Joan of Arc

In this honored and patriarchal household, Joan, "venerated like an angel sent from heaven," passed the week of the Deliverance. It was to this friendly hearth that she went whenever a breathing-space allowed her to return within the walls.

At these times, the press of people about the house would almost break the doors in. The kindly household protected, cherished, revered their gentle guest. When Jacques Boucher died, some thirteen years later, the monument raised to his memory by his widow and children recorded, with his name and rank, the fact that he had received into his house, as a revered guest, "the Maid, by God's help the saviour of the city."

On the evening of her arrival she supped on a few slices of bread dipped in wine and water. She begged that her host's daughter Charlotte, a child of ten years, might share her couch. Every morning, crossing the garden to the neighboring church, she assisted at mass, prayed for the relief of the city, and received with tears the holy communion.

On Tuesday, May 3rd, a solemn procession, led by the Maid, went to the cathedral to pray for the deliverance of the city. Here she was met by a priest, "Dr. John of Mascon, a very wise man," who looked at her in pity and in wonder.

"My child," he asked, "are you come hither to raise the siege?"

"In God's name, yes, my father!"

The good father shook his head sadly.

"My child, they are strong, and strongly fenced; it would be a mighty feat of arms to dislodge them."

"To the power of God," replied Joan, "nothing is impossible!"

This was her word, on this and on all days.

"Throughout the city," says the old chronicle, "she rendered honour to no one else!" The learned Doctor bowed his head, and from that moment accepted her as a messenger of God.

The Maid's arrival was followed by a brief lull in hostilities. She would not raise her sword till she had duly summoned the enemy, and bidden him depart in peace. On April 2nd she despatched the letter already quoted. The English replied promptly that if they caught the so-called Maid, they would burn her for a witch. In the evening of the same day, she went out on the bridge, and mounting on the barricades, called to Glasdale and his garrison, bidding them obey God and surrender, and promising to spare their lives if they would do so. They replied with a torrent of abuse and ridicule. "Milkmaid" was the gentlest term they had for her. They showed a bold front, Glasdale, Talbot, de la Pole and the rest; but they were ill at ease. They knew that their men were full of superstitious forebodings. They themselves were strangely shaken at sight of the slender girlish figure in snow-white armor, at sound of the clear ringing voice calling on them to fear God and yield to his Emissary. They could and did answer defiantly, but they attempted nothing more. On Monday, May 2d, Joan summoned them again, and again their only answer was gibes and insults. She rode out, a great multitude following her, to reconnoitre the enemy's position; rode about and about the various bastilles, noting every angle, every turret, every embrasure for cannon. The English watched her, but never stirred. Talbot, the old lion, victor in a score of fights, must have ground his teeth at the sight; but either he dared not trust his men, or else knew them to be outnumbered. He lay still, while the gallant little cavalcade, priests chanting in front, white-robed Maid in the midst, lifting her snowy standard, delirious people thronging to touch her stirrup, swept past their camp, and re-entered the city. A bitter hour for John Talbot!

Joan was delaying her attack till the army should return from Blois with the second convoy. On May 3d they appeared; at dawn on the fourth, Joan rode out with five hundred men to meet them; by noon all were safe within the walls, and the Maid sat down quietly to dinner with her faithful squire d'Aulon. They were still sitting when Dunois came in with news that Sir John Fastolf, the hero of the Battle of the Herrings, was but a day's march distant with provisions and reinforcements for the English.

Joan received the tidings joyfully. "In God's name, Bastard," she said, "I charge you to let me know as soon as you hear of his arrival. Should he pass without my knowledge – I will have your head!"

"Have no fear of that!" said Dunois. "You shall have the news the instant it comes."

Weary with her ride, and her heavy armor, the Maid lay down beside her hostess to rest. D'Aulon curled up on a little couch in the corner of the room; both slept as tired people do.

Suddenly the Maid sprang up, calling loudly to d'Aulon.

"In God's name," she cried, "I must go against the English. My Voices call me; I know not whether it is against their forts, or Fastolf comes."

Bewildered and full of sleep, d'Aulon and good Mme. Boucher helped her into her armor; even as they did so, voices rose in the street, crying that the English were attacking with great slaughter. She ran downstairs and met her page, Louis de Coulet.

"Miserable boy," she cried; "the blood of France is shedding, and you do not call me? My horse on the instant!"

The boy flew for the horse; the Maid mounted, calling for her banner, which he handed to her from an upper window, and rode off at full speed, squire and page following as best they might.

It was not Fastolf. Unknown to the Maid, certain of the French had planned an attack on the fort of St. Loup, about a mile and a half from the town. Either ignorant or careless of Dunois' promise to the Maid, they rode merrily to the attack, and surrounded the fort with warlike shouts. Out swarmed the English like angry bees; swords flashed; the struggle was sharp but brief. The French, with no adequate leader, gave back before the rush of the defenders; broke, turned, and were streaming pell-mell back toward the city, when they saw the Maid galloping toward them. Alone she rode; her snowy armor gleaming, her snowy standard fluttering. In the gateway she paused a moment at sight of a wounded man borne past by his comrades. She never could look on French blood without a pang: "My hair rises for horror," she would say. But only a moment; the next, she had met the retreating troops; rallied them, led them once more to the assault. They followed her shouting, every man eager to ride beside her, or at least within sight of her, within sound of her silver voice. On to the fort once more! this time with God and the messenger of God!

The English saw and in their turn faltered; wavered; gave back before the furious onset; broke and fled in disorder. The French pursued them to the fort, which they captured and burned. The church of St. Loup hard by had already been partly destroyed, but Joan forbade the plundering of it, and spared the lives of certain English soldiers who had thought to escape by arraying themselves in priestly vestments which they had found in the church. "We must not rob the clergy," she said merrily.

The French losses in this affair were insignificant; the English force, about one hundred and fifty men, were all either killed or captured. The victorious Maid rode back to the city, to weep for those who had died unshriven, and to confess her sins to Father Pasquerel, her director.

She told her followers that the siege would be raised in five days. The next day, Thursday May 5th, was Ascension Day, and she would not fight. Instead, she summoned the enemy once more. Crossing to the end of the bridge, where a small fort had been erected, she called across the water to the English in the Tourelles, bidding them depart in peace. It was God's will, she said simply, that they should go. They replied with the usual gibes and insults. On this, she dictated a formal summons, ending with these words: "This is the third and last time that I write to you. I would have sent my letter in more honorable fashion, but you keep my herald, Guienne. Return him, and I will return the prisoners taken at St. Loup."

The letter was bound round the shaft of an arrow, and shot from the bridge into the English camp. An Englishman picked it up, crying, "News from the harlot of the Armagnacs!"

Joan wept at these brutal words, and called on the King of Heaven to comfort her; almost immediately thereupon she was of good cheer, "because she had tidings from her Lord"; and without wasting time began to make ready for the morrow.

Early Friday morning (May 6th) troops and citizens issued through the Burgundy gate, crossed the river in boats, and advanced upon the Tourelles. This little fort had been restored by the English, and was now a strong place, with its pierced walls and its boulevard, and the fortified convent of the Augustines hard by. As the French advanced, the English sallied forth to meet them, in such numbers and with so bold a front that the assailants wavered, and began to fall back toward the island on which the central part of the bridge rested. This troop was commanded by De Gaucourt, the governor of the city, an old man and timid. Seeing his men and himself in danger, he would have withdrawn with them, but at the moment a cry was heard: "The Maid! the Maid!" Joan and La Hire had brought their horses over by boat, and now were galloping to the rescue, after them soldiers and townspeople in a rush. De Gaucourt would have held his soldiers back, but in vain.

"You are an evil man!" cried the Maid. "Will you nill you, the men-at-arms will follow me to victory!"

On she swept, lance in rest, crying, "In God's name, forward! forward boldly!" On swept La Hire and the rest, De Gaucourt and his men with them, carried away body and soul of them by the impetuous rush. They charged the English and drove them back to their intrenchments. Many of the defenders were slain, many taken; the rest took refuge in the boulevard, or outwork of the Tourelles.

Many of the victorious French remained on the spot, to guard against a possible night assault. Mounting guard in the captured Augustine convent, they supped on provisions brought to them in boats from the city, and slept on their arms, tired but joyful men.

The Maid, however, had been wounded in the foot by a calthrop, and was besides mortally weary. She went back to Orleans, to the kindly shelter of the Boucher roof. It was Friday; she usually fasted on that day, but this time she felt the absolute need of food. To-morrow was before her, when she must have her full strength; she must eat, must rest; for this reason she had come back, though her heart was full of anxiety, dreading the night attack which her keen military sense told her the enemy might and ought to make. But the enemy was tired, too, and discouraged to boot: no attack came.

"Rouse ye at daybreak to-morrow!" she charged her followers. "You shall do better still than to-day. Keep by my side, for I have much to do more than ever I had, and blood will flow from my body, above my breast."

Then the good Maid said her prayers, and lay down quietly to rest, and to such sleep as her wound and her anxious heart would allow.

CHAPTER X

THE RELIEF

Anxious indeed was this night for the Maid. Her unerring instinct told her that the English should make a counter attack, under cover of night, on the weary French, sleeping on their arms under the open sky or in the ruined Augustines, the broad stream flowing between them and safety. This, all authorities agree, they ought to have done; exactly why they did not do it, perhaps John Talbot alone knows. We know only that the night passed quietly, and that at sunrise on May seventh Joan heard mass and set forth on her high errand.

"There is much to do!" she said. "More than I ever had yet!"

Much indeed! The "boulevard" had high walls, and could be approached only by scaling-ladders; round it was a deep ditch or fosse. Beyond stood the Tourelles, still more strongly fortified. To take these two strongholds in the face of Talbot and his bulldogs was a heavy task indeed; but Joan was full of confidence and cheer. As she mounted her horse, a man brought her "une alose" a sea-trout or shad, for her breakfast.

"Keep it for supper!" said the Maid merrily to good Père Boucher, her friendly host. "I will bring back a 'goddam' to eat it with me; and I shall bring him back across the bridge!"

So she rode out, with her captains about her on either side, Dunois, and La Hire, De Gaucourt, Xaintrailles and the rest, a valiant company. One chronicler says that the captains went unwillingly, thinking the odds heavy against them. One would rather think that they shared their girl-leader's confidence; surely Dunois and La Hire did. They crossed the river in boats, and with them every man who could be spared from the city, which must be guarded from a possible attack by Talbot. French men-at-arms, Scottish and Italian mercenaries, citizens and apprentices, flocked to the banner of the Maid, armed with guns, crossbows, clubs, or whatever weapon came to hand; carrying great shields, too, and movable sheds to shelter their advance.

Inside the forts, six hundred English yeomen awaited them with confidence equal to their own. They were well armed; their great gun Passe Volant could throw an eighty-pound stone ball across the river and into the city; moreover, they had possession, that necessary nine points of the law, and English hearts for the tenth part; small wonder they were confident.

It was still early morning when the French rushed to the assault, planting their scaling ladders along the walls, wherever foothold could be found; swarming up them like bees, shouting, cutting, slashing, receiving cut and slash in return.

"Well the English fought," says the old chronicle, "for the French were scaling at once in various places, in thick swarms, attacking on the highest parts of their walls, with such hardihood and valor, that to see them you would have thought they deemed themselves immortal. But the English drove them back many times, and tumbled them from high to low; fighting with bowshot and gunshot, with axes, lances, bills, and leaden maces, and even with their fists, so that there was some loss in killed and wounded."35

Smoke and flame, shouts and cries, hissing of bolts and whistling bullets, with now and then the crash of the great stone balls; a wild scene; and always in the front rank the Maid, her white banner floating under the wall, her clear voice calling, directing, thrilling all who heard it.

So through the morning the fight raged. About noon a bolt or arrow struck her, the point passing through steel and flesh, and standing out a handbreadth behind her shoulder.

"She shrank and wept," says Father Pasquerel; but she would not have a charm sung over the wound to stay the bleeding. "I would rather die," she said, "than so sin against the will of God."36

She prayed, and feeling her strength returning, drew out the arrow with her own hand.

Dunois thinks she paid no further attention to the wound, and went on fighting till evening; but Father Pasquerel says she had it dressed with olive oil, and paused long enough to confess to him.

The English, seeing the Maid wounded, took heart even as the French lost it. The day was passing; "the place, to all men of the sword, seemed impregnable."37

"Doubt not!" cried the Maid; "the place is ours!"

But even Dunois held that "there was no hope of victory this day." He gave orders to sound the recall and withdraw the troops across the river. The day was lost?

Not so! "But then," he says, "the Maid came to me, and asked me to wait yet a little while. Then she mounted her horse, and went alone into the vineyard, some way from the throng of men, and in that vineyard she abode in prayer for about a quarter of an hour. Then she came back, and straightway took her standard into her hands and planted it on the edge of the fosse."

Seeing her once more in her place, steel and iron having apparently no power upon her, the English "shuddered, and fear fell upon them." They too, remember, had had their prophecies. "A virgin would mount on the backs of their archers!" A month, a week ago, they had still laughed at this. Now the "mysterious consolation" which seemed to radiate from the person of the Maid on all faithful Frenchmen, heartening and uplifting them, became for her adversaries a mysterious terror, striking cold on the stoutest heart.

The French had already sounded the retreat; the banner of the Maid, borne all day long by her faithful standard-bearer, d'Aulon, had already been handed by him to a comrade for the withdrawal; when at Joan's earnest prayer the recall was countermanded.

D'Aulon said to his friend, a Basque whom he knew well, "If I dismount and go forward to the foot of the wall, will you follow me?"

He sprang from his saddle, held up his shield against the shower of arrows, and leaped into the ditch, supposing that the Basque was following him. The Maid at this moment saw her standard in the hands of the Basque, who also had gone down into the ditch. She seems not to have recognized his purpose. She thought that her standard was lost, or was being betrayed, and seized the end of the floating flag.

"Ha! my standard! my standard!" she cried, and she so shook the flag that it waved wildly like a signal for instant onset. The men-at-arms conceived it to be such a signal, and gathered for attack.

"Ha! Basque, is this what you promised me?" cried d'Aulon. Thereon the Basque tore the flag from the hands of the Maid, ran through the ditch, and stood beside d'Aulon, close to the enemy's wall. By this time the whole company of those who loved her had rallied and were round her.

"Watch!" said Joan to a knight at her side, "Watch till the tail of my standard touches the wall!"

A few moments passed.

"Joan, the flag touches the wall!"

"Then enter, all is yours!"38

Then, like a wave of the sea, the French flung themselves upon the ladders; scaled the wall, mounted the crest, leaped or fell down on the inside; cut, thrust, hacked, all with such irresistible fury that the English, after valiant resistance, finally turned and fled to the drawbridge that crossed to the Tourelles.

Ah! The bridge was in flames! Smoke rolled over it, tongues of flame shot out red between the planks.

Seeing this, Joan's heart went out to the men who had wronged and insulted her, yet had fought so valiantly.

"Glasdale!" she cried; "Glasdale! yield thee to the King of Heaven! Thou calledst me harlot, but I have great pity on thy soul and the souls of thy company!"

Glasdale, brave as he was brutal, made no answer, but turned to meet a new peril, dire indeed. The people of the city had made a fireship and loaded it with inflammable material, lighted the mass, and towed it all flaming under the wooden drawbridge. The bridge flared to heaven, yet with heroic courage Glasdale and a handful of his knights shepherded the greater part of the defenders of the lost boulevard over the burning bridge, back into the stone enclosure of the Tourelles, themselves meantime holding the bridge with axe and sword.

The fugitives reached the fort only to find themselves assailed from a new quarter. Those watching the fight saw with amazement and terror men crossing from the city to the Tourelles, apparently through the air, over a gap where two arches were broken. A miracle? No, only quickness of wit and action. An old gutter had been found and laid across the gap, and over this frail support walked the Prior of the Knights of Malta, followed by his men-at-arms.

Finding all lost but honor, Glasdale and his faithful few turned and leaped on the burning drawbridge, hoping to make good their retreat into the fort. The charred beams broke under them, and borne down by their heavy armor, the brave English sank beneath the tide, while on the bank the "Witch of the Armagnacs" knelt weeping, and prayed for their souls.

Dunois, La Hire, and the rest were more concerned at losing so much good ransom.

For all was over; of all the valiant defenders of the two forts, not one man escaped death or captivity.

The red flames lit up the ruined forts; in Orleans the joy bells rang their wildest peal; and over the bridge, as she had promised, "crossing on ill-laid planks and half-broken arches," the Maid of Orleans rode back to the city she had saved.

Seventeen years old; a peasant maiden, who could not read or write; she had fought and won one of the "fifteen decisive battles of the world."

CHAPTER XI

THE DELIVERANCE

It was eight o'clock on the evening of the eighth of May when the people of Orleans gathered in dense masses at the bridgehead and along the riverside to greet their rescuer. Dusk had fallen; they pressed forward with lanterns and torches held aloft, all striving for a sight of the Maid.

"By these flickering lights," says Jules Quicherat, "Joan seemed to them beautiful as the angel conqueror of a demon."

Yet it was not the morning vision of snow and silver, fresh and dewy as her own youth, that had ridden out at daybreak to battle. Weary now was the white charger, drooping his gallant neck; weary was the Maid, faint with the pain of her wound, her white armor dinted and stained. But the people of Orleans saw nothing save their Angel of Deliverance. They pressed round her, eager to touch her armor, her floating standard, the horse which had borne her so bravely through the day. Weary and wounded as she was, she smiled on one and all, and "in the sweetest feminine voice, called them good Christians, and assured them that God would save them."

So she rode on to the Cathedral, where she returned thanks humbly and devoutly to God who had given the victory; then, still surrounded by the shouting, rejoicing throng, home to the house of Boucher, where they left her.

"There was not a man who, going home after this evening, did not feel in him the strength of ten Englishmen."39

She had fasted since dawn, but she was too tired to eat the alose, nor did she bring the promised "goddam" to share it with her. The goddams were all dead save a few, who were jealously guarded for ransom. She supped on a few bits of bread dipped in weak wine and water, and a surgeon came and dressed her wound.

All night, we are told, the joy bells rang through the rescued city, while the good Maid slept with the peace of Heaven in her heart.

It was not a long sleep. At daybreak came tidings that the English had issued from their tents and arrayed themselves in order of battle.

Instantly Joan arose and dressed, putting on a light coat of chain mail, as her wounded shoulder could not bear the weight of the heavy plate armor. She rode out with Dunois and the rest, and the French order of battle was formed, fronting the English; so the two armies remained for the space of an hour. The French, full of the strong wine of yesterday's victory, were eager to attack; but Joan held them back. "If they attack us," she said, "fight bravely and we shall conquer them; but do not begin the battle!"

Then she did a strange thing. She sent for a priest, and bade him celebrate mass in front of the army; and that done, to celebrate it yet again. Both services "she and all the soldiers heard with great devotion."

"Now," said the Maid, "look well, and tell me; are their faces set toward us?"

"No!" was the reply. "They have turned their backs on us, and their faces are set toward Meung."

"In God's name, they are gone!" said Joan. "Let them go, and let us go and praise God, and follow them no farther, since this is Sunday."

"Whereupon," says the chronicle, "the Maid with the other lords and soldiers returned to Orleans with great joy, to the great triumph of all the clergy and people, who with one accord returned to our Lord humble thanks and praises well deserved for the victory he had given them over the English, the ancient enemies of this realm."40

This service of thanksgiving ordered by Joan of Arc on the ninth of May, 1429, was the virtual foundation of the great festival which Orleans has now celebrated with hardly a break for five hundred years.

After that first outbreak of thanksgiving, Dunois himself laid down the rules for the annual keeping of the festival, which are given in the "Chronicle of the establishment of the fête," written thirty years after the siege.

"My lord the bishop of Orleans, and my lord Dunois (the Bastard), brother of my lord the duke of Orleans, with the duke's advice, as well as the burghers and inhabitants of the said Orleans, ordered that on the eighth of May there should be a procession of people carrying candles, which procession should march as far as the Augustines, and, wherever the fight had raged, there a halt should be made and a suitable service should be had in each place with prayer. We cannot give too much praise to God and the Saints, since all that was done by God's grace, and so, with great devotion, we ought to take part in the said procession. Even the men of Bourges and of certain other cities celebrate the day, because if Orleans had fallen into the hands of the English, the rest of the kingdom would have taken great harm. Always remembering, therefore, the great mercy which God has shown to the said city of Orleans, we ought always to maintain and never to abandon this holy procession, lest we fall into ingratitude, whereby much evil may come upon us. Every one is obliged to join the said procession, carrying a lighted candle in his hand. It passes round about the town in front of the church of our Lady of Saint Paul, at which place they sing praises to our Lady; and it goes thence to the cathedral, where the sermon is preached, and thereafter a mass is sung. There are also vigils at Saint Aignan, and, on the morrow, a mass for the dead. All men, therefore, should be bidden to praise God and to thank Him; for at the present time there are youths who can hardly believe that the thing came about in this wise; you, however, should believe that this is a true thing, and is verily the great grace of God."41