had been discomfited, from some fugitives who had passed at the foot of the castle.  He let down the bridge and opened the gate.  Then the king, with his following, went in, and remained there up to midnight, for the king did not care to stay and shut himself up therein.  He drank a draught, and so did they who were with him; then they mounted to horse, took guides to conduct them, and rode in such wise that at break of day they entered the good city of Amiens.  There the king halted, took up his quarters in an abbey, and said that he would go no farther until he knew the truth about his men, which of them were left on the field and which had escaped.”

Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with his army as disheartened as its king, and more disorderly in retreat than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardor and intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory.  In the difficult war of conquest he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance to him was to possess on the coast of France, as near as possible to England, a place which he might make, in his operations by land and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of provisioning, and of secure refuge.  Calais exactly fulfilled these conditions.  It was a natural harbor, protected, for many centuries past, by two huge towers, of which one, it is said, was built by the Emperor Caligula and the other by Charlemagne; it had been deepened and improved, at the end of the tenth century, by Baldwin IV., Count of Flanders, and in the thirteenth by Philip of France, called Toughskin (Hurepel), Count of Boulogne; and, in the fourteenth, it had become an important city, surrounded by a strong wall of circumvallation, and having erected in its midst a huge keep, furnished with bastions and towers, which was called the Castle.  On arriving before the place, September 3, 1346, Edward “immediately had built all round it,” says Froissart, “houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry, and arranged in streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for his intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and whatever trouble he must spend and take.  He called this new town Villeneuve la Hardie; and he had therein all things necessary for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of a market on Wednesday and Saturday; and therein were mercers’ shops, and butchers’ shops, and stores for the sale of cloth, and bread, and all other necessaries.  King Edward did not have the city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time it might cost him, if King Philip of France did not come to fight him again, and raise the siege.”