The northern operations in 1356 sink into insignificance when compared with the exploits of the Black Prince in the south.  After the capture of Perigueux, there had been some idea of the prince making a northward movement and joining hands with Lancaster on the Loire.  When Lancaster retired from Verneuil, however, the Black Prince was still in the valley of the Dordogne.  Even when all was ready, attacks on the Gascon duchy compelled him to divert a large portion of his army for the defence of his own frontiers.  Not until August 9 was he able to advance from Perigueux to Brantome into hostile territory.  It was a month too late to co-operate with Lancaster, and the 7,000 men, who followed his banners, were in equipment rather prepared for a raid than for a systematic conquest.

Edward’s outward march was in a generally northerly direction.  Leaving Limoges on his right, he crossed the Vienne lower down the stream, and thence he led his troops over the Creuse at Argenton and over the Indre at Chateauroux.  When he traversed the Cher at Vierzon, his followers rejoiced that they had at last got out of the limits of the ancient duchy of Guienne and were invading the actual kingdom of France.  On penetrating beyond the Cher into the melancholy flats of the Sologne, the prince encountered the first serious resistance.  He then turned abruptly to the west, and chased the enemy into the strong castle of Romorantin, which he captured on September 3.  There he heard that John of France, who had gathered together a huge force, was holding the passages over the Loire.  Edward marched to meet the enemy, and on September 7 reached the neighbourhood of Tours, where he tarried in his camp for three days.  But the few bridges were destroyed or strongly guarded, and the men-at-arms found it quite impossible to make their way over the broad and swift Loire.  Moreover the news came that John had crossed the river near Blois, and was hurrying southwards.  Thereupon the Black Prince turned in the same direction, seeing in this southward march his best chance of getting to close quarters.  The French host was enormously the superior in numbers, but after Morlaix, Mauron, and Crecy, mere numerical disparity weighed but lightly on an English commander.

For some days the armies marched in the same direction in parallel lines, neither knowing very clearly the exact position of the other.  On September 14 Edward reached Chatelherault on the Vienne.  His troops were weary and war-worn, and his transport inordinately swollen by spoils.  He rested two days at Chatelherault, but was again on the move on hearing that the enemy was at Chauvigny, situated some twenty miles higher up the Vienne.  Edward at once started in pursuit, only to find that the French had retired before him to Poitiers, eighteen miles due west of Chauvigny.  Careless of his convoy, he hurried across country in the hope of catching the elusive enemy, but was only in time to fight a