Although, as ever, anxious to command the attack, she allowed La Hire to lead the van.  His orders were to prevent the enemy advancing, and to keep him on the defensive till the entire French force could reach the ground.  La Hire’s attack proved so impetuous that the English rearguard broke and fled back in confusion.  Talbot, who had not had time, so sudden and unexpected had been the French attack, to place his archers and defend the ground, as was his wont, with palisades and stockades, turned on the enemy like a lion at bay.  Fastolfe now came up to Talbot’s succour; but his men were met by the rout of the rearguard of the broken battle, and the fugitives caused a panic among the new-comers.  In vain did Sir John attempt to rally his men and face the enemy.  After a hopeless struggle, he too was borne off by the tide of fugitives.  One of these, an officer named Waverin, states the English loss that day to have amounted to two thousand slain and two hundred taken, but Dunois gives a higher figure, and places the English killed at four thousand.

[Illustration:  RHEIMS CATHEDRAL—­WEST DOOR.]

This battle of Patay was the most complete defeat that the English had met with during the whole length of that war of a hundred years between France and England; and, to add to its completeness, the hitherto undefeated Talbot was himself amongst the taken.

‘You little thought,’ said Alencon to him, when brought before him, ‘that this would have happened to you!’

‘’Tis the fortune of war,’ was the old hero’s laconic answer.

The effects of this victory of Patay on the fortunes of the English in France were greater than the deliverance of Orleans, and far more disastrous, for the French had now for the first time beaten in the open field their former victors.  The once invincible were now the vanquished, and the great names of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt had lost their glamour.  When the news was known that the English under Talbot and Fastolfe had been beaten, and that the great commander for so many years the terror of France had been made a prisoner, and that these mighty deeds had been accomplished by the advanced guard of the French army under the inspiration of the Maid of Orleans, the whole country felt that the knell of doom of the English occupation in France had rung.

There is an anecdote relating to Joan of Arc at Patay that should find a place here.  After the battle, and while the prisoners were being marched off by the French, Joan was distressed to see the brutality with which those captives unable to pay a ransom were treated.  One poor fellow she saw mortally wounded by his captors.  Flinging herself from her saddle, she knelt by the side of the dying man, and, having sent for a priest to shrive him, she remained by the poor fellow’s side and attended to him to the end, and by her tender ministrations helped him to pass more gently over the dark valley of death.