The Maid and the Queen (24 page)

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 be yond 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.

T
HE 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.
^*

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 En glish 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.