themselves were in a desperate plight.  Many were wounded, and all were weary, especially the men-at-arms encased in heavy plate mail.  The flight of Orleans gave them a short respite:  but they soon had to face the assault of the rear battle of the enemy, gallantly led by the king.  “No battle,” we are told, “ever lasted so long.  In former fights men knew, by the time that the fourth or the sixth arrow had been discharged, on which side victory was to be.  But here a single archer shot with coolness a hundred arrows, and still neither side gave way."[1] At last the bowmen had only the arrows they snatched from the bodies of the dead and dying, and when these were exhausted, they were reduced to throwing stones at their foes, or to struggle in the melee, with sword and buckler, side by side with the men-at-arms.  But the Black Prince from his hill had watched the course of the encounter, and at the right moment, when his friends were almost worn out, marched down, and made the fight more even.  Before joining himself in the engagement, Edward had ordered the Captal de Buch, the best of his Gascons, to lead a little band, under cover of the hill, round the French position and attack the enemy in the rear.  At first the Anglo-Gascon army was discouraged, thinking that the captal had fled, but they still fought on.  Suddenly the captal and his men assaulted the French rear.  This settled the hard fought day.  Surrounded on every side, the French perished in their ranks or surrendered in despair.  King John was taken prisoner, fighting desperately to the last, and with him was captured his youngest son Philip, the future Duke of Burgundy, a boy of twelve, whose epithet of “the Bold” was earned by his precocious valour in the struggle.  Before nightfall the English host had sole possession of the field, and the best fought, best directed, and most important of the battles of the war ended in the complete triumph of the invaders.

    [1] Eulogium Hist., iii., 225.

As after Crecy, the victors were too weak to continue the campaign.  Next day they began their slow march back to their base.  On October 2 Edward reached Libourne, and a few days later conducted the captive king into the Gascon capital.  They were soon followed by the Cardinal Talleyrand on whose insistence the prince agreed to resume negotiations.  On March 23, 1357, a truce to last until 1359 was arranged at Bordeaux.  On May 24 the prince led the vanquished king through the streets of London.

The English, weary of the burden of war, strove to use their advantages to procure a stable peace.  Though Charles of Blois was released, he was muzzled for the future, and when John joined his ally David Bruce in the Tower, it was the obvious game of Edward to exact terms from his prisoners.  David’s spirit was broken, and he was glad to accept a treaty sealed in October, 1357, at Berwick, by which he was released for a ransom of 100,000 marks, to be paid