the whole body was borne back, first in confusion,
afterwards in flight. So slight are the inequalities of the ground, that
anyone watching from the midst of that crest could have made nothing of
the battle to the eastward, save that it was a surging mass of the French
king's men defeated, and followed (it might erroneously have been thought)
by the Black Prince and his victorious men.

At any rate, the whole of the second "battle," mixed with the debris of
the first, broke from the field and rode off, scattered to the north. It
is upon Orleans himself that the chief blame must fall. Whatever error,
confusion, stampede, or even panic had destroyed the ordering of his line,
it was his business to rally his men and bring them back. Whether from
personal cowardice, from inaptitude for command, or from political
calculation, Orleans failed in his duty, and his failure determined the
action.

The pause which necessarily followed the withdrawal of the central French
force, or second "battle," under Orleans gave Edward's army the breathing
space they needed. It further meant, counting the destruction of the
vanguard and the cutting to pieces of the Dauphin's "battle," the
permanent inferiority through the rest of the day of anything that the
French king could bring against the Plantagenets. The battle was lost from
that moment, between ten and eleven o'clock, when Orleans' confused
column, pouring, jostled off the field, left the great gap open between
King John and the lead of his third battle and the English force.

Had strict military rule commanded the feudal spirit (which it never did),
John would have accepted defeat. To have ridden off with what was still
intact of his force, to wit, his own command, the third "battle," would
have been personally shameful to him as a knight, but politically far less
disastrous than the consequences of the chivalrous resolve he now made. He
had left, to make one supreme effort, perhaps five, perhaps six thousand
men. Archers wherewith to meet the enemy's archers he had none. What
number of fully-armoured men-at-arms he had with him we cannot tell, but,
at any rate, enough in his judgment to make the attempt upon which he had
decided. The rest of the large force that was with him was of less
considerable military value; but, on the other hand, he could calculate
not unjustly upon the fact that all his men were fresh, and that he was
leading them against a body that had struggled for two