by Helen Castor
The chief pimp, the Bastard of Orléans, could see that he had a problem. A saviour had been sent to his town, and he had ridden beside her through streets that were alive with anticipation. People wanted to believe; he wanted to believe. But what could one girl do? He had no choice; the following day he left the town by the eastern gate, slipping past the bastille of Saint-Loup to ride to Blois to beg that the soldiers the Maid had brought with her should return to Orléans to fight.
He left Joan kicking her heels. For two days she rode through the town and out towards the English fortifications, finding her way around, familiarising herself with the disposition of the defences on both sides, and showing herself to the people who thronged around her everywhere she went, as if she were their guardian angel. On the third day, the burgesses of the town organised a procession in her honour, offering gifts and making a formal request for her help in lifting the siege. But formalities were hardly needed; the fact was that, until the Bastard’s return, she could not put her plan – which was, simply, to attack the English – into action. At last, on the morning of 4 May, he reappeared, with Gilles de Rais and Ambroise de Loré at his side, and Joan’s troops and her priests at his back. The logic of his position had won the day at Blois; there could be no sign, after all, if Joan were deprived of the means to put her mission to the test. That afternoon, finally, they would take the battle to the enemy.
Their first target was a soft one: the bastille of Saint-Loup, the isolated fortification on the eastern side of the city that had proved such an insufficient obstacle to the movement of soldiers in and out of the town. Still, it took three hours of hard fighting, and the intervention of a reserve force from within the walls to beat back an English attempt at rescue from the bastille of Saint-Pouair to the north, before Saint-Loup was taken and burned. Joan rode beside the Bastard, but she did not shed English blood herself; she carried her standard, not a weapon, to urge her soldiers on. But for the first time she saw death in battle close at hand. That evening, her mood was sombre. She ate sparingly, as was her habit. And the next day she wrote again to the enemy. ‘You men of England,’ she railed, ‘who have no right in this kingdom of France, the king of heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Maid, to abandon your strongholds and go back to your own country. If not, I will make a war-cry that will be remembered forever.’ She was forthright as always, but no longer rambling. Now, she was losing patience. ‘I am writing this to you for the third and last time; I will write no more.’ As she directed, the clerk added the inscription ‘Jhesus Maria’ before her name, ‘Jeanne la Pucelle’: Joan the Maid. She tied the letter to an arrow, and ordered an archer to shoot it into the English camp. When it dropped to the ground, the shouts could be heard in the distance: ‘News from the Armagnac whore!’
Now that Saint-Loup was in French hands, the defenders of Orléans could cross the river unimpeded, and that same day they made their move on the bastille of Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, the only fortification on the southern bank of the Loire to the east of the Tourelles bridgehead. But when they got there, they found it empty. After the fall of Saint-Loup the previous day, the English had retreated into the stronghold of the Tourelles and the bastille of the Augustins that defended it. For all the derision and abuse they had hurled her way, the enemy, it seemed, had been rattled by Joan’s singular presence and her determination to attack. And now the day of reckoning was at hand, because the Augustins and the Tourelles were the key to the town’s safety. Here, at last, the Maid would lead the assault to raise the siege, and – whether in victory or defeat – God would give His verdict on her mission.
When dawn came on 6 May, Joan’s chaplain heard her confession and sang mass for her and her men. If the English were discomfited, the Armagnac soldiers and the Orléanais they were there to defend were full of fire and hope. God had sent the Maid to save France, and this was the moment, here at Orléans, when the salvation she brought would begin. Many loyal Frenchmen would lose their lives in her service; that much was unavoidable. But to die doing God’s work was an end devoutly to be wished for. It was with eager purpose that the troops crossed the river once again, with the Bastard, La Hire and de Rais riding beside the Maid at their head. Almost at once, they encountered an English contingent bearing down on them from the Augustins, but Joan and La Hire led a ferocious charge that beat the enemy back to the fortifications of the bastille. It took all day, and the combat was bloody, but by sundown the Augustins was in French hands, and the Englishmen who had held it were either corpses or prisoners.
Suddenly, it was not Orléans but the Tourelles that was under siege. On the north side of the tower were the waters of the Loire and the ruins of the stone bridge that had once led into the town. Immediately to the south lay the Augustins, the bastille on the bank that now threatened rather than protected the English position. The English garrison was trapped. An Armagnac force remained outside the walls of the Tourelles throughout the night, well supplied by the townspeople with food and wine to keep up their strength for the next day’s assault. The battle began at daybreak, and, as missiles fell like savage hail from the ramparts above, it was clear that this would be a struggle in which no quarter would be given. The English were fighting for their position, for their lives and for the belief that God was still with them; but the momentum of the French attack was driven by a new conviction that heaven had intervened on their side, in the miraculous person of the Maid.
For hours it seemed as though this irresistible force had met an immovable object. Wave after wave of Armagnac assailants broke on the formidable defences of the Tourelles. As exhaustion took its toll and the sun sank lower in the sky, Joan was caught by an arrow between her neck and shoulder, and, at the sight of their Maid staggering and bloodied, the French began to falter. The Bastard prepared to sound the retreat, but Joan stopped him. It was a flesh wound, nothing worse, and she pressed forward into the ditch at the foot of the tower, brandishing her standard. When they saw her rise from where she had fallen, and heard her urging them on, her soldiers pushed again towards the walls and began to climb the scaling-ladders to the ramparts. Sudden fear gripped the English, and when, in the distance, they saw townsmen emerge from the gate on the other side of the river with great planks of wood to bridge the ruined arches, and more soldiers waiting to cross behind them, their frayed nerves finally broke. Their captain, Sir William Glasdale, whose voice had led the chorus of crude invective aimed at Joan over the previous days, lost his footing and toppled, fully armed, into the water. He did not reappear. Panic spread among his men, and by the time the sun tipped below the horizon, the Tourelles was once again an Armagnac fortress.
The carpenters at the bridge had done their work so well that Joan, the Bastard and their troops were able to re-enter the town directly from the Tourelles – the first time the crossing had been made there since the siege had taken hold six months earlier. Through the gate they met a wall of noise, church bells clanging in jubilant cacophony, streets packed with priests and people singing the great hymn of praise, Te Deum Laudamus, and calling on the town’s patron saints, the long-dead bishops Aignan and Euverte, to bless their living saviour, the Maid. But, while the celebrations continued, she needed to rest and eat and receive treatment for her wound, because her work was not yet over: the taking of the Tourelles had broken the English grip on Orléans, but garrisons remained in the bastilles ranged around the town to the north and west. And when first light came next morning, the sentries watching from the town walls reported that the enemy was arming for battle.
The defenders of Orléans mustered to meet them. La Hire, de Rais and the other captains rode out of the town beside the girl who had now, extraordinarily, become their brother-in-arms. They drew up their forces close to the English position and waited, alert and ready. But they did not move. For the first time since she had come to war, Joan did not order her men forward. They should defend themselves with all their power if the English attacked, she said, but they should not star
t the fight. After the triumph of the previous day, tired though they were, the troops were restive in their eagerness to put the enemy to flight, but they obeyed the Maid’s command. Behind the English lines, the bastilles abandoned by the besiegers overnight were empty, and some were burning; whatever happened now, it was clear, would be the last act of this brutal drama. An hour passed, and still the armies did not stir. And then, at last, a command rang out, and the English ranks began to peel away. The siege was over.
English casualties had been so heavy and the loss of the bridgehead so grave, the chronicler Monstrelet later reported, that the commanders Suffolk, Talbot and Scales had decided that their wisest option was an orderly retreat from fortifications they could no longer be confident of holding. They would fight the Armagnacs if they had to; but when no attack came, they gave the signal to withdraw. The unnerving matter of the girl sent from God was, it seemed, best left entirely unspoken. The girl herself and her fellow captains, her troops and the jubilant people of Orléans all watched the English go. Only when it was too late for the enemy to turn again and fight did Armagnac soldiers ride to harry them on their way, and to raid the artillery train at the rear of the English convoy for guns to add to the French arsenal.
The miracle had happened. After six months of siege, and with the kingdom of Bourges in disarray, Joan the Maid had freed Orléans in just four days – four days – of fighting. The threat that the English might snatch this key to the Loire was lifted. And even more importantly, God had vindicated the legitimacy of King Charles’s cause. A seventeen-year-old peasant girl knew nothing of war: how could she? Yet Joan had known what she would do. The learned doctors at Poitiers had asked for a sign, and it had come, heaven-sent.
In Orléans itself, the churches were packed with people giving thanks, in wonder, for their deliverance. Citizens who had once feared the depredations of the soldiers sent to defend their town now embraced them, the chronicler of the siege noted, as if they were their own children. But it was Joan who was the focus of their devotion – and now her fame began to spread. Just two days after the English retreat, Pancrazio Giustiniani, an Italian merchant in Bruges, wrote to tell his father in Venice what had happened at Orléans, and how a ‘maiden shepherdess’ had promised the dauphin that the siege would be lifted; ‘it seems’, he said, ‘that she may be another St Catherine come down to earth’. In Rome, the bishop of Cahors, Jean Dupuy, hurriedly added a new chapter to his magnum opus, a brief history of the world, to describe the ‘maid named Joan’ who ‘accomplishes actions which appear more divine than human’.
And in Lyon, the frail and elderly Jean Gerson once again applied the principles of discretio spiritum, the discernment of spirits, to this most exceptional case. The first treatise he had produced on the subject, with its even-handed exposition of points for and against Joan’s claims, was known simply as De quadam puella: ‘About a certain maid’. That his second became known as De puella Aurelianensi – ‘About the Maid of Orléans’ – or alternatively De mirabili victoria – ‘About the wonderful victory’ – reflected the change in his judgement wrought by the dramatic events of the first week of May. He began with his customary caution, offering an extended discussion of the relationship between probability and truth, and a recitation of a number of theological questions in which disagreement between learned scholars could not be definitively resolved. But, having said all that, a verdict on the Maid was now possible, he believed, because the outcome of her actions – the restitution of the king to his kingdom, and the defeat of France’s most obdurate enemies – justified belief in their divine inspiration. She did not resort to spells or superstitions; she took risks to pursue her mission; she inspired faith in the king and his people and fear in his enemies; and she did not tempt God by acting imprudently. Her story found parallels, he pointed out, in the holy lives of Deborah, Judith and St Catherine. And, if she wore men’s clothes despite the Old Testament prohibition, that could be excused because the Old Testament had been superseded by the New, and because her circumstances, as a warrior surrounded by men, made it necessary. His conclusion was simple. ‘This deed’, he wrote, ‘was done by God.’
As manuscript copies of Gerson’s new treatise began to circulate across France and beyond, at Chinon the court was celebrating. During the evening of Monday 9 May, the king had composed a letter to the people of Narbonne, three hundred miles away in the Languedoc, to give them the encouraging report that two supply trains had succeeded in breaching the siege at Orléans during the previous week, and that the bastille of Saint-Loup had been captured, to the great loss of the English. Heartfelt thanks and prayers were due to God, he said; but then, at one in the morning, a herald came pounding on the castle gates with news that seemed scarcely believable, had the exhausted man not sworn on his life that it was true. The bastille of the Augustins and the tower of the Tourelles had fallen, praise be to God who, in His divine mercy, had not forgotten France, and these victories had been accomplished in the presence of the Maid. Charles was busy adding this astonishing postscript to his letter to the Narbonnais when two more messengers arrived, sent by Raoul de Gaucourt to tell him that the English had fled, and Orléans was free.
Three days later, the Maid herself rode with the Bastard to meet the king, to report on what they had achieved, and petition for more men and money to finish the task. Charles must go to Reims, Joan insisted, for the coronation that would give divine sanction to his kingship. She would lead him there; but before that crucial campaign could be undertaken, the route north and east across the Loire would have to be cleared by sweeping away the remaining English garrisons along the river at Meung, Beaugency and Jargeau. After the miracle at Orléans, there could be no question of dismissing the Maid’s mission or ignoring her instructions, but her triumph had not eliminated the military and financial challenges facing the kingdom of Bourges. It took the best part of a month for the new troops she needed to be mustered – a frustrating delay, but one during which Joan could, at least, continue to refine her developing skills on horseback and with weapons of war. A young nobleman, Guy de Laval, who met her during a visit to the court, saw her wearing plate armour and riding a great black warhorse with a small axe in her hand. When he visited her at her lodgings, she ordered wine to be brought, and said she would soon be offering him a drink in Paris. His admiration was breathless and fervent. ‘It seemed to me a gift from heaven’, he told his mother, ‘that she was there, and that I was seeing her and hearing her.’
By the time de Laval’s letter was written on 8 June, preparations were nearly complete. His encounter with the Maid had taken place at Selles-sur-Cher, a little more than twenty miles south-east of Blois, and she was joined there by the young duke of Alençon, who had helped muster the troops for her first campaign. Now, the duke was ready to fight. He was by her side, along with the Bastard, Xaintrailles, La Hire, de Loré and other captains, when they rode for Jargeau, the English stronghold ten miles upstream from Orléans. Alençon, as the prince of the blood present in the field, was now the king’s lieutenant in command of this campaign, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was Joan’s relentless purpose – the conviction and the burgeoning charisma that had so dazzled de Laval – which drove the army forward.
On 11 June they laid siege to the earl of Suffolk’s forces in Jargeau, beating the English back from the suburbs until they withdrew behind the town’s walls. As she had done at Orléans, Joan sent a message that night to tell the enemy they could save their own lives, if they would give up the town to God and King Charles. When the refusal came – notably, this time without the mockery that had been the prelude to so many English deaths at Orléans – French guns began to sound, and by the morning the walls were pitted and damaged, and one of the great towers broken.
Still, the task of taking a fortified town by headlong assault was daunting. Word had come that Sir John Fastolf, the victor of the Battle of the Herrings, was approaching from Paris with reinforcements, and some of the
French captains counselled caution: perhaps retreat, or an attempt to meet Fastolf in the open, before he could approach Jargeau itself. But Joan insisted on immediate attack. Again, she carried her standard into the ditch outside the walls; again she was felled by a missile, this time a stone thrown at her head by an English soldier. And once again she got back to her feet, shouting to her men that there could be no doubt of their victory because God was with them. It seemed to French and English alike as though events at Orléans were repeating themselves: after four hours of unrelenting assault, Joan’s presence urged the French forward while the English shrank back in fear. When French troops scaled their ladders and hacked their way onto the ramparts, the earl of Suffolk himself was taken prisoner, pausing for a moment to knight the soldier who captured him before surrendering into the man’s newly honourable hands. With him, Jargeau fell, and the Maid, Alençon and the Bastard led their captives back to Orléans, where they were welcomed with wild celebrations.
From there they moved westward to Meung, ten miles down-river – another walled town, this one with a fortress outside its gates where the English lords Talbot and Scales had taken refuge after their retreat from the siege at Orléans. Rather than attempt a double assault on town and castle, the Armagnac army seized the fortified bridge that gave access over the Loire and left a garrison to hold it while they moved on another few miles to Beaugency, leaving Talbot and Scales cut off on the northern side of the river. The siege was set at Beaugency on 15 June, with the French artillery menacingly ranged, but the following day disturbing news reached Joan and the Armagnac captains on two fronts. From the north, Sir John Fastolf and his troops were now very close to their position, while approaching from the south-west – to general consternation – was the count of Richemont, the renegade constable of the kingdom of Bourges, who had not appeared in the field for months, ever since he had taken up arms against his former protégé and chief rival for power at court, Georges de La Trémoille. It seemed that word of the Maid’s miraculous exploits had tempted Richemont out of his fastness at Parthenay. If God were to grant famous victories against the English, he wanted a share of the glory.