The Maid of France
Being The Story Of The Life And Death of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc)
CHAPTER 13

AFTER ORLEANS

ON entering Orleans the French gave praise to God in all the churches of the city. The people had always a lively sense of what they owed to their patron saints, St. Aignan and St. Euverte, in whose honour they had made many processions. Myths about their action appear late in the chroniclers. The Journal du Siege, a patchwork finished thirty years later than the events, only says, on the report of an English prisoner, that the defenders of the boulevard and the Tourelles saw themselves" assailed by a marvellous number of men, as if the whole world were there assembled." General Foy had the same false impression of overwhelming numbers on the ridge of Busaco. The author of the Journal credits St. Aignan and St. Euverte with the production of this miraculous impression, so natural when the whole French force swarmed up the scalding-ladders. A still later author, probably a very aged survivor of 1429, improves the tale." One of the English said that, during the siege, he saw two prelates in pontifical habits coming and going par sus the walls of Orleans," though unless he saw the Archbishop of Reims, and Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, taking a Sunday stroll together in February, he was probably mistaken. That" two bishops, in a blaze of light, were seen floating over the Tourelles at the moment of the assault," is averred, but I can find no reference to this romantic legend earlier than 1908.

The religious service ended, Jeanne went to the house of Boucher, her host, where her wound was tended by a surgeon; and she took a slight supper, four or five slips of bread soaked in weak wine and water: she had not eaten or drunk since dawn, says Dunois. Her great temperance and perfect health alone can account for the absence of any ill effects from a wound caused by the perforation of her body by a bolt or arrow. Her wound was healed within a fortnight, so she told her judges. The French loss she stated at over a hundred. We may note the health of the Maid's constitution, when a distinguished Professor speaks, as to Jeanne, of an alleged symptom of" insufficiency of physical development found in most hysterical patients" [neuropathes).

She had not a long night's rest."In the dawn the English came out of their tents and arrayed themselves in order of battle. Thereon the Maid rose from bed, and for all armour wore a coat of mail" (jaseran), says Dunois: she could not bear her heavy plate armour. The English had collected their prisoners and all the property that they could carry, leaving their sick, their heavy guns, ammunition, pavois (huge shields), and their provisions.

Talbot's men, unencumbered, and with banners displayed, in excellent order of battle, challenged the French to fight in fair field. The French also, with the Maid and most of their daring leaders, the Marshals, La Hire, Saintrailles, and Florent d'llliers, led out and marshalled their troops. For an hour the armies confronted each other. A citizen of Orleans, in 1429 a man of twenty-five, says that Jeanne was unwilling to fight because the day was Sunday. Yet at Paris she showed that she thought" the better the day, the better the deed." A more rigid Sabbatarian than she, a Scottish preacher, when Montrose, at Tippermuir, on a Sunday, offered a day's truce, urged the Covenanters to refuse it, and to do the Lord's work on the Lord's day. The results were as usual when the Covenanters met Montrose!

Jeanne's conduct, according to the Orleans witness, was peculiar. She sent for a portable altar and the necessary ecclesiastical vest ments. Two Masses were said, the whole army devoutly worshiping. Then Jeanne asked those about her whether the English were facing them."No, the English are turned towards Meun." "Let them go! Our Lord does not wish us to fight them to-day, you will have them another time." They had them presently, in a crushing defeat."The Maid," says Dunois briefly," willed that none should attack the English." Her motive is unknown; did she wish to spare bloodshed, or did she doubt (she who rarely doubted) that the English bowmen, in fair field, might win, as they had done in many a battle? The English doubtless had dismounted and formed in line, with their archers en potence, at right angles to either wing. Many a time the French and the Scots had charged the English in this formation, only to be rolled up in heaps of slain, a lance length in height, as at Dupplin, Halidon Hill, and Agincourt. The French captains by long experience had become more wary, and doubtless appreciated the motives of the Maid in refusing battle. The English retired in good order and unopposed.

Later some cavalry leaders, La Hire and Ambroise de Loire, with a hundred lances, followed the retreating host for three leagues, reconnoitring, and then returned to Orleans. Suffolk retired to Jargeau; Scales, Talbot, and others to Meun and Beaugency and other towns on the Loire near Orleans. It is said that when Bedford heard the evil news he went from Pads, as if he dreaded the populace, to Vincennes and its castle, and called in forces from all quarters, with small success; for the French in the conquered provinces began to hate, despise, and desert the English. These processes moved, however, but tardily.

At Orleans the townsfolk looted the English works, and made merry over the wine and other spoils, while the devout listened to sermons and marched in processions. This was the beginning of the great Orleans festival of the Eighth of May.

The English army should have had one advantage, even after a disaster, over that of France. The men," indentured" for a very short period of service, say six months, could not easily desert their colours in a hostile country. As we have seen, they did manage to desert, so Bedford testifies, during the siege; but now their safety lay in keeping together behind the walls and towers of Jargeau, Meun, Janville, Beaugency, and other towns captured in autumn 1428. But, after the raising of the siege of Orleans, the French garrisons of Chateaudun and several other places departed to their posts; the army of relief in part broke up; there were scant supplies, scant money to pay the men, and on May 10 the Maid, de Rais, and other leaders went to see the Dauphin. There was, however, we shall find, an attempt to follow up the victory.

At Tours the Dauphin welcomed the Maid, and sent despatches with official news of the victory to his good towns. In the letter to Narbonne we see fresh intelligence added as messengers come in with later tidings, first of St. Loup; then of the Augustins, where the old standard of the renowned Chandos was captured; then of the taking of the Tourelles and the raising of the siege. The only leader chosen for mention in the gazette is the Maid, who was personally present in action in all these affairs. "Her part was not that of a captain, she held no command of any description," says one of her critics, who also remarks that she was "Captain of the Commune," that she was "the only power in the city"; that at St. Loup she rallied and led the forces; that "the moment she appeared in the field, she was the chief, because she was the best;" that "she did everything, because without her nothing would have been done"; while she persuaded Dunois to permit the last charge on the boulevard of the Tourelles, and, as commander-in-chief, on May 8 refused battle though many leaders desired to fight.

As all these are well-established facts, it is less than logical to grudge the Maid her mention in what we may call the gazette of the victory, and the title of a leader, unofficial.

Meanwhile the professional captains in war were not quite so fortunate in her absence as in her presence. Possibly Jeanne's wounds in the foot and through the shoulder, not healed till a fortnight had passed, incapacitated her from joining in the expedition against Jargeau, led by Dunois, the Marshal de Boussac, and Saintrailles, at the head of many knights, squires, and civic details from Bourges, Tours, Blois, and other towns. This large force attacked Jargeau, twelve miles east of Orleans, just after May 10 or May 11, and fought for three or four hours, but could do nothing, though the English commander of the town, Henry Bisset, was killed. The moat, fed by the Loire, which was high, could not be crossed: the besiegers, professionally led as they were, had not brought the usual appliances for filling up or ferrying across a deep moat. It appears from the military romance, Le Jouvencel, that leathern boats were in use, and were transported on the backs of horses. I know no other example of this device, which may have been evolved long after 1429.

The news of the English defeats at Orleans was, naturally, a source of pleasure to the Duke of Burgundy, their ally." It is his interest that the English, who are so powerful, should be a little beaten. ... If the Duke of Burgundy chose, were it but by a word, to aid the Dauphin's party, there would not be a fighting Englishman in the country by Midsummer"; so says an Italian news-writer resident in Bruges. His letter must be of about May 18. He adds that before the victory of the Maid," prophecies were found at Paris and elsewhere" announcing success to the Dauphin; and he goes on to give his version of the advent of the Maid. In the Middle Ages, when any event of note occurred, or was anticipated, people bethought them of the popular predictions of Merlin, current in folklore and in manuscripts, remembered the Virgin prophecy of Marie d' Avignon, and some one framed a chronogram, which was attributed, as prophetic, to Bede. The Merlin prophecies were forced into harmony with the new situations; they were not new prophecies forged by fraudulent priests who used the Maid as their puppet. That is merely the fallacy of a recent historian of Jeanne d'Arc. When Richard II was taken prisoner by Bolingbroke (1399), an old English knight told Jean Creton, the chronicler, that Merlin and Bede predicted the events. The Middle Ages confused the heathen sennachie with the Christian historian.

Nevertheless the old saws and the new chronogram helped to spread the renown of the Maid, and to increase the hopes of the enemies of England. If we may believe a German contemporary, Eberhard Windecke, treasurer of the Emperor Sigismund, and a chronicler who was sometimes well informed, a pretty incident occurred when the Maid, standard in hand, met the Dauphin as she rode into Tours."The Maid bowed to her saddle-bow (so sehr sie konnte), and the King bade her sit erect: it was thought he would have liked to kiss her, so glad he was." No Stuart prince would have been so bashful !

He might have been encouraged to greater enterprises than a kiss by the sensible and sagacious approval which the great clerk, Jean Gerson, then in his last days, bestowed upon the Maid. Even already many evil things were said of her garrulity (she was rather taciturn), of her not being wholly serious; of her trickery; but, says Gerson," we cannot be responsible for what people choose to say." Belief in her is not an Article of Faith, any more than belief in the legends of certain early Saints (such as her own St. Catherine and St. Margaret, we may add) is matter of faith. The Maid and other leaders must not abandon the dictates of ordinary human prudence. Suppose that she is not invariably successful, it must not be inferred that her victories were not of God but of an Evil Spirit, but that her failure too is of God's decreeing. The wearing of male dress is defended and approved of; in short, at every point Gerson anticipates and contradicts the verdict of her hostile judges at Rouen.

Not less encouraging than the opinion of Gerson was that of Jacques Gelu, Archbishop of Embrun. It is difficult, he says, to take the Apostle's advice and"try all spirits.""By their fruits shall we know them." The fruits of Jeanne's inspirations were French successes and English defeats. To a divine and legist of the Dauphin's party, these fruits must seem excellent; to the divines and legists of Henry vi they must seem apples of Sodom, and on that ground they condemned her, while Gerson and Gelu approved of her. All the virtues and piety of the Maid must, to the Anglo-Burgundian Doctors, seem hypocrisy. G6lu, on the other hand, decided that Jeanne was to be obeyed as the messenger or angel of God, as far especially as her mission was concerned."We piously believe her to be the Angel of the armies of the Lord."

Probably Jeanne became acquainted with this opinion of the archbishop. This is worth remembering, because, at her trial, she ventured, for the purpose of concealing the King's secret, to narrate a transparent allegory, or parable, about an angel who brought a crown to the Dauphin. She herself was the angel of the allegory; her warrant was the archbishop's phrase," Puella, quam angelum Domini exejxituun esse pie credimusT The archbishop said, finally, that human wisdom must exercise itself in matters of military finance, artillery, bridges, scaling-ladders, and so forth, but in extraordinary enterprises the Maid must be first and chiefly consulted.

The news of" the right glorious Pucelle" soon reached Rome, where a historian, obviously French, added a note on her to his own copy of his Latin chronicle, Breviarium Historiale, He says that he would rather pass over Jeanne's feats in war than write inexactly; but he represents her force as a handful and the English army as innumerable. Cest la le miracle. He gives the age of the Maid correctly at seventeen years. She seeks no worldly advantage; and the money which she receives, she gives away." She is not addicted to divination, as the envious declare." Her miracles are genuine, for they are useful, and tend to exalt the faith and to improve morals. Her cause is just; she made the Dauphin, by a legal deed, surrender his realm into the hands of God, his superior."You are now," she said,"the poorest knight in your kingdom." As it happens, Charles was not yet a knight.

For a while Jeanne was consulted and accepted, and all went well for her cause till she was distrusted and set aside. The wisdom of Gerson and Gelu was thrown away on the Dauphin, the tool of the advisers who happened to have him in their hands at any moment. Day by day her allotted year was wasted. As far as we can see, military reasons demanded the instant use of the enthusiasm which she had aroused. Probably it was not possible to advance at once on Paris before the English recovered from the shock of Orleans, before they were reinforced. Nobody is known to have suggested these tactics. The Maid's plan was Orleans first, then Reims, then Paris. She had plenty of time for her task, if she could have roused the King by the sign given at Orleans.

An Italian letter of July, from Avignon, declared that Jeanne had entered Rouen on June 23, and that the Dauphin had peacefully occupied Paris on June 24, and proclaimed a general amnesty! The foolish report shows what was expected.

Meanwhile the Dauphin dawdled, first at Tours, then at Loches, and the early days of June had come before anything was attempted. Dunois and the Maid together visited the Dauphin at Loches. She was not of the Privy Council. Dunois says that one day, when the Dauphin was in council with Christopher Harcourt, Machet his confessor, Robert le Macon (Seigneur de Treves in Anjou, an old man), and with Dunois himself, the Maid knocked at the door, entered, knelt, and, in the old Greek fashion of suppliants, embraced the knees of the Dauphin. She used the same mode of approach to her Saints." Noble Dauphin," she said," hold not such long and wordy councils, but come at once to Reims and be worthily crowned."

That was her conception of her mission from the first, to have the Dauphin consecrated, and made king. Her next step, as she understood her mission (though it does not seem so certain that she was so commanded by her Saints), was to attack Paris. This she could have done with success even after the Coronation, if she had not been distrusted, thwarted, and set aside.

D'Harcourt asked her if the march on Reims was part of the monitions of her council, her conseil as she called her saintly advisers. Jeanne said,"Yes, they chiefly insist on it." " Will you not tell us, in the presence of the King, what is the nature of this council of yours ?" He did not know; if she did tell the Doctors at Poitiers, the secret was kept sacredly. Machet, who was present, had been of the Poitiers commission of inquiry.

She blushed and said," I understand what it is that you wish to know, and I will tell you willingly."

"Jeanne," said the Dauphin kindly, u You are sure that you are willing to speak about it in this company?" He knew.

"Yes" she said, and went on in such words as these:"When I am somewhat hurt because I am not readily believed in the things which I speak from God, I am wont to go apart and to pray God, complaining that they are hard of belief; and, after that prayer I hear a Voice saying to me, 'Fille D va, va, va y je serai a ton aide, va!' When I hear that Voice I am very glad, and desire always to be in that state."

"What is more, while she was speaking these words concerning her Voices, she strangely rejoiced, raising her eyes to heaven." In this scene Jeanne said little about her Voices, nothing about her visions.

At some moment, apparently about April 23-26 (?), Jeanne had visited the mother and the young wife of dAlengon; the lady was a daughter of the Due d'Orl^ans. Jeanne stayed with them for three or four days at the abbey of St. Florent, near Saumur. "God knows what joy they made for her," says PerceVal de Cagny, the lifelong retainer of the House, and, says Quicherat,"the best informed, the most complete, the most sincere, and the earliest of the chroniclers of the Maid."

It was with the Due dAlenc^on in command that Jeanne now undertook a campaign for the purpose of driving the English from their holds on the Loire, before attempting the journey to Reims. A month had been wasted by the King and his advisers before this enterprise was permitted. Whether the enterprise was necessary, in order to free the French rear before the march to Reims, is not certain. The discouraged English army of the Loire garrisons was not capable of attacking Orleans afresh. The long delayed reinforcements under Fastolf were not ready to march. Burgundy and Bedford were not reconciled. Had the Dauphin marched to Reims, leaving sufficient garrisons at Orleans and elsewhere, had he from Reims marched on Paris, Fastolf would have been compelled to retire on the capital, then insufficiently fortified, and the town would probably have fallen. It is not quite clear whether a party among the leaders advocated, in preference to the march to Reims, a campaign in Normandy before or after the new campaign on the Loire. In either case, the Maid argued that, "when the Dauphin was crowned and consecrated, the power of his adversaries would continually dwindle. So all came into her opinion," says Dunois.

The true point of attack was Paris. Normandy was devastated, the Dauphin's army would not find supplies; there were several fortified towns that would offer a long resistance; and, while the English commanded the seas, Rouen was impregnable. Yet a Norman campaign, not an instant movement on Paris, was regarded as the alternative to the march to Reims. With d'Alencon and the Maid, de Rais, de Boussac, La Hire, and de Saintrailles were for some time busy in collecting and equipping forces to clear out the English from the Loire towns,

At this moment we obtain the most fresh and gracious of all descriptions of the Maid. It appears in a letter of June 8, written by young Guy de Laval, the fourteenth of his name, to his mother and grandmother. His brother Andre, later Amiral and Marshal of France, also signs the epistle. Jeanne knew their mother's renown for loyalty, and had sent her for that reason a ring of gold.

Guy writes that he has ridden from St. Catherine de Fierbois to Loches. At St. Aignan he announced his arrival and eagerness in the cause to the Dauphin, who thanked him for being ready at need, and coming unsummoned. He was a noble of a Breton house, and all aid from Bretagne was welcome, for the Constable, Arthur de Richemont, was forbidden to approach the Court, through the influence of his foe, La Tr^moille. At Selles in Berry, Guy de Laval was welcomed by the Maid in her rooms." She sent for wine, and told me that she would soon make me drink wine in Paris. To see her and hear her speak, she seems a thing wholly divine." She was leaving for Romorantin with de Boussac and a host of men-at-arms and archers.

"I saw her mount, all in white armour but unhelmeted, a small steel sperth (a little battle-axe) in her hand. She had a great black horse, which plunged at the door of her house, and would not permit her to mount ' Lead him to the Cross,' she cried; it stands in the road, in front of the church. There he stood as fast as if he were bound with cords, and she mounted and, turning towards the church gate she said in a sweet womanly voice, ' Ye priests and churchmen, go in processions and pray to God.' Then 1 Forward, forward ! ' she cried, a gracious page bearing her standard displayed, and she with the little sperth in her hand."

The picture rises out of the night of nearly five centuries. There is a modern addition to the picture, Jeanne" was surrounded by mendicant friars." Of that there is no word in the letter of Guy de Laval. He says that she bade the priests at the church door make processions and prayers to God. Guy goes on to tell how d'Alencon has arrived, and how he has beaten the Duke at tennis. Richemont, the Constable, was expected with a force of 1000 men; we shall see how the truculent Arthur de Richemont was received; he whom the Dauphin, for love of fat La Tr^moi'lle, detested." Never men went with better will to any enterprise than we go now."" There is no money, or very little, at Court, wherefore, Madame my mother, you who have my seal, spare not to sell or mortgage my lands as seems best, for our honour is to be saved, or if we be in default, to be lowered or lost. We must do as I say, for pay there is none.".

D'Alencon, Dunois, de Gaucourt are all following the Maid. The King wants to keep Guy with him till the Maid has cleared the line of the Loire, and then to ride with him to Reims." God forbid that I should so tarry and not ride" to the front."He is a lost man who waits." Venddme, Boussac, La Hire are coming, " soon we will be at work."

In this spirit were these two young gentlemen of France; but a biographer of Jeanne says,"As they had much need to gain money, they offered their services to the King, who received them very well, but did not give them a crown." Verily it was not to gather gold, but to spend their lands, that the young Lavals rode in. But they were friends of the Maid, and must be depreciated by suppressing the evidence of their disinterestedness !

The Maid entered Orleans, the base of the Loire campaign, on June 9, to the great joy of the people. According to the Historiographer Royal, Jean Chartier, who on such a point should have known the facts, the army was gathered more through desire to follow the Maid, who was known to seek God's service, than to fight for pay. The people of Orleans were very liberal in providing supplies and ammunition, being moved not only by loyalty and gratitude, though they were ceaselessly loyal and grateful, but also by their interests, for the English holds all around them were thorns in their side. The French force is stated at 8000 combatants of all arms, but the estimates are never trustworthy.

Here we may ask what was the military position, and what were the military qualities of the Maid ? At this time, apparently, she had no official military position, though later, in November 1429, she is mentioned in official documents with d'Albret, LieutenantGeneral for Berri, as one of the two commanders of the French force. She had her standard, like other captains, but only her Household followed it officially, say a dozen men in all. Nevertheless her standard was the favourite rallying-point of the men: as we have seen, it magnetically attracted the boldest, and it was always first among the foremost. The combatants devoted to the Maid distinguished themselves, like her own men, by wearing white penoncels on their lances.

When Jeanne was not consulted by the leaders, she sometimes caused her influence to be obeyed, as we have seen; but she was often consulted at Orleans, at Jargeau, before Pathay, at Troyes, and so forth, though the captains need not accept her opinion. On the eve of Pathay they did not attack, as she appears to have wished; while on May 8 they obeyed her when she insisted on not facing Talbot in the field.

Her idea of strategy was always to strike swiftly at vital points, as at Paris and on the He de France. But on November 1429 her counsel, wisely or unwisely (it is a moot point), was not accepted by the captains,--and the result was disaster. In the spring campaign of 1430 she relied on the leaders after her Voices had predicted her capture.

It is not to be supposed that Jeanne could, unaided, plan combined operations in country with which she was unfamiliar; indeed, combined operations were little known, though the art of cutting lines of communication was well understood and practised. The correctness of her coup d'ceil was admitted, when on May 4 a smaller force than that of April 28 marched on Orleans by the way of the Beauce.

By critics who have an equal horror and ignorance of war and of" miracles," it is averred that she knew absolutely nothing of war, and that she" was never consulted, she never led." To argue thus is merely to give the lie to the copious evidence--an arbitrary way of getting rid of facts not easily to be explained by science. The art of war is the application of sound sense to military affairs. War had degenerated into" a series of vulgar brawls." To understand what was needed in the military way required no instruction from St. Michael, the leader of the hosts of Heaven. Every plain man in France knew that to shake off the English yoke a combined effort, union among the jealous nobles, concentration, and resolute fightings were necessary. The very critic who denies military knowledge to the Maid grants what he denies when he says" there was all the stout common sense of the people in her fear that the chivalry of France would not fight as she understood fighting." She soon showed how she understood fighting ! Her influence promoted union and concentration; she had and she exercised the great military gift of encouragement by leading as Skob^leff led, by her own dauntless example, by her undefeated tenacity." She was much superior to the men of war in courage and good will," says M. France, and these qualities are of supreme value to a leader. I go on to quote the sworn evidence to her merits of three of her comrades in arms, Dunois, de Termes, d'Alengon; men aged from twenty-two to twenty-five in 1429, men under fifty in 1450. We are told that they simply swore to any absurdity which was likely to please their party. But that is an arbitrary hypothesis, in the interests of the theory that Jeanne was not what history represents her. Few men, gentle or simple, perjured themselves with light hearts in the fifteenth century, and Dunois displayed a candour as to the success of Jeanne's military prophecies which disconcerts some of her admirers. Here follows the evidence:

De Termes."At the assaults before Orleans, Jeanne showed valour and conduct which no man could excel in war. All the captains were amazed by her courage and energy, and her endurance. ... In leading and arraying, and in encouraging men, she bore herself like the most skilled captain in the world, who all his life had been trained to war."

D'Alencon."She was most expert in war, as much in carrying the lance as in mustering a force and ordering the ranks, and in laying the guns. All marvelled how cautiously and with what foresight she went to work, as if she had been a captain with twenty or thirty years of experience."

Dunois."She displayed" (at Troyes)"marvellous energy, doing more work than two or three of the most famous and practised men of the sword could have done."

These three testimonies are selected because they are given by soldiers of experience who were eye-witnesses. In modern times General Davout, a nephew of Napoleon's Marshal, recognised her possession of the two essential qualities of a leader, moral and physical courage; also he remarks on the strictness of her discipline; her care for her men, her caution, her enterprise, her combination of daring initiative with perseverance and tenacity.

General Dragomirof abounds in the same sense.
Against these testimonies of professional soldiers, contemporary and of our own day, we have merely the repeated assertions of a peaceful man of letters, such as,

"Jeanne's advice was never asked: she was led about for luck, nothing was said to her."

"She did not lead the men-at-arms, the men-at-arms led her, not regarding her as an officer, but as a luck-bringer."

Dunois, de Termes, d'Alencon, and the other knights are dust: their good swords are rust, and it is safe to give them the lie!

To put the logic of the case in a nutshell, as de Morgan says, "it is more likely that P. has seen a ghost than that Q. knows he cannot have seen one." It is more likely that Dunois, d'Alencon, de Termes, and a cloud of other witnesses saw a girl with great natural military qualities, than that a modern civilian knows that they cannot have seen such a being." It is a small point, but the Maid's eagerness to remain all night with the men at Les Augustins (May 6, 1429) while the leaders went to bed in Orleans, proves her knowledge of war. Her skill is a marvel like that of the untutored Clive, but nobody knows the limits of the resources of nature.