"Crecy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his army before the celebrated battle of Red Hills, or Neville's Cross, as it was afterwards termed, from the above elegant stone cross, erected to record the victory by Lord Ralph Neville. The English sovereign, Edward III., had just achieved the glorious conquest of Crecy; and the Scottish king judged this a fit opportunity for his invasion. However, "the great northern barons of England, Percy and Neville, Musgrave, Scope, and Hastings, assembled their forces in numbers sufficient to show that, though the conqueror of Crecy, with his victorious army, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of Crecy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were directed almost exclusively ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... orderly nationalism out of feudal chaos; it was her royal house of Capet that rallied Europe to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre and led the greatest of the crusades to Palestine. Yet the France of the last crusades was within a century the France of Crecy, just as the France of Austerlitz was more speedily the France of Waterloo; and men who followed the tricolour at Solferino lived to see it furled in humiliation at Sedan. No other country has had a history as prolific ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... in the bitterness of his sorrow, for he came of a proud stock. About him hung the portraits of his ancestors. Here on the right an Oxhead who had broken his lance at Crecy, or immediately before it. There McWhinnie Oxhead who had ridden madly from the stricken field of Flodden to bring to the affrighted burghers of Edinburgh all the tidings that he had been able to gather in passing the battlefield. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... did Allan a Dale and Little John. In the early battles it was the chief weapon, and did effective service. In the battle of Hastings it decided the issue for William the Conqueror; at Agincourt, Crecy and Poitiers victory depended on its use. Skilled archers became famous all over the land, and many were their doughty deeds with ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... indeed, were nearly three to one against the English seamen; but as soon as the tide began to flow they steered straight into the channel, and, Edward leading the van, came to close quarters, ship to ship. The famous archers of England, who six years later were to do such execution at Crecy, lined the bulwarks, and poured in a tempest of arrows so thick that men fell from the tops of the French ships like leaves before a storm. The first of the four lines in which Behuchet had drawn up his fleet was speedily broken, and the English, brandishing their ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... country on its wonderful career of ocean dominance. Moreover, his success established from the start that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Marle was put under ban by the king and excommunicated by the church. Louis raised an army and marched against him. De Marle was helpless with illness, but truculent in temper. He defied the king, and would not listen to his summons. Louis attacked his castles, took two of them, Crecy and Nogent, and in the end forced him to buy pardon by a heavy ransom and an indemnity to the church. As for the burghers who had taken refuge with him, the king showed them no mercy. They had had a hand in the murder of Bishop Gaudri, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... name to Henry VI.; and Mr. Quaritch possesses another Book of Hours, which the Duke presented to Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, as a wedding gift. The House of Valois was always friendly to literature. King John, who fought at Crecy, began a small collection: he had the story of the Crusades, a tract on the game of chess, and a book containing a French version of Livy, which seems to have belonged afterwards to Duke Humphrey, and to have found its way later into the Abbey of St. Genevieve. His son Charles ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... upon the citadel. After a tremendous cannonade, which lasted a week, and was heard in Antwerp, the city was taken by assault. Thus the key to the great Norman portal of France, the time-honored key which England had worn at her girdle since the eventful day of Crecy, was at last taken from her. Calais had been originally won after a siege which had lasted a twelvemonth, had been held two hundred and ten years, and was now lost in seven days. Seven days more, and ten thousand discharges from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Two days after the theft, three of your guests happened to be at Crecy, in the course of a motor-trip. Two of them went on to visit the famous battlefield, while the third hurried to the post-office and sent off a little parcel, packed up and sealed according to the regulations and insured to the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... Newbourg-house, situated between the Hague and Delft, close by the village of Ryswick; and to this proposition the ministers agreed. Those of England were the earl of Pembroke, a virtuous, learned, and popular nobleman, the lord Villiers, and sir Joseph Williamson: France sent Harlay and Crecy to the assistance of Callieres. Louis was not only tired of the war, on account of the misery in which it had involved his kingdom; but in desiring a peace he was actuated by another motive. The king ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... churchyard with its brick paths, its rose-beds, the red walls round it and its view of the Weald, has the serenity of deep meadowland and sunlit cloisters; the church itself, with its sculptured oak and baronial tombs, belongs to all English history from Crecy. If the churches of the surrounding parishes, with their brasses and their registers, make up an admirable local guide-book, the records of Lingfield church ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... fought at Crecy, too, Snored on or scoffed when trumpets blew, And presently were caught; And when the clanking N.C.O.'s Came round to prod them, I suppose They up and spoke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... stab your horses from below, seize your legs and try to drag you from your saddles, leap up on to the crupper behind you, and stab you to the heart. This is what makes them so dangerous a foe to horsemen, and at Crecy they did terrible execution among the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... brook, but on the evening of the fifth day Pop had the last bit of its tangle cut and piled. Of such stuff were warriors of the olden time. Given armor and a battle-ax, and nothing could have stood before him. One could imagine him at Crecy, at Agincourt, at Patay. Joan of Arc would have kept him at ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of Crecy, one of the most glorious in English History, was won by the common people of England, yeomen and archers, foot soldiers against the knights and squires of France ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... their shields, or on them; more than Rome gathered on her seven hills, when, under her kings, she commenced that sovereign sway, which afterward embraced the whole earth; more than London held, when, on the fields of Crecy and Agincourt, the English banner was carried victoriously over the chivalrous hosts ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Their garrisons, absurdly small, were prisoners in the country they had conquered. The English had long teeth, but a pike cannot swallow an ox. That they were too few and that France was too big had been plainly seen after Crecy and after Poitiers. Then, after Verneuil, during the troubled reign of a child, weakened by civil discord, lacking men and money, and bound to keep in subjection the countries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, were they likely to succeed better? In 1428, they were ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... at the ancient town of Espalion, which witnessed both the victory and the defeat of British arms long ere the Maid of Domremy came to the rescue of the golden lilies. Its capture took place soon after the Battle of Crecy. The lords of Espalion were the Calmont d'Olt, who played an active part in the wars with the English. The town deserves a prominent place among the many picturesque old burgs stamped with mediaeval character on the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... cattle; in time of peace crushed with forced labour, feudal burdens, and imposts of all kinds; in time of war driven, in unwilling masses, half-armed and helpless, to the shambles. Aristocratic luxury, gambling, profligate wars—Jacques Bonhomme pays for them all. At Crecy and Poictiers, the lords are taken prisoners; have to provide heavy ransoms, which, being debts of honour, like gambling debts, are more binding than debts of honesty. But Jacques Bonhomme's back is broad, it will bear everything. Broad as it is, it will not bear ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... way, how famous Bohemians in days of yore have played some part in our national story. We have sung the praises at Christmas time of the Bohemian Monarch, "Good King Wenceslaus." We have read how John, the blind King of Bohemia, fell mortally wounded at the Battle of Crecy, how he died in the tent of King Edward III., and how his generous conqueror exclaimed: "The crown of chivalry has fallen today; never was the like of this King of Bohemia." We have all read, too, how Richard II. married Princess Anne of Bohemia; how the Princess, so the story ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... says he was the son of a knight. He died in the year 1400, and thus was an active and observant contemporary of events in the most remarkable century which had thus far rolled over Europe—the age of Edward III. and the Black Prince, of Crecy and Poitiers, of English bills and bows, stronger than French lances; the age of Wiclif, of reformation in religion, government, language, and social order. Whatever his family antecedents, he was a courtier, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... April, 1333, had now been ransomed, and he was again recognized as regent for David II. So strong was the Scottish party that Balliol had to flee to England for assistance, and, in 1336, Edward III again appeared in Scotland. It was not a very heroic effort for the future victor of Crecy; he marched northwards to Elgin, and, on his way home, burned the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... was habitually melancholy, and liked everything which recalled the idea of death, in spite of the strongest fears of it. Of this, the following is an instance: Madame de Pompadour was on her way to Crecy, when one of the King's grooms made a sign to her coachman to stop, and told him that the King's carriage had broken down, and that, knowing her to be at no great distance, His Majesty had sent him forward to beg her to wait for him. He soon overtook us, and seated himself ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... it in England or all the Western countries in those days before Crecy was fought, when the third Edward sat upon the throne. There was none to tell them of the doom that the East, whence come light and life, death and the decrees of God, had loosed upon the world. Not one in a multitude in Europe had ever even heard of those vast lands of far Cathay ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... and political institutions, the national conception of duty, the efficiency of the corps of officers, and love of country, are the foundation of vigour and staunchness in the field. Yet it is a fact which can hardly be ignored, that from Crecy to Inkermann there have been exceedingly few instances where an English army, large or small, has been driven from a position. In the great struggle with France, neither Napoleon nor his marshals, although the armies of every other European nation had fled before them, could boast ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... knew that De Gamelyn the Bowman had summoned to their help the armies of the unconquered dead. They came, the De Gamelyns of all generations from Crecy to Waterloo: they fought by his side, and the machine gun bullets, which fell upon the dusty earth like tropical rain, ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... wars was less than it was under Henry II. Those wars were more disastrous to the interests of both the rival kingdoms than even those of the Crusades, and they were marked by great changes and great calamities. The victories of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt—which shed such lustre on the English nation—were followed by reverses, miseries, and defeats, which more than balanced the glories of Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. Provinces were gained and lost, yet no decisive results ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... known as Doctor Profundus, proctor and professor of theology at Oxford, and afterwards Chancellor of St. Paul's and confessor to Edward III. The English ascribed their success at Crecy to ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan |
