Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

by Donald Spoto

  Centuries later, it is often presumed that such a pious tone and environment would create boredom, cynicism, and even open rebellion among any militia. But in an era when faith was a fact of life, prayer was ubiquitous, ritual respected, and the presence of clergymen taken seriously, the result was a fresh discipline and respect—even a chivalric courtliness—among many of the troops. Joan herself was so obviously and sincerely devout that the major captains of her men-at-arms and crossbowmen were more than impressed: they followed her example as best they could.

  But the Maid did issue an order that many among her troops may have resented. “She would not have any women accompany the army,” recalled Louis de Coutes, speaking of Joan’s intolerance of camp prostitutes. “Once, near the town of Château-Thierry, she saw the mistress of one of the soldiers. The Maid pursued the woman…and warned her gently and charitably that she must be no longer found in the company of the soldiers.” Alençon and the squire Simon Beaucroix testified similarly: “She detested the women who follow soldiers,” related the former. “She would never have women of evil life in the army with the soldiers,” according to the latter. “When she found any of them, she obliged them to go away—unless the soldiers were willing to take them as wives.”

  Joan’s injunction against camp prostitutes was more than moral outrage: it was a way of establishing discipline among her soldiers, whose lassitude for war—based on their failing fortunes—had led them easily to the usual pastimes: gambling, excessive drinking, and (as the English called it) whoring. But her prohibition of camp followers was also an emblem of her conviction that women ought not to be merely used. She herself was a natural leader, and a situation of women in sexual-economic exploitation was naturally repellent to her.

  The fact is that before her arrival, the ambition and spirit of the French military depended on class associations, fraternal organizations, and political-financial alliances. As one scholar of the war has written, however, “[Joan’s] imposition of sterner morals on these armies largely seems to have been accepted by the common soldiers. She demanded a great deal, [and] the result was a startling increase in French morale which was soon reinforced by military success.”

  And what of Joan’s presence among so many young, armed men? Perhaps of all the nobles and military men, the Duke of Alençon—that dedicated, courageous and skillful commander—may be trusted most. Although he was a man who had a keen eye for attractive and available women, he too recognized a rare quality of sincere devotion that deflected any tendency to make sexual overtures. “Sometimes I lay down to sleep with Joan and the soldiers,” Alençon recalled. “We were all in the straw together, and sometimes I saw Joan prepare for the night. Sometimes too I looked at her breasts, which were beautiful. And yet I never had any carnal desire for her.”

  Gobert Thibault, a royal squire, confirmed the soldiers’ uncommon reaction to so appealing a young woman. “I heard many of those closest to her say that they sometimes felt a carnal urge for her, but they never dared to act on it. Often when they were speaking among themselves about fornication and saying things that might arouse desire, they were not able to continue such talk if they saw her or if she came near. I questioned several of those who sometimes slept the night in Joan’s company, and they answered as I have.” These recollections do not contradict the testimonies that earlier Joan had slept fully dressed on the way from Vaucouleurs to Chinon; she was now wearing heavy armor, which had to be removed at night.

  On April 27, in a long procession headed by priests carrying the crucifixion banner and leading them in singing hymns, Joan and the men left Blois and headed toward Orléans. Up to this time some important and influential military leaders had firmly avoided support of any effort to liberate Orléans, but now the general attitude had shifted in favor of Charles and the Maid.

  The New Deborah

  (April–June 1429)

  One of the most appealing cities of France, Orléans lies on the north bank of the Loire, sixty miles south of Paris. By 1429 it had been capital of a duchy for over a century and was fortified by ramparts, with towers at regular intervals. Ordinarily protected by its resident duke, Orléans suffered a profound loss of morale when he was imprisoned in England; the defense of the city was then undertaken by his half-brother, Jean, Count of Dunois.

  The ramparts of the walled city were strategically maintained, as were the city’s five gates: the Burgundy gate, through which ran the road southeast to Gien; the Paris gate, only for pedestrians at the time of the siege; the Bernier gate, with its road north to Paris; the Renard gate, through which travelers proceeded southwest toward Blois; and the Saint Catherine gate, on the harbor, which connected to the bridge and to the south or left bank of the Loire. Each gate had two towers connected by a drawbridge.

  DURING THE SUMMER of 1428 the English had sailed from Southampton to Harfleur in Normandy. From there they marched to Paris and onward to Chartres. Establishing footholds west and south of Orléans, the invaders—in a four-week period from early September to October—took the nearby towns of Meung, Beaugency, and Jargeau. Now began the formation of siege positions around Orléans.

  That winter the forces of Dunois and of La Hire tried unsuccessfully to break the stranglehold around Orléans and to prevent the English advance toward the dauphin while other French troops attempted to intercept a major English supply caravan near Rouvray. These maneuvers failed miserably, and most of the king’s men retreated south to Tours, Chinon and Bourges. By the spring of 1429 French morale could not have been lower.

  As one noted historian has rightly observed about the months leading up to the liberation of Orléans, “To describe this series of events in terms of a strategic plan is probably wrong. What the French commanders did with brilliant success was to take prompt advantage of rapidly changing circumstances. In doing so, they showed themselves to be military leaders of the finest quality.” As for Joan, she “ensured that the French assaults maintained their momentum despite heavy casualties. What was, however, new was the degree of French commitment to the capture of such siege-works in the face of the large number of guns which they contained.”

  That commitment would not have been effective without Joan, who was regarded as a daughter of God—a girl blessed with a mystical gift of insight and faith. To understand her value to the military expeditions, it is essential to appreciate the strength of religious belief at that time and the veneration in which people held an evidently prayerful woman vowed to virginity.

  Later, Napoleon could have been referring to Joan of Arc when he insisted that sustaining morale was the most critical aspect of successful combat. An effective standard-bearer, she knew when boldness was indicated. Her daring was not always justified, but because of her the French troops acted more bravely than ever. The chefs de guerre for this expedition were military men and others appointed directly by Charles, but because of the loyalty Joan evoked from the troops, their leaders had to consider her advice and often comply with it.

  This complex of ideas was demonstrated when the company left Blois on April 27. Joan, the supply caravan, and troops assigned to her were escorted northeastward, proceeding south of the Loire and thus avoiding the English-held towns. The fact that she was led along but did not determine the route indicates that she was not in command of these soldiers: they were “hers” only insofar as she was their moral support, their spiritual patron and champion and sometimes even a source of counsel in military strategy.

  On Friday, April 29, Joan was furious when she realized that she and her convoy had been led to bypass Orléans and that there would be a delay in the assault against the English. She was met on the banks of the Loire by Dunois, called the Bastard of Orléans, which implied neither shame nor social stigma. He was the natural son of the former Duke of Orléans but was born out of wedlock, a situation without any attachment of disgrace. At the time illegitimate children were openly acknowledged by their fathers and received all the prerogatives, titles, and inheritances of
legitimate offspring.

  Dunois soon became a staunch ally and a good friend to Joan, but things started badly between them. Confronting Dunois on the south bank of the Loire, Joan made no attempt to hide her anger. “Are you the Bastard of Orléans?”

  “I am indeed, and I rejoice at your arrival.”

  “Are you the one who gave the order that I come here, on this side of the river, so that I could not go directly to [engage and attack] the English?”

  Dunois replied that this had been the best and safest counsel of his and the king’s advisers.

  “In God’s name,” Joan shouted, “the counsel of our Lord God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought you could trick me, and instead you trick yourself. I am here with better help than any soldier ever brought to any city—the help of the King of Heaven.”

  Dunois may have been offended by her impatience and impudence, but there was no time to argue about courtly manners or expeditious travel routes. They were awaiting the arrival of supply boats, which were to ferry men and goods across the river to Orléans prior to the main assault. This fleet had come upriver from Blois and was now sailing against the tide, the wind, and the current, making the passage both late and perilous. But suddenly—while Joan was sparring with Dunois—the situation changed. The wind direction shifted, the water level rose, and the company was easily transported across the river with the supply boats. The troops regarded this propitious turn of events as miraculous, a sure sign of divine guidance because of Joan’s presence, and so her credibility advanced along with French determination. “From that moment,” Dunois said, “I had good hope in her—more than ever before.”

  To skeptics it seems downright gullible to interpret as miraculous a favorable turning of tide, which is quite a natural event. The Israelites of ancient history reacted similarly when they were fleeing Egyptian oppression and came to the sea: an auspicious shift in tide and wind enabled them to traverse a normally flooded isthmus, and by the time the pursuing enemy arrived, the waters had returned. But the event was seen, then and later, through the lens of faith: God had acted on behalf of His people through the ordinary patterns of nature. The wonderful aspect was the timing.

  In the Middle Ages there was no sense that some things were “natural” and some were “supernatural.” The world belonged to God, and He managed things to suit His purpose. Faith confirmed that God is always present and active, working in and through His world, however mysteriously and often incomprehensibly. It was no different for the French, who readily regarded their passage across the river as divinely guided. There was no room in their thinking for mere coincidence or accident. The universe and God’s activity in it were considered too mysterious to be predicted or comprehended.

  This apparently small event—large to her countrymen—was but one example of what Joan offered her troops: no worldly compensation but a pointer toward something like a religious vocation. This primary motivation and spiritual atmosphere did not, of course, make things easier for the soldiers; faith is not an anesthetic. Nor did they become saints. They still felt mortal terror, they tried to avoid injury, and they became fiercely angry at the enemy and aimed lethal blows. Was there a difference, then, between the French under Joan and the English under their commanders? There was indeed, and it had to do with the grander purpose of their battle: to save France, which was sacred to them and, they believed, to God.

  What Joan impressed on the men by her faith and her actions, then, had more to do with the things of God than the machinery of war or prevailing politics. For her the struggle against English occupation and the eventual permanent establishment of French sovereignty were matters of justice, and justice was regarded as a major virtue in the Middle Ages. From justice came the origins of chivalry, which was about much more than mere courtesy: it concerned the order of a sovereign society and its place in the economy of God’s plan for the world.

  RELATIVE TO HER sense of justice was Joan’s repeated reminder to her soldiers that whether they lived or died, their efforts would win them eternal life—their proper reward. This was not presumptuous: it sprang from a confidence that God would not reject those who fought bravely for a just cause. With the threat of danger haunting every step of every day, with the possibility of wounds or the loss of limbs on a battlefield, with the chance of capture and foreign imprisonment, troops had to be constantly encouraged. Can it be said then that hers was a mission of faith? And if it was, precisely how did she manage to inspire faith and to attract loyalty from thousands of men of varying temperaments, characters, attitudes, values, and backgrounds?

  Joan saw justice and the sovereignty of France as indissolubly linked. The result of securing France’s freedom from English imperialism was to be justice in the land, the exclusion of aggressors, and finally peace. In the fifteenth century the only means of securing the first step—legitimate rule—was by and in battle; she simply had no other method available to her. Negotiators could not be summoned with all dispatch; there were no swift means of communication, nor were there safe territories for men to sit down and work out a treaty; and both sides were scattered in disarray. But by letter and in person, she begged the English to depart peacefully before the French took up arms to liberate Orléans.

  Despite the fact that Joan of Arc is most often portrayed with armor and sword, the truth is that she hated bloodshed and longed for peace. She refused to wield her own sword in battle: it was used as a threat to the enemy and, held aloft, as a signal to her soldiers. For her, war was not an exciting, enlivened game of chess. It was real, earnest and dreadful. But it was also a tragic necessity if France were to survive.

  On the question of Joan’s faith and her attraction of others’ loyalty, it is a matter of record that she evoked a greater and deeper commitment from her troops than did any other commander of her time, and they kept alive their memories of her and her abilities. Joan was for her contemporaries as she has been for six centuries after her death: someone who could not be reduced to a footnote in history.

  Why did the king, nobles, royal counselors and so many ordinary Frenchmen respond to her challenge? First, it is critical to remember that the fifteenth century was a time in which many forms of popular piety flourished—most significantly, devotion to women saints, those who were long or recently deceased. But many living women were also regarded as saints: this was the idea of the mulieres sanctae, or living holy women, to whom respect and veneration were due. That notion may be clearly seen in the respect Joan received from Jean de Metz, Bertrand de Poulengy, Jean d’Alençon, and other men to whom she was often physically proximate and who at first responded understandably to her appeal but never made a sexual advance.

  As the king’s squire, Gobert Thibault, observed, “Everyone followed her.” The contemporary Journal of the Siege of Orléans added, “All regarded her with much affection—men and women, as well as small children. There was an extraordinary rush to touch her, or even to touch the horse on which she sat.” This occurred only because (as one contemporary scholar has noted), “she brought action and victory, while older, noble generals had achieved nothing but inaction and defeat.”

  Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give directions to soldiers. The Greek poet Telesilla was famous for saving the city of Argos from attack by Spartan troops in the fifth century B.C. In first-century Britain, Queen Boudicca led an uprising against the occupying Roman forces. In the third century Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (latter-day Syria), declared her independence of the Roman Empire and seized Egypt and much of Asia Minor. Africa had its rebel Queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth century. In the eleventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess of Montfort, took up arms after her
husband died in order to protect the rights of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and, dressed in full armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s rear camps.

  Joan was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk to both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her as a prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel with an army of men?

  Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy.

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK on the evening of Friday, April 29, Joan entered Orléans with Dunois, La Hire, de Rais, her personal staff, her brothers, various captains and about two hundred men-at-arms. Because the English did not have enough men to surround the city completely and had left the east gate undefended, the French arrived unmolested.

  The population of the city was just under twenty thousand, and most of the citizens came out to meet them with torches, “rejoicing as if God Himself had come among them—and not without reason, for they had endured much difficulty, and were afraid of not being rescued, of losing their goods and perhaps their lives” if they resisted the English occupiers. Thus reported the contemporary Journal of the Siege of Orléans, which added colorful details by eyewitnesses: