A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [100]
Warned of the assault, the Prince had halted the initial departure, reassembled, and in a fiery oration called upon his knights to fight for their King’s claim to the French crown, for the great honor of victory, for rich spoils and eternal fame. He told them to trust in God and obey commands.
Attacking from the flank, Audrehem’s squadron was caught and crushed under the piercing arrows of the archers, while Clermont, joined by the Constable, charged in the frontal attack he so mistrusted and was beaten back under flights of arrows so thick they darkened the air. Shooting from sheltered positions protected by dismounted knights and foot soldiers, the archers, at the express order of the Earl of Oxford, aimed for the horses’ unarmored rumps. Stumbling and falling, the horses went down under their riders or reared back among those who followed, “making great slaughter upon their own masters.” It was the frenzy of Crécy over again. Fallen knights could not raise their horses or rise themselves. In the melee that followed, amid call of trumpets, shouted battle cries, and screams of wounded men and horses, both Clermont and the Constable were killed, Audrehem was captured, and the greater part of the picked knights killed or taken prisoner.
Already the Dauphin’s battalion was advancing on foot into the havoc. With Charles in the front lines were his two brothers, seventeen-year-old Louis, Duc d’Anjou, and sixteen-year-old Jean, future Duc de Berry. Tangled in the confusion of riderless horses and raging combat, many of the battalion fought on savagely, hand to hand, stabbing with shortened lances and hacking with battle-ax and sword. But with no hardened leader in command, only a boy witnessing debacle, the unit began to fall back. A shout of triumph from enemy throats signaled seizure of the Dauphin’s standard. Whether on order of the King to save his sons, as later claimed, or at the decision of the four lords appointed as the princes’ guardians, the greater part of the battalion withdrew from the field, falling back upon and infecting with failure the Duc d’Orléans’ battalion. Instead of coming in with fresh force to give the hard-pressed English no pause, which at this stage might well have turned the tide, Orléans’ battalion, swept up in the retreat, fled without striking a blow, retrieved its waiting horses, and galloped for the city.
“Advance,” cried the King upon this successive disaster, “for I will recover the day or die on the field!” With Oriflamme flying and his youngest son, fourteen-year-old Philip, future Duke of Burgundy, at his father’s side, this largest of the three battalions, awkward on foot in their iron cocoons, marched upon the bloody field. “Alack! We are undone!” cried an English knight, seeing them come. “You lie, miserable coward,” stormed the Prince, “if you so blaspheme as to say that I, alive, may be conquered!” Each side fell upon the other with the strength and ferocity of desperation. Although a battle’s outcome, it was said, could be told by the time the sixth arrow was loosed, now when the English archers had emptied their sheaves the issue wavered. In the pause before the new French assault, the archers had retrieved arrows from the wounds and dead bodies of the fallen; others now hurled stones and fought with knives. Had the third French assault been mounted, it is possible that at this stage, against a battered opponent, it might have prevailed.
The battle entered its seventh hour, a tossing mass of separate groups hammering each other, oblivious of any formation, except for the Prince and Chandos still holding command