Joan of Arc 6/13

The sixth part of the thirteenth tale from Heroes of History

In battle, when she led a charge, Joan always carried her standard so that she might not be able to use her sword. She wished to kill nobody and said “she loved her banner forty times more than her sword.” Her enemies, at her trial, wished to prove that her flag was a kind of magical talisman, but Joan had no belief in anything of that kind.

When once it was settled that she was to lead an army to relieve Orleans, she showed her faith by writing a letter addressed to the King of England, the Duke of Bedford, the Regent, and the English generals at Orleans.

Joan had no ill will against the English. She bade them leave France and yield the keys of all the towns they had taken and assailed in France. If they did not yield to the Maid and the king, she would come on them to their sorrow. “Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and entreats you not to work your own destruction!”

We may imagine how the English laughed and swore when they received this letter. They threw the heralds of the Maid into prison and threatened to burn them as heretics. From the very first, the English promised to burn Joan as a witch and a heretic.

At last the men-at-arms who were to accompany Joan were ready. She was armed in white armor, but unhelmeted, a little axe in her hand, riding a great black charger. She turned to the church and said, in her girlish voice, “You priests and churchmen, make prayers and processions to God.” Then she cried, “Forward, forward!” and on she rode at their head, a page carrying her banner. And so Joan went to war.

Joan of Arc led, she says, ten or twelve thousand soldiers. This army was to defend a great convoy of provisions of which the people of Orleans stood in sore need. The people were not starving, but food came in slowly and in small quantities. From the first the citizens had behaved well. They had burned all the outlying suburbs beyond the wall so that they might not give shelter to the English. They had plenty of cannon, which carried large, rough stone balls and usually did little harm.

The French general-in-chief was the famous Dunois. On the English side was the brave Talbot, who fought under arms for sixty years and died fighting when he was over eighty. The English had not soldiers enough to surround and take so large a town, of 30,000 people, in ordinary war. But as Dunois said, “two hundred English could then beat a thousand French’—that is, as the French were before the coming of the Maid.

The position of Orleans was this:

Looking down the river Loire, Orleans lies on the right. It had strong walls, towers on the wall, and a bridge of many arches crossing to the left side of the river. At the further end of this bridge were a fort and rampart called Les Tourelles, and this fort had already been taken by the English, so that no French army could cross the bridge to help Orleans. The rampart and the fort of Les Tourelles were guarded by another strong work called Les Augustins.

All round the outside of the town, on the right bank, the English had built strong redoubts which they called bastilles, but on the east, above the town, and on the Orleans bank of the Loire, the English had only one bastille, St. Loup. Now, as Joan’s army mustered at Blois, south of Orleans and further down the river, she might march on the left side of the river, cross it by boats above Orleans, and enter the town where the English were weakest and had only one fort, St. Loup. Or she might march up the right bank and attack the English where they were strongest and had many bastilles.

The Voices bade the Maid act on the boldest plan and enter Orleans where the English were strongest, on the right bank of the river. The English would not move, said the Voices. She was certain that they would not even sally out against her. But Dunois in Orleans, and the generals with the Maid, thought this plan very perilous. They deceived her, therefore, and caused her to think that Orleans was on the left bank of the Loire, and led her thither.

When she arrived, she saw that they had not played her fair: that the river lay between her and the town and the strongest force of the enemy. If a large convoy of provisions was to be thrown into a besieged town, the worst way was to try to ferry the supplies across a river under the enemy’s fire. But Dunois and the other generals had brought her to this pass, and the Maid was sore ill-pleased.

The wind was blowing in her teeth; boats could not cross with the troops and provisions. There she sat her horse and chafed till Dunois came out and crossed the Loire to meet her. This is what he says about Joan and her conduct:

I did not think, and the other generals did not think, that the men-at-arms with the Maid were a strong enough force to bring the provisions into the town. Above all, it was difficult to get boats and ferry over the supplies, for both wind and stream were dead against us. Then Joan spoke to me thus:

“Are you the Bastard of Orleans?”

“That am I, and glad of your coming.”

“Is it you who gave counsel that I should come hither by that bank of the stream and not go straight where Talbot and the English are?”

“I myself, and others wiser than I, gave that advice, and we think it the better way and the surer.”

“In God’s name, the counsel of our God is wiser and surer than yours. You thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves, for I bring you a better rescue than ever shall come to soldier or city—that is, the help of the King of Heaven.”

Then, instantly, and as it were in one moment, the wind changed that had been dead against us, hindering the boats from carrying the provisions into Orleans, and the sails filled.

The End, Part Six