They returned without having any satisfactory information to report; "whereupon," says Froissart, "the king was not more joyous or less pensive, and began to fall into a great melancholy." He had halted three or four days at Airaines, some few leagues from Amiens, whither the King of France had arrived in pursuit with an army, it is said, more than a hundred thousand strong.

Philip learned through his scouts that the King of England would evacuate Airaines the next morning, and ride to Abbeville in hopes of finding some means of getting over the Somme.

Philip immediately ordered a Norman baron, Godemar du Fay, to go with a body of troops and guard the ford of Blanche-Tache, below Abbeville, the only point at which, it was said, the English could cross the river; and on the same day he himself moved with the bulk of his army from Amiens on Airaines.

There he arrived about midday, some few hours after that the King of England had departed with such precipitation that the French found in it "great store of provisions, meat ready spitted, bread and pastry in the oven, wines in barrel, and many tables which the English had left ready set and laid out." "Sir," said Philip's officers to him, as soon as he was at Airaines, "rest you here and wait for your barons and their folk, for the English cannot escape you." It was concluded, in point of fact, that Edward and his troops, not being able to cross the Somme, would find themselves hemmed in between the French army and the strong places of Abbeville, St.
Valery, and Le Crotoi, in the most evil case and perilous position possible.

But Edward, on arriving at the little town of Oisemont, hard by the Somme, set out in person in quest of the ford he was so anxious to discover.