"On the other edge of Europe, in the countryside of Wales, another formidable weapon against men and horses was being perfected. The English kings began to appreciate the possibilities of the Welsh longbow in their twelfth-century wars in Wales when Welsh archers with six-foot bows, taller than they were, fired arrows that could go through layers of chain mail, wooden saddles and flesh. In 1346, during the Hundred Years War between the French and the English, Edward III brought his Welsh archers to France. At Crécy a much weaker English force turned to fight the pursuing French. The French had three times as many mounted soldiers, considered the finest cavalry in Europe, 6,000 Genoese crossbowmen and 20,000 foot soldiers against 5,000. The English, however, had 11,000 archers armed with longbows. The Genoese fired first but did not inflict much damage on the English army. As the Genoese scrambled to reload, French knights, impatient for glory, started to trample them from behind, while the English archers launched a devastating fire. As one witness said, ‘Every arrow told on horse or man, piercing head, or arm, or leg among the riders and sending the horses mad.’ The French knights charged again and again, while the Welsh archers steadily reloaded and fired. By nightfall the ground was covered with dead and dying horses and men. The French lost over 1,500 knights and 10,000 who were ‘not of gentle blood’. The English losses were two knights, forty ‘others’ and some ‘few dozen’ Welsh. The unchallenged dominance of knights on the battlefield started to die there too."