A Distant Mirror (28 page)

From Cardinal Talleyrand, Prince Edward learned that the King of France counted on intercepting him and was preparing for pitched battle on September 14, and that the French army was daily enlarging as new units arrived. Though the Prince was not anxious to risk battle against fresh and superior numbers, he nevertheless rejected Talleyrand’s proposal to negotiate a truce, perhaps because he was overconfident of being able to elude the enemy. The French were pushing hard, intending to outflank the Prince at Poitiers, where they would get across the road to Bordeaux and cut off his retreat. For four days more the armies continued on the march without making contact, the English barely ten or twelve miles ahead, the French gradually closing the gap.

On September 17 at a farm called La Chaboterie, three miles west of Poitiers, a French party led by Raoul de Coucy, Sire de Montmirail, uncle of Enguerrand VII and reputed one of the bravest knights of his time, sighted an English reconnaissance unit, and on its own initiative galloped to the attack. Whether Enguerrand was in the party is unrecorded, or even whether he was with the host. The domain of Coucy must certainly have sent its contingent, unless this was with the forces in Normandy opposing Lancaster. In the clash that now occurred, Raoul dashed so far forward that he reached the Prince’s banner-bearer, fighting valiantly. Under the ardor of the French assault, the Anglo-Gascons reeled back, yet inexplicably, though they were far outnumbered, they recovered and overpowered the French. Many were killed and Raoul was captured, though ransomed soon afterward. Like so much else that happened at Poitiers, the outcome at La Chaboterie is difficult to explain.

Greedy for ransoms from the skirmish, the Anglo-Gascons pursued
with such vigor that they were drawn three leagues from the field, with the result that the Prince, in order to rally and reassemble his forces, had to halt where he was and camp for the night though suffering greatly from lack of water.

On the following morning, Sunday, September 18, as the Prince’s weary company resumed march just below Poitiers, his scouts from a crest of land saw a glitter of armor and the flutter of a thousand pennants as the French main body came into view. Knowing he was overtaken and battle now unavoidable, the Prince drew up his forces in the most favorable site he could find, on a wooded slope edged by vineyards and hedges and by a stream meandering through marshy land. Beyond the stream was a wide field traversed by a narrow road. The place was about two miles southeast of Poitiers.

Confident of victory in his superior strength, King Jean was held back from attack by Cardinal Talleyrand, who arrived with a great company of clerics to beg him to keep Sunday’s “Truce of God” until next morning while allowing the Cardinal another chance to mediate. At a war council in the King’s pavilion of scarlet silk, Marshal d’Audrehem and others ardent for battle, and conscious of the threat of the Duke of Lancaster at their rear, urged no delay. Against their advice, the King fatally agreed to the Cardinal’s plea for delay. A proposal by Geoffrey de Charny for an arranged combat of 100 champions on each side was rejected by his companions lest it exclude too many from combat, glory, and ransoms. If either immediate battle or Charny’s proposal had been adopted, the ultimate outcome might have been different.

When Cardinal Talleyrand hastened back to the English camp, he found the Prince was now amenable to, even anxious for, any arrangement that would get him out of danger with honor and spoils intact. Edward offered to restore free of ransom all prisoners he had taken during the two campaigns and all places he had occupied, and to agree to non-belligerency for seven years, during which he would pledge not to take up arms against the King of France. He even offered, according to the
Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois
, to yield Calais and Guînes, though he certainly lacked the authority for such a surrender. His extraordinary concessions indicate his sense of a desperate situation and the realization that he could be starved out if the French chose to surround and invest him. Or, knowing that so inglorious a choice by the French was unlikely, he may have been playing for time to complete preparation of his archers’ positions. This his men were already engaged in doing, and throughout the day of parleys they continued entrenching and setting up palisades.

King Jean agreed to consider the proposal. Cardinal Talleyrand and his clerics hurried back and forth on their mules, and the Prince’s chief knights came under safe-conduct to parley in person. Hardly a battle of the endless war, except in Brittany, was not preceded by efforts to stop it that never succeeded. Arrogant in his confidence of victory, Jean accepted the offer on condition that the Prince of Wales would surrender himself and 100 of his knights as prisoners of the King of France. Such humiliation the Prince resolutely refused, having meanwhile improved his position among the woods and behind hedges. While Talleyrand still begged the King for the love of Christ to agree at least to a truce until Christmas, the day of parleys was over. The French council of war reconvened to determine a plan of attack.

Marshal Clermont advised blockade, the very action the Prince had feared. Rather than the folly of attacking the English in their protected position, he said the French should encamp around them and when they had no more food “they would depart from that place.” This was the obvious and sensible course to adopt, but the dictates of chivalry forbade it. Met with scorn and fierce dispute by Marshal d’Audrehem, Clermont’s proposal was rejected. Three knights who had reconnoitered the English lines came in to report that the only access to the enemy was a narrow passage permitting no more than four abreast to ride through. On the advice of Sir William Douglas, a Scot experienced against the English who was acting as the King’s chief of tactics, the critical decision was taken for the main body to attack on foot. But rather than forgo altogether the cavalry charge of heavy armor, it was decided that the initial breakthrough of the archers’ lines should be carried out by a task force of 300 of the elite of the army mounted on the strongest and swiftest war-horses. All three military chiefs, the Constable and both Marshals, were recklessly assigned to this body.

At sunrise on Monday, September 19, in bustle and clamor of arms with trumpets sounding, the French host was drawn up behind the mounted spearhead in the usual three battalions. They were deployed one behind the other, presumably for successive shocks, but precluded by this position from aiding one another on the flank. The nineteen-year-old Dauphin, who had never fought in war before, was nominal commander of the first battalion; Philippe d’Orléans, brother of the King, aged twenty and equally a novice, commanded the second; the King himself, the third. He was accompanied by a personal guard of nineteen others dressed exactly like him in black armor and white surcoat marked with fleur-de-lys. This was a prudent if not exactly knightly precaution, since in a battle in which a sovereign engaged, the enemy would do its utmost to capture him.

“On foot! On foot!” ordered Jean, and “he put himself on foot before all.” It has been said that he took the decision to dismount in order to reduce the opportunity among his disunited forces for individual action or flight. Modern critics—for the debate has continued-have called it “suicidal folly”; others have considered it the only sensible and feasible decision because cavalry could not deploy en masse owing to the marshes, hedges, and ditches.

The knights dismounted, removed spurs, cut off the long pointed toes of their
poulaines
, and shortened their lances to five feet. The Oriflamme, fork-tongued scarlet banner of the Kings of France, was awarded to Geoffrey de Charny, “the perfect knight,” to carry. Legend derived the banner from Charlemagne, who was said to have carried it to the Holy Land in response to an angel’s prophecy that a knight armed with a golden lance from whose tip flames of “great marvel” burned would deliver the land from the Saracens. Embroidered with golden flames that gave it its name, the banner had been adopted by the monarchy from the Abbey of St. Denis along with the battle cry “Montjoie-St. Denis!” As the signal for advance or rally, the war cry signified allegiance to a particular lord. On that morning the King announced the royal cry as the cry for all. “You have cursed the English,” he cried to the assembled ranks of chivalry, “and longed to measure swords with them. Behold them in your presence! Remember the wrongs they have done you and revenge yourselves for the losses and sufferings they have inflicted on France. I promise you we shall do battle with them, and God be with us!”

The Prince of Wales deployed two battalions in front for mutual support and one behind, with the archers in saw-tooth formation divided among the three. The four Earls—Warwick and Oxford, Suffolk and Salisbury—commanded the two front divisions, the Prince and Chandos the rear, with a body of 400 reserves at their side. The English had the advantage of terrain and a far greater advantage in being a coherent body, experienced together in two campaigns, professionally trained, and based on better management and organization. For overseas expeditions the English had to plan carefully and recruit selectively the ablest and strongest fighting material.

Yet even now, perhaps because of divided opinion among his advisors, the Prince essayed a movement to get away toward the road to Bordeaux. “For on that day,” in the words of Chandos Herald, “he did not wish for combat, I tell you true, but wished without fail to avoid battle entirely.” The movement of baggage wagons behind the hill, revealed by the fluttering pennants of their advance guard, was seen by Marshal d’Audrehem, who shouted, “Ha! Pursue! Charge, ere the English
are lost to us!” The more sober Clermont still advised a surrounding action, precipitating a furious quarrel between the two Marshals on the very brink of battle. Audrehem accused his fellow of being “afraid to look on them” and of causing delay that would lose the day, to which Clermont replied with suitable insult. “Ha,
Maréchal
, you are not so bold but that your horse’s nose will find itself in my horse’s ass!” In this disunity the charge of the mounted spearhead was launched.

Warned of the assault, the Prince had halted the initial departure, reassembled, and in a fiery oration called upon his knights to fight for their King’s claim to the French crown, for the great honor of victory, for rich spoils and eternal fame. He told them to trust in God and obey commands.

Attacking from the flank, Audrehem’s squadron was caught and crushed under the piercing arrows of the archers, while Clermont, joined by the Constable, charged in the frontal attack he so mistrusted and was beaten back under flights of arrows so thick they darkened the air. Shooting from sheltered positions protected by dismounted knights and foot soldiers, the archers, at the express order of the Earl of Oxford, aimed for the horses’ unarmored rumps. Stumbling and falling, the horses went down under their riders or reared back among those who followed, “making great slaughter upon their own masters.” It was the frenzy of Crécy over again. Fallen knights could not raise their horses or rise themselves. In the melee that followed, amid call of trumpets, shouted battle cries, and screams of wounded men and horses, both Clermont and the Constable were killed, Audrehem was captured, and the greater part of the picked knights killed or taken prisoner.

Already the Dauphin’s battalion was advancing on foot into the havoc. With Charles in the front lines were his two brothers, seventeen-year-old Louis, Duc d’Anjou, and sixteen-year-old Jean, future Duc de Berry. Tangled in the confusion of riderless horses and raging combat, many of the battalion fought on savagely, hand to hand, stabbing with shortened lances and hacking with battle-ax and sword. But with no hardened leader in command, only a boy witnessing debacle, the unit began to fall back. A shout of triumph from enemy throats signaled seizure of the Dauphin’s standard. Whether on order of the King to save his sons, as later claimed, or at the decision of the four lords appointed as the princes’ guardians, the greater part of the battalion withdrew from the field, falling back upon and infecting with failure the Duc d’Orléans’ battalion. Instead of coming in with fresh force to give the hard-pressed English no pause, which at this stage might well have turned the tide, Orléans’ battalion, swept up in the retreat, fled
without striking a blow, retrieved its waiting horses, and galloped for the city.

“Advance,” cried the King upon this successive disaster, “for I will recover the day or die on the field!” With Oriflamme flying and his youngest son, fourteen-year-old Philip, future Duke of Burgundy, at his father’s side, this largest of the three battalions, awkward on foot in their iron cocoons, marched upon the bloody field. “Alack! We are undone!” cried an English knight, seeing them come. “You lie, miserable coward,” stormed the Prince, “if you so blaspheme as to say that I, alive, may be conquered!” Each side fell upon the other with the strength and ferocity of desperation. Although a battle’s outcome, it was said, could be told by the time the sixth arrow was loosed, now when the English archers had emptied their sheaves the issue wavered. In the pause before the new French assault, the archers had retrieved arrows from the wounds and dead bodies of the fallen; others now hurled stones and fought with knives. Had the third French assault been mounted, it is possible that at this stage, against a battered opponent, it might have prevailed.

The battle entered its seventh hour, a tossing mass of separate groups hammering each other, oblivious of any formation, except for the Prince and Chandos still holding command with the reserves on the hilltop. Pointing to where the Oriflamme flew, Chandos advised the Prince to attack the King’s unit, for, he said, “Valor will not allow him to flee; he will fall into our power and victory will be ours.” In what proved the decisive maneuver, the Prince ordered his D’Artagnesque ally, the Captal de Buch, to lead a small mounted force in attack upon the French rear while, with the mounted reserves and the unwounded from his own battalion, he summoned the army’s last strength for a frontal offensive. “Sirs, behold me here! For God’s mercy, think on striking! Advance, Banner, in the name of God and St. George!”