April 1429
En avant, fille de Dieu, et nous vous aiderons
(Les Voix)
SO at length an expedition was appointed to set out from Chinon to Orleans. It was no mere question of bad roads and fordless rivers that had given the Dauphin pause. He knew but too well that at least three of the strongly fortified towns on the route were in the hands of the English, who also held the banks of the Loire. Faith in the divine mission of the Maid must certainly have increased by this time, for we hear that, when it was proposed to clear the way by driving the foemen from their fortresses, Jeanne was put at the head of the expedition, and orders were given that nothing should be done without her sanction.
So first she goes with a light heart to the city of Tours, a rich and loyal town, held by the mother-in-law of the Dauphin, where her equipment for battle was to be prepared. There, while the suit of “white armour” was being forged by cunning smiths, she procured for herself the sword about which there was so much talk in after days. As she passed through Fierbois on the way to Chinon she had prayed in the Church of St. Catherine, her patron, and had noted there behind, or in front of the altar the tomb of a knight. There need have been no supernatural intervention here; that a knight’s tomb should contain his sword was a well-known fact. On the other hand, the devout Maid would prefer that her sword should come to her straight, as it were, from the hands of her own special saint. So she could say with truth to her judges, when they tried to prove witchery in the matter:
“While I was at Tours I sent to seek for a sword in the Church of St. Catherine of Fierbois behind the altar; and presently it was found all rusty. It had five crosses on it, and I knew of it through my Voices. I had never seen the man who went to look for it. I wrote to the Churchmen at Fierbois and asked them to let me have it and they sent it. It was not deep in the earth; I am not certain whether it was behind the altar or in front. When it was found the clergy rubbed it, and the rust readily fell off. The man who brought it was a merchant of Tours who sold armour. The clergy of Fierbois gave me a sheath; the people of Tours gave me two, one of red velvet, one of cloth of gold; but I had a strong leather sheath made for it.”
Not only the position of her sword was communicated to Jeanne at this time by her mysterious Voices; she told the Dauphin that she would be wounded by an arrow at Orleans, but not unto death. The prediction was taken down in writing, and was fulfilled, as we shall see, a fortnight later.
Meantime a “Household,” or retinue, had been appointed for the Maid of Domrémy, consisting of an Augustinian friar named Pasquerel, who acted as her confessor, a squire, and two pages. Of these Pasquerel must have been greeted with especial joy by Jeanne, for he had come straight from the town of Puy, whence he brought news of her mother, Isambeau d’Arc, and her two brothers who had gone there for the great yearly festival of the Annunciation, kept with special solemnity in that place; and he had talked to her brothers with such effect that the two young men were already preparing to join their sister on her march to Orleans, leaving poor Isambeau to return to Domrémy with a heart bursting with love and pride and fear for the girl she had nursed in the bygone years.
By the time they had left the town of Blois behind them, her troop had been joined by a band of priests, who marched in advance under the banner made for her at Tours. This had been specially designed by the Maid, according to the directions given her, she said, by Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. Upon a white linen ground stood the figure of the Christ holding the round world in His hands, with an adoring angel on either side. Below were inscribed the names, “Jesus, Maria.”
The banner was generally upheld by the strong young arm of the Maid herself. “Take the standard from the hand of God and bear it boldly” her saints had told her, and Jeanne, with a girl’s dread of bloodshed, was no doubt glad to exchange her little battle-axe for the banner, which would prevent her also from using the sword which hung at her side.
The whole army was “more like a religious procession than an army,” for the priests sang hymns as they marched, and twice a day held a religious service beneath the sacred banner. By the strict command of the Maid, “no man might swear by aught but his bâton,” or join in the singing “unless he were clean confessed.”
Such, then, was the appearance of the force that arrived on the 28th of April on the south bank of the Loire, opposite the beleaguered city of Orleans.
The condition of this town, “almost the last barrier between the invader and the final subjugation of France,” was deplorable. These huge towers, built by the English, threatened them from the outer walls; provisions were almost exhausted; the English, stationed in the camp between the Regnart gate and the river, had but to play a waiting game.
And yet perhaps the most curious part of the matter is that Orleans was strongly garrisoned, so strongly that her troops might well have been sufficient to drive off the English forces and to prevent them from building those threatening towers. The town was commanded, moreover, by Dunois, generally known as the Bastard of Orleans, a brave and popular young officer who had won the devotion of his people. Yet with all these advantages the place was doomed, and both those inside and those outside knew it but too well; for the French general and his men had alike lost heart, each success of their foes reduced their stock of hope and courage to a lower ebb, and made them less fit for the fight.
The first intimation that the English forces, under the Duke of Bedford, received of the coming of the Maid must have been the quaint letter dictated by her before she left Tours, and sent thence to the camp outside Orleans.
“King of England, and you Duke of Bedford, calling yourself Regent of France, you William de la Pole, John, Lord of Talbot, and you Thomas, Lord of Scales, who call yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford, listen to the King of Heaven:
“Give back to the Maid who is here sent on the part of God the King of Heaven, the keys of all the good towns which you have taken by violence in His France. She is sent on the part of God to redeem the royal rights. She is ready to make peace if you will hear reason and be just towards France and pay for what you have taken. And you archers, brothers-in-arms, gentles and others who are before the town of Orleans, go in peace on the part of God; if you do not do so, you will soon have news of the Maid who will see you shortly to your great damage.
“King of England, if you do not this, I am captain in this war, and in whatsoever place in France I find your people I will make them go away. I am sent here on the part of God the King of Heaven to push you all forth of France. If you obey I will be merciful. And be not strong in your own opinion, for you do not hold the kingdom from God the Son of the Holy Mary, but it is held by Charles, the true heir, for God, the King of Heaven so wills, and it is revealed by the Maid, who shall enter Paris in good company. If you will not believe this news on the part of God and the Maid, in whatever place you may find yourselves we shall make our way there, and make so great a commotion as has not been in France for a thousand years, if you will not hear reason. And believe this, that the King of Heaven will send more strength to the Maid than you can bring against her in all your assaults, to her and to her good men-at-arms. You, Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays and requests you to destroy no more.
“If you act according to reason you may still come in her company where the French shall do the greatest work that has ever been done for Christianity.
“Answer then if you will still continue against the city of Orleans. If you do so you will soon recall it to yourself by great misfortunes.
“Written the Saturday of Holy Week, 1429.”
One can but try to imagine the astonishment, not unmingled with blasphemy, with which the English general would read this letter, utterly naïve in its simplicity, boyishly straightforward in its frank confidence.
Dunois, meantime, had been told of the approach of the Maid with her advance guard of priests singing the Veni Creator, upon the village of Chécy, some five miles distant, between the town of Jargeau, held by the English, and Orleans.
At this spot they had crossed the river with the intention of marching into the city by the Burgundy gate, which was unguarded save by one English fort. But Jeanne’s aim from the first had been, not to enter the city without a struggle, but to fight her way through the main camp of the English on the farther side of the city; and when she saw that her guides, taking advantage of her ignorance of the locality, had tricked her into what they thought a course of greater safety, her anger blazed forth. Her wrath, moreover, was justified still further by the fact that an adverse wind prevented the army from sailing up the river to Orleans, as was at first planned, and thus laid it open to the attack of Suffolk and Talbot, the English generals.
At this juncture she was met by that courteous knight Dunois, who had come out from the city to meet her at Chécy. At once she faces him with the frank question:
“Are you the Bastard of Orleans?”
“I am, and glad am I of your coming,” says he.
“Is it you,” blazes forth the angry Maid, “who gave counsel that I should come by this side of the river, and not against Talbot and his English at once?”
“I, and others wiser than I, gave that counsel, and think it is the best and safest way.”
“The counsel of God, our Lord,” says she, scornfully, “is more sure and more powerful than yours. You think to deceive me, but you deceive yourselves, for I bring you better assistance than ever came to knight or city, the succour of the King of Heaven.”
The courtesy and good-will of Dunois soon restored the Maid to her wonted high spirits and good humour. The wind changed to a more favourable quarter so that the convoy of provisions was able to sail in safety up the river to the city, which it entered “with no good will of the English” but with no opposition, as Jeanne had already foretold. Meantime, as the main army had to return to Blois to bring up another convoy, Dunois suggested that Jeanne should ride with him back to the city and enter by the Burgundian gate. Sorely reluctant to leave the soldiers whose hearts she had won to herself, the Maid at length consented, and either rode along the bank or sailed up the river with Dunois and La Hire, entering the city without the smallest opposition about eight o’clock in the failing light of an April evening.
One cannot wonder that the inhabitants of that beleaguered town thronged the streets to look upon the white vision of the Maid in shining armour, carrying her gleaming banner as she rode through the midst of them, and gazed at her “as if they had seen God descending among them.”
“For,” says an eyewitness of those things, “they had suffered many disturbances, labours, and pains, and what is worse, great doubt whether they ever should be delivered. But now all were comforted, as if the siege were over, by the divine strength that was in this simple Maid whom they regarded most affectionately—men, women, and little children. There was a marvellous press around her to touch her or the horse on which she rode, so much so that one of the torch-bearers approached too near and set fire to her pennon; upon which she touched her horse with her spurs and turning him cleverly, extinguished the flames, as if she had long followed the wars.”
First she went to the Church of the Holy Rood, and there made her thanksgiving for her safe entry into the city, and then to the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duc d’Orleans, where she thankfully removed her heavy armour and shared the bed of the little Charlotte, the nine-year-old daughter of her host.
The second great step in the accomplishment of her mission had been taken.