These Genoese were archers, who had already marched on foot so far and at such a pace that they were exhausted; and when, against their will, they sullenly advanced, their bows that were wet from a thunderstorm proved slack and untrue. The sun also, that had just emerged from behind a cloud, shone in their eyes and dazzled them. Silently the English bowmen waited as they drew near, shouting hoarsely, and then of a sudden poured into the weary ranks such a multitude of arrows that ‘it seemed as though it snowed’. The Genoese, utterly disheartened, broke and fled; at which the French king, choking with rage, cried, ‘Kill me this rabble that cumbers our road without any reason’; but the English fire never ceased; and the French knights and men-at-arms that came to take the place of the Genoese and rode them underfoot fell in their turn with the shafts piercing through the joints of their heavy armour. Again, at Creci it was made evident to Europe that the old feudal order of battle was passing away. Victory fell not to the knight armoured with his horse like a slowly-moving turret, but to the clear-eyed, leather-clad bowman, or the foot-soldier quick with his knife or spear. The French fought gallantly at Creci, and none more fiercely than Philip of Valois, whose horse was killed beneath him; but courage cannot wipe out bad generalship, and when at last he consented to retreat he left eleven princes of the blood-royal and over a thousand of his knights stretched on the battle-field. The defeat of Creci took from Calais any hope of French succour, and in the following year after a prolonged siege it surrendered to the English and became the most cherished of all their possessions across the seas. ‘The Commons of England’, wrote Froissart, ‘love Calais more than any town in the world, for they say that as long as they are masters of Calais they hold the keys of France at their girdle.’ [Sidenote: The Black Death] Death at the battle of Creci, decked in all the panoply of mediaeval warfare, had taken its toll of the chivalry of France and England. Now, in an open and ghastly form, indifferent alike to race or creed, it stalked across Europe, visiting palace and castle but sweeping with a still more ruthless scythe the slum and the hovel. Somewhere in the far East the ‘Black Death’, as it was later called, had its origin, and wherever it passed, moving westward, villages, nay, even towns, disappeared.