mass of
contemporary mediaeval warfare.

In this opening section I will describe the great ride of Edward the Black
Prince from the Dordogne to the Loire, and show by what a march the raid
proceeded to its unexpected crisis in the final battle.

I have said that the Black Prince's object (apart from booty, which was a
main business in all these rapid darts of the time) was to draw the
pressure from the English troops in the north.

As a fact, the effort was wasted for any such purpose. Lancaster, who
commanded in the north, was already in retreat before the Black Prince had
started, but that commander in the south could not, under the conditions
of the time, learn the fact until he had set off. Further, the Black
Prince hoped, by this diversion of a raid up from the south through the
centre of France, to make it easier for King Edward, his father, to cross
over and prosecute the war in Normandy. As a fact, the King of England
never started upon that expedition, but his son thought he was about to do
so, and said as much in a letter to the Mayor of London.

The point of departure which the Black Prince chose for this dash to the
north was Bergerac upon the Dordogne, and the date upon which he broke
camp was Thursday, the 4th August 1356.

His force was an extremely small and a very mobile one; 3500
men-at-arms--that is, fully armoured gentlemen--were the nucleus of it;
2500 archers accompanied them, and it is remarkable that these archers he
_mounted_. Besides these 6000 riding men, he took with him 1000 lightly
armed foot-soldiers, and thus, with a little band of no more than 7000
combatants all told, he began the adventure. He had no intention of
risking action. It was his desire to take booty, to harry, to compel the
French king to come south in his pursuit, and when that enemy should be
close upon him, at whatever stage this might be in his own northern
progress, to turn and ride back south as rapidly as he had ridden north.
Thus he would draw the French feudal levies after him, and render what he
had been told was the forthcoming English expedition to Normandy an easy
matter, free from opposition. As things turned out, he was able to ride
north as far as the Loire before his enemy was upon him, and it gives one
an idea of the scale on which this great raid was planned, that from the
point on the Dordogne whence he started, to the point on the Loire where
he turned southward, was in a straight line no less than a