Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
". . . the knights and longbowmen of Edward the Black Prince, son of English King Edward III, watched apprehensively. They were a heavily outnumbered raiding party that had done its best to avoid the battle it was now obliged to fight. . . . But when the Dauphin's men fell back to regroup, their apparent retreat panicked the battalion behind them, which fled the field. . . . Impoverished by war and racked by peasant revolt, France never raised the full money to liberate its king, and John died a prisoner of the English in 1364." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "The battle of Poitiers (1356) was one of a series of spectacular victories won by the English invaders of France, who relied on archers and dismounted men-at-arm, against the mounted knights of the French." [Cambridge Illustrated History Warfare, p. 95]