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On the following morning, Sunday, September 18, as the Prince’s weary company resumed march just below Poitiers, his scouts from a crest of land saw a glitter of armor and the flutter of a thousand pennants as the French main body came into view. Knowing he was overtaken and battle now unavoidable, the Prince drew up his forces in the most favorable site he could find, on a wooded slope edged by vineyards and hedges and by a stream meandering through marshy land. Beyond the stream was a wide field traversed by a narrow road. The place was about two miles southeast of Poitiers.

Confident of victory in his superior strength, King Jean was held back from attack by Cardinal Talleyrand, who arrived with a great company of clerics to beg him to keep Sunday’s “Truce of God” until next morning while allowing the Cardinal another chance to mediate. At a war council in the King’s pavilion of scarlet silk, Marshal d’Audrehem and others ardent for battle, and conscious of the threat of the Duke of Lancaster at their rear, urged no delay. Against their advice, the King fatally agreed to the Cardinal’s plea for delay. A proposal by Geoffrey de Charny for an arranged combat of 100 champions on each side was rejected by his companions lest it exclude too many from combat, glory, and ransoms. If either immediate battle or Charny’s proposal had been adopted, the ultimate outcome might have been different.

When Cardinal Talleyrand hastened back to the English camp, he found the Prince was now amenable to, even anxious for, any arrangement that would get him out of danger with honor and spoils intact. Edward offered to restore free of ransom all prisoners he had taken during the two campaigns and all places he had occupied, and to agree to non-belligerency for seven years, during which he would pledge not to take up arms against the King of France. He even offered, according to the Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois, to yield Calais and Guînes, though he certainly lacked the authority for such a surrender. His extraordinary concessions indicate his sense of a desperate situation and the realization that he could be starved out if the French chose to surround and invest him. Or, knowing that so inglorious a choice by the French was unlikely, he may have been playing for time to complete preparation of his archers’ positions. This his men were already engaged in doing, and throughout the day of parleys they continued entrenching and setting up palisades.

King Jean agreed to consider the proposal. Cardinal Talleyrand and his clerics hurried back and forth on their mules, and the Prince’s chief knights came under safe-conduct to parley in person. Hardly a battle of the endless war, except in Brittany, was not preceded by efforts to stop it that never succeeded. Arrogant in his confidence of victory, Jean accepted the offer on condition that the Prince of Wales would surrender himself and 100 of his knights as prisoners of the King of France. Such humiliation the Prince resolutely refused, having meanwhile improved his position among the woods and behind hedges. While Talleyrand still begged the King for the love of Christ to agree at least to a truce until Christmas, the day of parleys was over. The French council of war reconvened to determine a plan of attack.

Marshal Clermont advised blockade, the very action the Prince had feared. Rather than the folly of attacking the English in their protected position, he said the French should encamp around them and when they had no more food “they would depart from that place.” This was the obvious and sensible course to adopt, but the dictates of chivalry forbade it. Met with scorn and fierce dispute by Marshal d’Audrehem, Clermont’s proposal was rejected. Three knights who had reconnoitered the English lines came in to report that the only access to the enemy was a narrow passage permitting no more than four abreast to ride through. On the advice of Sir William Douglas, a Scot experienced against the English who was acting