A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [99]
At sunrise on Monday, September 19, in bustle and clamor of arms with trumpets sounding, the French host was drawn up behind the mounted spearhead in the usual three battalions. They were deployed one behind the other, presumably for successive shocks, but precluded by this position from aiding one another on the flank. The nineteen-year-old Dauphin, who had never fought in war before, was nominal commander of the first battalion; Philippe d’Orléans, brother of the King, aged twenty and equally a novice, commanded the second; the King himself, the third. He was accompanied by a personal guard of nineteen others dressed exactly like him in black armor and white surcoat marked with fleur-de-lys. This was a prudent if not exactly knightly precaution, since in a battle in which a sovereign engaged, the enemy would do its utmost to capture him.
“On foot! On foot!” ordered Jean, and “he put himself on foot before all.” It has been said that he took the decision to dismount in order to reduce the opportunity among his disunited forces for individual action or flight. Modern critics—for the debate has continued-have called it “suicidal folly”; others have considered it the only sensible and feasible decision because cavalry could not deploy en masse owing to the marshes, hedges, and ditches.
The knights dismounted, removed spurs, cut off the long pointed toes of their poulaines, and shortened their lances to five feet. The Oriflamme, fork-tongued scarlet banner of the Kings of France, was awarded to Geoffrey de Charny, “the perfect knight,” to carry. Legend derived the banner from Charlemagne, who was said to have carried it to the Holy Land in response to an angel’s prophecy that a knight armed with a golden lance from whose tip flames of “great marvel” burned would deliver the land from the Saracens. Embroidered with golden flames that gave it its name, the banner had been adopted by the monarchy from the Abbey of St. Denis along with the battle cry “Montjoie-St. Denis!” As the signal for advance or rally, the war cry signified allegiance to a particular lord. On that morning the King announced the royal cry as the cry for all. “You have cursed the English,” he cried to the assembled ranks of chivalry, “and longed to measure swords with them. Behold them in your presence! Remember the wrongs they have done you and revenge yourselves for the losses and sufferings they have inflicted on France. I promise you we shall do battle with them, and God be with us!”
The Prince of Wales deployed two battalions in front for mutual support and one behind, with the archers in saw-tooth formation divided among the three. The four Earls—Warwick and Oxford, Suffolk and Salisbury—commanded the two front divisions, the Prince and Chandos the rear, with a body of 400 reserves at their side. The English had the advantage of terrain and a far greater advantage in being a coherent body, experienced together in two campaigns, professionally trained, and based on better management and organization. For overseas expeditions the English had to plan carefully and recruit selectively the ablest and strongest fighting material.
Yet even now, perhaps because of divided opinion among his advisors, the Prince essayed a movement to get away toward the road to Bordeaux. “For on that day,” in the words of Chandos Herald, “he did not wish for combat, I tell you true, but wished without fail to avoid battle entirely.” The movement of baggage wagons behind the hill, revealed by the fluttering pennants of their advance guard, was seen by Marshal d’Audrehem, who shouted, “Ha! Pursue! Charge, ere the English are lost