Authors: Thomas B. Costain
Edward was not anxious for war at this stage. He had sent his chamberlain to ask Parliament if they would favor the making of a permanent peace, and the members had responded with loud cries of “Yes! Yes!” England, clearly, had no more stomach for war. Still, there was the obligation to support Charles the Bad.
An army was raised and sent across the Channel under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, and word was sent to the Black Prince at Bordeaux to support the move by advancing against the French flank. The prince had just completed a drive up the Garonne River for the purpose of paying his troops (being completely out of funds) with the spoils of that rich and quiet country. It was said that after the sacking of Carcassonne and Norbonne the horses of his army were so heavily laden they could hardly move. As Charles the Bad in the meantime had made his peace with France and left the English in the lurch, the Black Prince now found it necessary to march again to aid the hard-pressed army of Lancaster. He was slow in getting under way and did not reach the Loire country until much later than had been planned. In the meantime the duke had been forced back on Cherbourg and seemed about to suffer a major reverse. Word of the movements of the Black Prince came just in time, and the French king, who was eager to wipe the score of Crécy off the slate, moved his troops south to meet the heir to the English throne.
The Prince of Wales dallied along the Loire in an attack on Romorantin. A favorite squire was killed by a stone from the battlements, and Edward swore to avenge him by burning the place to the ground. This was accomplished by the use of Greek fire but not before the French army crossed the Loire south of him. When he became fully aware of their movements, the French had swung around him and were across his line of retreat to Bordeaux.
Prince Edward’s army was a small one. He had in all about ten thousand men, including two thousand cavalry and four thousand bowmen. It was certain that the French were out in force, and the situation looked desperate for the English. Falling back toward Poictiers, the prince sent out a party to reconnoiter. When they returned after a brush with a party of French horse, he dispatched the Captal de Buch with a strong force and with instructions to get as close as he could to the French lines. The Captal, who was a brave and resourceful soldier, gained a position on a
high hill, from which he saw the royal banners of France waving over Poictiers. The whole countryside was covered with troops. Realizing that they had the full strength of France against them (some prisoners placed John’s army at sixty thousand), the Gascon rode back with his information.
“God help us!” said the Black Prince. But he spoke in reverent terms and not in fear.
The prince resembled his father in his tendency to loose planning, but he also had the king’s great tactical skill in ordering a battle and in fighting it through. He placed his meager forces as skillfully as Edward had done at Crécy. He took up his position on the field of Maupertuis on the crest of a slope so thickly covered with grapevines that the presence of the English was hard to detect. The ground here was unfit for cavalry and only a narrow lane gave access to the crest where the tiny English army waited. The bowmen were placed behind the hedges and in the thick vineyards, with the rest of the troops on foot behind them. The prince lacked one advantage that his father had enjoyed at Crécy: he had no protection on either flank, for the wood and abbey of Nouaille on his right offered no effective cover, and a ravine on the left might delay but not halt an attack. All that John of France had to do, in fact, was to divide his forces and push divisions of his men around both English flanks until the Black Prince would have only two courses: to retreat, which would be to invite complete disaster, or to surrender.
Fortunately for the English, the French king had no more sense of generalship than his father. He does not seem to have thought of the obvious and certain way of beating a small army with a large one, that of surrounding it. At the same time he did not like the look of the field at Maupertuis. It was not a fair and open field where knighthood could perform to advantage. He decided, on that account, to propose terms and sent the Cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord to discuss the matter with the English.
Edward had no illusions about the danger which faced him and he agreed to give up what he had won during the campaign. In addition he promised not to fight against the French for a period of seven years. John scoffed at these terms.
“First,” he cried, “he must surrender himself to me with one hundred of his best knights. Then we shall talk of other conditions.”
It was Edward’s turn to laugh. Had the French king forgotten Crécy that he allowed himself to entertain such a degree of confidence? He, Edward, would never give himself up.
Back and forth all day rode the Cardinal Talleyrand, striving to reconcile the two viewpoints and making no progress whatever. In the meantime the Black Prince had his men hard at work digging ditches and erecting ramparts of earth back of the encompassing vines. He even had time to do something about his vulnerable flanks in case a flash of military intelligence might come to the French king or his overconfident knightly advisers.
It was a Sunday, September 18, 1356, a bright and cheerful day. The French, sitting in their tents, were a happy and rather noisy lot. The late King Philip had created a brotherhood called Our Lady of the Noble House in opposition to the English Order of the Garter. The membership was limited to five hundred knights who had sworn never to retreat in battle but, if necessary, to die on the field. There was some rigmarole as well about never yielding more than four acres of land under any circumstances. They were all on hand, these five hundred bold knights, and it did not enter the head of anyone that on the morrow things would happen to make a mockery of their oaths. All they could see was that the English were trapped and must come to terms or be crushed.
The English remained stubborn and the bright sun sank in the west with no advance in the negotiations.
The battle began early next morning. The Black Prince stationed himself on the level ground above, where he could command a view of the narrow path winding crookedly up the hill. Sir John Chandos stood beside him as usual. This English knight, the finest the wars had produced, was tall, clean-shaven, with a nose like the beak of an eagle, and a disfiguration caused by the loss of an eye in battle. He was the ablest lieutenant of them all and his advice was always good.
As they stood together waiting for the French to advance, a scout brought word that the French king had donned black armor with a white plume in his helmet. A shout of laughter arose when it was reported soon after that nineteen French knights were also wearing black armor and with the same kind of plume in their head guards in order to protect the king from identification during the battle.
The talk between the prince and John Chandos was directed to one point. How much had the French learned from the battle of Crécy? Had they become convinced of the futility of sending knights against English archers before making an effort to rout the men of the longbow?
It soon became apparent that John of France had learned nothing. On a field covered with thick hedges and screened by vines, the stubborn king ordered an attack by his knights. He sent them up the narrow path, four abreast, and the English bowmen, shooting from cover, cut them down as fast as they appeared. The French army had been divided into three divisions. The king commanded one, his three oldest sons shared
the leadership of the second, and his brother, the Duke of Orleans, led the third; five Bourbons who had forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
When the attack was broadened, the English archers shot down the horses of the charging knights, throwing the line into complete confusion. The English foot troops could now creep forward through the thick vines and with their long knives dispatch the knights before they could get themselves disentangled. It was Crécy all over again, but with the English in a still firmer command of the field. The division led by the three princes was thrown into such a turmoil that the marshals, who were actually in charge, saw nothing to be done but to get the royal sons off the field. The result was that the one division fell back on the next and the sanguinary chaos of Crécy was re-enacted.
It remained for the Captal de Buch to complete the wreckage of French morale. Charging from ambush with a small force of mounted men, he drove headlong into the flank of the second French division. Forgetting their oaths and perhaps confused as to how much land constituted four acres, the knights of the Noble House took to flight, prepared to yield not only four acres but the whole of France.
“Sir Prince!” said John Chandos quietly. “Push forward: the day is yours. God has given it into your hands.”
Mounting their horses, the English knights charged down the slope after the prince, crying, “St. George, for Guienne!” The retreat of the French became general, and one body of eight hundred lances galloped off the field without having struck a blow. Soon there was nothing left of that huge and confident army but the troops under the direct charge of the king. These were still capable of winning the battle, being double the size of the whole English army, but for some reason they had no thought but to escape or to sell their lives as dearly as possible. King John cried out to his men to alight and then dismounted himself. His youngest son, Philip (who would survive to cuff a cup-bearer at the English court), was beside him and behaving with great coolness for a lad of fourteen.
The king finally yielded himself a prisoner to a French knight who had been fighting on the English side, having been banished earlier. There had been excited rumors in the English lines during the battle about the nineteen French knights in black armor, and many of them had been captured or killed. The mystery as to the identity of the king was now solved. The king removed his helmet.
“Where is my cousin, the Prince Edward?” he asked. Then to the English men-at-arms, who were scuffling to get possession of his person, recognizing the value of the prize, he said: “I pray you take me peaceably to my cousin. I am great enough to enrich you all.”
The Black Prince had seen to it that his standard was brought down from the crest to serve as a new rallying point. His silk pavilion was raised
and here a supper was served to the captive king, the prince waiting on him personally and doing everything possible to set him at ease. During the meal a survey was made of the field and it was learned that the French had left eleven thousand dead, over two thousand of them men of knightly rank. The English loss was low in the hundreds.
A curious anecdote of the battle has survived. A Welsh soldier named Howell y Twyell had performed so bravely that the Black Prince knighted him on the field and endowed him with a pension. As a further honor, the battle-ax of the Welshman was taken to the Tower of London and every day a full meal was placed beside it for the owner if he should appear. As soon as it was certain that Sir Howell would not come, the food would be distributed to the poor, with instructions to pray for the soul of the rightful partaker. This custom was followed for over two hundred years and was ended with the Reformation.
A truce for two years was arranged and the captive king was taken to Bordeaux. Here the winter was spent in tournaments and recreation of all kinds. John hoped he would not be removed from the country, but early in the spring orders were received from King Edward that he was to be brought to England. The prince set sail with his prisoner in April and they landed at Sandwich eleven days later. Desiring to meet the unfortunate John on an informal basis, the English king rode out from London with a hunting party.
“Sweet Cousin, you are welcome,” he said when the two parties met.
The citizens of London outdid themselves in their welcome a few days later. Tapestries were hung from all the windows and the twelve prettiest girls in the town were suspended above the streets in cages so they could shower flowers on the victorious Edward and the French king as they passed. John was on a splendid white charger, but Prince Edward contented himself with a black pony. King Edward received them at Westminster Palace and later presided at a great feast. A luxurious river-front palace, called the Savoy, was given to the royal prisoner for his residence. Here he was to remain in great comfort for a very long time.
There was no comfort for anyone in France. As the fighting was over temporarily, the soldiers who had been engaged in it formed themselves into bands called Free Companies and proceeded to prey on the people, robbing and burning and laying the country bare. Wherever one looked, the fields were black and desolate. The houses were piles of rubble and the fences had given up and were allowing the wild growths of nature
to take back their own. Even the sun seemed to have caught the infection and shone with a wan light. Never did one hear, even at dawn when farmyards came alive, the cheerful lowing of cows or the confident cackle of chickens.
The French soldiers were as active in this freebooting as the English and the mercenaries from other countries. While the land was thus being bled white, the need to raise ransoms for the captured nobility led to new taxes and exactions laid on the overburdened backs of the people.
The hardships they suffered were so great that finally the peasantry rose in rebellion. Armed with scythes and clubs, the maddened peasants attacked and captured many castles and murdered all the occupants, irrespective of age or sex. This insurrection, which was called the
Jacquerie
from the name Jacques Bonhomme applied to the tiller of the soil, was suppressed in a thorough and bloody manner in time to prevent it from spreading and attaining the proportions of a civil war. The
Jacquerie
set off even more significant troubles. The eldest son of the king, Prince Charles, had been made regent in his father’s enforced absence and had taken the title of the dauphin, because the land of Dauphiné had recently been ceded to France. He resorted to many unpopular measures to raise money, including the debasing of the coinage. The people of Paris rose indignantly under the leadership of Stephen Marcel, their provost, and put such pressure behind the States-General (the equivalent of the English Parliament) that radical measures were taken to make the government of the country more democratic. Marcel, who was a combination of patriot and demagogue, went too far, however, and his following fell away from him and in the end he was killed in a riot on the streets of Paris.