Fortune, or rather the fault of his enemies, befriended him, as it had befriended his predecessor. A Norman peasant, who preferred a hundred nobles to his duty to his country, had guided Edward to the ford of Blanchetaque; and now the neglect of the people of St. Quentin, who had been commanded to stop the ford between Betencourt and Voyenne, allowed a passage to Henry. The crossing was no easy task. The river was swollen with rain, and the army had no little difficulty in approaching the bank. If a sufficient French force had come in time to dispute the passage, the English might have lost heavily, or even been destroyed; but the first part of the army had made its way over unmolested, the King himself superintending the operation, before the enemy came in sight, and then not in sufficient force to prevent the completion of the passage. Before nightfall the whole army had safely reached the right bank of the Somme. Henry had been marching and counter-marching for nine days on the other shore, and had been forced to make a long detour from his proposed line. If he could have made the passage of the river, as he had once hoped to do, at the ford of Blanchetaque, he would have been at less than half the distance from Calais than that at which he now found himself. The line of march from which he had been driven by the necessity of crossing the Somme he was bent on regaining.[9] The nearer to the sea the easier the road, and there would be the advantage that one flank of the army would be safe against attack. Accordingly he moved westward unmolested, it would seem, by the French troops which had been previously guarding the right bank of the Somme, and had now fallen back on the main body of their countrymen. His route led him through the villages of Peronne, Albert, Bonnieres, and Frevent. On October 24th he reached the village of Blangy-on-the-Ternoise, a stream with an average breadth of about thirty feet and of considerable depth. It is possible, however, that it was not then, as it is now, dammed up to work a mill; and it is at this mill that local tradition fixes the place of his crossing. Continuing his march up the slope which leads to the table-land above the valley of the Ternoise, he found himself close to the enemy, who indeed had posted themselves in great force across the way to Calais. Their presence was announced to the Duke of York, who was in command of the van. The King, calling a halt, rode forward to reconnoitre, and began at once to make his arrangements for the battle which he now felt to be imminent. His main body took up its position at Maisoncelles, the baggage being placed in the rear of the wood that still bears that name. The front lines of the French army were but three bow-shots off; according to one account still less; their headquarters seem to have been somewhere behind the village of Azincour or Agincourt.