The battle of Crécy was not merely a battle; the event involved a great social revolution. The whole chivalry of the most chivalrous nation was exterminated by a small band of foot-soldiers. A new system of tactics came forth from a new state of society; it was not a work of genius or reflection. Edward III employed foot-soldiers for want of horse. The issue revealed a fact of which no one dreamed till then; namely, the military inefficiency of that feudal world which had thought itself the only military world. The private wars of the barons, and of canton against canton, in the primitive isolation of the Middle Ages, had not disclosed this truth; for then gentlemen were defeated only by gentlemen. Two centuries of defeats, during the Crusades, had not damaged their reputation. All Christendom was interested in disguising the successes of the misbelievers. Besides, these wars were waged so far away, that there was always some means of excusing every disaster: the heroism of a Godefroy and a Richard redeemed all the rest. In the thirteenth century, when the feudal banners were habituated to follow the king’s, when out of so many seigniorial courts was formed a single one, brilliant beyond all the fictions of the romances, the nobles, diminished in power, increased in pride; humbled in their own person, they felt themselves exalted in their king. They valued themselves more or less in proportion as they shared in the galas of royalty. In excuse for the disaster of Courtrai, the nobles pleaded their own hare-brained heroism, and the Flemish ditch. Two easy massacres at Mons-en-Pévêlle and Cassel retrieved their reputation. For several years they railed at the king, who forbade them to vanquish. An opportunity was afforded them at Crécy; the whole chivalry of the kingdom was there assembled; every banner flaunted in the wind, with all those haughty blazons, lions, eagles, castles, besants of the Crusades, and all the arrogant symbolism of heraldry. Opposed to this gallant array, excepting four thousand men-at-arms, all the rest were the barefooted English commons, the rude mountaineers of Wales, and the swineherds of Ireland, blind and savage races, that knew neither French, nor English, nor chivalry. They aimed none the worse for this at noble banners; they killed but so much the more: there was no common tongue in which to parley. The Welshman or Irishman did not understand the noble baron prostrate beneath him, who offered to make him rich, and he made answer only with the knife. From that day forth there was many an unbeliever in the religion of nobility. Armorial symbolism lost all its effect. Man began to doubt that those lions could bite, or those silken dragons vomit forth fire and flames. The cow of Switzerland and of Wales seemed good armorial bearings too. THE SIEGE OF CALAIS