gentle slopes of open field towards the shallow depression above which a somewhat steeper and shorter bank defended the line, a mile and a half long, upon which Edward had stretched his men.