David Fiaçon argues Edward III wanted a decisive battle. Raids near allied lands in 1339 and 1340 failed because Philip VI's advisers avoided battle. By striking Normandy, the richest province at the heart of the king's domain, and approaching Paris, he forced the French king to fight, while his creditors pressed him for victory.

About 14,000 English soldiers landed, perhaps 30,000 men counting pages, engineers and gunners, with archers the majority. France could muster 30,000 men of arms and 30,000 foot across the kingdom, but many were in Guyenne, so Philip VI probably had 20,000 to 25,000 men at Crécy.

English historians such as Andrew Hayton see Edward III as a chess player heading for Ponthieu, his mother's inheritance, to give battle. The American Michael Livingstone sees a poker player who hoped to conquer Normandy, then fled north. Fiaçon sides with the English view, citing the bridge specialists he brought along.

The French demolished bridges as a delaying tactic, slowing the English to 17 km per day in Normandy. Edward III tried several crossing points and finally crossed at Poissy after his bridge builders repaired a broken bridge in one day, escaping the danger of being caught between two French armies.

Philip VI, pushed by his advisers, ordered a retreat to wait for reinforcements from Abbeville, the Dauphiné and Savoy. But young knights, frustrated since 1339 and 1340, refused to obey an old king over 50 who weighed about 100 kilos, and he let them attack to keep his authority.

The longbow fired about four times as many arrows per minute as the crossbow and reached farther. The Genoese, recruited to fight on ships, fell short of the English lines or came under their fire, and their protective pavises were still in wagons from Abbeville, so they suffered a carnage and fled.

Armour resisted arrows at long range, but horses were unprotected. Arrows killed the horses, trapping knights beneath them, where specialised English units finished them off. Dead horses formed a rampart, forcing later charges around the sides into an ever narrower tunnel where the massed French made a perfect target.

The Cassini map of the 18th century places it at the Valais-aux-Claires near Crécy. Michael Livingstone argued a steep slope there would have blocked a French charge and proposed a site 5 km south. Fiaçon rejects this, noting horses handle slopes and citing an older local tradition supporting the traditional site.

Historians now agree the English had cannons, a first on a battlefield since cannons were then used in sieges. They were probably not decisive, as none appeared at Poitiers ten years later, but their noise may have added terror and helped persuade some French knights to flee.

Militarily modest: Edward III took Calais in 1347, a lasting gateway into France. Politically, some saw the defeat as God's judgment on Edward III's 1328 exclusion from the crown. Philip VI himself had a memoir defending his rights drawn up on his deathbed, and the bishop of Maizet swore allegiance to Edward.