hours against two
fierce assaults, and one that has but just emerged--unbroken, it is
true--from a particularly severe hand-to-hand fight.

John, then, determined to advance and, if possible, with this last reserve
to carry the position. It was dismounted, as he had ordered and wished all
his men-at-arms to be, and the King of France led this last body of
knights eastward across the little dip of land. As that large, fresh body
of mailed men approached the edge of the depression on its further side,
there were those in the Black Prince's force who began to doubt the issue.
A picturesque story remains to us of Edward's overhearing a despairing
phrase, and casting at its author the retort that he had lied damnably if
he so blasphemed as to say the Black Prince could be conquered alive.

I have mentioned some pages back that reserve of four hundred
fully-equipped men-at-arms which Edward had detached from his own body and
had set about four hundred yards off, surrounding his standard. The exact
spot where this reserve took up its position is marked to-day by the
railway station. It overlooks (if anything can be said to "overlook" in
that flat stretch) the field. It is some twelve or fifteen feet higher
than the hedge at which, a couple of furlongs away, the long defence had
held its own throughout that morning. The Black Prince recalled them to
the main body. Having done so, he formed into one closely ordered force
all the now mixed men of the three lines who were still able to go
forward. John was coming on with his armoured knights on foot, their
horses almost a mile away (he was bringing those men, embarrassed and
weighted by their metal under the growing heat of the day, nearly double
the distance which his son's men had found too much for them). Edward bade
his men-at-arms mount, and his archers mounted too. It will be remembered
that six men out of seven were mounted originally for the raid through
Aquitaine. The fighting on foot had spared the horses. They were all
available. And the teams and sumpter animals were available as well in so
far as he had need of them. John's men, just coming up on foot to the
opposite edge of the little dip, saw the low foot line of the
Anglo-Gascons turning at a word of command into a high mounted line. But
before that mounted line moved forward, Edward had a last command to
give. He called for the Captal of Buch, a Gascon captain not to be
despised.

This man had done many things