his 7000 men and his heavy train of booty had
marched into La Haye des Cartes, a small town upon the right bank of the
Creuse, somewhat above the place where that river falls into the Vienne.

His confidence that his well-mounted and light-armed troops could outmarch
his pursuers was not yet shaken; he was even prepared to imagine that he
had already shaken them off; but anyone who could have taken a general
survey of all that countryside would have discovered how ill-founded was
his belief. The great forces of the French king, coming down slantways
from the north and east, had had nearly four miles to march to his three.
Yet they were gaining on him. Edward had given the French king a day's
advance by his hesitation before Tours, and the tardiness with which he
had received news of John's crossing the Loire was another point in favour
of the French.

It was the Black Prince's business to get down on to the great road which
has been the trunk road of Western France for two thousand years, and
which leads from Paris through Chatellerault and Poitiers to Angouleme,
and so to Bordeaux. If (as he hoped) he could advance so quickly as to get
rid of the pursuit, so much the better. If he were still pressed he must
continue his rapid marching, but, at any rate, that was the road he must
take.

To the simple plan, however, of reaching Chatellerault and then merely
following the great road on through Poitiers, he must make a local
exception, for Poitiers itself contained a large population, with plenty
of trained men, munitions, and arms; and it was further, from its position
as well as from its walls, altogether too strong a place for him to think
of taking it.

The town had been from immemorial time a fortress: first tribal (and the
rallying point of the Gaulish Picts under the name of Limon); later, Roman
and Frankish. The traveller notes to-day its singular strength, standing
on the flat top and sides of its precipitous peninsula, isolated from its
plateau on every side save where a narrow neck joins it to the higher
land; it is impregnable to mere assault, half surrounded by the Clain to
the east, and on the west protected by a deep and formidable ravine.

It was absolutely necessary for the Prince not only to avoid Poitiers, but
not to pass so close to it as to give the alarm. What he proposed to do,
therefore, was to strike the great Bordeaux road at a point well south of
the city, called Les Roches, and to do this h