It is curious to hear that in that great plain of the Beauce, so flat, so fertile, with nothing but vines and cornfields now against the horizon, the two armies at last almost stumbled upon each other by accident, in the midst of the brushwood by which the country was wildly overgrown.  The story is that a stag roused by the French scouts rushed into the midst of the English, who were advantageously placed among the brushwood to arrest the enemy on their march; the wild creature terrified and flying before an army blundered into the midst of the others, was fired at and thus betrayed the vicinity of the foe.  The English had no time to form or set up their usual defences.  They were so taken by surprise that the rush of the French came without warning, with a suddenness which gave it double force.  La Hire made the first attack as leader of the van, and there was thus emulation between the two parties, which should be first upon the enemy.  When Alencon asked Jeanne what was to be the issue of the fight, she said calmly, “Have you good spurs?” “What!  You mean we shall turn our backs on our enemies?” cried her questioner.  “Not so,” she replied.  “The English will not fight, they will fly, and you will want good spurs to pursue them.”  Even this somewhat fantastic prophecy put heart into the men, who up to this time had been wont to fly and not to fight.

And this was what happened, strange as it may seem.  Talbot himself was with the English forces, and many a gallant captain beside:  but the men and their leaders were alike broken in spirit and filled with superstitious terrors.  Whether these were the forces of hell or those of heaven that came against them no one could be sure; but it was a power beyond that of earth.  The dazzled eyes which seemed to see flights of white butterflies fluttering about the standard of the Maid, could scarcely belong to one who thought her a servant of the enemy of men.  But she was a pernicious witch to Talbot, and strangely enough to Richemont also, who was on her own side.  The English force was thrown into confusion, partly, we may suppose, from the broken ground on which they were discovered, the undergrowth of the wood which hid both armies from each other.  But soon that disorder turned into the wildest panic and flight.  It would almost seem as if between these two hereditary opponents one must always be forced into this miserable part.  Not all the chivalry of France had been able to prevent it at the long string of battles in which they were, before the revelation of the Maid; and not the desperate and furious valour of Talbot could preserve his English force from the infection now.  Fastolfe, with the philosophy of an old soldier, deciding that it was vain to risk his men when the field was already lost, rode off with all his band.  Talbot fought with desperation, half mad with rage to be thus a second time overcome by so unlikely an adversary, and finally was taken prisoner; while the whole force behind him fled and were killed in their flight, the plain being scattered with their dead bodies.