Upon the next morning, that of Sunday the 18th of September, broken as the force was with fatigue, it was marshalled again for the march--but no more than a mile or two was asked of it. Edward had scouted forward upon the morning, and discovered, just in front of the little town of Nouaillé and to the northward of the wood that covers that little town, a position which, if it were necessary to stand, would give him the opportunity for a defensive action. That he intended any such action we may doubt in the light of what followed. It was certainly not to his advantage to do so. The French by occupying Poitiers had left his way to the south free, but the extreme weariness of his force and the possibility that the French might strike suddenly were both present in his mind. He wisely prepared for either alternative of action or retreat, and carefully prepared the position he had chosen. For its exact nature, I must refer my reader to the next section, but the general conditions of the place are proper to the interest of our present matter. The main business, it must be remembered, upon which the Prince's mind was concentrated was still his escape to the south. He must expect the French advance upon him to come down by the shortest road to any position he had prepared, even if he did not intend, or only half intended, to stand there: and that position was therefore fixed astraddle of the road which leads from Poitiers to Nouaillé. Now, just behind--that is, to the south of--this position runs in a tortuous course through a fairly sharp[2] little valley a stream called the Miosson. It formed a sufficient obstacle to check pursuit for some appreciable time. There was only one bridge across it, at Nouaillé itself, which he could destroy when his army had passed; and the line of it was strengthened by woods upon either side of the stream. The Black Prince, therefore, must be judged (if we collate all the evidence) to have looked forward to a general plan offering him two alternatives. Either the French would advance at once and press him. In which case he would be compelled to take his chance of an action against what were by this time far superior numbers; and in that case he had a good prepared position, which will shortly be described, upon which to meet them. Or they would give him time to file away southward, in which case the neighbouring Miosson, with its ravine and its woods, would immediately, at the very beginning of the march, put an obstacle between him and his pursuer; especially as he had two crossings, a ford, and a bridge some way above it, and he could cut the bridge the moment he had crossed it. Finally, if (as was possible) a combination of these two alternatives should present itself, he had but to depend upon his prepared position for its rearguard to hold during just the time that would permit the main force to make the passage of the Miosson, not two miles away.