part of the pursuit, but we must presume that he could not yet
risk an engagement. The town of Poitiers was everything to him. There he
would find provisions and munition, some considerable body of trained men,
and the possibility of levying many thousands more. It was a secure
rallying point upon which to block the Black Prince's march to the south,
or from which to sally out and intercept his march. But when John found
himself in La Haye upon Wednesday the 14th, a day's march behind Edward's
command, he could not take the direct line for Poitiers because that very
command intercepted him. He knew that it had taken the road for
Chatellerault. He determined, therefore, by an exceptionally rapid
progress, to march _round_ his enemy by the east, to get down to
Chauvigny, and from that point to turn westward and reach Poitiers. It was
a risk, but it was the only course open to him. Had the Black Prince
pursued his march instead of waiting at Chatellerault, John's plan would
have failed, prompt as its execution was; but the Black Prince's delay
gave him his opportunity.

From La Haye to Chauvigny by the crossroads that lead directly southward
is a matter of thirty miles. John covered this in two days. Leaving La
Haye upon the morning of Thursday the 15th, he brought his force into
Chauvigny upon the 16th, Friday. He left, no doubt, a certain proportion
delayed upon the road, but he himself, with the bulk of the army,
completed the distance.

While, therefore, the Black Prince was delaying all that Thursday and
Friday in Chatellerault, John was passing right in front and beyond him
some eight miles to the eastward; and on the Saturday, the 17th, while the
Black Prince was leading his column through the triangle between the
rivers, John was marching due west from Chauvigny to Poitiers by the great
road through St Julien, yet another fifteen miles and more, in the third
day of his great effort. The head of the column, with the king himself, we
must presume to have ridden through the gate of Poitiers before or about
noon, but the last contingents were spread out along the road behind him
when, in that same morning or early afternoon of Saturday, the outriders
of the Anglo-Gascon force appeared upon the fields to the north.

It was an encounter as sudden as it was dramatic. The countryside at this
point consists in wide, open fields, the plough-lands of a plateau which
rises about one hundred feet above the level of the rivers