History of the British Army (Vol.1&2). J. W. Fortescue

      THE CAMPAIGN OF 1367.

      The English archers as usual opened the engagement, and then the divisions of Chandos and du Guesclin, the two most gallant and chivalrous soldiers of their day, met in full shock. In spite of a furious resistance the English, weakened by privation, were for a moment borne back. Chandos was overthrown and went near to lose his life. But meanwhile the English archers in the flanking divisions had driven off the light horse that stood before them, and now wheeling inward enveloped du Guesclin's devoted band on both flanks. The bastard Henry strove gallantly to save the day with the second line, but the Black Prince brought up not only a second line but a third, and the battle was soon over. Then the English men-at-arms flew, as at Poitiers, to their horses, and the defeat was turned into a rout. A rapid torrent, spanned by but a single bridge, barred the retreat of the fugitives; the narrow passage was choked by the press of the flying, and thousands were taken or slain.

      This battle marks the zenith of early English military power. But the campaign was after all a failure. The ill faith of Pedro the Cruel forced the Black Prince to tax Gascony heavily for the expenses of the war; the province appealed to the King of France, and the Prince was summoned to be judged before his peers at Paris as a rebellious vassal. He shook his head ominously when he received the message. "We will go," he said, "but with helmet on head and sixty thousand men at our back." The war with France broke out anew, and petty operations were soon afoot all over the country; but now noble after noble in Aquitaine and Gascony forsook his allegiance and revolted to the French. Disaster came thick upon disaster. The Earl of Pembroke, a new commander, disdaining the help of the veteran Chandos, was defeated, and Chandos himself, while advancing to his relief, was slain in a skirmish, to the grief alike of friend and of foe. The Prince, already sickening of a mortal disease, turned in fury upon the insurgent town of Limoges, besieged it, took it, and ordered every soul in it to be put to the sword. Three thousand men, women, and children were cut down, crying "Mercy, mercy!" but the stern man, too ill to ride, looked on unmoved from his litter, till at the sight of three French knights fighting gallantly against overwhelming odds his heart softened, and he gave the word for the slaughter to cease.

      A few weeks later his little son, but six years old, the boy upon whom the great soldier had lavished all that was tender in his nature, died suddenly at Bordeaux. The blow aggravated the Prince's sickness, and the physicians ordered him to England, in the faint hope that he might get better at home. He returned, hid himself in strict seclusion in his house at Berkhampstead, and waited for the end. Meanwhile things in France went from bad to worse. A great naval defeat before Rochelle cost England the command of the sea, and with the loss of the sea Guienne and Gascony were lost likewise. An expedition under John of Gaunt landed at Calais and marched indeed to Bordeaux, but lost four-fifths of its numbers through sickness on the way. By 1374 the English possessions in France were reduced to Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne; so swiftly had victory passed away with the withdrawal of the master's hand.

      1376.

      At length, in 1376, the Prince came up to Westminster to attend, even in his sick-bed, the deliberations of Parliament. This was his last effort. Two months later, on the 8th of June, he summoned his faithful comrades to his chamber to bid them farewell, and as they filed past he thanked them for their good service and asked their pardon for that he could not reward them as he wished. Then he entreated them to be faithful to his son as they had been to himself: and they swore it, weeping like women, with all their hearts. The end came with a flash of the imperious soldier's spirit. Observing that a knight who had offended him had come in with the rest, the Prince instantly bade him begone and see his face no more; and then the noble heart cracked, and with a last ejaculation that he forgave all men as he hoped to be forgiven, the Black Prince, the hope and pride and treasure of England, sank back and died. Two months later he was buried with military pomp in the cathedral at Canterbury; and over his tomb were hung, and still hang, his helmet, his surcoat, his gauntlets, his crest, his shield, and his sword,[25] the veritable arms worn by the first great English soldier.[26] For a great soldier he was and a great commander. He could be stern and he could be merciless, but those were stern and merciless times, and the man whose last thoughts were for his comrades-in-arms was a chief who could hold men to him and a leader whom they would follow to the death. Men no longer pray for his soul in the chapel which he founded in the crypt of the cathedral; but morning and evening the voice of the trumpet, calling English soldiers to their work and dismissing them to their rest, peals forth from the barracks without and pierces faintly into the silence of the sanctuary, no unfitting requiem for the great warrior who, waiting for the sound of a louder trumpet, sleeps peacefully beneath the shadow of his shield.

      Authorities.—The principal authority for the period is of course Froissart, whose narrative has been elucidated, by the help of minor authorities, by Köhler with his usual care and pains. See his vol ii. pp. 385–523, and in particular the list of authorities on pp. 385 and 417.