Laura Richards
Joan of Arc
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
Walls and boulevard have long since been outgrown by the city of the Loire: dynasties have risen and fallen, wars have swept and harried France after their fashion. Still, in the early May time, when Nature is fair and young and sweet as the Maid herself, Orleans rises up to do reverence to her rescuer. The priests walk in holiday vestments, the bells ring out, the censers swing, the people throng the streets and fill the churches.
During her brief stay in Orleans after its deliverance, Joan bore herself with her own quiet modesty. She loved solitude, and rather shunned than sought company. She took no credit to herself; the glory was God's and God's alone, she repeatedly told the people, who flocked about her in adoration.
"Never were seen such deeds as you have wrought!" they told her. "No book tells of such marvels!"
"My Lord," replied the Maid, "has a book in which no clerk ever read, were he ever so clerkly."42
What next was for the Maid to do?
Orleans was delivered, but France was still under English rule. John of Bedford, "brave soldier, prudent captain, skilful diplomatist, having experience of camps and courts," was startled, but not discouraged by the rescue of Orleans. He meant to rule France for his child-king, and to rule it well; as a matter of fact, he did rule it for thirteen years, striving always "in a degree superior to his century," to bring order out of chaos, to convert the bloodstained wilderness of the conquered country into a decent and well-ordered realm.
Nor was John Talbot himself one whit disheartened. He had lost some of his best men on the bloody day of the Tourelles, but he had plenty more. He had lost Orleans, but the river towns on either side of it were still his, Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau; all strongly fortified, all guarding river and high road so that no man might pass without their leave.
He had retreated in excellent order from that field where his offered battle had been – strangely, he may have thought – refused by the Maid and her victorious army; he now established himself at Meung, with strong outposts at Beaugency and Jargeau, and awaited the next move on the enemy's part.
Bedford, meantime, assembled in all haste another army at Paris, prepared to go to Talbot's assistance whenever need should arise.
Joan knew better than to follow the orderly retreat of the English. Her own men, with all their superb courage, even with the flame of victory in their hearts, had not the training necessary for a long campaign in the open; neither was there money for it, nor provisions.
Besides, her Voices had but one message for her now; she was to go to the Dauphin; he was to be crowned king, as soon as might be; then – to Paris!
Leaving Dunois in charge of Orleans, Joan, with several of her followers, rode out once more, this time to Tours, whither Charles came from Chinon to meet her.
It was a strange meeting. The conquering Maid, she beside whom, as she and all her followers believed, the angels of God had fought for France, rode forward, bareheaded, her glorious banner drooping in her hand, and bent humbly to her saddle-bow in obeisance. Charles bade her sit erect;[46] an eyewitness thinks that in his joy he fain would have kissed her. He might better have alighted and held her stirrup, but this would naturally not occur to him; certainly not to the Maid, who had but one thought in her loyal heart.
"Gentle Dauphin," she said, "let us make haste and be gone to Rheims, where you shall be crowned king!" Now, she pleaded, was the time, while their enemies still "fled, so to speak, from themselves."[46]
She added some words which well had it been for Charles if he had heeded. "I shall hardly last more than a year!" she said. "We must think about working right well this year, for there is much to do."
From the beginning, she had known that her time was short. The how and why were mercifully hidden from her, but she knew right well that whatever she was to do must be done soon.
But Charles of Valois would not willingly do anything one year that might be put off till the next. He hesitated; dawdled; consulted La Trémoïlle, his favorite and master; consulted Jean Gerson, the most Christian doctor, whom men called the wisest Frenchman of his age. The latter gave full honor and credence to the Maid. "Even if (which God forbid) she should be mistaken," he wrote, "in her hopes and ours, it would not necessarily follow that what she does comes of the evil spirit and not of God, but that rather our ingratitude was to blame. Let the party which hath a just cause take care how by incredulity or injustice it rendereth useless the divine succor so miraculously manifested, for God, without any change of counsel, changeth the upshot according to desert."43
Thus Gerson, the learned and saintly. La Trémoïlle, the ignorant and unscrupulous, was of another mind, and La Trémoïlle was master of the Dauphin and of such part of France as the Dauphin ruled. This greedy parasite had been willing that Orleans should be rescued; that alone boded him no special danger. Any general awakening of the country, however, any dawn of hope, freedom, tranquillity, for the unhappy people, might be disastrous for him. While the strength of the realm was expended on petty squabbles among Charles's various adherents, while the splitting of hairs with Burgundy filled the time safely and agreeably, La Trémoïlle could rob and squeeze the people at his pleasure. But now affairs began to take on a new aspect. This Maid, having saved Orleans, might well have busied herself with matters of personal glory and profit. Instead of this, she talked of nothing but a united France, a France at peace, with honor; of Charles a king indeed, with all good and true men serving him honestly and joyfully. Moreover, his, La Trémoïlle's, chief rival and former patron, Arthur of Brittany, Count of Richemont, was an admirer of this troublesome young woman.
Altogether it seemed to La Trémoïlle that the Maid was not a person to be encouraged. Fair and softly, though; no haste, no outward show of enmity; judicious procrastination could do much.
Procrastination suited Charles admirably; he asked nothing better. He dawdled two precious weeks away at Tours; then he went to Loches, and dawdled there. (His son, Louis XI. did not dawdle at Loches, though he spent much time there, making cages for unruly cardinals, worshipping our Lady of Embrun, hanging men like apples on his orchard trees, and otherwise disporting himself in his own fashion! But that was thirty years later.)
Poor Joan, bewildered at this strange way of following up a great victory, followed Charles to Loches, and with Dunois at her side sought the Dauphin in his apartments, where he was talking with his confessor and two other members of his council, Robert le Maçon and Christopher of Harcourt.
Entering the room, with a modest but determined mien she knelt before Charles and clasped his knees.
"Noble Dauphin," she said, "do not hold so many and such lengthy councils, but come at once to Rheims and take the crown that is yours!"
Upon this, Harcourt asked her if this advice came from her "conseil," as she called her heavenly advisers. "Yes!" she replied. "They greatly insist thereupon."
"Will you not tell us, in the presence of the king, what is the nature and manner of this counsel that you receive?"
Joan blushed; it was great pain to her to unveil things so sacred; but she answered bravely: "I understand well enough what it is you wish to know, and I will tell you freely.
"When men do not believe in those things which come to me from God, it grieves me sore. Then I go apart and pray, making my plaint to my Lord for that they are so hard of belief: and after I have prayed I hear a Voice saying to me, 'Child of God, go, go, go! I will be thy helper; go!44 When I hear that Voice I am joyful, and wish it might always be thus with me."
While she spoke, she raised her eyes to heaven, and seemed indeed in an ecstasy of joy.
Charles listened, was impressed, and doubtless went to tell La Trémoïlle about it.
But there were others, who cared nothing for La Trémoïlle and much for the Maid.
The young Duke of Alençon was, we know, her sworn brother-in-arms. He had no mind to let the glory of Orleans evaporate in trailing mists of negotiation and dispute. He got together a little army, and demanded the presence and help of the Maid in a campaign against the English. La Trémoïlle could not well prevent this; he could only so manage that a whole month was wasted before permission was given. This was a hard month for the Maid. To her eyes it was clear as the sun in heaven that "when once the Dauphin was crowned and consecrated, the power of his adversaries would continually dwindle."
"All," says Dunois, "came to share her opinion!" By which he meant all true and knightly persons like himself.
Finally the matter was decided. A rendezvous was appointed at Selles, not far from Loches; thither, in the first days of June, the Maid repaired, and there gathered about her all the chivalry of France, eager to follow her to fresh conquests.
Alençon was in command; he was, we might say, the temporal chief; Joan the spiritual one. Dunois was there; La Hire, Vendôme, and the rest; among them Guy de Laval and his brother Andrew. A letter from the former, written in his name and his brother's to his mother and grandmother, has been preserved, and gives us so clear and life-like a picture of the occasion and of Joan herself that I cannot resist giving it in full. Mutatis mutandis, it is not so unlike certain letters that come over the sea to-day.45 Reading it, we can thrill with the two women, one of whom, remember, the grandmother, was the widow of Bertrand Du Guesclin.
My Reverend Ladies and Mothers: After I wrote you on Friday last from St. Catherine of Fierbois, I reached Loches on Saturday, and went to see my lord Dauphin46 in the castle, after vespers in the collegiate church. He is a very fair and gracious lord, very well made and active, and ought to be about seven years old. Sunday I came to St. Aignan, where the king was, and I sent for my lord of Treves to come to my quarters; and my uncle went up with him to the castle to tell the king I was come, and to find out when he would be pleased to have me wait on him. I got the answer that I should go as soon as I wished, and he greeted me kindly and said many pleasant things to me.
On Monday I left the king to go to Selles, four leagues from St. Aignan, and the king sent for the Maid, who was then at Selles. Some people said that this was done for my sake, so that I could see her; at any rate she was very pleasant to my brother and me, being fully armed, except for her head, and holding her lance in her hand. Afterwards, when we had dismounted at Selles, I went to her quarters to see her, and she had wine brought, and told me she would soon serve it to me in Paris; and what she did seemed at times quite divine, both to look at her and to hear her. Monday at vespers she left Selles to go to Romorantin, three leagues in advance, the marshal of Boussac and a great many soldiers and common people being with her. I saw her get on horseback, armed all in white, except her head, with a little battle-axe in her hand, riding a great black courser, which was very restive at the door of her lodgings, and would not let her mount. So she said, "Lead him to the cross," which was in front of the church near by, in the road. There she mounted without his budging, just as if he had been tied, and then she turned toward the church door which was close by, and said, "You priests and churchmen, make a procession and pray to God." She then set out on the road, calling "Forward, forward," with her little battle-axe in her hand, and her waving banner carried by a pretty page.
On Monday my lord duke of Alençon came to Selles with a great company, and to-day I won a match from him at tennis. I found here a gentleman sent from my brother Chauvigny, because he had heard that I had reached St. Catherine. The man said that he had summoned his vassals and expected soon to be here, and that he still loved my sister dearly, and that she was stouter than she used to be. It is said here that my lord constable is coming with six hundred men at arms and four hundred archers, and that the king never had so great a force as they hope to gather. But there is no money at court, or so little that for the present I can expect no help nor maintenance; so since you have my seal, my lady mother, do not hesitate to sell or mortgage my lands, or else make some other provision by which we may be saved; otherwise through our own fault we shall be dishonored, and perhaps come near perishing, since if we do not do something of the kind, as there is no pay, we shall be left quite alone. So far we have been, and we are still, much honored, and our coming has greatly pleased the king and all his people, and they make us better cheer than you could imagine.
The Maid told me in her lodgings, when I went there to see her, that three days before my coming she had sent to you, my grandmother, a little gold ring, but she said that it was a very little thing and that she would willingly have sent you something better considering your rank.
To-day my lord of Alençon, the Bastard of Orleans, and Gaucourt should leave this place of Selles, and go after the Maid, and you have sent I don't know what letters to my cousin La Trémoïlle and to my lord of Treves, so that the king wants to keep me with him until the Maid has been before the English places around Orleans to which they are going to lay siege, and the artillery is already prepared, and the Maid makes no doubt that she will soon be with the king, saying that when he starts to advance towards Rheims I shall go with him; but God forbid that I should do this, and not go with her at once; and my brother says so, too, and so does my lord of Alençon – such a good-for-nothing will a fellow be who stay behind. They think that the king will leave here to-day, to draw nearer to the army, and men are coming in from all directions every day. They hope that before ten days are out affairs will be nearly settled one way or the other, but all have so good hope in God that I believe He will help us.
My very respected ladies and mothers, we send our remembrances, my brother and I, to you, as humbly as we can; and please also write us at once news of yourselves, and do you, my lady mother, tell me how you find yourself after the medicines you have taken, for I am much troubled about you.
My very respected ladies and mothers, I pray the blessed son of God to give you a good life and a long one, and we both of us also send our remembrances to our brother Louis. Written at Selles this Wednesday the 8th of June.
And this vespers there came here my lord of Vendôme, my lord of Boussac, and others, and La Hire is close to the army, and soon they will get to work. God grant that we get our wish.
Your humble sons,Guy and Andrew of Laval.47
On June 9th, Alençon and the Maid entered Orleans with their army, about two thousand strong. The people flocked about her with joyous greetings and offers of provisions and munitions; they could not do enough to show their enduring gratitude to the saviour of their beloved city. Beside this, it must be confessed that they felt the proverbial "lively sense of future favors." Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency, were still in English hands; from these sentinel towns up and down the Loire the enemy kept strict watch over Orleans, and there could be no freedom of coming or going. These towns, it appeared, must be taken before the cry 'To Paris!' could be raised in good earnest.
