so great a victory; the other were stimulated by the shame
of quitting the field to an enemy so much inferior: but the three German
generals, together with the duke of Athens, constable of France, falling
in battle, that body of cavalry gave way, and left the king himself
exposed to the whole fury of the enemy. The ranks were every moment
thinned around him: the nobles fell by his side one after another:
his son, scarce fourteen years of age, received a wound, while he was
fighting valiantly in defence of his father: the king himself, spent
with fatigue and overwhelmed by numbers, might easily have been slain;
but every English gentleman, ambitious of taking alive the royal
prisoner, spared him in the action, exhorted him to surrender, and
offered him quarter: several, who attempted to seize him, suffered for
their temerity. He still cried out, "Where is my cousin, the prince
of Wales?" and seemed unwilling to become prisoner to any person of
inferior rank. But being told that the prince was at a distance on the
field, he threw down his gauntlet, and yielded himself to Dennis de
Morbec, a knight of Arras, who had been obliged to fly his country for
murder. His son was taken with him.[*]

* Rymer, vol vi. p. 72, 154. Froissard, liv. i. chap. 164.

The prince of Wales, who had been carried away in pursuit of the flying
enemy, finding the field entirely clear, had ordered a tent to be
pitched, and was reposing himself after the toils of battle; inquiring
still with great anxiety concerning the fate of the French monarch.
He despatched the earl of Warwick to bring him intelligence; and that
nobleman came happily in time to save the life of the captive prince
which was exposed to greater danger than it had been during the heat
of the action. The English had taken him by violence from Morbec: the
Gascons claimed the honor of detaining the royal prisoner; and some
brutal soldiers, rather than yield the prize to their rivals, had
threatened to put him to death.[*] Warwick overawed both parties, and
approaching the king with great demonstrations of respect, offered to
conduct him to the prince's tent.

Here commences the real and truly admirable heroism of Edward; for
victories are vulgar things in comparison of that moderation and
humanity displayed by a young prince of twenty-seven years of age, not
yet cooled from the fury of battle, and elated by as extraordinary and
as unexpected success as had ever crowned the arms