With all this there remains a large margin which cannot be generally set down as certain, and which even in matters essential must be written tentatively, with such phrases as "it would seem," or "probably" to excuse it. But history is consoled by the reflection that all these gaps may be filled by further research or further discovery, and that each new effort of scholarship bridges one and then another. As to the critical power by which each individual writer will decide between conflicting statements, or apparently irreconcilable conditions, this must be left to his own power of discrimination and to the reader's estimate of his ability to weigh evidence. He is in duty bound--as I have attempted to do very briefly in certain notes--to give the grounds of his decision, and, having done so, he admits his reader to be a judge over himself: with this warning, however, that historical judgment is based upon a vast accumulation of detail acquired in many fields besides those particularly under consideration, and that a competent historian generally claims an authority in his decisions superior to that reposing upon no more than a mere view of limited contemporary materials. I THE POLITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES The Battle of Crécy was the first important decisive action of what is called "The Hundred Years' War." This war figures in many history books as a continued struggle between two organised nations, "England" and "France." To present it in its true historical character it must be stated in far different terms. The Hundred Years' War consisted in two groups of fighting widely distant in time and only connected by the fact that from first to last a Plantagenet king of England claimed the Crown of France against a Valois cousin. Of these two groups of fighting the first was conducted by Edward III., and covers about twenty years of his reign. It was magnificently successful in the field, and gave to the English story the names of _Crécy_ and of _Poitiers_. So far as the main ostensible purpose of that first fighting was concerned, it was unsuccessful, for it did not result in placing Edward III. upon the French throne. The second group of actions came fifty years later, and is remembered by the great name of _Agincourt_. This latter part of the Hundred Years' War was conducted by Henry V., the great-grandson of Edward III. and the son of the Lancastrian usurper. And Henry was successful, not only in the tactical results of his battles, but in obtaining the Crown of France for his house. After his death his success crumbled away; and a generation or so after Agincourt, rather more than one hundred years after the beginning of this long series of fights, the power of the kings of England upon the Continent had disappeared. As a visible result of all their efforts, nothing remained but the important bastion of Calais, the capture of which was among the earliest results of their invasions.