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Battle of Patay
Hundred Years' War
Lancastrian phase (1415–1453)
The Battle of Patay (18 June 1429) was the culminating engagement of the Loire Campaign of the Hundred Years' War between the French and English in north-central France. The French cavalry inflicted a severe defeat on the English. Many of the English knights and men-at-arms on horses were able to escape but crippling losses were inflicted on the corps of veteran English longbowmen, which was not reconstituted after the battle. This victory was to the French what Agincourt was to the English. Although credited to Joan of Arc, most of the fighting was done by the vanguard of the French army as English units fled, and the main body of the French army (including Joan herself) were unable to catch up to the vanguard as it pursued the English for several miles.In this battle, the English employed the same methods used in the victories at Crécy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415, deploying an army composed predominantly of longbowmen behind a barrier of sharpened stakes driven into the ground to obstruct any attack by cavalry.
The French and English Clashing. The English, however, did not fight on horseback
Becoming aware of the French approach, Talbot sent a force of archers to ambush them from a patch of woods along the road.[7] Apparently dissatisfied, Talbot attempted to redeploy his men, setting up 500 longbowmen in a hidden location which would block the main road.[7] However, they were faced with a sudden cavalry assault by 180 knights of the French vanguard under La Hire and Jean Poton de Xaintrailles before they had a chance to prepare their position and were swiftly overwhelmed, leading to the exposure of the other English units, which were spread out along the road.[8] Earlier, the English longbowmen had inadvertently disclosed the position of the English army to French scouts when a lone stag wandered onto a nearby field and the archers raised a hunting cry. With the threat of an ambush dealt with, the French knights were soon joined by the rest of the vanguard of about 1,300 mounted men-at-arms. They then charged at the English positions on the flanks, which were left unprotected by sharpened stakes. Fastolf's unit attempted to join up with the English vanguard but the latter fled, forcing Fastolf to follow suit. The rest of the battle was a prolonged heavy cavalry mopping-up operation against the fleeing English units, with little organized resistance.[9]
During the course of the battle, the English lost over 2,000 men killed out of a force of about 5,000 according to Barker, who doesn't specify the number of men captured, although she mentions that every one of the senior English captains was captured, apart from Fastolf.[10] A loss of 2,500 men is the number specifically given by Grummitt,[2] many of them longbowmen. By contrast the French lost only about one hundred men.[2] Fastolf, the only English commander who remained on horseback, managed to escape. Talbot, Scales and Sir Thomas Rempston were captured. Talbot later accused Fastolf of deserting his comrades in the face of the enemy, a charge which he pursued vigorously once he had negotiated his release from captivity. Fastolf hotly denied the charge and was eventually cleared of the charge by a special chapter of the Order of the Garter.
Consequences
The virtual destruction of the English field army in central France and the loss of many of their principal veteran commanders (another, the Earl of Suffolk, had been captured in the fall of Jargeau, while the Earl of Salisbury had been killed at the siege of Orléans in November 1428), had devastating consequences for the English position in France, from which it would never recover. During the following weeks the French, facing negligible resistance, were able to swiftly regain swathes of territory to the south, east and north of Paris, and to march to Reims, where the Dauphin was crowned as King Charles VII of France on 17 July.
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