CHAPTER 9
The Maid
of Orléans
Jhesus-Maria, King of England, and you, Duke of Bedford, who call yourself regent of the Kingdom of France… and you… who call yourselves lieutenants of the Duke of Bedford, acknowledge the summons of the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid here sent by God… the keys of all the good towns which you have taken and violated in France. She is here come by God’s will to reclaim the blood royal. She is very ready to make peace, if you will acknowledge her to be right, provided that France you render, and pay for having held it…. And if so be not done, expect news of the Maid who will come to see you shortly, to your very great injury.
—excerpt from a letter to the English dictated by Joan of Arc,
March 22, 1429
RLéANS, A LARGE WALLED CITY, one of the most heavily fortified in France, was situated on the north bank of the Loire about seventy-five miles south of Paris. The siege was in its sixth month by the time the convoy of supplies left Blois, and the situation was indeed dire. Because Orléans was almost completely surrounded by the English, only one of its five gates—the easternmost door, called the Burgundy Gate—could still be accessed by French partisans, which meant that foodstuffs trickled in only sporadically and in far too limited quantity to support the needs of a population that numbered over thirty thousand. On Tuesday, March 8, for example, the town authorities managed to smuggle in a mere nine horses carrying wheat and other victuals. If Orléans was not resupplied quickly, its citizens faced the choice of surrender or starvation.
And yet militarily the situation was not without hope. Although the English had initially committed an army of six thousand men to the effort, in order to encircle Orléans effectively they had been required to subdue the surrounding territory. This meant leaving behind garrisons in a number of towns, thus reducing the size of the force available to conduct the actual siege. Additionally, because living conditions during the winter were so poor—it was difficult to maintain supply lines and the English men-at-arms were often as hungry and cold as those whom they had been assigned to blockade—desertion was a problem. By April 1429, the number of English troops participating in the siege had dwindled to somewhere between twenty-five hundred and four thousand.*
A few thousand soldiers were insufficient to surround a city protected to the south by a large river and that boasted a walled perimeter of two thousand yards supported by a significant number of guns, some of them capable of hurling stone cannonballs weighing nearly two hundred pounds a distance of half a mile. The English commander, the earl of Suffolk, had compensated by erecting a number of bastilles—a series of improvised, detached forts—to encircle the city. There were at least five to the north of Orléans and two on the southern bank of the Loire. Several hundred English soldiers manned each of these bastilles, which were equipped with cannons, although some of the forts had more cannons and soldiers than others.
The problem with this setup was that there was quite a bit of terrain between the bastilles, which meant that the soldiers of one fort could not easily come to the aid of another. Nor could the English fill in these gaps by building more bastilles without a fresh infusion of troops. “Really the bastilles were not to blame, but there were not enough of them, because the investing armies were numerically inadequate,” observed the eminent historian Andrew Lang. “They [the English] had not soldiers enough to man twice the number of bastilles.” The success of this strategy was heavily dependent upon the French army and the population of the city itself remaining quiescent. To his credit, the duke of Bedford recognized the siege of Orléans for what it was: a bit of military hubris on the part of the English commanders that he as regent had been unable to prevent. “God knoweth by what advis [advice] the siege of the city of Orleans was taken in hand,” Bedford would later write grimly to Henry VI.
THE RESPONSIBILITY for the defense of Orléans would ordinarily have fallen to its duke, but as this gentleman was still detained overseas as a prisoner of the English, the obligation fell to his half brother, Jean. Unlike Charles VII, who many assumed was the illegitimate son of Louis, duke of Orléans, Jean actually was Louis’s illegitimate son by his acknowledged mistress, Mariette of Enghien. For this reason, Jean was universally referred to as “the Bastard of Orléans,” a moniker that carried with it no hint of disparagement, being rather meant only to elucidate, in the most helpful way possible, the specifics of Jean’s lineage.
Orléans under siege and surrounded by the English bastilles, 1429
Jean was an experienced and highly skilled captain who had arrived in Orléans very soon after the siege had been laid and so had had ample time over the intervening months to observe the strength and layout of the enemy’s forces. It was he, and not Joan, who was in charge of the relief effort. There were only two routes by which to circumvent the English blockade. The first of these was to go north through the forest and around the system of bastilles in a wide, out-of- the-way circle before finally reaching the Burgundy Gate by ducking between the enemy’s two easternmost forts, which coincidentally were the least manned and the farthest away from each other. The second was to approach from the south, paralleling the Loire to the town of Chezy, about five miles upstream from Orléans. From Chezy, the supplies could be loaded onto barges and floated downstream to the Burgundy Gate. This second route “was rendered possible owing to the neglect of the earl of Suffolk to stretch a chain across the river—a laxity that would have horrified Henry V,” deplored the English military historian Alfred Higgins Burne. The river option was safer but problematic because the barges necessary to load the supplies were in Orléans, which meant that the wind had to be out of the west to get them upstream to Chezy. (It didn’t matter which way the wind blew on the way back, as the barges could just float downstream with the current.) The Bastard assessed the situation and ordered the army to come by way of the southern route.
However, as this counsel conflicted with the military policies urged by Joan’s voices, which commanded her to take the northern route and engage the enemy at once, it was kept secret from her. Consequently, her first encounter with her commanding officer, as related by Jean himself, who had a keen remembrance of the conversation more than two decades after the fact, was less than auspicious:
“‘Are you the Bastard of Orléans?’ Joan asked.
“‘Yes, I am, and I rejoice in your coming,’ Jean replied.
“‘Are you the one who gave orders for me to come here, on this side of the river, so that I could not go directly to Talbot [an enemy captain] and the English?’
“‘I and others, including the wisest men around me, had given this advice, believing it best and safest.’
“‘In God’s name, the counsel of Our Lord God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought that you could fool me, and instead you fool yourself; I bring you better help than ever came to you from any soldier to any city: It is the help of the King of Heaven.’”
Luckily for all concerned the breeze, which had previously been unfavorable, shifted direction at that very moment. “Forthwith I had the sails hoisted, and sent in the rafts and vessels,” remembered the Bastard. “And we passed beyond the Church of Saint-Loup despite the English. From that moment I had good hope in her, more than before.” The Bastard may have credited Joan with the change of the wind, but it was he who had had the foresight to bring the convoy along the southern route to Chezy and to have the boats in place. More important, he had arranged for a diversionary attack—a sortie against the English bastille at Saint-Loup, the fort farthest away from all of the others—just as the barges were being launched for the return trip. This excellent bit of soldiering distracted the enemy forces and allowed the boats to sail through to the city unmolested. And just like that, Orléans was resupplied.
So successful was this venture that the Bastard immediately ordered the royal army that had escorted the convoy to return to Blois to pick up and transport further supplies. Again, this tactic was in opposition t
o the one urged by Joan’s voices, but the Bastard circumvented this problem by convincing Joan to remain behind. “I then implored her to consent to cross the river of Loire and to enter into the town of Orléans where she was greatly wished for,” the Bastard later testified. The celebrated French captain La Hire was also invited to stay, presumably to render advice on military strategy, and the three officers—the Bastard, Joan, and La Hire—entered the city in a triumphal procession on the evening of Friday, April 29, 1429, Joan dressed in her armor and riding upon a white horse, with her standard carried before her.
By this time everyone in Orléans knew who she was and the streets were mobbed with jubilant citizens grateful as much for the hope she had brought with her as for the desperately needed grain and livestock. “Came to receive her the other men of war, burgesses and matrons of Orléans, bearing great plenty of torches and making such rejoicing as if they had seen God descend in their midst; and not without cause, for they had many cares, travails and difficulties and great fear lest they be not succoured and lose all, body and goods,” reported the Journal of the Siege, the official town chronicle of Orléans. “But they felt themselves already comforted and as if no longer besieged, by the divine virtue which they were told was in this simple maid, who looked upon them all right affectionately, whether men, women, or little children. And there was marvelous crowd and press to touch her or the horse upon which she was.”
The next day was Saturday, and Joan, of course, wanted immediately to sally forth against the English in battle. But again she was overruled by the Bastard, who, in combination with the other captains, counseled waiting until the army returned from Blois with the additional supplies, so that they could engage the English at full strength. “Joan went to see the Bastard of Orléans and spoke to him, and on her return she was in great anger; for, said she, he had decided that on that day they would not go out against the enemy,” remembered Louis de Coutes, one of Joan’s pages. Having been prevented from attacking the English militarily, Joan chose instead to confront them verbally. Taking up a position on the street in Orléans closest to the enemy—it was at the intersection of the bridge over the Loire—she shouted across to the English captain, Sir William Glasdale, and those of the enemy troops who were within earshot, telling them to “go away in God’s name, otherwise she would drive them out,” and later that “they should surrender for God’s sake and that their lives would be saved.”
Although knowledge of Joan and her mission had spread rapidly among Charles’s supporters, and she had previously sent a letter to the duke of Bedford warning him of her approach, it is probable that this shouting match across the Loire was England’s first introduction to the Maid. The duke of Bedford, if he had received her letter at all, likely got many such letters from disgruntled French subjects and had disregarded it. Similarly, the English troops surrounding Orléans would hardly have credited the rumors that a French peasant girl had been enlisted to break the siege. Now, in the deepening gloom—Joan had chosen the hour of sunset to acquaint her opponents with her existence—they could just make out the slight figure of a young woman standing on the other side of the bridge hollering at them to surrender to her or else. While the novelty was undeniable, this approach did not have the desired effect on the gruff, war-hardened English soldiers, who were used to winning and had already formed a rather contemptuous opinion of their counterparts in the French military. “Glasdale and those of his company answered basely, insulting her and calling her ‘cow-girl,’ shouting very loudly that they would have her burned if they could lay hands on her,” reported Louis de Coutes.
But the outcome of any particular war or battle does not always rely solely upon such obvious variables as troop size or weaponry or tactics. There is always the possibility that the more elusive concepts of morale and momentum will come into play. Although the English did not yet realize it, merely by breaking the blockade and bringing in that first shipment of supplies, Joan had altered the attitude of the French and caused a shift in the military equation. Many years later, the Bastard, reflecting upon her role in these events, expressed this transformation succinctly: “It seems to me,” he said, “that Joan and also what she did in warfare and in battle was rather of God than of men; the change which suddenly happened in the wind, after she had spoken, gave hope of succour, and the introduction of supplies, despite the English, who were in much greater strength than the royal army.” Or, as a more modern military scholar observed, “Joan’s contribution… was that she roused the fighting spirits of the French, which had lain dormant for so long. This contribution was decisive.”
IT TOOK THE ROYAL ARMY until Tuesday, May 3, to return to Orléans from Blois. This time, as a ploy, the soldiers came by the northern route but again sent the supplies south to Chezy. To distract the English, they again attacked the easternmost fort of Saint-Loup. (“The fact that Fort St. Loup was so dangerously isolated was evidence of the supreme disdain that the besiegers had for their enemies at this time,” noted the same military scholar.) Joan must have heard the noise from the battle, because she accused her page of not having awoken her in time—“Ah, bleeding boy, you told me not that the blood of France was spilling!” he remembered she cried to him. By the time Joan’s horse was ready and she was dressed in her armor, wounded French soldiers were already streaming back toward the city. Worse, one of the English officers, Captain Talbot, having been alerted to the attack, had charged out of his headquarters with a regiment and, picking up reinforcements from the various forts along the way, was bearing down on the French army, intending to rout the offensive and vanquish the enemy troops.
At the sight of Talbot and his men, the French soldiers would ordinarily have become disheartened and retreated. But not this time. This time, they had Joan. Undaunted by the bloodied casualties she encountered outside the Burgundy Gate, Joan spurred her horse to the scene of the battle. “The En glish were preparing their defense when Joan came in haste at them, and as soon as the French saw Joan, they began to shout [cheer],” reported Louis de Coutes, who had followed his mistress to the battlefield.
And then something highly unusual happened. The French soldiers, inspired by the young woman in their midst, renewed their attack rather than quitting it and to their astonishment succeeded in capturing the fort of Saint-Loup and burning it to the ground. Talbot saw the flames and knew the bastille was lost; further, as the bulk of the French army turned to face his troops, he suddenly realized that he did not have a sufficient force to ensure victory. And upon that realization, something even more unexpected and uncommon happened: Talbot abruptly called off his soldiers and retreated to his fort, leaving the French the masters of the field and allowing the supplies to enter the city uncontested a second time.
The following day, the Feast of the Ascension, was given over to rest and prayer. Joan was extremely upset by the number of English dead, fearing they had died without benefit of the sacrament. “She wept much upon them and at once confessed herself to me, and she told me publicly to exhort all the soldiers to confess their sins and to give thanks to God for the victory won; if not she would stay not with them but would leave them,” remembered Joan’s confessor. The next day, Thursday, May 5, Joan dictated a final letter of warning to the English: “You, Englishmen, who have no right in this Kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Maid, that you quit your fortresses and return into your own country, or if not I shall make you such babay [the precise definition of this word is unclear, perhaps she meant battle] that the memory of it will be perpetual.” Then, to ensure they received her warning, she attached the letter to an arrow and had a French archer lob it at the enemy, shouting, “Read, it is news!” at the English soldiers. “News of the Armagnacs’ whore!” the English men-at-arms shouted in return, whereupon “Joan began to sigh and to weep copious tears, calling the King of Heaven to her aid. And thereafter was she consoled, as she said, for she had had news of her Lord,” Jean Pasquerel later r
eported. “And that evening, after dinner, she ordered me to rise on the morrow earlier than I had done… and that she would confess herself to me very early in the morning, which she did.”
And so, finally, on Friday, May 6, the Bastard launched a full-scale attack against the besieging army. Again, the French strategy was well thought out and executed. Instead of building upon the victory against Saint-Loup by confronting Talbot and his troops to the north, the French unexpectedly changed direction and attacked the enemy forces stationed to the south across the Loire. Making use of a small island in the middle of the river called the Isle of Saint-Aignan, a French regiment crossed by boat to this landmass very early in the morning and, taking the enemy by surprise, began immediately to strike at the English fort of Les Tourelles. Under cover of this initiative, more French soldiers crossed by boat to Saint-Aignan and began the construction of a bridge from the island to the southern shore, which their English counterparts in Les Tourelles, busy protecting themselves, were unable to prevent. Upon completion of the bridge, the main body of the French army crossed over to the southern bank of the Loire. Seeing the enemy upon them, the English soldiers stationed in the fort of Les Tourelles abandoned this bulwark in favor of the next closest bastille, called the fort of the Augustins, which was larger and more heavily fortified, and the battle began in earnest.
Although the historical evidence indicates that the French troops significantly outnumbered their English opponents—as many as four thousand French combatants went up against something less than a thousand Englishmen—the English were protected by the stone walls and armaments of the fort of the Augustins, and so the struggle was a desperate, all-day affair with significant casualties. Again, Joan’s participation was crucial. She and La Hire crossed the river at the same time and arrived just as the English were mounting a counterattack. “When they perceived that the enemies were coming out of the bastion to charge their men, at once the Maid and La Hire, who were always before them to guard them, couched their lances and were the first to strike among the enemies,” reported Jean d’Aulon. “Thereupon the others all followed them and began to strike at the enemy in such fashion that by force they drove them to retire and enter again into the bastion of the Augustins…. Very bitterly and with much diligence they assailed it from every side so that in a little while they gained and took it by storm; and there were killed or taken the greater part of the enemies, and those who could escape retired into the bastion of the Tourelles at the foot of the bridge. And thus won the Maid, and those who were with her, victory over the enemies upon that day.”
The Maid and the Queen Page 16
