Three considerable bodies of men arranged in dense formation, faced west by a little north upon the level which intervenes between the modern farm of Cardinerie and the wood of Nouaillé. These three bodies of men stood armed, one rank behind the other, and all three parallel. The first was commanded by Salisbury. It was drawn up along the hedge that bounded the vineyards, and it stretched upon either side of the lane which led and leads from Poitiers to Nouaillé. With Salisbury was Suffolk; and this first line, thus facing the hedge, the depression, and the fields beyond, from whence a French attack might develop, was certainly the largest of the three lines. The reader must conceive of the road astraddle of which this command of Salisbury's and Suffolk's stood as lying flush with the fields around, until the edge of the depression was reached, and there forming for some yards a sunken road between the vines that stood on either side of it. The reader should also remember that further to the left, and covered by the last extension of this line of men, was the second diverging lane, crossing through vineyards precisely as did the other, and sunk as the other was sunk for some yards at the crest of the little depression. It is this lane which now passes by the tile-works and leads later to the ford over the river in the valley beyond. The line thus holding the hedge, and commanded by Suffolk and Salisbury, contained the greater number of the archers, and also a large proportion of men-at-arms, dismounted, and ready to repel any French attack, should such an attack develop in the course of the morning to interfere with the retirement which Edward had planned; but as yet, in the neighbourhood of six o'clock, there was no sign of the enemy in the empty fields upon the west beyond the depression. The King of France's camp was more than two miles away, and it looked as though Edward would be able to get his whole force beyond the river without molestation. So much for what we will call the first line, for the position of which, as for that of its fellows, I must beg the reader to refer to the coloured map forming the frontispiece of this book. Immediately behind the first line so drawn up came a second line, under the command of Warwick and Oxford, but it was a much smaller body, because it had a very different task to perform. Its business was to act as an escort for certain of the waggon-loads which Edward, both on account of their value and of the difficulty of getting them up and down the banks of the steep ravine of the river behind them, had determined to send forward at the head of his retirement. This escort, then, we may call the second line. Before the retiring movement began it stood parallel to and immediately in the rear of the first line. The third line was a somewhat larger command, principally of Gascon men-at-arms under the direct leadership of the Black Prince himself.