year and won a disgraceful success. Unable to pay his troops,
he staved off their demands by a campaign of sheer pillage. While plague
and war and the anarchy which sprang up under the weak government of John
were bringing ruin on the northern and central provinces of France, the
south remained prosperous and at peace. The young prince led his army of
freebooters up the Garonne into "what was before one of the fat countries
of the world, the people good and simple, who did not know what war was;
indeed no war had been waged against them till the Prince came. The English
and Gascons found the country full and gay, the rooms adorned with carpets
and draperies, the caskets and chests full of fair jewels. But nothing was
safe from these robbers. They, and especially the Gascons, who are very
greedy, carried off everything." Glutted by the sack of Carcassonne and
Narbonne the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, "their horses so laden with
spoil that they could hardly move." Worthier work awaited the Black Prince
in the following year. In the plan of campaign for 1356 it had been
arranged that he should march upon the Loire, and there unite with a force
under the Duke of Lancaster which was to land in Britanny and push rapidly
into the heart of France. Delays however hindered the Prince from starting
from Bordeaux till July, and when his march brought him to the Loire the
plan of campaign had already broken down. The outbreak in Normandy had
tempted the English Council to divert the force under Lancaster from
Britanny to that province; and the Duke was now at Cherbourg, hard pressed
by the French army under John. But if its original purpose was foiled, the
march of the Black Prince on the Loire served still more effectively the
English cause. His advance pointed straight upon Paris, and again as in the
Crecy campaign John was forced to leave all for the protection of the
capital. Hasty marches brought the king to the Loire while Prince Edward
still lay at Vierzon on the Cher. Unconscious of John's designs, he wasted
some days in the capture of Romorantin while the French troops were
crossing the Loire along its course from Orleans to Tours and John with the
advance was hurrying through Loches upon Poitiers in pursuit, as he
supposed, of the retreating Englishmen. But the movement of the French
army, near as it was, was unknown in the English camp; and when the news of
it forced the Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy was alr