A Great and Glorious Adventure (22 page)

It was probably when he was in the vicinity of Vierzon that the Black Prince realized he must abandon any intention of joining up with the duke of Lancaster. The duke had presumably calculated
that, if he continued in the direction of Tours, he was going to meet the French army before he could join with Prince Edward. As he had no intention of fighting a hopeless battle, he wisely
withdrew, sending a message to the French king that he had no intention of fighting as the French hoped but would ‘go where he liked and do as he wished’.
²⁷
The Black Prince’s expedition was not dependent on combining with Lancaster, but, now that this was no longer possible, he had to reappraise the situation. He
was not afraid of a pitched battle with the French – indeed, he hoped for it – but to push further towards Paris without the addition of Lancaster’s troops would be unwise. It was
essential that, if a battle were to take place, it was on ground of the prince’s choosing, where the English tactics could be best employed,
rather than an
opportunistic encounter dictated by the French. To move back the way he had come was not an option, as the territory had been laid waste and there would be no supplies or fodder for the horses to
be found. He therefore decided to move west as far as Tours, from where he had the option of retiring south out of the devastated area and back to Bordeaux if no opportunity for a decisive battle
presented itself.

Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, the Black Prince, is in many ways an enigmatic figure. We are not even sure of the origin of the soubriquet. The Victorians thought it was because he wore
black armour, and they painted his funerary monument in Canterbury Cathedral accordingly (it was later restored to its original steel and gilt); alternatively, it has been suggested that it was a
French appellation, indicating how much they hated him. From contemporary descriptions and paintings and from the effigy on his tomb, he appears to have been tall, well built and handsome, with the
long face of the Plantagenets, and like most sprigs of the nobility of the time he was fond of tournaments and jousting. From the age of thirteen he accompanied his father on campaign, and there
can be no doubt that he was personally brave, as he showed at Crécy, and cognizant of the chivalric conduct of others, even of his enemies, as he demonstrated when he honoured the dead King
John of Bohemia by taking his ostrich feather badge as his own personal insignia.
⁵¹
In matters of religion, he appears to have gone beyond the
conventional display of faith and to have had a genuine and deep belief. We know from lists of allowances and gifts of armour and plate given to friends and to those who had served him well that he
was generous and, at least in his earlier years, accrued little personal profit from ransoms, often distributing much of the monies to companions and attendants. As a military commander, once away
from his father and in sole command, he was a sound tactician and a natural leader, while always prepared to listen to subordinates who had more experience than he. On the debit side, he had the
reputation of being a stern landlord, and tenants and inhabitants of the lands that were his main sources of income – Wales, Cornwall, Cheshire and Aquitaine – often found themselves
heavily taxed. This was mainly in order to pay for military campaigns, however, rather than to fund personal extravagance, as was alleged.

To some, the prince appeared aloof and unapproachable, but this may simply have been the result of a preference for the company of those whom he knew and trusted.
Politically, he could be naive: he was hopeless at intrigue and often settled for less than he might have got with more skilful negotiation. To modern eyes, his conduct on campaign – the
burning, the levelling of towns, the destruction of crops – is nothing short of criminal, but it was the normal mode of behaviour in an enemy country at the time. It was intended not as
wanton ruin
per se
but to entice the main enemy army to give battle, and to show the populace that he who claimed to be their ruler was unable to give them the protection that should have
stemmed from allegiance. Overall, the verdict of history – British history at least – is that Edward was a great soldier, a great Englishman and a worthy occupant of the British
pantheon.

It has to be said that on this occasion the young Edward showed a great deal of confidence in himself and his men, and very little sense of urgency, reinforcing the evidence that he wanted to
provoke a battle. He calculated that his mounted army could easily outmarch the generally ponderous French military machine, so he moved along the River Cher to Romorantin, on the Loire, and laid
siege to it. Not only could the Black Prince not afford to leave a hostile garrison in his rear, but there was also the hope that the French might try to relieve the town and thus give the prince
his battle. If Jean did not take the bait, however, Edward was confident that he could take the town and be on his way long before the French could interfere. Romorantin took five days to subdue
and was eventually forced to surrender when the walls were collapsed by mining and the central keep was set on fire, but there was no attempt by the French to raise the siege. More time was lost
trying to find a crossing of the Loire in the Tours area, although the wait here may also have been dictated by a renewed hope that the duke of Lancaster might yet be able to rendezvous with the
prince.

The French had destroyed all the bridges over the Loire from Tours north-east to Blois, so, having failed to find either the duke of Lancaster or a crossing point, the prince decided on 11
September to move south in the direction of the English base at Bordeaux, still at a leisurely pace. Whether this was due to overconfidence or because he wanted to entice the French into following
him is still debated; all the evidence seems to point to the
latter, but it may well have been a combination of the two. In fact, the French army was much closer than either
the Black Prince or Jean of France knew, and soon they were marching parallel to each other as the English reached Châtellerault and the French La Haye, twelve miles to the north-east. Both
commanders wanted a battle: the Black Prince because he needed to strike a decisive blow, being, as the chronicler le Baker avers, ‘Anxious for battle for the sake of the peace which usually
follows’;
²⁸
and Jean because he could no longer placate his own people by procrastination. Moving rather faster than anyone expected, on 15
September, the French reached the east bank of the River Vienne at Chauvigny, from where they intended to move west towards Poitiers and cut the English off from Bordeaux. Reports from the Black
Prince’s mounted reconnaissance patrols that the French were now to their south discomfited Edward not one whit. The French had now committed themselves to battle and Edward would oblige
them. The English baggage train and its accumulated booty was moved off to the west so as not to hinder the movement of the army.

The first blows were struck on 17 September, when strong English mounted patrols under the Gascon knights d’Aubricourt and de Ghistelles intercepted the French rearguard, with the
advantage going to the English. The lead scouts of the main bodies clashed briefly too, when the English tried to intercept the French as they crossed the Vienne, arriving too late to do so. The
French army now took up position on the plateau south-east of Poitiers, with Jean himself in the town and the English army to the south. Before first light on the following day, Sunday, the English
army was on the march south, in order to find a position suitable for battle, halting somewhere in the area of Nouaillé-Maupertuis, about four miles south-east of Poitiers.

The rest of the day was spent in negotiation on the instigation of the cardinal of Périgord, who scurried hither and thither trying to persuade each combatant to come to an arrangement
that would avoid a battle. Eventually, Prince Edward agreed to talk and discussions began. On the French side were two archbishops, the count of Tancarville, who had been captured at Caen and
ransomed for £6,000, and three other lords, while the English were represented by the earls of Warwick and Suffolk, senior commanders, and the trio of Audley, Chandos and Sir Bartholomew
Burghersh. Burghersh was another who had made his name from war,
although starting from rather more comfortable circumstances than most. He was the great-nephew of Lord
Badlesmere, whose wife had refused Queen Isabella entry to Leeds Castle in 1322, the family losing their estates as a result, regaining them after Isabella and Mortimer’s invasion, losing
them briefly on Edward III’s coup, and then finally re-establishing themselves in good standing. Burghersh’s father, the first Lord Burghersh, had made a great deal of money (relatively
honestly), but his son owed his position to being a first-class soldier who was present at most of Edward III’s and the Black Prince’s battles and was another founder member of the
Order of the Garter.

It is difficult to see what either side thought could come out of these parleys. Indeed, it is unclear whether they seriously wanted them to succeed. Points at issue included the prisoners in
English hands, and the obvious sticking points were the French demand that the English should provide hostages and the English insistence that any agreement arrived at must be ratified by Edward
III. Neither condition was in the least acceptable, and, when the French suggested that the question might be settled by a combat between 100 knights on each side, the earl of Warwick refused,
saying that the issue must depend upon a battle between two armies and nothing else. Even if the French could be trusted to keep their word, the English had no intention of abrogating their
tactical mix of archers and dismounted men-at-arms, which they knew gave them an advantage, in favour of an equal contest which they might lose. Jean was still leaning towards compromise but was
eventually dissuaded by the rhetoric of two men, William Douglas and the bishop of Challons. Douglas commanded a force of 200 Scottish soldiers in the French army. There is some confusion over
exactly who this Douglas was – the Scots have lamentably few surnames and use but a handful of Christian names. He was not the William Douglas, Lord of Liddesdale, who was still languishing
in the Tower, but he had certainly fought the English, and he now assured Jean that, whatever the Black Prince might appear to agree to, he would continue to lay waste French lands and it would be
much better to deal with him now than to have to fight him later in less advantageous circumstances. The bishop meanwhile made an impassioned plea, citing the shame and disgrace that the English
operations had brought upon the present French king and his father, and insisting that the English were short of supplies, cut off from their base
and hugely outnumbered.
The only thing the English – any English – understood was force. Now was the time to deal with them once and for all. Jean was convinced and negotiations were broken off, the departure
of the cardinal of Périgord’s entourage to fight for the French only serving to emphasize the existing English suspicion of papal peacemakers. One advantage to the French was that they
had bought time for a reinforcement of another 1,000 men-at-arms to arrive – and perhaps buying time was the sole French intention in the first place.

While the negotiations were going on throughout the Sunday, the English were preparing their position. In conformity with what was now standard tactical practice, the three divisions would
dismount and take position with two forward and one in rear, with archers on both flanks. We are told that the vanguard was commanded by the earls of Warwick and Oxford, the second division by the
prince himself, and the rearguard by the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk. Confusingly, the prince took up position in rear, as was normal procedure for the overall commander, with the vanguard on
the left and rearguard on the right covering the front. The command arrangements for the vanguard and rearguard are, on the face of it, unclear. Divided command is never a good idea and was a major
factor in the series of defeats suffered by the French for most of the war. The chroniclers were not, of course, military men, and it may be that they simply tell us the senior magnates in each
division, not meaning to imply that they exercised command jointly. While joint command might work in a static battle of attrition, it would be a recipe for chaos once any form of manoeuvre was
required, and we may assume that divisions were commanded by the senior magnate in each – in this case, Warwick and Salisbury.

Not all historians agree the exact positions of the opposing armies, but the most likely location for the eventual English defensive position is on a low ridge running along an ancient track
across a bend of the River Moisson, on the Plaine de Plumet west of the village of Les Bordes. The frontage is about 800 yards and the flanks are protected by steep drops to the river, while the
rear is protected by the river itself. French accounts say the French army marched along a ‘
maupertuis
’ or ‘bad road’ from Poitiers to get there, and there is what
is now a farm track running south-south-east from Gibauderie through Le Maupas and Brout de Chèvre to La Cadrousse, which
is of considerable antiquity and may well be
the road referred to. The two forward English battles would have been on the track, the right-flank archers south of La Cadrousse and those on the left somewhere around Le Plan. The reserve would
have been placed some hundred yards to the rear, with a small mounted reserve of 200 knights under the Gascon lord, the Captal de Buch.