Philip himself, with an army estimated at as much as 120,000 men, was meanwhile advancing from Abbeville with 15,000 Genoese crossbowmen, forming an advanced guard, led by Antonio Doria and Carlo Grimaldi, followed by 4000 men-at-arms and foot soldiers under the Dukes of Alençon and Flandres, behind which came the remainder of the army in four lines, under the command of the king. The march was disordered and confused. “There is no man,” writes Froissart, “unless he had been present, that can imagine or describe truly the confusion of the day.” It was a case again of “those behind cried Forward, and those in front cried Back”; and while the masses surged backward and forward, under contradictory orders and want of plan, a gathering thunderstorm burst with peals of heaven’s artillery, and the driving rain lasted long enough to wet the bowstrings of the crossbowmen and render them of little use. The superiority of the longbow was fully shown then, for the English were able to keep the bows cased and the strings dry until the moment for their use came. And come it did; for the sunshine again broke through the clouds, and now full in the faces of the French. Other omens too were there, which in days of superstition helped to raise the courage of one side and depress that of the other; for over the French early gathered great flocks of ravens, which “was deemed,” so writes De Mezeray, “a presage of their defeat.” When, therefore, the Genoese were ordered to attack, they did little execution, and under a fire of clothyard shafts so heavy that “it seemed as if it snowed,” they fell back in panic and disorder. Whether Edward’s artillery had any real effect is doubtful, but the noise of the new weapon, probably firing stone shot, may have tended to add to the _débâcle_, even if the actual loss it caused was small. The Genoese were between two fires. In front were still the English line, cool on the defensive, as they have always been; behind was Alençon’s cavalry, who cared but little--in that chivalric age--for mere men on foot. “Kill me those scoundrels,” said Philip, “for they block up our road without any reason. “Truly,” also answered D’Alençon, “a man is well at ease to be charged with these kind of rascals who are faint, and fail us now when most at need;” so through the flying men rode the French knights, whilst over the disordered crowd still fell the heavy rain of English arrows. To add to the confusion, too, the Irish and Welsh infantry, though they were of little value apparently otherwise, joined in the mêlée, to slay with their long knives the dismounted knights, whether wounded or not, “nor was any quarter given that day by the victors.”