A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [97]
It had no cohesion. The great seigneurs came at their own time, many late for the rendezvous, each with his own troop of 50, 100, or 150 under his own banner, and with his own household and baggage train and gold and silver vessels and plate for turning into ready cash when needed. The provisions of the ordinance of 1351 for discipline and order had borne few results. Owing to a quarrel over renewed taxation, bourgeois support was disaffected, causing the towns to withdraw their contingents. Froissart, on the other hand, reports that Jean dismissed the bourgeois forces when he crossed the Loire, “which was madness in him and in those who advised him.”
With the might of France assembled, Jean was confident he could force the Prince back into Aquitaine, even back to England. Between September 8 and 13 the French army crossed the Loire at Orléans, Blois, and other points and pushed south in pursuit of the Anglo-Gascons. On September 12 the Black Prince was at Montbazon, five miles south of Tours, where he was met by the papal legates who had been endeavoring to make peace since early in the year. Besides writing to the Kings of England and France and to leading nobles of the two countries, urging them to negotiate, the Pope had dispatched the two cardinals in person to try to halt the hostilities.
The chief of the two was the aristocratic Cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord, a prelate baldonzoso e superbo (proud and haughty), as Villani called him. He was a son of the Count of Périgord and of the beautiful Countess reputed to have been Pope Clement V’s mistress. At the age of six, perhaps too early to have a religious calling but not its income, he had been given the Pope’s permission to receive the clerical tonsure and therefore the right to hold ecclesiastical benefices. A bishop at twenty-three, a cardinal at thirty, he had held at one time or another nine English benefices in London, York, Lincoln, and Canterbury, making him a principal target of English resentment.
From Cardinal Talleyrand, Prince Edward learned that the King of France counted on intercepting him and was preparing for pitched battle on September 14, and that the French army was daily enlarging as new units arrived. Though the Prince was not anxious to risk battle against fresh and superior numbers, he nevertheless rejected Talleyrand’s proposal to negotiate a truce, perhaps because he was overconfident of being able to elude the enemy. The French were pushing hard, intending to outflank the Prince at Poitiers, where they would get across the road to Bordeaux and cut off his retreat. For four days more the armies continued on the march without making contact, the English barely ten or twelve miles ahead, the French gradually closing the gap.
On September 17 at a farm called La Chaboterie, three miles west of Poitiers, a French party led by Raoul de Coucy, Sire de Montmirail, uncle of Enguerrand VII and reputed one of the bravest knights of his time, sighted an English reconnaissance unit, and on its own initiative galloped to the attack. Whether Enguerrand was in the party is unrecorded, or even whether he was with the host. The domain of Coucy must certainly have sent its contingent, unless this was with the forces in Normandy opposing Lancaster. In the clash that now occurred, Raoul dashed so far forward that he reached the Prince’s banner-bearer, fighting valiantly. Under the ardor of the French assault, the Anglo-Gascons reeled back, yet inexplicably, though they were far outnumbered, they recovered and overpowered the French. Many were killed and Raoul was captured, though ransomed soon afterward. Like so much else that happened at Poitiers, the outcome at La Chaboterie is difficult to explain.
Greedy for ransoms from the skirmish, the Anglo-Gascons pursued with such vigor that they were drawn three leagues from the field, with the result that the Prince, in order to rally and reassemble his forces, had to halt where he