It is evident on the face of it that the detail of the retreat was not invented. Everyone is agreed that the rhymed chronicle of the _Chandos Herald_ does not carry the same authority as prose contemporary work. It is not meant to. It is a literary effort rather than a record. But there would be no reason for inventing such a point as the beginning of a retreat before an action--not a very glorious or dramatic proceeding--and the mere mention of such a local feature as the ford in Baker is clear proof that what we can put together from the two accounts is based upon an historical event and the memory of witnesses. On the other hand, the road proper ran through Nouaillé, and when you are cumbered with a number of heavy-wheeled vehicles, to avoid a road and a regular bridge and to take a bye-track across fields down a steep bank and through water would seem a very singular proceeding. Further, this track would lose all the advantages which the wood of Nouaillé gave against pursuit, and, finally, would mean the use of a passage that could not be cut, rather than one that could. Again, we know that the Black Prince when he was preparing the position on Sunday morning, covered its left flank, exactly as his father had done at Crécy ten years before, with what the Tudors called a "leaguer," or park of waggons. Further, we have a discrepancy between the story of this retreat by the ford and the known order of battle arranged the day before. In that order of battle he put in the first line, just behind his archers, who lined the hedge bounding the vineyards, a group of men-at-arms under Warwick and Oxford. He himself commanded the body just behind these, and the third or rearmost line was under the command of Salisbury and Suffolk. How are these contemporary and yet contradictory accounts to be reconciled? What was the real meaning of movement on the ford? I beg the reader to pay a very particular attention to the mechanical detail which I am here examining, because it is by criticism such as this that the truth is established in military history between vague and apparently inconsistent accounts.