On the other hand, the road proper ran through Nouaille, and when you are
cumbered with a number of heavy-wheeled vehicles, to avoid a road and a
regular bridge and to take a bye-track across fields down a steep bank
and through water would seem a very singular proceeding. Further, this
track would lose all the advantages which the wood of Nouaille gave
against pursuit, and, finally, would mean the use of a passage that could
not be cut, rather than one that could.

Again, we know that the Black Prince when he was preparing the position on
Sunday morning, covered its left flank, exactly as his father had done at
Crecy ten years before, with what the Tudors called a "leaguer," or park
of waggons.

Further, we have a discrepancy between the story of this retreat by the
ford and the known order of battle arranged the day before. In that order
of battle he put in the first line, just behind his archers, who lined the
hedge bounding the vineyards, a group of men-at-arms under Warwick and
Oxford. He himself commanded the body just behind these, and the third or
rearmost line was under the command of Salisbury and Suffolk.

How are these contemporary and yet contradictory accounts to be
reconciled? What was the real meaning of movement on the ford?

I beg the reader to pay a very particular attention to the mechanical
detail which I am here examining, because it is by criticism such as this
that the truth is established in military history between vague and
apparently inconsistent accounts.

If you are in command of a force such as that indicated upon the following
plan, in which A and B together form your front line, C your second, and D
your third, all three facing in the direction of the arrow, and expecting
an attack from that direction; and if, after having drawn up your men so,
you decide there is to be no attack, and determine to retreat in the
direction of X, your most natural plan will be to file off down the line
towards X, first with your column D, to be followed by your column C, with
A and B bringing up the rear. And this would be all the more consonant
with your position, from the fact that the very men A and B, whom you had
picked out as best suited to take the first shock of an action, had an
action occurred, would also in the retreat form your rearguard, and be
ready to fight pursuers should a pursuit develop and press you. That is
quite clear.

[Illustration]

Now, if, for reasons of internal orga