The experience and the memory of Crécy ten years before had left with the Valois a clear though very general idea that the novel and overwhelming superiority of the English long-bow could not be met by the old-fashioned dense feudal cavalry charge. Any attempt to attack the front of a line sufficiently defended by long-bowmen in this fashion meant disaster, many horses would be shot long before their riders could come within lance thrust, the dense packed line of feudal knights, thousands in number, would be thrown into confusion by the maddened and fallen animals, the weight of the remainder as they pressed forward would only add to that confusion, and the first "battle," delivering the regular traditional first-charge with which every old feudal battle had opened, would in a few minutes degenerate into a wild obstacle of welter and carnage stretched in front of the defensive line, and preventing anything behind them from coming up. It was to avoid misfortune of this kind that the vanguard of which I have spoken was formed. Its orders were these:--The picked three hundred knights of that vanguard were to ride straight at the English archers, and almost certainly to sacrifice themselves in so doing. But as their numbers were few, their fall would not obstruct what was to follow. It was their business in this immolation of their bodies to make it possible for the mass of infantry, especially those armed with missile weapons, to come close in behind and tackle the English line. That infantry, aided by the mounted German mercenaries and meeting missile with missile by getting hand to hand with the English bowmen at last, would prevent those English bowmen from effective action against the next phase of the offensive. This next phase was to be the advance of the first "battle," that of the Dauphin, the Duke of Normandy. His men-at-arms were to go forward dismounted, and to close with the whole English line while its most dangerous portion, the bowmen, were still hampered by the close pressure of the vanguard. The plan thus ordered by the French king at the advice of his Scotch lieutenant was not so incompetent as the results have led some historians to judge. It suffered from four misconceptions; but of these one was not the fault of the French commander, while the other three could only have been avoided by a thorough knowledge of the new Plantagenet tactics, which had not yet been grasped in the entirety of their consequences even by those who had invented them. The four misconceptions were:--