BATTLE OF POITIERS The battle of Poitiers, which was fought on Sept. 19, 1356, between the armies of King John of France and of Edward the "Black Prince," was the second of the three great English vic tories of the Hundred Years' War. From Bordeaux the Black Prince had led an army of his father's Guienne vassals, with which was a force of English archers and men-at-arms, into central France and had amassed an enormous booty. King John, hitherto engaged against the army of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, in Normandy, hurried south to intercept the raiding army and to bar its homeward road. After an unexpected encounter with the French rear, the Black Prince, by forced marching, was able to slip past the French, but reaching Maupertuis, 7m. S.E. of Poi tiers, with the king's army in chase, he found himself compelled to choose between fighting and abandoning his spoil. He chose the former course, in spite of the enemy's great superiority in numbers (perhaps 16,000 to 6,500), and in order to give his trains time to draw off took up a defensive position on Sept. 18 with a slight hollow in front and a wood behind, between the Poitiers Bordeaux main road and the River Maussion.' John, instead of manoeuvring to outflank the English, allowed the Cardinal Talley rand de Perigord to attempt to negotiate a peace. This proving vain, the French army attacked without any attempt at ma noeuvre or reconnaissance, and on a front so narrow that the ad vantage of superior numbers was forfeited. Moreover, King John ordered all but the leading line to dismount and to attack on foot (tactics suggested by the success on the defensive of the dis mounted English men-at-arms at Crecy and the Scots at Ban nockburn), and thus condemned the best part of his army to a fatiguing advance on foot across difficult country in full armour.
The French crossbow-men, who might have crushed the rela tively few English archers present, were mingled with the mounted men in first line, but, as the latter charged, their advance masked the fire of the cross-bowmen in the first few seconds, besides leav ing the others, dismounted, lines far in rear. Thus the first attack on the Black Prince's line, which was greatly strengthened by trees and hedges in front of it, was promptly brought to a stand still by the arrows of the archers lining a hedge which overlooked 'The view adopted is that of Oman, Art of War in the Middle Ages, p- 631.
the hollow in front ; and the earl of Oxford hastily drawing out a body of archers beyond the defenders' left, into the marshy valley of the Maussion, completed their rout by firing up the hol low into their flank. But it was not so easy to deal with the second
line of dismounted men-at-arms, led by the dauphin, which was the next to arrive on the French side. The hedge indeed was held, and the assailants, unable to advance beyond the hollow, gave way, but to achieve this the prince had to use all but 400 of his men. Had the third body of the French advanced with equal spirit the battle would probably have ended there and then, but the duke of Orleans, who commanded it, was so demoralized by the retirement of the dauphin's division that he led his whole force off the field without striking a blow.
Thereupon the king himself advanced furiously with the fourth and last line, and as it came on, the situation of the English seemed so desperate that the prince was advised to retreat. But his de termined courage was unshaken seeing that this was the last attack he put his reserve into line, and rallying around this nucleus all men who could still fight, he prepared not only to repulse but to counter-attack the French. He despatched 6o men-at-arms and oo archers under the Captal de Buch to ride round the flank of the enemy and to appear in their rear at the crisis of the fight. Though a mediaeval knight, he knew as well as Napoleon at Arcola that when the moral force of both sides has passed its culminating point even a materially insignificant threat serves to turn the balance. And so it fell out. When both lines were fighting hand-to hand, the 6o horsemen of the Captal de Buch appeared in rear of the French. The front ranks fought on, but the rearmost French men melted away rapidly, and at last only a group of the bravest, with King John and his son Philip, a boy of 14, in their midst, were left. This band continued their hopeless resistance for a time, but in the end they were killed or captured to a man. The rest of the French army, totally dispersed, was pursued by the victors until nightfall. Two thousand five hundred of the French, 2,000 of them knights and men-at-arms, were killed, including the Constable, one of the marshals, the standard-bearer and six other great lords. The prisoners included the king and his son Philip, the other marshal and 25 great lords, and 1,933 knights and men-at-arms as well as Soo others. The Black Prince then resumed his march to Bordeaux, making no effort to exploit his military ascendancy. And in this he was justified, for he had now in his hands a political key which could yield him all the possible profits of victory, without their military cost.