THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACTION
It was, as we have seen, on the evening of Tuesday, September the 13th,
that the Black Prince with his 7000 men and his heavy train of booty had
marched into La Haye des Cartes, a small town upon the right bank of the
Creuse, somewhat above the place where that river falls into the Vienne.
His confidence that his well-mounted and light-armed troops could outmarch
his pursuers was not yet shaken; he was even prepared to imagine that he
had already shaken them off; but anyone who could have taken a general
survey of all that countryside would have discovered how ill-founded was
his belief. The great forces of the French king, coming down slantways
from the north and east, had had nearly four miles to march to his three.
Yet they were gaining on him. Edward had given the French king a day's
advance by his hesitation before Tours, and the tardiness with which he
had received news of John's crossing the Loire was another point in favour
of the French.
It was the Black Prince's business to get down on to the great road which
has been the trunk road of Western France for two thousand years, and
which leads from Paris through Chatellerault and Poitiers to Angouleme,
and so to Bordeaux. If (as he hoped) he could advance so quickly as to get
rid of the pursuit, so much the better. If he were still pressed he must
continue his rapid marching, but, at any rate, that was the road he must
take.
To the simple plan, however, of reaching Chatellerault and then merely
following the great road on through Poitiers, he must make a local
exception, for Poitiers itself contained a large population, with plenty
of trained men, munitions, and arms; and it was further, from its position
as well as from its walls, altogether too strong a place for him to think
of taking it.
The town had been from immemorial time a fortress: first tribal (and the
rallying point of the Gaulish Picts under the name of Limon); later, Roman
and Frankish. The traveller notes to-day its singular strength, standing
on the flat top and sides of its precipitous peninsula, isolated from its
plateau on every side save where a narrow neck joins it to the higher
land; it is impregnable to mere assault, half surrounded by the Clain to
the east, and on the west protected by a deep and formidable ravine.
It was absolutely necessary for the Prince not only to avoid Poitiers, but
not to pass so close to it as to give the alarm. What he proposed to do,
therefore, was to strike the great Bordeaux road at a point well south of
the city, called Les Roches, and to do this he must engage himself within
the broadening triangle which lies between the Clain and the Vienne: these
rivers join their waters just above Chatellerault itself.
The main road from Chatellerault to Poitiers runs on the further side of
the Clain from this triangle, and the Black Prince, by engaging himself in
the wedge between the rivers, would thus have a stream between his column
and the natural marching route of any force which might approach him from
the fortified city which he feared.
Further, he was well provided for part of this march through the triangle
between the rivers by the existence of a straight way formed by the old
Roman road which runs through it, and may still be followed. He could not
pursue this road all the way to Poitiers (which town it ultimately reaches
by a bridge over the Clain), but somewhere half-way between Chatellerault
and Poitiers he would diverge from it towards the east, and so avoid the
latter stronghold and make a straight line for Les Roches. This it would
be the easier for him to do because the soil in that countryside is light
and firm and traversed by very numerous cross-lanes which serve its
equally numerous farms. Only one considerable obstacle interrupts a
passage southward through the triangle between the rivers. It is the
forest of Mouliere. But the Black Prince's march along the Roman road
would skirt this wood to the west, and by the time his approach to
Poitiers compelled him to diverge from the Roman road eastward, the
boundary of the forest also sloped eastward away from it.
His first day's march upon this last lap, as it were, of his escape was a
long one. By the road he took it was no less than fifteen miles, and at
the end of it he gathered his column into Chatellerault, a couple of miles
from the place where the Clain and the Vienne meet, and where the triangle
between the two streams through which he proposed to retreat begins. At
the same hour that the Black Prince was bringing his men into
Chatellerault, John was leading the head of _his_ column into La Haye. He
was just one day's march behind the Plantagenet.
There followed an unsoldierly and uncharacteristic blunder on the part of
the Black Prince which determined all the strange cross-purposes of that
week.
The Black Prince having made Chatellerault, believed that he had shaken
off the pursuit.
In explanation of this error, it must be remembered that the population so
far north as this was universally hostile to the southern cause and to the
claim of the Plantagenets. Whether news of the ravaging and burning to the
eastward had affected these peasants or no, we are certain that they would
give the Anglo-Gascon force nothing but misleading information. The
scouting, a perpetual weakness in mediaeval warfare, was imperfect; and
even had it been better organised, to scout rearwards is not the same
thing as scouting on an advance or on the flanks. At any rate, he took it
for granted that there was no further need for haste, that he had
outmarched the French king, and that the remainder of the retreat might
be taken at his own pleasure. It must further be noted that there was a
frailty in the Black Prince's leading which was more than once discovered
in his various campaigns, and which he only retrieved by his admirable
tactical sense whenever he was compelled to a decision. This frailty
consisted, as might be guessed of so headstrong a rider, in trying to get
too much out of his troops in a forced march, and paying for it upon the
morrow of such efforts by expensive delays which more than counterbalanced
its value. He relied too much upon the very large proportion of mounted
men which formed the bulk of his small force. He forgot the limitations of
his few foot-soldiers and the strain that a too-rapid advance put upon his
heavy and cumbersome train of waggons, laden with a heavier and heavier
booty as his raid proceeded.
He stayed in Chatellerault recruiting the strength of his mounts and men
for two whole days. He passed the Thursday and the Friday there without
moving, and it was not until the Saturday morning that he set out from the
town, crossed the Clain, and engaged himself within the triangle between
the two rivers.
The land through which he marched upon that Saturday morning had been the
scene of a much more famous and more decisive feat of arms; for it was
there, just north of the forest of Mouliere, that Charles Martel six
hundred years before had overthrown the Mahommedans and saved Europe for
ever.
So he went forward under the morning, making south in a retreat which he
believed to be unthreatened.
Meanwhile, John, at the head of the French army, was pursuing a
better-thought-out strategical plan, whose complexity has only puzzled
historians because they have not weighed all the factors of the military
situation.
We do not know what numbers the King of France disposed of during this,
the first part of the pursuit, but we must presume that he could not yet
risk an engagement. The town of Poitiers was everything to him. There he
would find provisions and munition, some considerable body of trained men,
and the possibility of levying many thousands more. It was a secure
rallying point upon which to block the Black Prince's march to the south,
or from which to sally out and intercept his march. But when John found
himself in La Haye upon Wednesday the 14th, a day's march behind Edward's
command, he could not take the direct line for Poitiers because that very
command intercepted him. He knew that it had taken the road for
Chatellerault. He determined, therefore, by an exceptionally rapid
progress, to march _round_ his enemy by the east, to get down to
Chauvigny, and from that point to turn westward and reach Poitiers. It was
a risk, but it was the only course open to him. Had the Black Prince
pursued his march instead of waiting at Chatellerault, John's plan would
have failed, prompt as its execution was; but the Black Prince's delay
gave him his opportunity.
From La Haye to Chauvigny by the crossroads that lead directly southward
is a matter of thirty miles. John covered this in two days. Leaving La
Haye upon the morning of Thursday the 15th, he brought his force into
Chauvigny upon the 16th, Friday. He left, no doubt, a certain proportion
delayed upon the road, but he himself, with the bulk of the army,
completed the distance.
While, therefore, the Black Prince was delaying all that Thursday and
Friday in Chatellerault, John was passing right in front and beyond him
some eight miles to the eastward; and on the Saturday, the 17th, while the
Black Prince was leading his column through the triangle between the
rivers, John was marching due west from Chauvigny to Poitiers by the great
road through St Julien, yet another fifteen miles and more, in the third
day of his great effort. The head of the column, with the king himself, we
must presume to have ridden through the gate of Poitiers before or about
noon, but the last contingents were spread out along the road behind him
when, in that same morning or early afternoon of Saturday, the outriders
of the Anglo-Gascon force appeared upon the fields to the north.
It was an encounter as sudden as it was dramatic. The countryside at this
point consists in wide, open fields, the plough-lands of a plateau which
rises about one hundred feet above the level of the rivers. To the east of
this open country a line of wood marks the outlying fragments of the
forest of Mouliere; to the west, five miles away, and out of sight of
these farms, stands upon its slope above the Clain the town of Poitiers.
The lane by which the Black Prince was advancing was that which passes
through the hamlet of Le Breuil.[1] It is possible that he intended to
camp there; he had covered sixteen miles. But if that was his intention,
the accident which followed changed it altogether. A mile beyond the
village there is a roll of rising land, itself a mile short of the great
road which joins Poitiers and Chauvigny. It was from this slight eminence
that scouts riding out in front of Edward's army saw, massed upon that
road and advancing westward across their view, a considerable body of
vehicles escorted by armed men. It was the rearguard and the train of King
John.
A man following to-day that great road between Poitiers and Chauvigny
eastward, notes a spinney and a farm lying respectively to the right and
to the left of his way, some four kilometres from the gate of Poitiers,
and not quite three from the famous megalith of the "Lifted Stone," which
is a matter of immemorial reverence for the townsfolk. That farm is known
as La Chaboterie, and it marks the spot upon the high road where John's
rearguard first caught sight of Edward's scouts upon the sky-line to the
north.
The mounted men of this force turned northward off the high road, and
pursued the scouts to the main body near Le Breuil; then a sharp skirmish
ensued, and the French were driven off. This melee was the first news the
Black Prince had that the French army, so far from having abandoned the
pursuit, had marched right round him, and that his column was actually in
the gravest peril. It warned him that though he had already covered those
sixteen miles, he must press on further before he could dare to camp for
the night. His column was already weary, but there was no alternative.
The army reached the high road, and crossed it long after the French
rearguard had disappeared to the west. Exhausted as it was, it pushed on
another mile or two southward by the lanes that lead across the fields to
the neighbourhood of Mignaloux, and there it camped. The men had covered
that day close on twenty miles! But before settling for the evening, the
Black Prince sent out the Captal de Buch north-westward over the rolling
plateau in reconnaissance. When this commander and his body reached the
heights which overlook the Clain, and faced the houses of Poitiers upon
the hill beyond, they saw in the valley beneath them, and on the slopes of
the river bank, the encampment of the French army; and reported, upon
their return, "that all the plain was covered with men-at-arms."
Upon the next morning, that of Sunday the 18th of September, broken as the
force was with fatigue, it was marshalled again for the march--but no more
than a mile or two was asked of it.
Edward had scouted forward upon the morning, and discovered, just in front
of the little town of Nouaille and to the northward of the wood that
covers that little town, a position which, if it were necessary to stand,
would give him the opportunity for a defensive action.
That he intended any such action we may doubt in the light of what
followed. It was certainly not to his advantage to do so. The French by
occupying Poitiers had left his way to the south free, but the extreme
weariness of his force and the possibility that the French might strike
suddenly were both present in his mind. He wisely prepared for either
alternative of action or retreat, and carefully prepared the position he
had chosen. For its exact nature, I must refer my reader to the next
section, but the general conditions of the place are proper to the
interest of our present matter.
The main business, it must be remembered, upon which the Prince's mind was
concentrated was still his escape to the south. He must expect the French
advance upon him to come down by the shortest road to any position he had
prepared, even if he did not intend, or only half intended, to stand
there: and that position was therefore fixed astraddle of the road which
leads from Poitiers to Nouaille.
Now, just behind--that is, to the south of--this position runs in a
tortuous course through a fairly sharp[2] little valley a stream called
the Miosson. It formed a sufficient obstacle to check pursuit for some
appreciable time. There was only one bridge across it, at Nouaille itself,
which he could destroy when his army had passed; and the line of it was
strengthened by woods upon either side of the stream.
The Black Prince, therefore, must be judged (if we collate all the
evidence) to have looked forward to a general plan offering him two
alternatives.
Either the French would advance at once and press him. In which case he
would be compelled to take his chance of an action against what were by
this time far superior numbers; and in that case he had a good prepared
position, which will shortly be described, upon which to meet them.
Or they would give him time to file away southward, in which case the
neighbouring Miosson, with its ravine and its woods, would immediately, at
the very beginning of the march, put an obstacle between him and his
pursuer; especially as he had two crossings, a ford, and a bridge some way
above it, and he could cut the bridge the moment he had crossed it.
Finally, if (as was possible) a combination of these two alternatives
should present itself, he had but to depend upon his prepared position for
its rearguard to hold during just the time that would permit the main
force to make the passage of the Miosson, not two miles away.
With this plan clearly developed he advanced upon the Sunday morning no
more than a mile or two to the position in question, fortified it after
the fashion which I shall later describe, and camped immediately behind it
to see what that Sunday might bring. He could not make off at once,
because his horses and his marching men were worn out with the fatigue of
the previous day's great march.