History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) eBook

John Richard Green
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 343 pages of information about History of the English People, Volume II (of 8).

History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) eBook

John Richard Green
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 343 pages of information about History of the English People, Volume II (of 8).
the country full and gay, the rooms adorned with carpets and draperies, the caskets and chests full of fair jewels.  But nothing was safe from these robbers.  They, and especially the Gascons, who are very greedy, carried off everything.”  Glutted by the sack of Carcassonne and Narbonne the plunderers fell back to Bordeaux, “their horses so laden with spoil that they could hardly move.”  Worthier work awaited the Black Prince in the following year.  In the plan of campaign for 1356 it had been arranged that he should march upon the Loire, and there unite with a force under the Duke of Lancaster which was to land in Britanny and push rapidly into the heart of France.  Delays however hindered the Prince from starting from Bordeaux till July, and when his march brought him to the Loire the plan of campaign had already broken down.  The outbreak in Normandy had tempted the English Council to divert the force under Lancaster from Britanny to that province; and the Duke was now at Cherbourg, hard pressed by the French army under John.  But if its original purpose was foiled, the march of the Black Prince on the Loire served still more effectively the English cause.  His advance pointed straight upon Paris, and again as in the Crecy campaign John was forced to leave all for the protection of the capital.  Hasty marches brought the king to the Loire while Prince Edward still lay at Vierzon on the Cher.  Unconscious of John’s designs, he wasted some days in the capture of Romorantin while the French troops were crossing the Loire along its course from Orleans to Tours and John with the advance was hurrying through Loches upon Poitiers in pursuit, as he supposed, of the retreating Englishmen.  But the movement of the French army, near as it was, was unknown in the English camp; and when the news of it forced the Black Prince to order a retreat the enemy was already far ahead of him.  Edward reached the fields north of Poitiers to find his line of retreat cut off and a French army of sixty thousand men interposed between his forces and Bordeaux.

If the Prince had shown little ability in his management of the campaign, he showed tactical skill in the fight which was now forced on him.  On the nineteenth of September he took a strong position in the fields of Maupertuis, where his front was covered by thick hedges and approachable only by a deep and narrow lane which ran between vineyards.  The vineyards and hedges he lined with bowmen, and drew up his small body of men-at-arms at the point where the lane opened upon the higher plain on which he was himself encamped.  Edward’s force numbered only eight thousand men, and the danger was great enough to force him to offer in exchange for a free retreat the surrender of his prisoners and of the places he had taken, with an oath not to fight against France for seven years to come.  His offers however were rejected, and the battle opened with a charge of three hundred French knights up the narrow lane.  But the lane was soon

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History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.