Battle of Patay

On 18 June 1429 at Patay near Orléans, the French vanguard under La Hire and Xaintrailles crushed an English foraging detachment. French cavalry inflicted heavy losses on English archers whose cavalry fled; nearly all senior English commanders were captured. A turning point in the Hundred Years' War, the victory opened the road to Reims.

After the siege of Orléans was lifted on 8 May 1429, the royal army strung together victories in the Loire valley and pushed the English back on their garrisons. Joan of Arc accompanied the campaign, to which the victory is often credited, but the fighting at Patay took place in the vanguard. Caught on the march, the English had no time to establish the defensive position that was their strength: according to medieval accounts, a deer flushed by French scouts ran straight towards their lines and gave away their location, without the troops being able to prepare.

Some hundred and eighty knights of the vanguard, led by La Hire and Poton de Xaintrailles, charged the English archers in the flank before they could plant their stakes. Deprived of the array that made their strength, the elite archers were cut to pieces and the English cavalry fled. It was the exact reversal of Agincourt, where those same archers had broken the French chivalry from behind their palisades. John Fastolf managed to escape, but his flight earned him lasting disgrace.

The victory opened the road to Reims, where Charles VII was crowned on 17 July 1429. Above all it began a continuous English retreat: the next twenty-five years of the war were a matter of sieges rather than pitched battles, until the English presence was reduced to the single town of Calais in 1453.