CHAPTER IV. THE BATTLE OF POICTIERS.
A.D. 1356-1360
The Black Prince sets out for France.-Plymouth.-The ships of those days.-The prince ravages the country.-Progress of the Black Prince.-The country laid waste.-The King of France comes to meet the Black Prince.-Ambuscade near Romorantin.-Reconnoitring party.-The English troop surprised.-The French surprised in their turn.-The French retreat to the castle.-The castle besieged.-Crossing the ditch.-Engines.-The castle taken.-King John and his four sons.-Attempt of the Pope's legate to make peace.-Negotiations of the Pope's legate.-The English camp.-The cardinal obtains a truce.-The king's pavilion.-King John's demands.-Prince Edward will not yield to them.-Story of the two knights.-Coats of arms.-Quarrel between the two knights.-Preparations for the battle.-English position.-The horses and the barbed arrows.-The English victorious.-Fate of the king's sons.-The victory announced to the prince.-The men called in.-Gathering at the prince's tent.-Two barons sent to look for the king.-The King of France and his son taken prisoners.-Quarrel about them.-The two barons take possession of the prisoners.-Denys.-His previous adventures.-The king's surrender to him.-Prince Edward makes a supper for his prisoners.-Generous demeanor of the prince.-Disposition of the prisoners.-English prisoners.-Douglas's extraordinary escape from his captors.-Prince Edward conveys the King of France to London.-Entrance into London.-Magnanimous treatment of the prisoner.-The war ended.-The king ransomed.-Prince Edward's renown.-Edward the heir apparent to the crown.
In process of time, Philip, the King of France, against whom these wars had been waged, died, and John succeeded him. In the course of the reign of John, the Black Prince, when he was about twenty-five years of age, set out from England, at the head of a large body of men, to invade France on the southern and western side. His first destination was Gascony, a country in the southern part of France, between the Garonne, the Pyrenees, and the sea.[D]
[Footnote D: See map on page 110.]
From London he went to Plymouth, where the fleet had been assembled in which he was to sail. He was accompanied on his march by an immense number of nobles and barons, all splendidly equipped and armed, and full of enthusiastic expectations of the glory which they were to acquire in serving in such a campaign, under so famed and brilliant a commander.
The fleet which awaited the army at Plymouth consisted of three hundred vessels. The expedition was detained for a long time in the port, waiting for a fair wind and good weather. At length the favorable time arrived. The army embarked, and the ships set sail in sight of a vast assemblage, formed by people of the surrounding country, who crowded the shores to witness the spectacle.
The ships of those times were not large, and, judging from some of the pictures that have come down to us, they were of very odd construction. On the adjoining page is a copy of one of these pictures, from an ancient manuscript of about this time.
These pictures, however, are evidently intended rather as symbols of ships, as it were, than literally correct representations of them. Still, we can deduce from them some general idea of the form and structure actually employed in the naval architecture of those times.
[Illustration: ANCIENT REPRESENTATION OF ENGLISH SHIPS.]
Prince Edward's fleet had a prosperous voyage, and his army landed safely in Gascony. Soon after landing he commenced his march through the country to the eastward, pillaging, burning, and destroying wherever he went. The inhabitants of the country, whom the progress of his march thus overwhelmed with ruin, had nothing whatever to do with the quarrel between his father and the King of France. It made very little difference to them under whose reign they lived. It is not at all unlikely that far the greater portion of them had never even heard of the quarrel. They were quietly engaged in their various industrial pursuits, dreaming probably of no danger, until the advance of this army, coming upon them mysteriously, no one knew whither, like a plague, or a tornado, or a great conflagration, drove them from their homes, and sent them flying about the country in all directions in terror and despair. The prince enjoyed the credit and the fame of being a generous and magnanimous prince. But his generosity and magnanimity were only shown toward knights, and nobles, and princes like himself, for it was only when such as these were the objects of these virtues that he could gain credit and fame by the display of them.
In this march of devastation and destruction the prince overran all the southern part of France. One of his attendants in this campaign, a knight who served in the prince's household, in a letter which he wrote back to England from Bordeaux, gave the following summary of the results of the expedition:
"=My lord rode thus abroad in the countrie of his enimies
eight whole weekes and rested not past eleven daies in all
those places where he came. And know it for certeine that
since this warre began against the French king, he had
never such losse or destruction as he hath had in this
journie; for the countries and good townes which were wasted
in this journie found to the King of France everie yeare
more to the maintainance of his warre than half his realme
hath doon beside, except, &c."=
[Illustration: MAP-CAMPAIGN OF POICTIERS.]
After having thus laid waste the southern coast, the prince turned his course northward, toward the heart of the country, carrying devastation and destruction with him wherever he came. He advanced through Auvergne and Berri, two provinces in the central part of France. His army was not very large, for it consisted of only about eight thousand men. It was, however, very compact and efficient, and the prince advanced at the head of it in a very slow and cautious manner. He depended for the sustenance of his soldiers on the supplies which he could obtain from the country itself. Accordingly, he moved slowly from town to town, so as not to fatigue his soldiers by too long marches, nor exhaust them by too frequent battles. "When he was entered anie towne," says the old chronicler, "that was sufficientlie stored of things necessarie, he would tarrie there two or three daies to refresh his soldiers and men of warre, and when they dislodged they would strike out the heads of the wine vessels, and burne the wheat, oats, and barlie, and all other things which they could not take with them, to the intent that their enimies should not therewith be sustained and nourished."
At length, while the prince was advancing through the province of Berri, and approaching the River Loire, he learned that the King of France, John, had assembled a great army at Paris, and was coming down to meet him. Large detachments from this army had already advanced as far as the banks of the Loire, and all the important points on that river had been taken possession of, and were strongly guarded by them. The king himself, at the head of the main force, had reached Chartres, and was rapidly advancing. The prince heard this news at a certain castle which he had taken, and where he had stopped some days to refresh his men.
A council of war was held to determine what should be done. The prevailing voice at this council was in favor of not attempting to cross the Loire in the face of such an enemy, but of turning to the westward toward the province of Poitou, through which a way of retreat to the southward would be open in case a retreat should be necessary. The prince determined to accept this advice, and so he put his army in motion toward the town of Romorantin.