What seems to have happened was this. The remnant of the Dauphin's force, falling back in confusion down the slight slope, mixed into and disarrayed the advancing "battle" of Orleans. These, again, were apparently not all of them, nor most of them, dismounted as they should have been, and, in any case, their horses were near at hand. The ebb tide of the Dauphin's retirement may have destroyed the loose organisation and discipline of that feudal force, must have stampeded some horses, probably left dismounted knights in peril of losing their chargers, and filled them with the first instinct of the feudal soldier, which was to mount. We may well believe that to all this scrimmage of men backing from a broken attack, men mounting in defiance of the unfamiliar and unpopular orders which had put them on foot, here riderless horses breaking through the ranks, there knots of men stampeded, 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.