Joan of Arc Wins Patay: French Turn Tide

French forces crushed the English army at the Battle of Patay on June 18, 1429, killing or capturing approximately 2,500 English soldiers while losing fewer than 100 of their own. The victory, achieved in open-field combat against the English longbowmen who had dominated European battlefields for a century, reversed the momentum of the Hundred Years' War. Joan of Arc, the teenage peasant who had arrived at the French court just months earlier claiming divine guidance, did not personally command at Patay but her presence at the head of the army had transformed French morale. The English had been winning the war decisively. Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 and the 1420 Treaty of Troyes had effectively given England the French crown. When Henry died in 1422, his infant son Henry VI was proclaimed king of both England and France. The Dauphin Charles, the disinherited French heir, controlled only the territory south of the Loire. English forces besieging Orleans in 1428-1429 appeared poised to eliminate the last major obstacle to complete English control. Joan had lifted the Siege of Orleans on May 8, 1429, after nine days of fighting, electrifying France and demoralizing the English. At Patay, the French vanguard under La Hire and Jean de Dunois caught the English army in the open before Sir John Fastolf could deploy his archers behind their defensive stakes. Without their standard defensive formation, the longbowmen were overrun by French cavalry in a battle that lasted barely an hour. Fastolf fled. Sir John Talbot, the most feared English commander, was captured. Patay opened the road to Reims, where Charles was crowned king on July 17, 1429, with Joan standing at his side. The coronation gave Charles the religious legitimacy the English could never replicate. Joan was captured by Burgundian allies of England in May 1430 and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, but the strategic situation she had reversed never reverted.