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 Alen?on 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.
Jeanne herself made use of those spurs concerning which she had enquired,and carried away by the passion of battle,followed in the pursuit,we are told,until she met a Frenchman brutally ill-using a prisoner whom he had taken,upon which the Maid,indignant,flung herself from her horse,and,seating herself on the ground beside the unfortunate Englishman,took his bleeding head upon her lap and,sending for a priest,made his departure from life at least as easy as pity and spiritual consolation could make it on such a disastrous field.In all the records there is no mention of any actual fighting on her part.She stands in the thick of the flying arrows with her banner,exposing herself to every danger;in moments of alarm,when her forces seem flagging,she seizes and places a ladder against the wall for an assault,and climbs the first as some say;but we never see her strike a blow.On the banks of the Loire the fate of the mail-clad Glasdale,hopeless in the strong stream underneath the ruined bridge,brought tears to her eyes,and now all the excitement of the pursuit vanished in an instant from her mind,when she saw the English man-at-arms dying without the succour of the Church.Pity was always in her heart;she was ever on the side of the angels,though an angel of war and not of peace.
It is perhaps because the numbers engaged were so few that this flight or "Chasse de Patay,"has not taken a more important place in the records of French historians.In general it is only by means of Fontenoy that the /amour propre/of the French nation defends itself against the overwhelming list of battles in which the English have had the better of it.But this was probably the most complete victory that has ever been gained over the stubborn enemy whom French tactics are so seldom able to touch;and the conquerors were purely French without any alloy of alien arms,except a few Scots,to help them.The entire campaign on the Loire was one of triumph for the French arms,and of disaster for the English.They--it is perhaps a point of national pride to admit it frankly--were as well beaten as heart of Frenchman could desire,beaten not only in the result,but in the conduct of the campaign,in heart and in courage,in skill and in genius.There is no reason in the world why it should not be admitted.But it was not the French generals,not even Dunois,who secured these victories.It was the young peasant woman,the dauntless Maid,who underneath the white mantle of her inspiration,miraculous indeed,but not so miraculous as this,had already developed the genius of a soldier,and who in her simplicity,thinking nothing but of her "voices"and the counsel they gave her,was already the best general of them all.
When Talbot stood before the French generals,no less a person than Alen?on himself is reported to have made a remark to him,of that ungenerous kind which we call in feminine language "spiteful,"and which is not foreign to the habit of that great nation."You did not think this morning what would have happened to you before sunset,"said the Duc d'Alen?on to the prisoner."It is the fortune of war,"replied the English chief.