in the six weeks' course of the raid. He was
a cavalry leader, great not only with his own talent, but with the
political cause which he served, for of those lords under the Pyrenees he
was the most resolute for the Plantagenets and against the Valois. The
order Edward gave him was this: to take a little force all mounted, to
make a long circuit, skirting round to the north and hiding its progress
behind the spinneys and scrub-wood until he should get to the rear of the
last French reserve that was coming forward, and when he had completed the
circuit, to display his banner and come down upon them unexpectedly from
behind. It was an exceedingly small detachment which was picked out for
this service, not two hundred men all told. Rather more than half of them
archers, the rest of them fully-equipped men-at-arms. Small as was this
tiny contingent which the Black Prince could barely spare, it proved in
the event sufficient.

That order given, the Black Prince summoned his standard-bearer--an
Englishman whose name should be remembered, Woodland--set him, with the
great banner which the French had seen three hours before disappearing
into the river valley when Edward had been off watching the passage of the
ford, at the head of the massed mounted force, and ordered the charge. The
six thousand horse galloped against the dismounted armoured men of John
down the little slope. The shock between these riders and those foot-men
came in the hollow of the depression. The foot-men stood the charge. In
the first few minutes gaps were torn into and through the French body by a
discharge of the last arrows, and then came the furious encounter with
dagger and sword which ended the Battle of Poitiers. It was the mounted
men that had the better of the whole. The struggle was very fierce and
very bewildered, a mass of hand-to-hand fighting in individual groups that
swayed, as yet undetermined, backwards and forwards in the hollow. But
those who struck from horseback had still the better of the blows, until,
when this violence had continued, not yet determined, for perhaps half an
hour, the less ordered and less armoured men who were the confused
rearmost of John's corps heard a shout behind them, and looking back saw,
bearing down upon them, the banner of St George, which was borne before
the Captal, and his archers and his men-at-arms charging with the lance.
Small as was the force of that charge, it came unexpectedly from the rear,
and pr