CHAPTER 9
Jhesus-Maria, King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the Kingdom of France . . . and you . . . who call yourselves lieutenants of the Duke of Bedford, acknowledge the summons of the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid here sent by God . . . the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and violated in France. She is here come by God’s will to reclaim the blood royal. She is very ready to make peace, if you will acknowledge her to be right, provided that France you render, and pay for having held it. . . . And if so be not done, expect news of the Maid who will come to see you shortly, to your very great injury.
—excerpt from a letter to the English dictated by Joan of Arc, March 22, 1429
ORLÉANS, A LARGE WALLED CITY, one of the most heavily fortified in France, was situated on the north bank of the Loire about seventy-five miles south of Paris. The siege was in its sixth month by the time the convoy of supplies left Blois, and the situation was indeed dire. Because Orléans was almost completely surrounded by the English, only one of its five gates—the easternmost door, called the Burgundy Gate—could still be accessed by French partisans, which meant that foodstuffs trickled in only sporadically and in far too limited quantity to support the needs of a population that numbered over thirty thousand. On Tuesday, March 8, for example, the town authorities managed to smuggle in a mere nine horses carrying wheat and other victuals. If Orléans was not resupplied quickly, its citizens faced the choice of surrender or starvation.
And yet militarily the situation was not without hope. Although the English had initially committed an army of six thousand men to the effort, in order to encircle Orléans effectively they had been required to subdue the surrounding territory. This meant leaving behind garrisons in a number of towns, thus reducing the size of the force available to conduct the actual siege. Additionally, because living conditions during the winter were so poor—it was difficult to maintain supply lines and the English men-at-arms were often as hungry and cold as those whom they had been assigned to blockade—desertion was a problem. By April 1429, the number of English troops participating in the siege had dwindled to somewhere between twenty-five hundred and four thousand.16
A few thousand soldiers were insufficient to surround a city protected to the south by a large river and that boasted a walled perimeter of two thousand yards supported by a significant number of guns, some of them capable of hurling stone cannonballs weighing nearly two hundred pounds a distance of half a mile. The English commander, the earl of Suffolk, had compensated by erecting a number of bastilles—a series of improvised, detached forts—to encircle the city. There were at least five to the north of Orléans and two on the southern bank of the Loire. Several hundred English soldiers manned each of these bastilles, which were equipped with cannons, although some of the forts had more cannons and soldiers than others.
The problem with this setup was that there was quite a bit of terrain between the bastilles, which meant that the soldiers of one fort could not easily come to the aid of another. Nor could the English fill in these gaps by building more bastilles without a fresh infusion of troops. “Really the bastilles were not to blame, but there were not enough of them, because the investing armies were numerically inadequate,” observed the eminent historian Andrew Lang. “They [the English] had not soldiers enough to man twice the number of bastilles.” The success of this strategy was heavily dependent upon the French army and the population of the city itself remaining quiescent. To his credit, the duke of Bedford recognized the siege of Orléans for what it was: a bit of military hubris on the part of the English commanders that he as regent had been unable to prevent. “God knoweth by what advis [advice] the siege of the city of Orleans was taken in hand,” Bedford would later write grimly to Henry VI.
THE RESPONSIBILITY for the defense of Orléans would ordinarily have fallen to its duke, but as this gentleman was still detained overseas as a prisoner of the English, the obligation fell to his half brother, Jean. Unlike Charles VII, who many assumed was the illegitimate son of Louis, duke of Orléans, Jean actually was Louis’s illegitimate son by his acknowledged mistress, Mariette of Enghien. For this reason, Jean was universally referred to as “the Bastard of Orléans,” a moniker that carried with it no hint of disparagement, being rather meant only to elucidate, in the most helpful way possible, the specifics of Jean’s lineage.
Orléans under siege and surrounded by the English bastilles, 1429
Jean was an experienced and highly skilled captain who had arrived in Orléans very soon after the siege had been laid and so had had ample time over the intervening months to observe the strength and layout of the enemy’s forces. It was he, and not Joan, who was in charge of the relief effort. There were only two routes by which to circumvent the English blockade. The first of these was to go north through the forest and around the system of bastilles in a wide, out-of-the-way circle before finally reaching the Burgundy Gate by ducking between the enemy’s two easternmost forts, which coincidentally were the least manned and the farthest away from each other. The second was to approach from the south, paralleling the Loire to the town of Chezy, about five miles upstream from Orléans. From Chezy, the supplies could be loaded onto barges and floated downstream to the Burgundy Gate. This second route “was rendered possible owing to the neglect of the earl of Suffolk to stretch a chain across the river—a laxity that would have horrified Henry V,” deplored the English military historian Alfred Higgins Burne. The river option was safer but problematic because the barges necessary to load the supplies were in Orléans, which meant that the wind had to be out of the west to get them upstream to Chezy. (It didn’t matter which way the wind blew on the way back, as the barges could just float downstream with the current.) The Bastard assessed the situation and ordered the army to come by way of the southern route.
However, as this counsel conflicted with the military policies urged by Joan’s voices, which commanded her to take the northern route and engage the enemy at once, it was kept secret from her. Consequently, her first encounter with her commanding officer, as related by Jean himself, who had a keen remembrance of the conversation more than two decades after the fact, was less than auspicious:
“ ‘Are you the Bastard of Orléans?’ Joan asked.
“ ‘Yes, I am, and I rejoice in your coming,’ Jean replied.
“ ‘Are you the one who gave orders for me to come here, on this side of the river, so that I could not go directly to Talbot [an enemy captain] and the English?’
“ ‘I and others, including the wisest men around me, had given this advice, believing it best and safest.’
“ ‘In God’s name, the counsel of Our Lord God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought that you could fool me, and instead you fool yourself; I bring you better help than ever came to you from any soldier to any city: It is the help of the King of Heaven.’ ”
Luckily for all concerned the breeze, which had previously been unfavorable, shifted direction at that very moment. “Forthwith I had the sails hoisted, and sent in the rafts and vessels,” remembered the Bastard. “And we passed beyond the Church of Saint-Loup despite the English. From that moment I had good hope in her, more than before.” The Bastard may have credited Joan with the change of the wind, but it was he who had had the foresight to bring the convoy along the southern route to Chezy and to have the boats in place. More important, he had arranged for a diversionary attack—a sortie against the English bastille at Saint-Loup, the fort farthest away from all of the others—just as the barges were being launched for the return trip. This excellent bit of soldiering distracted the enemy forces and allowed the boats to sail through to the city unmolested. And just like that, Orléans was resupplied.
So successful was this venture that the Bastard immediately ordered the royal army that had escorted the convoy to return to Blois to pick up and transport further supplies. Again, this tactic was in opposition to the one urged by Joan’s voices, but the Bastard circumvented this problem by convincing Joan to remain behind. “I then implored her to consent to cross the river of Loire and to enter into the town of Orléans where she was greatly wished for,” the Bastard later testified. The celebrated French captain La Hire was also invited to stay, presumably to render advice on military strategy, and the three officers—the Bastard, Joan, and La Hire—entered the city in a triumphal procession on the evening of Friday, April 29, 1429, Joan dressed in her armor and riding upon a white horse, with her standard carried before her.
By this time everyone in Orléans knew who she was and the streets were mobbed with jubilant citizens grateful as much for the hope she had brought with her as for the desperately needed grain and livestock. “Came to receive her the other men of war, burgesses and matrons of Orléans, bearing great plenty of torches and making such rejoicing as if they had seen God descend in their midst; and not without cause, for they had many cares, travails and difficulties and great fear lest they be not succoured and lose all, body and goods,” reported the Journal of the Siege, the official town chronicle of Orléans. “But they felt themselves already comforted and as if no longer besieged, by the divine virtue which they were told was in this simple maid, who looked upon them all right affectionately, whether men, women, or little children. And there was marvelous crowd and press to touch her or the horse upon which she was.”
The next day was Saturday, and Joan, of course, wanted immediately to sally forth against the English in battle. But again she was overruled by the Bastard, who, in combination with the other captains, counseled waiting until the army returned from Blois with the additional supplies, so that they could engage the English at full strength. “Joan went to see the Bastard of Orléans and spoke to him, and on her return she was in great anger; for, said she, he had decided that on that day they would not go out against the enemy,” remembered Louis de Coutes, one of Joan’s pages. Having been prevented from attacking the English militarily, Joan chose instead to confront them verbally. Taking up a position on the street in Orléans closest to the enemy—it was at the intersection of the bridge over the Loire—she shouted across to the English captain, Sir William Glasdale, and those of the enemy troops who were within earshot, telling them to “go away in God’s name, otherwise she would drive them out,” and later that “they should surrender for God’s sake and that their lives would be saved.”
Although knowledge of Joan and her mission had spread rapidly among Charles’s supporters, and she had previously sent a letter to the duke of Bedford warning him of her approach, it is probable that this shouting match across the Loire was England’s first introduction to the Maid. The duke of Bedford, if he had received her letter at all, likely got many such letters from disgruntled French subjects and had disregarded it. Similarly, the English troops surrounding Orléans would hardly have credited the rumors that a French peasant girl had been enlisted to break the siege. Now, in the deepening gloom—Joan had chosen the hour of sunset to acquaint her opponents with her existence—they could just make out the slight figure of a young woman standing on the other side of the bridge hollering at them to surrender to her or else. While the novelty was undeniable, this approach did not have the desired effect on the gruff, war-hardened English soldiers, who were used to winning and had already formed a rather contemptuous opinion of their counterparts in the French military. “Glasdale and those of his company answered basely, insulting her and calling her ‘cow-girl,’ shouting very loudly that they would have her burned if they could lay hands on her,” reported Louis de Coutes.
But the outcome of any particular war or battle does not always rely solely upon such obvious variables as troop size or weaponry or tactics. There is always the possibility that the more elusive concepts of morale and momentum will come into play. Although the English did not yet realize it, merely by breaking the blockade and bringing in that first shipment of supplies, Joan had altered the attitude of the French and caused a shift in the military equation. Many years later, the Bastard, reflecting upon her role in these events, expressed this transformation succinctly: “It seems to me,” he said, “that Joan and also what she did in warfare and in battle was rather of God than of men; the change which suddenly happened in the wind, after she had spoken, gave hope of succour, and the introduction of supplies, despite the English, who were in much greater strength than the royal army.” Or, as a more modern military scholar observed, “Joan’s contribution . . . was that she roused the fighting spirits of the French, which had lain dormant for so long. This contribution was decisive.”
IT TOOK THE ROYAL ARMY until Tuesday, May 3, to return to Orléans from Blois. This time, as a ploy, the soldiers came by the northern route but again sent the supplies south to Chezy. To distract the English, they again attacked the easternmost fort of Saint-Loup. (“The fact that Fort St. Loup was so dangerously isolated was evidence of the supreme disdain that the besiegers had for their enemies at this time,” noted the same military scholar.) Joan must have heard the noise from the battle, because she accused her page of not having awoken her in time—“Ah, bleeding boy, you told me not that the blood of France was spilling!” he remembered she cried to him. By the time Joan’s horse was ready and she was dressed in her armor, wounded French soldiers were already streaming back toward the city. Worse, one of the English officers, Captain Talbot, having been alerted to the attack, had charged out of his headquarters with a regiment and, picking up reinforcements from the various forts along the way, was bearing down on the French army, intending to rout the offensive and vanquish the enemy troops.
At the sight of Talbot and his men, the French soldiers would ordinarily have become disheartened and retreated. But not this time. This time, they had Joan. Undaunted by the bloodied casualties she encountered outside the Burgundy Gate, Joan spurred her horse to the scene of the battle. “The English were preparing their defense when Joan came in haste at them, and as soon as the French saw Joan, they began to shout [cheer],” reported Louis de Coutes, who had followed his mistress to the battlefield.
And then something highly unusual happened. The French soldiers, inspired by the young woman in their midst, renewed their attack rather than quitting it and to their astonishment succeeded in capturing the fort of Saint-Loup and burning it to the ground. Talbot saw the flames and knew the bastille was lost; further, as the bulk of the French army turned to face his troops, he suddenly realized that he did not have a sufficient force to ensure victory. And upon that realization, something even more unexpected and uncommon happened: Talbot abruptly called off his soldiers and retreated to his fort, leaving the French the masters of the field and allowing the supplies to enter the city uncontested a second time.
The following day, the Feast of the Ascension, was given over to rest and prayer. Joan was extremely upset by the number of English dead, fearing they had died without benefit of the sacrament. “She wept much upon them and at once confessed herself to me, and she told me publicly to exhort all the soldiers to confess their sins and to give thanks to God for the victory won; if not she would stay not with them but would leave them,” remembered Joan’s confessor. The next day, Thursday, May 5, Joan dictated a final letter of warning to the English: “You, Englishmen, who have no right in this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Maid, that you quit your fortresses and return into your own country, or if not I shall make you such babay [the precise definition of this word is unclear, perhaps she meant battle] that the memory of it will be perpetual.” Then, to ensure they received her warning, she attached the letter to an arrow and had a French archer lob it at the enemy, shouting, “Read, it is news!” at the English soldiers. “News of the Armagnacs’ whore!” the English men-at-arms shouted in return, whereupon “Joan began to sigh and to weep copious tears, calling the King of Heaven to her aid. And thereafter was she consoled, as she said, for she had had news of her Lord,” Jean Pasquerel later reported. “And that evening, after dinner, she ordered me to rise on the morrow earlier than I had done . . . and that she would confess herself to me very early in the morning, which she did.”
And so, finally, on Friday, May 6, the Bastard launched a full-scale attack against the besieging army. Again, the French strategy was well thought out and executed. Instead of building upon the victory against Saint-Loup by confronting Talbot and his troops to the north, the French unexpectedly changed direction and attacked the enemy forces stationed to the south across the Loire. Making use of a small island in the middle of the river called the Isle of Saint-Aignan, a French regiment crossed by boat to this landmass very early in the morning and, taking the enemy by surprise, began immediately to strike at the English fort of Les Tourelles. Under cover of this initiative, more French soldiers crossed by boat to Saint-Aignan and began the construction of a bridge from the island to the southern shore, which their English counterparts in Les Tourelles, busy protecting themselves, were unable to prevent. Upon completion of the bridge, the main body of the French army crossed over to the southern bank of the Loire. Seeing the enemy upon them, the English soldiers stationed in the fort of Les Tourelles abandoned this bulwark in favor of the next closest bastille, called the fort of the Augustins, which was larger and more heavily fortified, and the battle began in earnest.
Although the historical evidence indicates that the French troops significantly outnumbered their English opponents—as many as four thousand French combatants went up against something less than a thousand Englishmen—the English were protected by the stone walls and armaments of the fort of the Augustins, and so the struggle was a desperate, all-day affair with significant casualties. Again, Joan’s participation was crucial. She and La Hire crossed the river at the same time and arrived just as the English were mounting a counterattack. “When they perceived that the enemies were coming out of the bastion to charge their men, at once the Maid and La Hire, who were always before them to guard them, couched their lances and were the first to strike among the enemies,” reported Jean d’Aulon. “Thereupon the others all followed them and began to strike at the enemy in such fashion that by force they drove them to retire and enter again into the bastion of the Augustins. . . . Very bitterly and with much diligence they assailed it from every side so that in a little while they gained and took it by storm; and there were killed or taken the greater part of the enemies, and those who could escape retired into the bastion of the Tourelles at the foot of the bridge. And thus won the Maid, and those who were with her, victory over the enemies upon that day.”
Having gained the fort of the Augustins, Joan, along with the rest of the French army, took shelter there for the night. But the battle resumed again very early the next morning, Saturday, May 7. By this time the great English knight Sir William Glasdale had arrived with reinforcements from the northern forts to secure the area. Taking cover at the fort of the Tourelles, he put up a valiant defense. Joan herself was wounded by an arrow above the breast at midmorning, and though she “was afraid and wept,” she nonetheless fought on to the great inspiration of those around her, just as the young Henry V had in his first battle continued to lead his men after enduring a similar injury. Again, the struggle was an all-day affair; again the spirits of the French soldiers faltered, only to be revived by Joan. “The assault lasted from the morning until eight o’clock of vespers, so that there was hardly hope of victory that day,” recalled the Bastard. “So that I was going to break off and wanted the army to withdraw toward the city. Then the Maid came to me and required me to wait yet a while. She herself, at that time, mounted her horse and retired alone into a vineyard, some distance from the crowd of men. And in this vineyard she remained at prayer during one half of a quarter of an hour. Then she came back from that place, at once seized her standard in hand and placed herself on the parapet of the trench, and the moment she was there the English trembled and were terrified. And the king’s soldiers regained courage and began to go up, charging against the boulevard [the side of a rampart] without meeting the least resistance.”
As the English men-at-arms fell back against this final assault, the drawbridge of the fort of the Tourelles suddenly collapsed under their weight. Soldiers and horses, burdened by heavy equipment, fell into the Loire and drowned; their commanding officer, Sir William, in full armor and waving his banner to the end, was among them. “And Joan, moved by pity, began to weep much for the soul of Classidas [Glasdale] and the others who were there drowned in great numbers. And that day all the English who were beyond the bridge were taken or killed,” affirmed her confessor.
The taking of the fort of the Tourelles was a great victory for the French; in addition to vanquishing the formidable Glasdale, it meant that food and other supplies could now be transported into the city without fear of attack. The citizens of Orléans rang the city bells and sang Te Deums throughout the night, “expressing joy in every way, giving wondrous praise to their valiant defenders, and above all others to Joan the Maid.” Joan’s wound, which appears not to have been serious, was dressed and she took some food.
The next morning, what remained of the English besieging force took stock of the damage. They had lost men, arms, and, most important, their belief in their own invincibility; they were not only outnumbered but demoralized. From mocking and jeering at Joan, the common men-at-arms now actively feared her, believing her to be a witch; and it is likely that their officers agreed with them. There being no real choice of maintaining the siege with any hope of success, the decision was made to abandon it, and the English troops came out of their forts and destroyed them. But they did not retreat. Instead, the English army solemnly arrayed itself in battle formation in front of the walls of Orléans as though daring the French to come out and engage them in open combat.
This action was answered not only by Joan and the royal army but by a large militia of ordinary citizens from Orléans who, arming themselves as best they could, came out from behind the city walls and, joining the soldiers, arranged their forces in a line opposite their former tormentors. But because it was Sunday, Joan forbade anyone on the French side from initiating an attack. According to the official town chronicle, many of the men objected to this prohibition, but she placated them with the assurance that “if the English assaulted them, they could defend themselves as strongly and bravely as they wished and they should have no fear: They would be the masters of that field.” For a solid hour the two opposing armies, whose soldiers were so close in some places that they could look into each other’s eyes, faced each other down in this manner, neither force yielding to the other.
Joan raises the siege of Orléans.
At the end of the hour, neither camp having made any movement to renew hostilities, whatever ancient condition of manhood being tested must have been satisfied, because the English army suddenly turned away without further incident and marched off in formation.
The city of Orléans had been rescued from the enemy and recovered for France.
THE ASTOUNDED jubilation with which the news of this victory was greeted at the royal court of Chinon is a matter of record. The king had barely time to learn of the army’s departure from Blois before the glad tidings began rolling in. So quickly did the events unfold that a letter Charles was composing to his loyal supporters had to be revised three times between May 9 and May 10 to reflect the current status of the operation. “From the King, dear and well-beloved, we believe that you have been informed of the continual diligence by us exercised to bring all succour possible to the town of Orléans long besieged by the English, ancient enemies of our kingdom,” Charles had begun (a trifle disingenuously, since his efforts to aid the city prior to this initiative could hardly be characterized as energetic). “By our Lord’s grace from which all proceeds, we have again caused to be revictualled in strength the town of Orléans twice in a single week, well and greatly, in the sight and knowledge of the enemies, without their being able to resist.” Then, upon receiving a further update, the king continued, “Since these letters were written, there has come to us a herald about one hour after midnight, who has reported to us on his life that last Friday our aforesaid people crossed the river by boat at Orléans and besieged, on the Sologne side, the bastion at the end of the bridge and the same day won the fort of the Augustins. And on the Saturday likewise assailed the rest of the said bastion . . . where there were at least six hundred English fighting men. . . . And finally, by great prowess and valiance in arms, yet still by means of Our Lord’s grace, won all the said bastion and of it were all the English therein killed or taken.” And then once more, upon receipt of the final, crowning intelligence, “And since then again, before the completion of these letters, have arrived with us two gentlemen . . . who certify and confirm . . . that after our men had last Saturday taken and demolished the bastion of the bridge end, on the morrow at dawn, the English who were in it, decamped and fled so hastily that they left their bombards, cannons and artilleries, and the best part of their provisions and baggage. Given at Chinon, the tenth day of May. Signed: Charles.” Nor did the king neglect to give Joan credit for the miraculous nature of the victory: “For that more than ever before must [we] praise and thank our Creator, that in His divine clemency He has not forgotten us. And [we] cannot sufficiently honor the virtuous acts and things marvelous which this herald who was present has reported to us and likewise the Maid who was always present in person at the doing of all these things,” he wrote.
The obvious next step was to follow up this unexpected achievement by a continued pursuit of the enemy forces. The Bastard, taking no chances, himself escorted Joan to the royal court in order to urge the adoption of a new offensive. The more experienced military men among the king’s command argued in favor of building upon the victory at Orléans by striking out against the English occupation of Normandy. But this advice ran contrary to Joan’s voices, which demanded that Charles be crowned at Reims as soon as possible. Bursting in on a council meeting—Joan was still not included in these planning sessions—she threw herself at Charles’s feet and, hugging his legs in supplication, cried, “Noble Dauphin, hold not such, and such long, council but go to Rheims as soon as possible to receive a fitting crown.” As before, her humbly dramatic appeal had a strong effect upon the king, who asked her to expand upon her thinking. “I remember that . . . the lords of the blood royal, and the captains, wanted the King to go into Normandy and not Rheims, but the Maid was still of the opinion that we should go to Rheims to consecrate the King, and she gave reason for her opinion saying that once the King should be crowned and anointed the strength of his adversaries would go on declining and that at last they would not be able to harm him or his kingdom,” the Bastard remembered.
The source of Joan’s fixation with a coronation at Reims—an objective that, until the crisis at Orléans, seems to have been her voices’ primary concern—may very probably be traced to the enemy’s humiliating reference to Charles as “the king of Bourges,” and by the subsequent English promotion of Henry VI as the legitimate heir to Saint Louis. The duchy of Bar was very close to Reims, and every native of that area knew that the cathedral at Reims was where Saint Louis had been crowned; it stood to reason that Saint Louis’s true heir would be crowned there as well. This was a piece of homespun philosophy that the English, unconcerned with the myriad ancient customs and ethos of the kingdom they happened to be occupying, had failed as yet to take into account.17
The problem with a coronation at Reims was that in order to achieve this goal, Charles was actually going to have to go to Reims, a coronation not being the sort of ceremony that could be handled by proxy or delegated to an inferior. This meant abandoning the royal court, which was located at a safe distance behind the enemy lines, and venturing out into far more risky territory. A great many English and Burgundian towns and soldiers stood between Orléans and Reims. To become king, Charles was going to need to act like one and follow the royal army as it fought its way to the cathedral. For a man who feared capture above all else, this must have been a truly frightening prospect. It is a measure of his faith in Joan, and the self-evident nature of her argument—“All rallied to her opinion,” the Bastard reported—that Charles agreed to make the journey.
The duke of Alençon was placed in charge of the king’s forces. His father had been killed at Agincourt and he himself captured by the English in 1424 at the battle of Verneuil, a predicament from which he had only recently extricated himself by raising the substantial sum of 80,000 gold saluts with which to pay his ransom. His wife, frantic for his safety, begged him not to accept the commission and appealed to Joan, an entreaty to which the Maid replied, “Lady, fear not, I will bring him back to you safe and sound and in such state or better than now he is.” The army mustered at Selles-en-Berry, between Tours and Bourges, near Romorantin. “And arrived the Monday at Selles my lord the Duke of Alençon who had a very great company. . . . And it is said here that my lord the Constable is coming also with six hundred men-at-arms and four hundred men of draft [supply bearers] and that Jean de la Roche comes also, and that the King never had so great a company as are hoped for here,” reported an eyewitness who participated in the campaign.
This sudden influx of men and arms was directly attributable to the victory at Orléans. As news of the English defeat spread, many of Charles’s former allies who had dismissed the king’s campaign as moribund returned to his camp. Among these was the old duke of Brittany, who the year before, disgusted with Charles’s lack of enterprise, had shifted his allegiance yet again to the English and Burgundian side. (This was the reason—exploited by Georges de la Trémoïlle—that the constable, Arthur of Richemont, had fallen from grace.) Now, just as Yolande and her faction had hoped, the duke of Brittany sent his confessor and a herald to congratulate Charles on his victory. The duke’s confessor questioned Joan as to whether she had truly been sent by God to help the king. “If it be so,” the confessor continued, “my lord the duke of Brittany is disposed to come to the King’s aid with his service. . . . He cannot come in his proper person, for he is in a great state of infirmity, but he can send his eldest son with a great army.”
On June 6, 1429, Joan, accompanied by the duke of Alençon and the king’s soldiers, marched out of Selles to rendezvous with the Bastard and his men at Orléans. Again, the army was preceded by churchmen, in this case mendicant friars who were instructed by Joan to pray aloud as they walked, giving the company the air of a religious procession; she herself, arrayed in white armor and a hood, rode behind them on a spirited black stallion. This force met up with the Bastard just outside of Orléans on June 9. Also among those present were La Hire and Yolande’s ally, the count of Vendôme, the lord who had escorted Joan into Charles’s presence. Estimates of the size of the French army gathered at Orléans vary from five thousand to eight thousand men. The duke of Alençon reported the strength of the battalion at “about twelve hundred lances,” to which must be added foot soldiers and archers, as well as a volunteer militia from within the city itself. On Saturday, June 11, these troops marched out of Orléans to meet the English.
The remains of the original enemy force, still under the command of the earl of Suffolk, had taken refuge in three of the neighboring towns—Jargeau, Meung, and Beaugency—that hugged the Loire. Upon being informed that a French army of significant size was on the move, the earl of Suffolk, with five hundred English knights and two hundred archers, barricaded himself in the town of Jargeau, just ten miles southeast of Orléans. Jargeau, much smaller than Orléans, was protected by a wall and towers; additionally the town boasted a bridge fortified by two tall stone strongholds.
No sooner had Joan and her troops arrived at the suburbs of Jargeau than word reached them that a large battalion of English reinforcements—the intelligence indicated a force of at least two thousand soldiers, under the direction of the feared English commander Sir John Fastolf—was approaching at a rapid pace. The duke of Alençon, who was young and inexperienced (he had fought in only two battles before being captured, which explains his wife’s anxiety), lost his nerve and called for a war council. Some of the captains argued that they should break off the attack on Jargeau in order to intercept Fastolf; some advised abandoning the project altogether. Joan, however, insisted on maintaining their original target. “Be not afraid of any armed host whatsoever and make no difficulty of attacking the English, for Messire [God] leads you,” she asserted. Separately, to the duke of Alençon, who worried it was too soon to begin the assault, she said, “Ah, gentle Duke, wast thou afeared? Knowest thou not that I promised thy wife to bring thee back safe and sound?”
The next morning, June 12, the people of Orléans having dragged some of their cannons to Jargeau, the French opened fire on the town and with three volleys destroyed the largest of the fortifications on the bridge. (For some reason Joan did not seem to object to beginning the attack on a Sunday as she had done previously; perhaps she had lost track of the date.) The English returned fire, and Joan, who had more battle experience than her commanding officer, advised the duke of Alençon, who had taken a position directly in the line of fire, to move. “That machine . . . will kill thee,” she told him, pointing to one of the English guns. The duke of Alençon hastily changed locations, and another French knight who took up the duke’s vacated position and was not lucky enough to have Joan looking out for him was killed instead.
With the English overwhelmingly outnumbered, the battle for Jargeau took only four hours. Again, Joan was a source of great inspiration to her troops. She climbed high atop a scaling ladder, banner in hand, and the French soldiers, following her lead, swarmed over the walls and overran the town. The earl of Suffolk tried to call for a negotiated surrender, but no one paid any attention to him and he was taken prisoner by a French squire. (“Are you a gentleman?” the earl asked his captor suspiciously after it was clear that he was cornered. The squire replied in the affirmative. “Are you a knight?” the earl pressed. Upon hearing the Frenchman was not, the earl promptly dubbed his antagonist. Honor and the social structure having been rescued, if not the town itself, only then did the earl surrender his glove and allow himself to be taken captive.) Those serving under Suffolk were not so fortunate. With the exception of the members of the garrison who were of sufficient rank to command a ransom, the entire English force at Jargeau was executed, and the town sacked.
That was Sunday; by Wednesday, the French had taken the bridge at Meung. By Friday, the entire English garrison at Beaugency had capitulated and as part of the terms of submission abandoned the city on Saturday morning, June 18, without a fight. However, as the French turned back toward Meung to finish retaking the town, new, disquieting information arrived. “And while the English [at Beaugency] were retreating came one from La Hire’s company who said to me, as to the King’s captains, that the English were coming, that we should soon be face to face with them, and that they were about one thousand men-at-arms in number,” remembered the duke of Alençon.
It was Fastolf with the long-awaited reinforcements. La Hire’s man must have underestimated this force, as the number of English men-at-arms bearing down on the French seems to have been double that of the original assessment. The English commander had been marching to the aid of Beaugency when, halting just outside of Meung, he met up with Captain John Talbot, who was leading what was left of the original army that had besieged Orléans—just forty lances, two hundred archers, and their foot soldiers, about three hundred men in all—in the hopes of intercepting Fastolf and making a united stand against the French. Hearing from Talbot that Beaugency had fallen, and having reports of the superior numbers of the French force, Fastolf counseled falling back on Patay, about fifteen miles north of Orléans. Talbot reluctantly agreed and the English soldiers were turned around and ordered to retreat northward.
News of the arrival of the English reinforcement army threw the French military leadership into its customary panic. The duke of Alençon abruptly reverted to his former, indecisive self—a less commanding commanding officer is difficult to imagine—and appealed to Joan for guidance. “Then the lord Duke of Alençon, in the presence of the lord constable, of myself and several others, asked Joan what he ought to do,” recalled the Bastard. “She answered him in a loud voice, saying, ‘Have all good spurs,’ which hearing those present asked Joan: ‘What say you? Are we going to turn our backs on them?’ Then Joan answered: ‘No. But it will be the English who will not defend themselves and will be vanquished and you will need good spurs to run after them.’ ”
By this time, the French were aware that the English were falling back in order to regroup to the north, and the decision was made to follow Joan’s advice and pursue them. To prevent the enemy’s getting away, the royal army was divided into three groups: in the first wave were approximately twelve hundred of the swiftest cavalry, under the direction of La Hire; then came the main body of troops, led by the Bastard and the duke of Alençon; and finally a rear guard headed by Joan and Arthur of Richemont. Joan was upset at being consigned to the back, but she was overruled; possibly she was not skilled enough to ride with the advance guard. In the end, it did not matter, for she had already given the French soldiery, and in particular La Hire, all they needed: the confidence that they could win. This would be his battle, not hers.
Riding at full speed, unburdened by heavy artillery, the French cavalry overtook Fastolf’s men in the woods outside of Patay at about two o’clock in the afternoon. Some of the English bowmen, not realizing the enemy was so close, gave their position away by ballyhooing at a stag as it bounded through the forest. Seeing the French upon them, Captain Talbot hurriedly found what he believed to be an advantageous spot at which to arrange his troops. His strength was, as usual, heavily weighted to his archers, five hundred of whom, handpicked by their commander for their experience and ability, were instructed to dismount and dig their pikes into the ground in a long line, to make it more difficult for the French horsemen to pass. Fastolf and the rest of the English regiment ducked in behind the longbowmen and, searching for the high ground, scrambled to a ridge, ready to confront the main body of the French army when it arrived.
This battle plan was similar to that employed by the English at Agincourt to such devastating effect. But in the space of two short months, Joan had erased the stigma of defeat associated with that battle. Even though he had only a small force with him, La Hire did not have to wait for the rest of the army to catch up: he knew he could take Talbot’s men on his own; he was not afraid to lead. Consequently, unlike at Agincourt, he did not stand by and allow the English longbowmen to set up so that they could then safely slaughter their French opponents at a distance. Instead, in a move decried by English historians as most unsportsmanlike, La Hire attacked at once.18 The archers went down in a matter of minutes. The second wave of the French army arrived soon after and Fastolf, watching from the ridge, brought his men down to aid the fight. But no sooner did he get there than he saw that it was hopeless and, deserting his post, escaped with a handful of men. “And before he had gone, the French had thrown to the ground the lord de Talbot, had made him prisoner and all his men being dead, and were the French already so far advanced in battle that they could at will take or kill whomsoever they wanted to,” testified an eyewitness. It took less than an hour for the main body of the French army to decimate their opponents; at the end of that time two thousand Englishmen lay dead.
Even more than the raising of the siege of Orléans, this encounter, called the battle of Patay, was decisive. Afterward, throughout the kingdom, the English occupiers were suddenly on the defensive; they were cognizant of being in danger of losing all of their gains; most important, the home country’s attitude toward the war changed. “By the renown of Joan the Maid,” wrote a Burgundian chronicler of the time, “the courage of the English was much impaired and fallen off . They saw, it seemed to them, their fortune turn its wheel sharply against them, for they had already lost several towns and fortresses which had returned their obedience to the King of France. . . . They saw their men stricken down and did not now find them of such or so firm and prudent words as they were wont to be.” The erosion of the English commitment to the war may be dated from this moment. “Thus they were all . . . very desirous of withdrawing on to the Normandy marches, abandoning what they held in the country of France and thereabout,” observed the chronicler.
The experienced military men among the duke of Alençon’s command, understanding the significance of this victory and not wishing to give the English time to recover and regroup, pressed to continue the forward assault by marching on Paris and liberating the city, a strike that could have meant the end of the war. (The duke of Bedford was so sure that this would happen that upon hearing the news of the English defeat at Patay, he immediately went into hiding at the fort of Vincennes.) But it would have taken a bold leader to order such a move, exactly the sort of individual the duke of Alençon patently was not; moreover, Joan was against this and adamant that Charles instead be crowned. “All that [pursuing the English to Paris] means nothing to me: now, we must go to Rheims,” she said.
And so the royal army broke off the advance to the north in order to turn around and march south to Gien, where Charles (staying safely out of the fray) had moved his court. Even so, it took another two weeks for Joan to convince the king to make the journey, and this pattern continued even as they were en route. Despite being accompanied by a substantial army, Charles expressed fear every time they drew near a Burgundian city along the way—Auxerre, Troyes, Châlons—and sought to withdraw, but in each case was dissuaded from doing so by Joan, who “told the King to advance boldly and to fear nothing, for if he would advance courageously he would recover all his kingdom,” remembered Simon Charles. She dictated letters to the various cities, informing them of the king’s approach. “Loyal Frenchmen, come out to meet King Charles,” she ordered written, “and if you do so . . . I promise you and certify on your lives that we shall enter with the help of God all the towns which should be of the holy kingdom, and there make good and lasting peace, let who will come against it.” Most of the towns, although ostensibly loyal to the Burgundians, were quick to note the size of the king’s army and opened their doors after a brief period of negotiation. (Auxerre, which came first, set precedent; there the inhabitants promised that “they would pay to the King the same obedience as should those of the towns of Troyes, Chalons and Rheims,” a particularly adroit bit of diplomacy that neatly handed off the responsibility for choosing between the king and the duke of Burgundy to the next in line.) At Troyes alone was it necessary to engage in a brief show of force before the town capitulated.
As one by one the cities surrendered peacefully, it became clear that neither the English nor the duke of Burgundy would attempt to halt the king’s progress. The realization settled in that the coronation would indeed take place, and excitement among Charles’s supporters grew proportionately. People began pouring into Reims for the ceremony. “So many came that it would be an infinite task to describe, as would be the great joy that all felt,” wrote an observer. Domrémy itself sent a small delegation, headed by Joan’s parents, to witness the magnificent ceremony engineered by a daughter of the village, proving again that, despite its remote location, news of the king and his court did in fact penetrate to this outpost in a timely fashion. There is, however, no mention at all of Robert de Baudricourt’s being in Reims on this occasion, which is surprising considering that he is credited with launching Joan’s career. On the other hand, Yolande’s son, René of Anjou, future duke of Bar and Lorraine, was reported as being in attendance.
Although initially Charles had wanted his wife to accompany him, neither Yolande of Aragon nor her daughter Marie was present at the ceremony, which took place on July 17 at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Reims. The journey was probably deemed too dangerous for Marie, who was pregnant again, although there is also the possibility that it would have been somewhat awkward to bring the queen as it might then be expected that she be crowned along with her husband, and it was important to maintain the focus on Charles as the heir to Saint Louis. Yolande stayed home to be with her daughter.
But just because she wasn’t there didn’t mean she didn’t want to know all about it, so in her place Yolande sent three members of her household charged with the task of keeping her and her daughter informed of every particular. The report these agents sent back, addressed to both the queen of Sicily and her daughter, the queen of France, detailing the coronation ceremony and its aftermath, has survived. “Our Queens and most dread Ladies,” their letter began. “May it please you to know that yesterday the King arrived in this town of Reims where he found complete and full obedience. Today he was anointed and crowned and the beautiful mystery was most striking to behold because it was as solemn and comprised of all the accoutrements that are essential to such a ceremony, as if it had been in preparation for a full year. . . . Our lords the duke of Alençon, the count of Clermont, the count of Vendôme, the lords of Laval and La Trémoïlle attended in their royal garments; his lordship d’Alençon conferred knighthood on the king . . . his lordship d’Albret held up the sword before the king . . . and our lord of Reims carried out the said mystery and hence the consecration.” The holy oil used to anoint the king was carried in on horseback by four lords, magnificently attired and waving banners; the coronation lasted five hours, from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. “And at the hour that the King was anointed and also when the crown was lowered onto his head, one and all cried out Noël! And the trumpets rang out in such a way that it seemed the church vaults might crack. And during said mystery [the mystical rite of coronation] the Maiden stood at all times by the King’s side, holding her banner high in hand. And it was beautiful to behold the gracious manners of the King and the Maiden. God knows you were missed,” the correspondents made haste to point out.
Having communicated the most important aspects of the coronation—that it was splendid and solemn enough in all respects to convey legitimacy, thereby wiping away the memory of the feeble ceremony at which Charles had declared himself king immediately after his father’s death; that the abundance of participating lords meant that the old Armagnac alliance was once again firmly in place; and that Joan’s role in bringing about this momentous event was publicly recognized by the king, as indicated by her place at his side—the three operatives then reported on recent political developments, an area of keen interest to both women. “Tomorrow the king must leave in the direction of Paris,” they wrote. “We hear in this town that the duke of Burgundy went there and then on to Lyon where he is now. He sent a messenger to the King as soon as he arrived. At this hour, we hope that a solid treaty will be ready before they take their leave. The Maiden is confident that she will succeed at obtaining compliance from Paris.”
This news was precisely what Yolande of Aragon had hoped for. Charles had been persuaded to act and as a result his old allies had flocked to his side and the diplomatic solution she had been advocating for so long—prying the duke of Burgundy away from the English by arranging for a separate treaty—was in sight. More than this, her daughter’s husband was now established as the true heir to the throne of Saint Louis and the legitimate king of France, which meant that Marie, coronation or no coronation, was the legitimate queen, and her off spring were the future heirs to the kingdom. From Reims, the army would go to Paris with every hope of victory. And all of this had happened as a result of the introduction of the Maid to the court at Chinon.
The coronation of Charles VII at Reims.
As for Joan herself, the hours spent at the coronation ceremony were a source of great pride. She had accomplished the impossible, the miraculous; she understood that her place nearest the king signified the tangible acknowledgment of her achievement. When asked later by her inquisitors, “Why was your standard more carried in the church at Rheims at the consecration of the King than those of other captains?” she answered simply that, as “it had borne the burden, it was quite right that it receive the honor.”