by Donald Spoto
The towns people already felt comforted by the virtue of that simple Maid, whom they regarded with strong affection. There was a huge crowd, with everyone trying to touch her or her horse. One of the men bearing torches came so close to her that her standard caught fire. But she put it out calmly. “My Lord has sent me to help this good town of Orléans,” she told the crowd. “Hope in God—and if you do, you shall be delivered from your enemies.”
Joan and her retinue were taken for a night’s lodging to the house of Jacques Boucher, the town treasurer. The English troops, meantime, were occupied with constructing new blockades and shifting many of their forces to points south of the river.
On Saturday, April 30, the troops of Dunois confronted the English at their crucial defense point, a strategy apparently undertaken to distract them while the last of the supplies were brought into the city. At the same time Joan hurried toward Les Tourelles, the fortified towers guarding the approach to the city on a bridge over the river. She had had enough of interrogations and examinations, plans and preparations. Now she wanted action.
Whoever held Les Tourelles essentially held Orléans, and in this case it was Sir William Glasdale, in command of English troops. With her usual audacity, Joan ordered him to abandon the siege, a demand that was countered by Glasdale’s insults. He would never surrender to a prostitute like Joan, he shouted down to her; furthermore, if he could capture her he would immediately burn her at the stake.
The next few days were eerily quiet. On Sunday, May 1, Dunois and La Hire borrowed money from the citizens of Orléans to pay the soldiers; a few hours later Dunois departed for Blois, planning to return soon with cash and more troops. Meanwhile, people nearly battered down the door of the Boucher house to see Joan, to touch her garments, to offer food and supplies. She and her companions then rode through the streets of the city, encouraging everyone just as she did the soldiers. God would not abandon them, she said over and over: He held them and the cause of France in His hands. She also studied the geography of the town, considering the places most advantageous for defense. The next day they ventured outside the city walls, where Joan made a careful assessment of the English preparations for battle: they were not, she considered, as daunting as some of the French captains had predicted.
On Wednesday, May 4, La Hire went out to secure the safe reentry of Dunois, who returned from Blois with reinforcements. The precise sequence of events that day is obscure, but at some point—quite on her own and without informing Dunois or La Hire—Joan rode out to join about fifteen hundred men in an assault on English attackers; according to the Journal of the Siege of Orléans, the mere sight of her brought cheers from the French soldiers. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, who was partial to the Burgundian cause and therefore antagonistic to Joan, wrote an accurate picture of this day in his contemporary Chronicles:
After rising early, Joan spoke to several captains and soldiers, persuading them to arm and follow her because she wanted, as she put it, to get at the enemy, adding that she knew they would be defeated. They were amazed at what she said, but they nevertheless armed and went with her to that part of the English fortifications known as the Bastille Saint-Loup, which was particularly strong. It was held by three or four hundred English, but they were soon beaten and all of them either killed, wounded or captured, and the tower [was] demolished and burned. Then the Maid returned to Orléans with all the knights and men she had led, and there she was joyfully acclaimed by all ranks of men.
Other sources add that one hundred Englishmen were killed, a slaughter that brought Joan to tears, and forty were taken prisoner. In light of this victory the French felt even more confident—and their loyalty to the Maid was all the greater.
The Feast of the Ascension was celebrated on Thursday the fifth, and there were no military excursions or calls to arms. But strategic choices had to be made, and Dunois called a war council that included La Hire, Raoul de Gaucourt, Gilles de Rais and, for the first time, Joan. Should the French attack the weakened English positions on the north bank of the Loire or launch an onslaught on Les Tourelles? The latter was chosen, dangerous though they knew it was. As for the tactics to be used, Dunois and Joan were strongly at odds; Gaucourt supported Dunois, but most of the others (and the ordinary men-at-arms) agreed with Joan’s plans. At the same time, messengers arrived with word that a large English platoon was coming down from Paris. That afternoon Joan dictated another letter to the English; in addition to being a plea for peace, it also exemplified her sense of humor. The message was delivered by a crossbowman who shot it into Les Tourelles:
You men of England, who have no right to this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and notifies you through me, Joan the Maid, to leave your fortresses and go back to your own country—or I will produce a clash of arms to be eternally remembered. This is the third and last time I have written to you, and I shall not write anything further.* I would have sent this letter in a more proper form, but you have arrested my heralds. Please send them back to me, and I will send some of your men, captured in the fortress, for they are not all dead.
The English response was another flurry of insults. On Friday, May 6, the simmering drama became an open crisis. Joan led the men directly toward Les Tourelles, Dunois and the others following her despite their preference for a roundabout route. Near their destination Joan and her companions realized that they were no longer numerous enough to withstand the English from so vulnerable a position below the towers. The Journal of the Siege of Orléans documented what next occurred: “The English rushed out of the Tourelles in great numbers, shouting and charging violently. But despite their disadvantage, Joan and La Hire and all their army attacked the English with such great force and courage that they [the English] were forced to retreat back to the towers.”
Dunois and his cohorts wanted the soldiers to have a rest after this excursion, but Joan would not hear of it, and the men rose up to agree with her. Now that they seemed to have an advantage, they wanted to attack in full force the next morning to take Les Tourelles, especially because it was obvious that the English did not move any additional troops to that strategic place. As for the people of Orléans, they were by now virtually unanimous in support of Joan’s decisions and advice; to show their approval of her plans, according to the Journal, “they labored through the night to bring food, bread, and wine to the men-at-arms who were in the vanguard.”
On Saturday morning, May 7, Joan and her troops were ready to go. When they reached the gate of the city, however, they were stopped by Raoul de Gaucourt, Dunois’s second in command. Told not to proceed, Joan replied coolly, “Like it or not, the soldiers will go forth, and they will prevail as they always have.” So, she added, he ought not to act like an obstacle, a bad man. Gaucourt yielded.
Les Tourelles were defended by about eight hundred Englishmen; Joan went forth with perhaps half that number of French soldiers. Surrounding the towers, they were bombarded with arrows, axes, spears, spiked clubs and even cannonballs when they tried to climb up, and the conflict quickly turned into the most violent and deadly clash since the battle of Agincourt. Undaunted and shouting both prayers and imprecations against the enemy, the French continued bravely, placing ladders against the towers and rapidly scaling them, demonstrating remarkable perseverance even as their comrades were cut down all around them.
Suddenly, as she was planting a ladder against the fort at the bridge, an Englishman’s arrow was aimed toward Joan at an angle, hitting its mark perfectly, piercing a seam in her plate armor and searing through the flesh between her neck and shoulder to a depth of several inches. For a few moments she tried to ignore the wound and the protruding arrow, which could not easily be torn out. But then the pain became too severe, and when her squires saw her pale features, they carried her away from the center of action.
Her friends assessed the injury, which was not life threatening but could become so if she lost a quantity of blood or succumbed to infection. By this time Joan was shaking
with fear and probably with a fever, and the pain made her cry out in great sobs. A few plates of armor were then removed and the arrow quickly wrenched out, fortunately, with the deadly tip intact. Available swatches of cloth were used to stop the flow of blood, but nothing alleviated Joan’s pain. Olive oil was applied as an antiseptic and analgesic, and a soldier asked if she wished them to pronounce a popular magical incantation. She welcomed the oil but forbade anything to do with superstition. Hours later she was back in the battle.
By early evening the French had no advantage over their enemy, and Dunois suggested retreating to the city until the next day. Joan would hear nothing of it; instead she took up her standard and stuck it in a prominent ditch near the action. At once the English were so astonished they thought she might indeed be someone with supernatural powers. At the same time, the French were heartened at the sight of her. “They regained their courage,” Dunois recalled, “and began to climb up again…so that, at about eight o’clock that evening, many Englishmen were in flight.”
There was one last sortie: enemy forces tried to make a surprise return to Les Tourelles to recover their advantage, but the drawbridge collapsed under pressure from a boat, deliberately set afire and launched in the direction of the bridge. “Few among them could escape,” Jean d’Aulon recalled, “for the four or five hundred soldiers they numbered were all killed or drowned.” Weighed down by their armor, most of the English, including their commander, Sir William Glasdale, could not swim, and others were unable to draw them out of the Loire. Seeing this, the few remaining comrades in the towers surrendered and most of the army withdrew toward the towns of Meung and Jargeau, which they still held. Several witnesses attested that Joan wept openly at the sight of so many deaths. Urging the surviving Englishmen to avoid a similar death, she told them to leave at once on their own lest a worse fate befall them. Her remark was later misinterpreted as a threat that she would put some curse or other on them—and this supported the idea that Joan was a witch with demonic powers. Still weeping at the carnage on both sides, she was then taken to her lodging, where a doctor was summoned to care for her injury.
The next morning, Sunday, May 8, the English gathered in battle array between their siege lines and the walls of Orléans. This was either a gesture of insolent bravado or an attempt to prevent the French from attacking them as they withdrew. Or perhaps they hoped the French would indeed attack; most likely the lineup reflected a complex of all three motives. And so, outside the walls, the French faced the English, horses opposite horses and riders staring down riders. Joan and the other commanders ordered their forces not to attack. For an hour the scene was uncannily suspenseful. Then the English quietly turned and departed. The French kept their ground, savoring their victory as they watched the last of the enemy disappear over the horizon.
Joan and company returned to Orléans, where there was general rejoicing: the cathedral bells tolled, and a thanksgiving procession wound through the streets and alleys of the city. The siege had lasted two hundred ten days, and in only nine it had been lifted. “The people expressed joy in every way,” according to the Journal of the Siege of Orléans, “giving wondrous praise to their valiant defenders, but most of all to the Maid.” The occasion, in fact, marked the turning point of the Hundred Years’ War: British hegemony in France had been broken, and the survival of France was no longer a dim hope but a distinct probability.
MESSENGERS RODE AT once to the king at Chinon, bearing news that confirmed what Joan had promised: she had been sent by God to help save France, and God had not failed them. “Dear and well-beloved subjects,” Charles wrote to the cities still supporting him, “we know that nothing will bring you greater joy than to hear the good news…” and he detailed the battle, the situation of the walled city, the courage of the French, and the taking of Les Tourelles. “We exhort you to honor the virtuous acts and wondrous things reported to us, and also the Maid, who was present in person at the achievement of all these deeds.”
The news was also heard in Paris, still held by the Burgundians on behalf of the English. Clément de Fauquembergue, clerk of the parlement, made a note of what the messengers had relayed: “On Tuesday, the tenth day of May, it was reported and circulated in Paris that on the previous Sunday, after repeated battles, a significant number of French troops…entered Orléans and attacked the bridge of the city…[and] in their company was a maid, who held her banner between the two enemy forces.”
It has been customary since the early twentieth century to devalue, even dismiss, Joan’s exploits and real accomplishments during the short span of her activity. Her detractors, with frank condescension, praise her religious sincerity but not her ability to muster the troops. Frenchmen like Anatole France reckoned that Joan was a victim of hallucinations, but he patted her as if she were an adorable mascot, refusing to attribute to her anything more significant than spiritual fervor. This belittlement perhaps tells us not so much about the facts of history as it does about the cynicism of writers who are unable to credit a woman whose deeds altered the course of history.
The testimony of Joan’s contemporaries, however, is very different from the suppositions of modern cynics. Dunois felt that her activities were so remarkable “that even two or three of the most seasoned captains would not have made so good a plan,” and Alençon confirmed that “everyone was astonished that she acted with the wisdom and perception of men with twenty or thirty years of experience.” Some of the “wisdom” may in fact be traced to the peasant background derided by so many sophisticates.
Joan was persistently pragmatic: her goals were specific, realistic and congruent with her faith and morals. Critics to the contrary notwithstanding, she did not leave all military decisions to the men, nor (after they were in the thick of Orléans) was she excluded from councils of war. She made the decision to attack Les Tourelles, and she would not retreat from this assault despite her wound. Jean Luillier, a citizen of Orléans, put the matter simply when he said that he “and all the people of the city believed that if the Maid had not come from God to help them, all the inhabitants and the city itself would have quickly succumbed to the power of the enemy besieging them.”
It was not her military expertise that won her the enduring loyalty of her people; it was rather Joan’s utter and complete fidelity toward God that evoked reverence. Thus little time passed before poets and chroniclers compared her to Deborah, Esther and Judith, formidable women in the Hebrew Scriptures who heeded messages from God and brought relief to their people at critical times. Deborah victoriously led a coalition of tribal militias against a Canaanite army. Another threat to the Hebrew people was put down through the intervention of Esther, and Judith was a faithful widow who captivated and then decapitated the Assyrian general Holofernes. Joan did not share the bloodlust of these ancient heroines, but she was regarded as in their tradition, equally patriotic and just as effective on behalf of her nation. As early as that summer, the Hebrew heroines appear in a famous poem about the Maid by Christine de Pisan, written and circulated in July 1429.
It was, then, Joan’s victories that impressed others. She insisted on having a chaplain among her retinue to celebrate Mass daily for her and to attend to the spiritual lives of her soldiers, and she deplored the inevitable suffering endured by both the French and English. Perhaps it is an unacceptable aspect of the story for later times: Joan’s compatriots welcomed and revered the holiness she brought into their midst. She never said that anything was miraculous; much less did she claim to be unique or singularly gifted. Rather, she had a specific vocation, and she would be true to it. She listened, she believed, she obeyed.
“I Won’t Fly Away!”
(May–July 1429)
Weakened by her wound but eager to proceed with her mission, Joan did not remain at Orléans to accept the tributes and gifts prepared by a grateful public. Instead, on Monday, May 9, she left the city with Dunois, La Hire, Gilles de Rais and her personal retinue. Their destination was Loches, ninety
miles south, where the king was in residence at another royal castle; they arrived on May 11.
The group had not come to be honored or thanked; they wanted troops in order to liberate the Loire Valley from English hands—specifically, the towns of Meung, Jargeau and Beaugency—and thus to provide a safe route for the king to travel to Reims for his anointing, which had obviously been a matter of discussion among Joan and her companions. Here we see one of the first indications of the second part of Joan’s campaign. Later Dunois testified that he went with her “to the king, at Loches, to ask him to give them men-at-arms so they could take Meung, Beaugency and Jargeau, which would permit them to go more freely and safely to Reims for the consecration.”
She had no doubt about the next stage of the conflict or about the necessity of an expeditious coronation, and she advised the king not to hesitate. But his councilors were not so sure, and Charles first considered trying to take back Normandy. One of his advisers, Christophe d’Harcourt, asked Joan to speak openly about what her divine counsel advised, and that request was repeated by Charles himself: “Joan, won’t you please tell us what he [Harcourt] asks, here, in the presence of my court?”
According to the testimony of Dunois, who was present, Joan said that whenever people asked about her spiritual counsel, she withdrew for prayer, during which she heard a voice: “Daughter of God, go, go, go, for I will be there to help. Go.”
That faith, and Joan’s natural importunity, carried the day. In light of the triumph at Orléans, Charles said, they would go to Reims. From Loches Joan proceeded to Saint-Florent-lès-Saumur, where she rested at the home of Alençon and his family. He was to be the commander, as Dunois had been at Orléans, and Joan outlined her plan for the recapture of the Loire Valley. Alençon’s young wife was anxious for his safety. “Don’t worry,” Joan assured her. “I’ll bring him back safe and sound—and maybe even better than he is now!”