probably have rendered the French far greater service had he done so—he left Luxemburg (where he had gone immediately after the election of Rhense) for Paris, accompanied by his son Charles and only five hundred horsemen, mostly Bohemian nobles and knights. When they arrived in Paris, the enemy's camp-fires and the reflection of many burning villages in the sky could be seen from the towers of Notre-Dame.
King Edward marched northward shortly afterwards to join the Flemish forces that were gathering at Gravelines,[1] and the Bohemians, joining the French army, took part in King Philip's march into Picardy. When the English army essayed the passage of the Somme at the bridge of St. Remy, near Abbeville, it was principally the Bohemian troops who prevented the attempt[2] As is known to all readers of English history, King Edward's army crossed the Somme shortly afterwards by surprising the ford of Blanche-Taque.
The English army reached the village of Crécy on August 25, but the French and their allies only arrived there on the following day. Henry Mönch of Basel, a knight serving under the King of Bohemia, was sent forward with one or two followers to reconnoitre the position of the English army, which the French still believed to be in full retreat. He reported that this was entirely untrue, and that the English army was, on the contrary, preparing for battle. Henry Mönch of Basel, and with him his warlike king, therefore strongly advised that the attack should be deferred to the following day, as the troops were fatigued by a long march. As is known, this advice was over-ruled, and the battle immediately began. The Bohemians remembered that it was the day of St. Rufus (August 26), the anniversary of the defeat and death of Přemysl Ottokar II.
- ↑ The old Bohemian chronicler Dubravius, with uncritical but rather touching patriotism, accounts for the change of King Edward's plans by the arrival of the horsemen of the King of Bohemia: "Edoardus Angliae rex cognito Boiemororum et Germanorum adventu ab absidione Lutaetiae Parisiorum discedit" (Dubravius, Historia Bohemiae, lib. xxi). Besides the Bohemians, a few German knights from Luxemburg were under King John's command.
- ↑ "Vicesima secunda die Augusti fuit rex Angliae ad Pontem Remi in Ponteu versus Abbeville et volebant transire Anglici per pontem sed gentes regis Boemiae et ejus filii et D. Johannes de Bryaumont restiterunt et ibi conflictus magnus unde ex utraque parte plures ceciderunt" (Palacký, quoting from a contemporary manuscript of Limuisis, abbot of St. Martin at Tournay).
