I have mentioned some pages back that reserve of four hundred fully-equipped men-at-arms which Edward had detached from his own body and had set about four hundred yards off, surrounding his standard. The exact spot where this reserve took up its position is marked to-day by the railway station. It overlooks (if anything can be said to "overlook" in that flat stretch) the field. It is some twelve or fifteen feet higher than the hedge at which, a couple of furlongs away, the long defence had held its own throughout that morning. The Black Prince recalled them to the main body. Having done so, he formed into one closely ordered force all the now mixed men of the three lines who were still able to go forward. John was coming on with his armoured knights on foot, their horses almost a mile away (he was bringing those men, embarrassed and weighted by their metal under the growing heat of the day, nearly double the distance which his son's men had found too much for them). Edward bade his men-at-arms mount, and his archers mounted too. It will be remembered that six men out of seven were mounted originally for the raid through Aquitaine. The fighting on foot had spared the horses. They were all available. And the teams and sumpter animals were available as well in so far as he had need of them. John's men, just coming up on foot to the opposite edge of the little dip, saw the low foot line of the Anglo-Gascons turning at a word of command into a high mounted line. But before that mounted line moved forward, Edward had a last command to give. He called for the Captal of Buch, a Gascon captain not to be despised. This man had done many things in the six weeks' course of the raid. He was a cavalry leader, great not only with his own talent, but with the political cause which he served, for of those lords under the Pyrenees he was the most resolute for the Plantagenets and against the Valois. The order Edward gave him was this: to take a little force all mounted, to make a long circuit, skirting round to the north and hiding its progress behind the spinneys and scrub-wood until he should get to the rear of the last French reserve that was coming forward, and when he had completed the circuit, to display his banner and come down upon them unexpectedly from behind. It was an exceedingly small detachment which was picked out for this service, not two hundred men all told. Rather more than half of them archers, the rest of them fully-equipped men-at-arms. Small as was this tiny contingent which the Black Prince could barely spare, it proved in the event sufficient.