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).

He came out over the edge of the hill, just before the mass of the French
vanguard had got home, and when only the front of it had reached the hedge
and was beginning the hand-to-hand struggle. He put such archers as he had
had with his escort somewhat in front of the line of the hedge, and with
their fire unexpectedly and immediately enfiladed all that mass of the
French infantry, which expected no danger from such a quarter, and was
pressing forward through the v