Poitiers

by Hilaire Belloc

So much for what we will call the first line, for the position of which, as for that of its fellows, I must beg the reader to refer to the coloured map forming the frontispiece of this book.

Immediately behind the first line so drawn up came a second line, under the command of Warwick and Oxford, but it was a much smaller body, because it had a very different task to perform. Its business was to act as an escort for certain of the waggon-loads which Edward, both on account of their value and of the difficulty of getting them up and down the banks of the steep ravine of the river behind them, had determined to send forward at the head of his retirement. This escort, then, we may call the second line. Before the retiring movement began it stood parallel to and immediately in the rear of the first line.

The third line was a somewhat larger command, principally of Gascon men-at-arms under the direct leadership of the Black Prince himself.

To this picture of the three lines standing one behind the other and facing away from the sunrise of that Monday morning, we must add a great body of waggons, parked together, upon the right of the first line and defending it from any turning movement that might be attempted upon that flank, should a French advance develop after all. We must suppose some few of the more valuable waggon-loads, carrying the best booty of the raid, to have been put last in this park, so that their drivers should have the opportunity of filing off first when the middle or second line, which was to be their escort, began the retirement. Further, we must remark teams harnessed and drivers mounted in front of those special waggons, while the mass of the wheeled vehicles still lay closely packed together for the purposes of defence against a possible attack, their teams standing to the rear, ready to harness up only when the retirement was in full swing, and to come last in the retreating column, saving perhaps for a small rearguard that might be left to watch the extremity of the line after everyone else had got safely off the field. We must see the Black Prince’s command, such of it as was mounted, all on horseback already, and the men-at-arms of the second line or escort under Warwick similarly in the saddle; but the first line, which formed the bulk of the whole force, we must picture to ourselves all on foot, the mounted men as well as the small proportion of foot-sergeants: for if there should be occasion to repel some attack developing during the retirement, it was in the essence of the Plantagenet tactics to dismount the men-at-arms during the defensive, and to hold a position entirely on foot.

I have said that no sign of the enemy appeared upon the empty fields to the west beyond the depression while these dispositions were being made; and, when all was ready, perhaps between seven and eight o’clock, the order for the first movement of the retirement was given. Warwick and the escort he commanded turned from line to column and began to file off by the left, down towards the ford. The special waggons, whose safety was thus being first anxiously provided for, followed, and the whole of the second line thus got clear of the space between the first and the third. It marched south towards the river, with its little body of wheeled vehicles following up its mounted men.

When the second line had thus got clear of the original formation, Edward, preceded by his banner and accompanied by a certain number of men from the third line (how many we cannot tell, but presumably no great force), rode off over the fields to the left of Warwick’s string of cavalry and waggons, to superintend the difficult passage of the Miosson. He left behind him, standing to arms at the hedge, the whole of the strong first line under Salisbury and Suffolk, and the bulk of his own third line marshalled in parallel behind this first line.

At this moment, then, somewhere between seven and eight o’clock, the situation is thus: the Prince and the band with him are riding off towards the edge where the land falls somewhat steeply towards the Miosson. He and his men have their backs turned to the bulk of the army, which, in two bodies, the larger one lining the hedge and a smaller one behind it, are holding the chosen defensive position in case there should be any sign of a French pursuit. We must presume that if no such pursuit appeared to be developing it was Edward’s intention, when he had got the special waggons and their escort safely across the ford, to withdraw the bulk of his force thus left behind by the road through Nouaillé and across its bridge. The smaller body would go first; then, section by section, the first line would fall into column and retire by the Nouaillé road, leaving at last no more than a small rearguard at the hedge, which, when all the waggons of the park had been harnessed up and were filing down the Nouaillé road, would itself fall into column and bring up the extreme end of the retreat.

By this plan the valuable waggon-loads with their escort, which had crossed at the ford under Warwick, would be joined in, say, an hour or an hour and a half by the bulk of the army, which would have rejoined by the Nouaillé road, and the junction would be effected at the spot where, at the bottom of the frontispiece-map, the dotted line passing the ford reaches the main road. Well before noon the whole command, with its heavy and cumbersome train of wheeled vehicles, would be on the heights there called Le Bouilleau and would be approaching in safety, with the obstacle of the Miosson behind them, the great south-western road to Bordeaux, along which the rest of the retreat would take place.

This plan would have every advantage, always supposing that there was no French pursuit, or that that pursuit should develop too late to interfere with the Black Prince’s scheme. The more valuable of the booty would have been got clean away by a side track which was also a short cut, and which would put it, when the whole retirement was effected, ahead of the column, that is upon the safe side of the force, furthest from an enemy’s attack. It would have got away early without suggesting to the enemy the line of its escape or the opportunity of using the ford. The retirement of the mass of the army by the Nouaillé road would lead the pursuit, if any, along that road and towards the bridge, the cutting of which after the Anglo-Gascon force had passed would leave that force with the obstacle of the river between it and its enemy.

As it happened, a French pursuit did develop, and, luckily for the Black Prince, it developed within a very few minutes of his setting off to superintend Warwick’s passage of the ford. Had it come an hour later, when the mass of the force was in column of route and making for Nouaillé, he might have had to record not a triumph but a disaster.