It was a little before nine when the vanguard of the Valois advanced across the depression and began to approach the slight slope up towards the vineyards and the hedge beyond. In that vineyard, upon either side of the hollow road, stood, in the same “harrow” formation as at Crécy, the English long-bowmen.
The picked three hundred knights under the two French marshals spurred and charged. Small as their number was, it was crowded for the road into which the stakes of the vineyard inevitably shepherded them as they galloped forward, and, struggling to press on in that sunken way, either side of their little column was exposed to the first violent discharge of arrows from the vines. They were nearly all shot down, but that little force, whose task it had been, after all, to sacrifice their lives in making a way for their fellows, had permitted the rest of the vanguard to come to close quarters. The entanglement of the vineyard, the unexpected and overwhelming superiority of the long-bow over the cross-bow, the superior numbers of the English archers over their enemies’ arbalests, made the attack a slow one, but it was pressed home. The trained infantry of the vanguard, the German mounted mercenaries, swarmed up the little slope. The front of them was already at the hedge, and was engaged in a furious hand to hand with the line defending it, the mass of the remainder were advancing up the rise, when a new turn was given to the affair by the unexpected arrival of Warwick.
The waggons which that commander had been escorting had been got safely across the Miosson; the Black Prince had overlooked their safe crossing, when there came news from the plateau above that the French had appeared, and that the main force which the Black Prince had left behind him was engaged. Edward rode back at once, and joined his own particular line, which we saw just before the battle to be drawn up immediately behind the first line which guarded the hedge and the vineyard. Warwick, with excellent promptitude, did not make for Salisbury and Suffolk to reinforce their struggling thousands with his men, but took the shorter and more useful course of moving by his own left to the southern extremity of his comrade’s fiercely pressed line (see [frontispiece] near the word “Hedge”; the curved red arrow lines indicate the return of Warwick).
He came out over the edge of the hill, just before the mass of the French vanguard had got home, and when only the front of it had reached the hedge and was beginning the hand-to-hand struggle. He put such archers as he had had with his escort somewhat in front of the line of the hedge, and with their fire unexpectedly and immediately enfiladed all that mass of the French infantry, which expected no danger from such a quarter, and was pressing forward through the vineyards to the summit of the little rise. This sharp and unlooked for flank fire turned the scale. The whole French vanguard was thrown into confusion, and broke down the side of the depression and up its opposing slope. As it so broke it interfered with and in part confused the first of the great French “battles,” that under the Dauphin, whose ordered task it was to follow up the vanguard and reinforce its pressure upon the English line. Though the vanguard had been broken, the Dauphin’s big, unwieldy body of dismounted armoured men managed to go forward through the shaken and flying infantry, and in their turn to attack the hedge and the vineyard before it. Against them, the flank fire from Warwick could do less than it had done against the unarmoured cross-bowmen and sergeants of the vanguard which it had just routed. The Dauphin’s cumbered and mailed knights did manage to reach the main English position of the hedge, but they were not numerous enough for the effort then demanded of them. The half mile of advance under such a weight of iron had terribly exhausted them, and meanwhile Edward had come back, the full weight of his command—every man of it except a reserve of four hundred—was massed to meet the Dauphin’s attack. Warwick’s men hurried up from the left to help in the sword play, and by the time the mêlée was engaged that line of hedge saw the unusual struggle of a defensive superior in numbers against an inferior offensive which should, by all military rule, have refused to attempt the assault.
Nevertheless, that assault was pressed with astonishing vigour, and it was that passage in the action, before and after the hour of ten o’clock, which was the hottest of all. Regarded as an isolated episode in the fight, the Dauphin’s unequal struggle was one of the finest feats of arms in all the Hundred Years’ War. Nothing but a miracle could have made it succeed, nor did it succeed; after a slaughter in which the English defending line had itself suffered heavily and the Dauphin’s attack had been virtually cut to pieces, there followed a third phase in the battle which quite cancelled not only the advantage (for that was slight) but also the glory gained by the Dauphin’s great effort.
Next behind the Dauphin’s line, the second “battle,” that of the Duke of Orleans, should have proceeded to press on in reinforcement and to have launched yet another wave of men against the hedge which had been with such difficulty held. Had it done so, the battle would have been decided against Edward. The Dauphin’s force, though it was now broken and the remnants of it were scattering back across the depression, had hit the Anglo-Gascon corps very hard indeed. Edward had lost heavily, his missile weapon was hampered and for the moment useless, many of his men were occupied in an attempt to save the wounded, or in seeking fresh arms from the train to replace those which had been broken or lost in the struggle. What seems to have struck most those who were present at the action upon the English side was the exhaustion from which their men were suffering just after the Dauphin’s unsuccessful attempt to pierce the line. If Orleans had come up then, he could have determined the day. But Orleans failed to come into action at all, and the whole of his “battle,” the second, was thrown away.
What exactly happened it is exceedingly difficult to infer from the short and confused accounts that have reached us. It is certain that the whole of Orleans’ command left the field without actually coming into contact with the enemy. The incident left a profound impression upon the legend and traditions of the French masses, and was a basis of that angry contempt which so violently swelled the coming revolt of the populace against the declining claims of the feudal nobility. It may almost be said that the French monarchy would not have conquered that nobility with the aid of the French peasantry and townsmen had not the knights of the second “battle” fled from the field of Poitiers.
What seems to have happened was this. The remnant of the Dauphin’s force, falling back in confusion down the slight slope, mixed into and disarrayed the advancing “battle” of Orleans. These, again, were apparently not all of them, nor most of them, dismounted as they should have been, and, in any case, their horses were near at hand. The ebb tide of the Dauphin’s retirement may have destroyed the loose organisation and discipline of that feudal force, must have stampeded some horses, probably left dismounted knights in peril of losing their chargers, and filled them with the first instinct of the feudal soldier, which was to mount. We may well believe that to all this scrimmage of men backing from a broken attack, men mounting in defiance of the unfamiliar and unpopular orders which had put them on foot, here riderless horses breaking through the ranks, there knots of men stampeded, the whole body was borne back, first in confusion, afterwards in flight. So slight are the inequalities of the ground, that anyone watching from the midst of that crest could have made nothing of the battle to the eastward, save that it was a surging mass of the French king’s men defeated, and followed (it might erroneously have been thought) by the Black Prince and his victorious men.
At any rate, the whole of the second “battle,” mixed with the debris of the first, broke from the field and rode off, scattered to the north. It is upon Orleans himself that the chief blame must fall. Whatever error, confusion, stampede, or even panic had destroyed the ordering of his line, it was his business to rally his men and bring them back. Whether from personal cowardice, from inaptitude for command, or from political calculation, Orleans failed in his duty, and his failure determined the action.