The Maid and the Queen (18 page)

As it was hardly useful for Charles’s troops to fight each other rather than the English, Yolande took over. When Charles’s army took a route that required them to travel through Tours, Yolande made sure that the doors of the city were closed to him. “We should not let any men of arms enter who are stronger than the people of [the] town, be he the King our sire, or the president in his attendance, who directs his government, nor other governors who disrupt and prevent the said peace, and whom the lord of Richemont, constable of France, and the said Queen intend to oust shortly from the attendance and government of the King,” she wrote coolly to the captain of the city. Charles, incredulous, halted outside Tours, giving Yolande a chance to intercept him; she arrived on June 8 and with her usual dispatch within two days had delivered on her promise to reorganize the
king’s government along lines more to her liking. Louvet was exiled to Provence, Charles was reconciled with Arthur, and the queen of Sicily even used this occasion to send a conciliatory signal to Philip the Good by dismissing Tanneguy du Chastel, whose role in the murder of John the Fearless could not be ignored.

After this incident, to avoid further unpleasantness, Yolande regularly chaired Charles’s council, and the political situation continued to improve. The duke of Brittany abandoned the Triple Alliance and began cautiously to support Charles; even better, the banishment of Tanneguy du Chastel prompted Philip the Good to send emissaries to begin talks with members of Charles’s circle that everyone hoped would lead to reconciliation.

But she could not get her son-in-law to fight the English, and this had to be done, and done quickly, lest the duke of Bedford’s forces succeed in conquering more of the portion of the kingdom that included Yolande’s own territories. Charles, however, was still so unnerved by his defeat at Verneuil that he refused to mount another offensive. Worse, in his impulsive, erratic way, he had formed an attachment to a new counselor, Georges de la Trémoïlle, who was introduced at court by Arthur of Richemont in the summer of 1427. Although Yolande at first approved this appointment—La Trémoïlle had a brother who served the duke of Burgundy, whom the queen of Sicily hoped to use to further a negotiated peace with Philip the Good—she soon came to regret this decision. Corrupt, cunning, and enthusiastically self-serving, La Trémoïlle, described as “a fat man of about forty,” flattered Charles and played upon his vices and insecurities, encouraging inaction. He was especially masterful at detecting weakness in others and exploiting conflict to his own advantage. Charles knew it. “Dear cousin,” he said to Arthur of Richemont when he first introduced La Trémoïlle at court, “you give him to me, but you’ll repent of it, because I know him better than you do.”

And suddenly, with the accession of La Trémoïlle, Yolande, who had been Charles’s primary support and mentor from the age of ten, felt her mastery over her son-in-law recede. This must have been something of a shock, not to mention irritating after all she had done for him. They must have quarreled, as Yolande abruptly quit the royal court and retired to her castle in Saumur in June 1427. She was not the only adviser to feel the chilling effects of Charles’s fickleness; three months later, she was followed by her protégé, Arthur of Richemont, who was also evicted from his position as constable by La Trémoïlle’s influence. With the loss of these two key players, the kingdom
was left entirely at the mercy of a councillor whose principal interests lay in undermining the king’s confidence as a means of controlling him and enriching himself as much as possible at the public expense.

This period of Georges de la Trémoïlle’s greatest power—he almost single-handedly ran Charles’s court from September 1427 until the following September—unquestionably marked the low point in Charles’s already none-too-stellar career, and the English were quick to capitalize on it. By the spring of 1428, word reached France that substantial troop reinforcements under the direction of an accomplished general, the earl of Salisbury, were due to arrive that summer in preparation for a major new offensive. On April 28, 1428, the duke of Bedford very publicly summoned a war council to Paris to debate military options and chart the future course of hostilities in preparation for the earl’s arrival. Philip the Good made a special trip to the capital at this time to participate in the conclave. News of these talks, and the impending embarkation of fresh troops from England, were grimly reported to Charles’s court and from there leaked to his supporters; the atmosphere was tense as those who resisted the English-Burgundian alliance on his behalf braced themselves for a new onslaught.

Against this ominous background, Joan made her first attempt to reach Charles.

T
HE TIMING OF THIS,
Joan’s initial foray into the world outside of Domrémy, was no coincidence. Her voices—by now Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret were also speaking to Joan—became exceedingly urgent in May 1428, clearly in reaction to the English war council in Paris and the anticipated arrival of the earl of Salisbury and his troops. “The voice told me that I should go to France and I could not bear to stay where I was,” she said. “The voice told me also that I should make my way to Robert de Baudricourt in the fortress of Vaucouleurs, the Captain of that place, that he would give me people to go with me.”

Unwilling to let her parents know her true intention—“As for my father and my mother, my voices would have been satisfied that I tell them…. As for me, I would not have told them for anything in the world,” she admitted—Joan feigned a simple social visit to her aunt and uncle, who lived about halfway between Domrémy and Vaucouleurs. “I went to my uncle’s and I told him that I wanted to stay with him for a time and there I
stayed about eight days,” Joan reported. “And I then told my uncle that I must go to the town of Vaucouleurs and my uncle took me there. And when I came to this town of Vaucouleurs I recognized Robert de Baudricourt, whereas never before had I seen him and by my voice I knew this Robert, for the voice told me that it was him. And I told this same Robert that I must go into France.”

Joan’s uncle—actually, he was her mother’s cousin’s husband, she just called him uncle—was named Durand Laxart, and he later confirmed Joan’s account of this episode, detailing the arguments she used to convince him to help her. “I went myself to fetch Joan at her father’s house and I took her to my house,” he reported. “And she told me that she wanted to go to France, to the Dauphin, to have him crowned saying, ‘Has it not been said that France will be lost by a woman and shall thereafter be restored by a virgin?’ And she told me also that I was to go to Robert de Baudricourt that he might have her taken to the place where the lord Dauphin was to be found.”

Accompanied by her relative, Joan reached Vaucouleurs safely. The distinguishing feature of the town was its fortified castle, a twenty-three-stone-tower edifice on the bank of the Meuse supported by an escarpment, at which was stationed a garrison loyal to Charles. The soldiers of this unit were responsible for defending the territory surrounding Vaucouleurs against the Burgundians. Joan and her cousin went searching for Robert de Baudricourt and eventually found him. There followed a conversation that was overheard by a number of bystanders. The event was sufficiently unusual to be remembered long afterward: an unknown sixteen-year-old girl, attired in a shabby red dress or surcoat, loudly declaiming to a seasoned military commander while her adult male cousin looked on uncomfortably. This sort of thing did not occur every day in Vaucouleurs. An eyewitness reported, “Joan the Maid came to Vaucouleurs at the time of the Ascension of Our Lord [approximately May 14], as I recall it, and there I saw her speak with Robert de Baudricourt who was then captain of the town. She told him that she was come to him, Robert, sent by her Lord to bring word to the Dauphin that… the Lord wanted the Dauphin to be made King and he was to place his kingdom at her command, saying that despite his enemies the Dauphin would be made King and that she would lead him to his coronation.” The outcome of this first parley was not successful. “This Robert several times told me that I should return her to her father’s house after having cuffed her soundly,” Joan’s hapless cousin Durand Laxart reported.

Durand took the captain’s advice and returned Joan to Domrémy, but the war intervened and she didn’t remain there long. On June 22, taking the recommendation of the military council in Paris, the duke of Bedford ordered the governor of the nearby county of Champagne, Antoine de Vergy, a Burgundian ally who was on the English payroll, to attack the fortress of Vaucouleurs. In July, Antoine invaded the Bar-Lorraine region with an army of some twenty-five hundred soldiers, frightening the inhabitants of all of the villages in the area, including Domrémy. Gathering their possessions and livestock, Joan and her family followed their neighbors and fled to Neufchâteau, the nearest walled city, which was located only about ten miles south of Vaucouleurs.

Neufchâteau was large enough to boast an inn, owned by a woman known as La Rousse (the Redhead), and here Joan lodged, helping out in the kitchen to help pay for her stay. Both the inn and the city were crowded with people and men-at-arms similarly displaced by the war, and as might be imagined, there was much talk about the political situation and the need for Charles’s government to take action against the enemy, particularly when the Burgundians began burning everyone’s fields, an infuriating measure that could be witnessed simply by climbing onto the city’s walls. There was much fear that Vaucouleurs would surrender, but Robert de Baudricourt and his men stubbornly resisted, and by the end of July the enemy, finding the fortress more difficult to conquer than they had expected, lifted the siege and retreated to their home base in Champagne.

F
ROM HER EXILE
in Saumur, Yolande monitored the renewed English military offensive, and Charles’s pathetic response to it, with increasing concern. Ordinarily, as a diplomat, she would have preferred to work quietly behind the scenes in order to regain her former influence at court. But conditions were deteriorating so rapidly that she didn’t have the time. So she effectively staged a coup.

In February 1428, she hosted a small but select conclave at her castle to discuss what could be done to redeem the political and military situation. Attending this private conference were three former members of Charles’s council—Arthur of Richemont (the constable), the duke of Clermont, and the count of Pardiac—all persons of high birth who, like Yolande herself, had left the king’s court the year before. An understanding was reached, an army was mobilized, and by summer a plan of action was in motion.

On June 15, 1428, just after Joan’s first unsatisfactory conversation with Robert de Baudricourt, Charles received a written communication signed by the constable and the two noblemen who had been called by Yolande to Saumur. In their letter, the three called for a meeting between the “États généraux” (a representative assembly from all the territories loyal to Charles) and the king and his councillors, for the purpose of determining the direction of the war. The three “princes of blood” noted that they wished to be reconciled with the king but only if the policies drawn from these deliberations were actually put into effect (a reference to La Trémoïlle’s influence over Charles, which was generally recognized as inhibiting the king’s will to act). To see that this condition was met, they demanded that “the queen of Sicily and those whom she was pleased to designate for this task, be responsible for ensuring the execution” of whatever resolutions came out of these discussions, evidence of Yolande’s guiding influence over these events. That these three princes, with the queen of Sicily’s aid, had managed to raise a substantial army capable of taking over the government with or without Charles’s permission was well known at the royal court, and added greatly to the persuasiveness of their argument.

Charles was in no position to refuse this ultimatum. The prospect of a new offensive by the English frightened him; if the enemy broke through to the south of France he could be captured or killed. He needed allies and troops, and he recognized that the three princes, once reconciled, could bring the forces they were now using to threaten him to his defense. Accordingly, he acceded to all of their demands, and on September 15 a meeting of the États généraux was convened at Chinon. Yolande was back in power.

Having once again organized events to her satisfaction, the queen of Sicily returned to Charles’s court. Mindful of the lessons of her own mother-in-law, Marie of Blois, to ease the process of mediation and smooth over any lingering hurt feelings, Yolande thoughtfully remembered to pack 500,000 francs, which she immediately donated to Charles’s war effort. Even more important, she brought with her two new influential allies, the duke of Alençon and the count of Vendôme, high-ranking noblemen who, with Richemont, Clermont, and Pardiac, now formed the core of her political party.

Reconciliation was effected, and the queen of Sicily resumed her former position of authority within the royal council. At the September meeting, the États généraux, in combination with the councillors of the court,
recommended that a new battalion be raised to meet the English threat, and, as previously agreed, Yolande was put in charge of organizing and supplying this army. She now had the policy she wanted—to meet the English with force—and the authority to implement it. She worked feverishly over the next few months to assemble the best and most experienced military commanders and soldiers available from within Charles’s dominion and to gather the necessary provisions and equipment. By winter, all was in readiness, awaiting only the king’s command to attack.

But despite all of her efforts, she was unable to convince Charles to act militarily, and only the king could order the army to advance. Subtler methods would be necessary to effect that transition.

B
Y SEPTEMBER,
the reinforcements under the command of the earl of Salisbury had arrived in Paris and the English once more made plans to launch an offensive. Against the orders of the duke of Bedford, who wanted to attack and hold Anjou, the earl of Salisbury instead chose the city of Orléans, about halfway between Paris and Bourges, as his primary target. Orléans, on the north bank of the Loire, was protected by a number of walls and moats but was vulnerable to a blockade. In October, the earl of Salisbury had seized a number of towns in the surrounding area, including an important fort on the south side of the river, effectively isolating the city. Although Salisbury died from wounds incurred in the attack, he was immediately replaced by the earl of Suffolk, whose plan was simply to starve the inhabitants into submission. The English forces encircled the city and dug in for the winter, and so began the siege of Orléans.