stood upon the defensive
against a feudal cavalry charge unshaken, and he was trained by his
experience and instruction to know that if he kept his line unbroken, the
cavalry charge would never get home. That is the supreme tactical factor
of the Plantagenet successes of the Hundred Years' War.

PART VI

THE RESULTS OF THE BATTLE

The immediate results of the victory of Poitiers consisted, first, in the
immensely increased prestige which it gave to the House of Plantagenet
throughout Europe.

Next, we must reckon the local, though ephemeral, effect upon the opinion
of Aquitaine, through which the Black Prince was now free to retreat at
his ease towards Bordeaux and the secure territories of Gascony.

But though these results were the most immediate, and though the victory
of one monarch over the other was the most salient aspect of the victory
for contemporaries, as it is for us, there was another element which we
must particularly consider because it illustrates the difference between
the political conditions of the fourteenth century and of our own time.

The real point of the success was the capture of the king's person. The
importance of the action lay, of course, to some extent, in the prestige
it gave to the Black Prince personally; though that point was lost a very
few years afterwards in the subsequent decline of the Plantagenet power in
the south. In so far as an action in those days could carry a _national_
effect--that is, could be regarded by distant civilian populations as
proof of strength or weakness in contrasting races and societies--Poitiers
had not even the claim of Crecy; for it was not principally an archers'
but a knights' battle, and the knights were mainly the gentry of the South
of France, while those who had been broken by the only cavalry movement of
the engagement were not even French knights, but levies of German,
Spanish, and other origin. But the capture of the King of France at that
particular moment of chivalry, that last fermentation of a feudal society
which was reaching its term, had a vast positive effect, as well as an
almost incalculable moral effect.

There is nothing in modern times to which such an accident can be
accurately paralleled. Perhaps the capture of the capital city would be
the nearest thing; but there is this grave difference between them, that
the capture of the modern capital must mean prolonged and decisive
success in war, whereas the capture of Joh