nisation or what not, you desired to
keep your vanguard still your vanguard in retreat, as it was on the field,
your middle body still your middle body on the march, and what was your
rearguard on the field still your rearguard in the long column whereby you
would leave that field, the manoeuvre by which you would maintain this
order would be filing off by the left; that is, ordering A to form fours
and turn from a line into a column, facing towards the point E, and,
having done so, to march off in the direction of X. You would order B to
act in the same fashion next. When A and B had got clear of you and had
reached, say, F, you would make C form fours and follow after; and when C
had marched away so far as to leave things clear for D, the last remaining
line, you would make D in its turn form fours and close up the column.

Now, suppose the Black Prince had been certain on that Monday morning that
there would be no attack, nor even any pursuit. Suppose that he were so
absolutely certain as to let him dispense with a rearguard--then he might
have drawn off in the second of the two fashions I have mentioned. Warwick
and Oxford (A and B) would have gone first, C (the Black Prince, in the
centre) would have gone next, and Salisbury, D, would have closed the line
of the retreat. This would have been the slowest method he could have
chosen for getting off the field, it would have had no local tactical
advantage whatsoever, and to adopt such a method in a hurried departure at
dawn from the neighbourhood of a larger force with whom one had been
treating for capitulation the day before, would be a singular waste of
time in any case. But, at any rate, it would be physically possible.

What is quite impossible is that such a conversion and retirement should
have been attempted; for we know that a strong rearguard was left, and
held the entrenchments continuously.

To leave the field in the second fashion I have described is
mathematically equivalent to breaking up your rearguard and ceasing to
maintain it for the covering of your retreat. It is possible only if you
do not intend to have a rearguard at all to cover your retirement, because
you think you do not need it. As a fact, we know that all during the
movement, whatever it was, a great body of troops remained on the field
not moving, and watching the direction from which the French might attack.
So even if there was a beginning of retirement, a strong rearguard was
maintai