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 Châtellerault. 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 Châtellerault, 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 Châtellerault, 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 Moulière; 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 mêlée 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 Nouaillé 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 Nouaillé.

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 Nouaillé 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;