1415, deploying an army composed predominantly of longbowmen behind a barrier of sharpened stakes driven into the ground to obstruct any attack by cavalry. Learning of the French approach, Talbot sent a force of archers to ambush them from a patch of woods along the road, then ordered them to redeploy, setting up 500 longbowmen in a hidden location which would block the main road. Though they moved quickly, these English archers were attacked by 180 knights of the French vanguard under La Hire and Xaintrailles before they could finish preparing their new position and were swiftly overwhelmed, leading to the exposure of the other English units, which were spread out along the road. Earlier, the longbowmen had inadvertently disclosed their position to French scouts when a lone stag wandered onto a nearby field and the archers raised a hunting cry, not knowing their enemies were already so close. Learning of this, the French vanguard had raced ahead, soon moving up within sight of them. With the threat of an ambush dealt with by the French knights, some were sent back to inform the men-at-arms of the English predicament. Opting to not wait for the reinforcements, La Hire, Xaintrailles and their knightly fellows deployed and charged forward, crashing into the English positions from the now exposed flanks. Meanwhile, having ridden over a ridge south of the English lines, the rest of the French vanguard, consisting of some 1,300 men-at-arms, soon appeared behind the enemy in battle order. At the sight of the French horsemen charging, Fastolf's unit attempted to join up with the mounted knights and men-at-arms who formed the English vanguard but the latter fled the battlefield, forcing Fastolf to follow suit. Outflanked and overrun, the rest of the battle was a prolonged heavy cavalry mopping-up operation against the fleeing English units, with little organized resistance. Historian Juliet Barker suggests Patay was the most disastrous English defeat since the Battle of Baugé in 1421, and one with more significant consequences since they lost over 2,000 dead out of 5,000, while all of their senior commanders were captured apart from Fastolf, the only one who remained mounted. Grummitt estimates English casualties as 2,500, the bulk of whom were archers, while the French lost only about one hundred men. Talbot, Scales and Sir Thomas Rempston were captured and after his release in 1433, Talbot accused Fastolf of deserting his comrades in