[1] On the details of this force, see Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. xviii. (1897); cf. J.E.  Morris in Engl.  Hist.  Review, xiv., 766-69.

[2] Besides the sources for this campaign mentioned in Sir E.M.  Thompson, Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, pp. 252-57, the disregarded Acta bellicosa Edwardi, etc., published in Moisant, Le Prince Noir en Aquitaine, pp. 157-74, from a Corpus Christi Coll.  Cambridge MS., should be mentioned.  It has first been utilised in H. Pientout’s valuable paper, La prise de Caen par Edouard III. en 1346, in Memoires de l’Academie de Caen (1904).

It was only at Caen that any real resistance was encountered.  On July 26 Edward’s soldiers entered the northern quarter of the town without opposition, to find the fortified enclosures of the two great abbeys of William the Conqueror and his queen undefended and desolate, the grand bourg, the populous quarter round the church of St. Peter open to them, and only the castle in the extreme north garrisoned.  Caen was not a walled town, and the defenders preferred to limit themselves to holding the southern quarter, the Ile Saint-Jean, which lay between the district of St. Peter’s and the river Orne, but was cut off from the rest by a branch of the Orne that ran just south of St. Peter’s church.  There was sharp fighting at the bridge which commanded access to the island; but the English archers prepared the way, and then the men-at-arms completed the work.  After a determined conflict, the Island of St. John was captured, and its chief defenders, the Count of Eu, Constable of France, and the lord of Tancarville, the chamberlain, were taken prisoners.  Meanwhile the English fleet, which had devastated the whole coast from Cherbourg to Ouistreham, arrived off the mouth of the Orne, laden with plunder and eager to get back home with its spoils.  Edward thought it prudent to avoid a threatened mutiny by ordering the ships to recross the Channel, and take with them the captives and the loot which he had amassed at Caen.  During a halt of five days at Caen, Edward discovered a copy of the agreement made between the Normans and King Philip for the invasion of England eight years before.  This also he despatched to England, where it was read before the Londoners by the Archbishop of Canterbury in order to show that the aggression was not all on one side.

On July 31, Edward resumed his eastward march.  At Lisieux, the next important stage, came the inevitable two cardinals with their inevitable proposals of mediation, which Edward put aside with scant civility.  The army was soon once more on the move, and on August 7 struck the Seine at Elbeuf, a few miles higher up the river than Rouen.  Here Edward was at last in touch with his enemy.  During the English march through lower Normandy, Philip VI. had assembled a