his progress
southward advanced, and we shall see that his ultimate entry into the town
of Poitiers did considerably reinforce him. But at no time before the
battle which decided this campaign was John in any important numerical
superiority over his enemy, and even in that battle the superiority had
nothing of the dramatic disproportion which has rendered the field of
Crecy famous.

John marched down the Loire straight on Tours. He reached Amboise, twenty
miles off, in two days, coming under that town and castle upon Monday the
12th of September, twenty-four hours after the Black Prince had broken up
his camp in front of Tours. As it was now useless to go on to Tours, John
turned and marched due south, reaching Loches, another twenty miles away,
not in two days but in one. It was a fine forced march; and if the Black
Prince had appreciated the mobility of the foe, he would not have
committed the blunder which will be described in the next section. He
himself was marching well, but, encumbered as he was by his heavy baggage
train, he covered on the 12th and 13th just less than thirty miles, and
reached the town of La Haye des Cartes upon Tuesday the 13th, just as
John, with his mixed force of Frenchmen, Germans, and Spaniards, was
marching into Loches, twenty miles away.

On the next day, Wednesday the 14th, John made yet another of those
astonishing marches which merited a better fate than the disaster that
was to conclude them, covered the twenty miles between Loches and La Haye,
and entered the latter town just as the Black Prince was bringing his men
into Chatellerault, only fifteen miles in front of him. Both the
commanders, pursuing and pursued, had been getting remarkable work out of
their men; for even the Black Prince, though the slower of the two, had
covered forty-five miles in three days. But John in that determined
advance after him had covered forty miles in two days.

With John's entry into La Haye des Cartes and Edward's leaving that town
twenty-four hours ahead of him, we enter the curious bit of cross-marching
and conflicting purposes which may properly be called "The Preliminaries"
of the Battle of Poitiers, and it is under this title that I shall deal
with them in the next section.

[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF OPERATIONS PRECEDING THE BATTLE]

PART II

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACTION

It was, as we have seen, on the evening of Tuesday, September the 13th,
that the Black Prince with