Poitiers

The pace and method with which all this early part of the business was conducted in the first three weeks of August may be judged by the fact that, measured along the roads the Black Prince followed, he covered between Bergerac and Argenton just on a hundred and eighty miles, and he did it in just under eighteen marching days. In other words, he kept to a fairly regular ten miles a day, and slowly rolled up an increasing loot without fatiguing his horses or his men.

From Argenton, which he thus reached quite unweakened on the 21st of August, he made Châteauroux (rather more than eighteen miles off, but not nineteen by the great road) in two days, reaching it on the 23rd. Thence he turned still more to the eastward, and passed by Issoudun towards Bourges. This last excursion or "elbow" in the road was less strategically motiveless than most of the march; for the Prince had had news that some French force under the son of the French king was lying at Bourges, and to