The picked three hundred knights under the two French marshals spurred and charged. Small as their number was, it was crowded for the road into which the stakes of the vineyard inevitably shepherded them as they galloped forward, and, struggling to press on in that sunken way, either side of their little column was exposed to the first violent discharge of arrows from the vines. They were nearly all shot down, but that little force, whose task it had been, after all, to sacrifice their lives in making a way for their fellows, had permitted the rest of the vanguard to come to close quarters. The entanglement of the vineyard, the unexpected and overwhelming superiority of the long-bow over the cross-bow, the superior numbers of the English archers over their enemies' arbalests, made the attack a slow one, but it was pressed home. The trained infantry of the vanguard, the German mounted mercenaries, swarmed up the little slope. The front of them was already at the hedge, and was engaged in a furious hand to hand with the line defending it, the mass of the remainder were advancing up the rise, when a new turn was given to the affair by the unexpected arrival of Warwick. The waggons which that commander had been escorting had been got safely across the Miosson; the Black Prince had overlooked their safe crossing, when there came news from the plateau above that the French had appeared, and that the main force which the Black Prince had left behind him was engaged. Edward rode back at once, and joined his own particular line, which we saw just before the battle to be drawn up immediately behind the first line which guarded the hedge and the vineyard. Warwick, with excellent promptitude, did not make for Salisbury and Suffolk to reinforce their struggling thousands with his men, but took the shorter and more useful course of moving by his own left to the southern extremity of his comrade's fiercely pressed line (see frontispiece near the word "Hedge"; the curved red arrow lines indicate the return of Warwick).