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Updated: May 10, 2025
We took Orleans on the 8th of May, and could have cleared the region round about in three days and saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks ago, and in Paris now; and would see the last Englishman pass out of France in half a year. But we struck no blow after Orleans, but went off into the country what for?
A long, dreary funeral march, with never a shout or a cheer; friends looking on in tears, all the way, enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last that place whence we had set out on our splendid march toward Rheims less than three months before, with flags flying, bands playing, the victory-flush of Patay glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes shouting and praising and giving us godspeed.
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.
A veteran of Castelfidardo, Lieutenant-Colonel de Charette, the same who was destined afterwards to immortalize himself at Patay and at Mans, understood that nothing was to be gained by a fusillade. “Forward,” he cried, “my Zouaves! charge with the bayonet; and, remember, the French army is looking on.” The Zouaves reply: “Live Pius IX!” and spring forward with their leader.
They waste the glory of being the first to carry the great news to Domremy the taxes remitted forever! and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality!
As for the Prince, the same childish carelessness lighted up his jovial face, while the hero of Patay, with his coarse boots, his immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote, exhibited a face so contracted that one would have thought him devoured by remorse.
"You can verify my assertions some other time." They left the garden and followed the footprints which led them toward the outer boulevards, inclining somewhat in the direction of the Rue de Patay. There was now no longer any need of close attention. No one save the fugitives had crossed this lonely waste since the last fall of snow.
This battle of Patay was the most complete defeat that the English had met with during the whole length of that war of a hundred years between France and England; and, to add to its completeness, the hitherto undefeated Talbot was himself amongst the taken. 'You little thought, said Alençon to him, when brought before him, 'that this would have happened to you!
Now at this time our reconnaissance, feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer, and it went bounding away and was out of sight in a moment. Then hardly a minute later a dull great shout went up in the distance toward Patay. It was the English soldiery.
Of such stuff were warriors of the olden time. Given armor and a battle-ax, and nothing could have stood before him. One could imagine him at Crecy, at Agincourt, at Patay. Joan of Arc would have kept him at her side. Pop had another name, but everybody called him "Old Pop" and he seemed to prefer it. He was seventy years old and a pensioner.
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