When the two armies were close to one another, on the platform of Maupertuis, two leagues to the north of Poitiers, two legates from the pope came hurrying up from that town, with instructions to negotiate peace between the Kings of France, England, and Navarre.

John consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours.

The Prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by forces very much superior to his own,--for he had but eight or ten thousand men,--offered to restore to the King of France "all that he had conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the prisoners that he and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven whole years, he would bear arms no more against the King of France; "but King John and his council would not accept anything of the sort, saying that "the prince and a hundred of his knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in the hands of the King of France." Neither the Prince of Wales nor Chandos had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand: "God forbid," said Chandos, "that we should go without a fight! If we be taken or discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms, and in so great a host, we shall incur no blame; and if the day be for us, and fortune be pleased to consent thereto, we shall be the most honored folk in the world." The battle took place on the 19th of September, 1356, in the morning.

There is no occasion to give the details of it here, as was done but lately in the case of Crecy; we should merely have to tell an almost perfectly similar story.

The three battles which, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century, were decisive as to the fate of France, to wit, Crecy, on the 26th of August, 1346; Poictiers, on the 19th of September, 1356; and Azincourt, on the 25th of October, 1415, considered as historical events, were all alike, offering a spectacle of the same faults and the same reverses, brought about by the same causes.