If Joan did not own a horse until she received one from Robert de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs; if she did not have a sword until she received one also from Baudricourt or even later sent for the one which was hidden in the monastery of Saint-Catherine-de-Fierbois; if she had never worn armor, until she first tried on the suit which Charles, the dauphin, ordered to be made for her; and if she had never ridden under any standard, let alone hers, when did she become a soldier or, even better, a military leader? For that is what Joan was destined to be; that is why the dauphin had her tested and approved by so many at Chinon, Poitiers, and Tours. The rather convoluted question can be answered quite simply in two ways. The first is to stand on a historical soapbox and exclaim that a horse, sword, armor, or standard were not necessary to make someone in the late Middle Ages a soldier, let alone a military leader, just as having those items did not automatically improve one’s military skill or legitimize one’s generalship. Indeed, during the Hundred Years War especially, it was being discovered that many were not made military leaders simply by their noble birth. Far more often, the good generals on all sides – English, French, and Burgundian – rose from obscurity to greatness because they had a natural ability to lead men, formulate strategy and tactics, and, perhaps most importantly, stay alive when others around them were being killed. They also had to have confidence in their abilities, for if they appeared to doubt what they were asking others to do, their leadership was moot; no soldiers would follow them for long. This was more important even than winning (although numerous victories also obviously helped) in leading men into battle or at sieges during the last two centuries of the Middle Ages.
Even during the fourteenth century, the great generals were not always born into their roles – although some obviously were, such as Edward III and Edward, the Black Prince – but often rose through the ranks. Thus it was that a man such as Bertrand du Guesclin, whose minor nobility would never have accorded him the military leadership that he eventually achieved, became the most important general of France. He alone may have been responsible for the positive reversal of French fortunes towards the end of that century.1 On the English side was Sir Robert Knolles. His origin unknown, Knolles learned the soldiering trade simply by fighting, playing non-leadership parts in earnest battles such as Poitiers and more chivalric displays such as the Combat of the Thirty. Eventually, his ability to lead chevauchées successfully through the French countryside made him a popular and very wealthy leader. So popular was he that when peasants threatened London in 1381, the retired and relatively old Knolles was called on to design the defense of the city; so wealthy was he that later, when Richard II ran into money problems he went to Knolles for a loan, the collateral for which were Richard’s own crown jewels.2
During the fifteenth century, such leaders multiplied. In Joan’s own company, men, such as Étienne de Vignolles (dit La Hire), and Ponton de Xantrailles, were every bit the leaders that the more noble-born Jean, the Bastard of Orléans, Jean, the duke of Alençon, and Gilles, the lord of Rais, were. The latter may technically have been in charge of the soldiers who fought in the French armies that Joan was a part of, but the real leaders were those wizened old veterans, men who had proven themselves in warfare and had not been caught or imprisoned, let alone killed. Follow one of the noble leaders into a potential imprisonment, the leader would be ransomed, the more common soldier might be hanged; follow an impoverished, veteran captain into the same situation, and the potential for survival was far greater. One need only look at the signatures of these leaders to know their potential worth on the battlefield. The Bastard of Orléans’s, Alençon’s, and Rais’s signatures are all flowery and full bodied, evidence of an education in the posh surroundings of wealth and title. La Hire’s and Xantrailles’s, the few times when they can be found, are thin and shaky, evidence of a late-acquired knowledge of how to write, let alone other arts and sciences, learned probably around the campfire. Joan might have been one of these. She was confident in the divinity of her mission, and she had a fire and spirituality, which attracted soldiers to her. As will be seen, when the other leaders questioned her ability, it was often the fact that the soldiers followed her that would cause them to accede to her strategic and tactical wishes.
But that answer may side-step the question entirely. If the horse, weapons, and armor did not make the soldier or leader in the Hundred Years War, why did noble families continue to educate their sons in military skills and leadership? Why pay for them to be so richly attired and educated, when there was the likelihood that a peasant subject with no equipment or training might assume their military responsibilities? The answer is that everyone, including Joan, believed that it was necessary to learn how to fight and lead in a military engagement. And whatever spare time she had between her numerous examinations and ecclesiastical devotions, she spent on the practice of military arts. A short time after the duke of Alençon, who would become Joan’s closest friend, first met her, he was astonished to find that she was practicing her riding and fighting on horseback. He was impressed, testifying later:
And after a meal [at Chinon Castle], the king [and he went] for a walk in the fields, and there Joan ran with the lance [jousted], and seeing Joan conduct herself in the wielding and running with the lance so, [Alençon] gave her a horse.3
Marguerite de la Touroulde confirmed this: ‘She could ride a horse wielding a lance as well as a more experienced soldier could.’4 Alençon also testified that the Maid seemed to have been especially adept at sighting the relatively new gunpowder weaponry that the French used in their sieges:
. . . everyone marveled at this, that she acted so wisely and clearly in waging war, as if she was a captain who had the experience of twenty or thirty years; and especially in the setting up of artillery, for in that she held herself magnificently.5
While she did not practice that skill at Chinon or elsewhere, she seems to have had an affinity in learning from and in the engagements which she fought, and she always seemed eager to learn, especially if such learning aided the fulfilment of her mission. Being ‘common’ may also have allowed her to listen to others, common cannoneers, for example, and to learn from them, something prohibited the more noble French military leaders.
All of this resulted in a European-wide reputation for military skill and leadership which was unsurpassed for her day. No less a contemporary figure than Pope Pius II was incredibly impressed by her military capabilities. He writes:
The woman was made the leader of war. Arms were brought to her, horses led; the girl mounted with defiance, and burning in her armor, her lance quivering, she compelled her horse to dance, to run, and in no way to turn from its course.6
Somehow, somewhere, sometime, perhaps over a long time, in many places, and under many teachers, Joan became a military leader. And it all started at Orléans.
No single military engagement in the Hundred Years War has had more written about it than the siege of Orléans, and primarily the relief of that siege by the French army. The battles of Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Formigny, and Castillon together cannot boast the number of pages devoted to the siege of Orléans. The reason for this is simple. While all of those engagements contained valiant military efforts and sometimes even cinematic scenes of heroism (e.g. the teenage Black Prince’s defense of the center of the English line at Crécy, John II’s capture at Poitiers, Henry V’s battlefield oration before Agincourt, Richemont’s march into the battle of Formigny, and the death of the aged Lord John Talbot at Castillon), none of those engagements had the participation of the Maid, Joan of Arc.
Of course, most of the modern authors writing on the siege of Orléans are French, as are most of the chroniclers who wrote about the engagement in the fifteenth century.7To modern English commentators, their ancestors’ inability to capture the city of Orléans by siege is somewhat of an embarrassment, a sentiment which they share with their late medieval counterparts. Joan’s presence, and her role in the relief of the siege, too, is embarrassing. Jean Chartier’s comment, written between 1440 and 1450, ‘it was a very strange thing to see a woman fight in such an army’,8 works both ways in the Hundred Years War, or in any war, for that matter. If one wins using an unorthodox leader, in this case a woman who claims that she has a divine mission, the victory takes on a miraculous description. However, if one loses to that same unorthodox leader, an excuse for the loss must be found. Naturally, no one who is defeated by a ‘mission’ can accept it as ‘divine’, as that calls into question the justification and divinity of their military adventure. So it was with Joan of Arc. No contemporary English or Burgundian writer credited her victory at Orléans to deity, and few English historians do so today. Such an explanation, if nothing else, would mean that the justice of their cause should be questioned. At the same time, another excuse for defeat must be found.
There is little historical question as to the earl of Salisbury, Thomas Montagu’s, boldness or bravery. His military skill had led to significant and impressive acquisitions during Henry V’s Normandy campaign, and, after that king’s death, he had led several successful military campaigns into the dauphin’s territory, including victory at the battle of Verneuil. However, it is his 1428 campaign leading up to and including the siege of Orléans for which this general is best known. This stab into the very center of the dauphin’s lands was meant to break that future king’s opposition to Anglo-Burgundian rule in the north of France. And, had Orléans been captured and, thereafter, the Loire river basin been controlled, there is little doubt that the dauphin’s road to rule would have been delayed for quite a long time, if not completely destroyed.
But was it a task that could have been successfully completed? With only 5,000 men, could Salisbury have expected to be victorious over all of the towns which he needed to control to win the Loire, including the rather large Orléans? By 12 October 1428, when he began the siege of Orléans, Salisbury had occupied no fewer than seven towns, all of which must have cost him soldiers as casualties, not to mention that he needed some troops to remain behind in each of these locations as garrisons. Even if the garrisons were not large, and they do not seem to have been, he appears to have had an army no larger than 4,000 men at the time of the siege of Orléans. M. Boucher de Molandon and Adalbert de Beaucorps’ tally is 4,365, including almost 900 pages, while Louis Jarry’s total is 3,189; both judgements are based on an English compte of Salisbury’s army.9 Even when they were joined by some 1,500 Burgundian soldiers later in the siege,10 there seem not to have been enough soldiers to surround the city, let alone to capture it by siege. In fact, Salisbury never did completely surround Orléans. Instead, he manned only a few strongholds, boulevards – fortresses made of earth and wood which will be detailed later – some 600 meters from the city walls along the western side of the town (four in total), one more to the north, one on an island in the Loire river to the west of the town, and one more (the boulevard of Saint Loup) along the eastern road from Orléans to Jargeau (this last one located some two kilometers from Orléans’s walls).11 All of these held very few troops. Additionally, almost the entirety of the northern and most of the eastern sides of the city were left vacant of troops. Only the Saint Loup boulevard, located on the bank of the Loire, protected the eastern approaches to the besieged city, and, as will also be seen later, it was easily surpassed by French relief supply convoys, and by Joan and her army.
There was a single bridge across the Loire into Orléans. It was 350 meters long and consisted of nineteen arched spans. It was an old bridge, built sometime in the early twelfth century, but it had served the city well. Along this bridge, at the furthest point away from the city, on the last of the nineteen arches, was a stone castle, the Tourelles. Really just a fortified gate, with two flanking towers and a drawbridge separating it from the Loire bank, the Tourelles was a formidable defensive structure with which any attacking army was forced to contend. On the shore in front of the Tourelles lay an earthwork that further protected the bridge, although what purpose exactly it was to serve and even what shape it was is unknown. English changes to the bridgehead, principally the building of a boulevard, destroyed what had earlier stood there, and no contemporary description of this earthwork remains.12
The Tourelles became Salisbury’s primary target of attack. He determined that if he occupied this fortress and then the bridge, the city would eventually fall to him, especially as any French relief army would be forced to dislodge him from that same fortress. First, he bombarded the Tourelles and the earthwork in front of it with gunpowder weapons.13 Then, after the earthwork had fallen to him with relative ease, he brought forward a large number of miners who began to undermine the stone fortification’s foundations.
The defenders of Orléans must have decided that they could not resist Salisbury’s attack on the bridgehead and that it would be better for them to try and withstand his forces from behind the long and powerful walls of the city. (Although why they held this belief cannot be determined from contemporary documents.) During the time of Salisbury’s attack on the Tourelles, Orléanais miners had also been at work, breaking the bridge behind the fort. After a couple of days, to the surprise of the English who had not significantly undermined the walls of the Tourelles, the French defenders retreated to the city, and their final destruction of two arches of the bridge took place.14
Despite most English historians claiming this as a victory for the earl of Salisbury,15 this English military leader cannot have reveled too much in his capture of the Tourelles. After all, with the bridge broken behind the fortress, his occupation of the city was now as far from reality as it had been before. On the other hand, he now had a more comfortable, more fortified location for his future direction of the siege. But this comfort was not to last long. Only a few days after the occupation of the Tourelles, either 17 October, according to Enguerrand de Monstrelet, or 24 October, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans (most modern historians accept the latter), as Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, peered out of one of the upper windows of his captured fortification towards the town, a cannonball fired from one of the Orléanais gunpowder weapons smashed into the window ledge, shattering it, and propelling a piece of the metal window-frame into the face of the English military leader. Carried to the nearby castle of Meung-sur-Loire, the earl received medical attention. But much of his jaw and lower face had been removed by the blow, and, although he lingered for eight days, he could not recover from such a wound.16
The death of Salisbury was devastating to English concerns at Orléans. Few leaders in either the English or Burgundian armies could compete with the earl’s military capabilities, his brashness, heroism, or skill in leading men to victory even when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, took over from Salisbury, and later, at the beginning of December, he was joined by Sir Thomas Scales and John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who then in turn assigned the siege of Orléans to Sir William Glasdale,17 but one must wonder if Salisbury’s death put an end to any serious attempt to capture Orléans. For one thing, earnest attacks on the city stopped – although gunpowder bombardments were exchanged between the city and the English almost daily18 – with the English troops remaining in their fortresses around Orléans.19 Second, the English constructed a large boulevard over the earthwork which they had earlier captured outside of the Tourelles. (If Jacques Debal is to be believed, this was actually a reconstruction of the earlier earthwork, also called a boulevard by Debal, built by the French and occupied by Salisbury before his capture of the Tourelles.20 However, if the earlier structure were a boulevard, based on the later attack of this fortification by Joan, it appears that the English structure was far stronger than its French precursor.) Placed between the bridgehead and an Augustinian convent, this fortification was meant for one thing only: to be an added defense for the English troops situated in the Tourelles.
A boulevard was a low earthwork defense that was generally placed before a vulnerable gate or wall. In essence, it was a gunpowder artillery fortification, its defense derived from a large number of guns, and, in English boulevards at least, longbowmen (who increased the amount of defensive firepower), a low height (over which it was easier to fire) and earth and timber walls (which more readily absorbed the impact of any attackers’ stone and metal cannonballs). Boulevards had been known in France for at least two decades, and their effectiveness had been witnessed in several places. Indeed, so impressed were they by these gunpowder artillery fortifications, that the English too began to adopt them for their own defensive purposes, as witnessed by the use of them to garrison troops around Orléans before their occupation of the Tourelles.21 But it was the boulevard placed before the Tourelles that was the strongest and most famous at Orléans. This boulevard, called either the boulevard of Tourelles or of the Augustins in contemporary sources, was one of the most imposing fortifications ever built, despite its earth and wood construction. According to Régine Pernoud, it measured 20 meters in length and 26 meters in width, with a ditch surrounding it 8 meters deep.22 After its completion, Suffolk, and later Talbot, filled it with a large number of men and gunpowder weapons, perhaps the majority of both English soldiers and guns at Orléans.23
The boulevard of the Augustins was to become one of the focal points in Joan of Arc’s relief of the siege of Orléans. More importantly for the English troops there before Joan’s arrival, the construction of this boulevard and the garrisoning of it with men and gunpowder weapons shows that the English meant to alter their strategy away from the more active assault on the city. It is clear that Suffolk and his successors desired to wait patiently for the city’s surrender from starvation, bombardment, or despair. They certainly did not anticipate that the dauphin and his French forces would mount an effective attempt to relieve the siege.
That conclusion was not unwarranted. It is true that the Orléanais fought valiantly to keep their city from falling to the English. Unlike several other French cities and towns, even of the size of Auxerre or Troyes, that had surrendered to English besiegers without putting up much of a defense or even suffering much hunger, the inhabitants of Orléans were determined not to fall to the English without a fight. The numbers of arms within the city are not known, although as the earl of Salisbury discovered, the inhabitants of Orléans obviously had some gunpowder weapons. Nor is it known how many Orléanais were capable of using those weapons. What can be determined from the original sources is that those leading the defense of the city had what can best be called a ‘defensability’, a sense of what to do to prolong their defensive stance without particularly increasing their suffering. Evidence of this can be seen in the decision to abandon the Tourelles, but to use Salisbury’s attack of it to mask their own destruction of the bridge behind it. Thus Salisbury held the bridgehead, but not the bridge; and he was no closer to occupying the city. Another example can be seen in the Orléanais reaction to the destruction of their important Loire mills. The Journal du siège d’Orléans reports that in the early days of the siege, Salisbury, using his gunpowder weapons, had especially targeted and destroyed these mills, twelve in number situated between the bridge and the eastern-most city tower, the Tour Neuve. However, these mills were quickly replaced by the besieged citizens with eleven horse-operated mills built within the city and outside of the range of the English cannon.24 Then there are the exploits of Master Jean, a gunner actually mentioned as one who operated a gunpowder weapon known as a ‘grosse couleuvrine’, who was originally from Lorraine. The Journal calls him ‘the best master there was from that trade’ and Jean seemed to use that expertise to harry the English in the Tourelles. Firing from a fortified position, known as the Belle-Croix and approximately 400 meters across the broken bridge from the Tourelles, ‘he wounded and killed many’. But this was not all: ‘To mock [the English] he sometimes let himself fall to the earth, feigning either death or wounds, and had himself carried into the town. But he would return quickly to the skirmish, and did such so that the English would know that he was still alive, to their great damage and displeasure.’25 Finally, the Orléanais sometimes made their own attacks on the English positions without the participation of French soldiers.26 The response of the Orléanais to Joan’s entry into their city also gives evidence of their unwillingness to surrender to the English.
But the inhabitants of Orléans were unlikely to defeat their besiegers without outside assistance. And a similar unwillingness to surrender was not evident among the leaders of the French army sent by the dauphin to relieve the siege. When exactly a French relief force arrived at Orléans is difficult to determine from the sources; nor can it be determined who the leader of this first relief army was. What is known is that by Christmas 1428, Jean, the Bastard of Orléans, was there with a sizeable French force, as was the renowned veteran, La Hire, with his own military contingent. Of the two, the Bastard of Orléans was the chief commander, not only for his royal blood – he was the cousin of the dauphin – but also because he, as the brother, albeit the bastard brother, of the imprisoned Charles, duke of Orléans, was the noble most responsible for the security of the city. That said, at the coming of Joan of Arc to Orléans, it may also have been this Bastard of Orléans who was most willing to abandon the besieged city to the troops of Talbot, Scales, Suffolk, and Glasdale.
Jean, the Bastard of Orléans, later known as Lord Dunois, was born to Duke Louis of Orléans and Mariette d’Enghien, the Lady de Cany, in 1403, four years before his father’s murder began the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war that still raged during the 1428–9 siege of Orléans. Born out of wedlock, as his sobriquet indicated – Louis of Orléans’ legitimate wife was Valentine Visconti, but his amorous ways were legendary, provoking rumors of his infidelity even with the queen, Isabeau of Bavaria27 – Jean, the Bastard of Orléans, was nevertheless recognized by his father, which entitled him to similar benefits as his half-brothers. After Charles was captured at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and his younger brother, Philippe, comte de Vertus and last legitimate son of Louis of Orléans remaining in France, died in 1420, Jean took over the familial leadership as well as the responsibility for raising his half-brother’s hefty ransom.28
By this time, his own military career had begun. By 1417, only fifteen years old at the time, the Bastard of Orléans had already taken up arms against the enemies of the dauphin, primarily against John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy. He was captured and lingered under Burgundian imprisonment for two years. However unsuccessful at the beginning, in 1421 the Bastard began to build his military reputation anew, this time with far more success. In that year, he participated in the battle of Baugé and the defense of Blois. In both engagements he acquitted himself well, and, by the end of the year, his twenty-first, he had been dubbed a knight. From then until the end of his life, the Bastard of Orléans participated in nearly every military engagement involving forces of the dauphin, later Charles VII. Indeed, perhaps no one in French military leadership, including the impressive Arthur de Richemont, fought in more military engagements during the fifteenth century, and especially between 1421 and 1428, than did Jean, the Bastard of Orléans. His reputation continued to grow as did his titles and land-holdings. By March 1424, he had been given the county of Mortain, and by December of that same year, he was also awarded the county of Gien. In addition, Jean married well, in 1422, to the daughter of the president of the Parlement, Louvet.
Surprisingly, considering the time in and the side on which he fought, the Bastard of Orléans had known defeat in only a few conflicts. The battle of Baugé must be considered a French victory, despite some English historical attempts to deny its outcome.29 Additionally, the Bastard participated in the defense of Mont-Saint-Michel in 1425 and the relief of the siege of Montargis in 1427; in the latter, again in the company of La Hire, he won fame by his awe-inspiring attack of the besieging forces, an unconventional offensive that alone effectively raised the siege.30 Thus it would seem that he would have been the perfect leader for the forces ordered to relieve the siege of Orléans, his own city. Yet, contemporary chronicles paint a portrait of a military leader not prepared at all to repeat his Montargis feats. Rather, he seems to have been reluctant to meet the enemy, frightened by the English-garrisoned fortifications, and eventually, at least until Joan of Arc appeared, willing to retreat from Orléans and allow the city to fall to its adversaries.31
The Bastard of Orléans did attempt some military intervention, it is true, but on these few occasions, he seemed hesitant and cautious, exhibiting no leadership qualities. On 30 December, the Journal du siège d’Orléans reports, he led a ‘great attack’ on the English forces which ‘pushed back the enemy’ but resulted in no change in the status of the siege.32 And on 15 January, he again attempted a sortie into the English siege positions, leading ‘many knights, squires, captains, and citizens of Orléans’ against the boulevard of Saint Laurent. But, also according to the author of the Journal du siège d’Orléans, ‘the English observed it and called their men to arms against the enemy, so that they were armed, such that there followed a large and intense battle. Finally, the French had to retreat . . . because the English sallied out in all of their strength.’33 (Both of these attacks seem to have been led out of the city against the English; as will be seen, the English troops were so few at Orléans that passage into the city was relatively unimpeded.) La Hire, too, tried other sorties against the besiegers, but they met with similar results.34 All of these must be counted as setbacks in a military sense, as they brought not even the most modest of positive results. But no setback was quite so severe to the relief of the siege of Orléans than that delivered on 12 February 1429, outside of the village of Rouvray, to the north of Orléans, at what became known as the battle of the Herrings.35
Since the outset of the siege by the earl of Salisbury, the English troops had been constantly reinforced and supplied from their territories to the north, especially from Paris. This was important, for nothing plagues any besiegers more than their own lack of supplies; a siege effectively ends if the besiegers run out of supplies before the besieged. In early February, the Bastard of Orléans decided to intercept one of these supply trains, a large one led by an experienced English general, Sir John Fastolf, and outfitted in Paris. The Bastard’s purpose was two-fold: not only did he want to keep Fastolf from supplying the Orléans besiegers, but a convoy of this size would do much to alleviate some of the hunger which the citizens of Orléans were beginning to suffer. At the same time, such an attack might remove some of the unhappiness felt by these citizens at the Bastard’s inaction. He persuaded the dauphin to send a large army to perform the task. This convoy was filled with fish for approaching Lent, giving it its unusual name.
On the morning of 12 February, the French army, numbering between 3,000 and 4,000, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans,36 appeared on the horizon between the sleeping English camp and their Orléans destination. Undoubtedly they were hoping to surprise the English, but on this unusually clear morning their approach had in fact been seen, giving the English army ample time to set up their battle lines and protect their supply wagons. (The flat terrain had probably been recognized as a favorable campsite by Fastolf because it would give his scouts ample warning of an approaching army.) Fastolf’s army was significantly smaller than its French counterpart, so that, placing his wagons in a make-shift fortification, he took up a defensive formation. Against this, the French leader, Charles of Bourbon, the count of Clermont – the Bastard of Orléans served only as a leader of one of the French battle contingents – began to bombard the English formation/fortification with his gunpowder weapons. This proved to be remarkably successful, as the English had no option but to endure the bombardment or retreat; English casualties grew and wagons were destroyed, spilling their contents on to the field. (It is said by Enguerrand de Monstrelet that the Rouvray villagers profited much from the herrings left on the field following the battle, and that they were the first to call it ‘the battle of the Herrings’.37) But the French, true to their late medieval military characteristics, decided not to wait for their artillery to take its ultimate toll.38 A contingent of Scottish infantry serving in the French army, led by the Constable of Scotland, Sir John Stewart of Darnley, marched into the fray, halting the French guns for fear of striking them, but initiating English longbow fire. Not well protected by armor, the Scots were decimated by the English archers shooting from behind their wagon barricade, and they were forced to retreat. In response, or perhaps feeling that the guns and Scots had weakened the English enough to warrant a frontal assault, Clermont ordered a French cavalry attack. French horsemen outnumbered their opponents perhaps as many as ten-to-one and reached the English lines with little effort. But, by this time, their charge had become disordered by constant archery fire and the stakes which English archers had become accustomed to place before their formations. The French impetus was lost, and, as the fight intensified, English soldiers came from behind their wagons and attacked the rear and flanks of the French cavalry. Within a short time, the French army was in retreat, and the English had won the battle. Fastolf was able to continue with the remainder of his convoy and resupply the English besiegers of Orléans. Even more importantly, the English defeat of the French at the battle of the Herrings sent French spirits, especially those of the soldiers in and citizens of Orléans, to an all-time low. The count of Clermont and several other leaders, ‘with about 2,000 soldiers’, left Orléans for Tours.39 And, by the time the Bastard of Orléans returned to his city – he had barely escaped with his life from the battle, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans40 – the thought of abandoning it to the very determined English must have been quite appealing.
But hope was shortly to come to Orléans from quite a different source. On the day that the battle of the Herrings was fought, and lost, by the French, Joan of Arc was meeting with Robert de Baudricourt. It was her final meeting with the count, after which she would leave to meet the dauphin at Chinon. It was not long before word of her mission, in particular her mission to relieve the siege of Orléans, was heard in Orléans. The Bastard, having by then earned the title Lord Dunois, testified at the nullification trial that he had heard ‘rumors from the town of Gien . . . that a certain young woman, commonly called the Maid, asserted that she was going to the noble dauphin to raise the siege of Orléans and to lead the dauphin to Reims’.41 Gien was not far from Orléans and, still faithful to the dauphin, obviously was quite interested in the progress of the siege there. Undoubtedly, should Orléans fall, Gien might be next. It was thus important to the inhabitants of the latter if Joan’s mission was to prove divine.
The divinity of Joan’s mission was no less important for the Orléanais. Perhaps this is what gave those citizens the energy to continue to resist their besiegers after the disaster at the battle of the Herrings. They must have listened intently to whatever news came from Joan’s meeting with the dauphin at Chinon and her trial at Poitiers. Of course, this was not all that they did. The Orléanais also sent a legation under the leadership of the veteran captain, Ponton de Xantrailles, who had joined the besieged at Orléans early in 1429, to Duke Philip of Burgundy, asking him to intercede on their behalf. The duke refused, leaving the citizens of Orléans no recourse except to wait for their inevitable defeat – unless the Maid could assist them.42 After the battle of the Herrings, it was clear that there would be no other official French response.
For Joan’s part, the siege of Orléans stayed foremost in her mind. She spoke of it frequently and showed impatience at her extended interrogation because of it.43 Once she was accorded ecclesiastical and then royal approval, she sought to relieve the city. Even before she had returned to Chinon, she sent her famous ‘Letter to the English’, in which she told the besiegers of her mission to relieve the siege and her determination to complete it. Dictated around 22 March at the conclusion of her trial at Poitiers and sent from Blois between 24 and 27 April44 as she was collecting her weapons and soldiers, the letter is clear in its confidence and in its defiance:
Jesus-Maria,
King of England, and you, duke of Bedford, you call yourself regent of the kingdom of France, you, William de la Pole, Sir John Talbot, and you, Sir Thomas Scales, who call yourself lieutenant of the aforesaid duke of Bedford, render your account to the King of Heaven. Surrender to the Maid, who is sent here from God, the King of Heaven, the keys to all of the good cities that you have taken and violated in France. She has come here from God to proclaim the blood royal. She is entirely ready to make peace, if you are willing to settle accounts with her, provided that you give up France and pay for having occupied her. And those among you, archers, companions-at-arms, gentlemen, and others who are before the city of Orléans, go back to your own countries, for God’s sake. And if you do not do so, wait for the word of the Maid who will come visit you briefly, to your great damage. If you do not do so, I am commander of the armies, and in whatever place I shall meet your French allies, I shall make them leave it, whether they wish to or not; and if they will not obey, I shall have them all killed. I am sent from God, the King of Heaven, to chase you out of all of France, body for body [every last one of you]. And if they wish to obey, I shall have mercy on them. And have no other opinion, for you shall never hold the kingdom of France from God, the King of Heaven, the son of St Mary; but King Charles, the true heir, will hold it; for God, the King of Heaven, wishes it so and has revealed through the Maid, and he will enter Paris with a goodly company. If you do not wish to believe this message from God through the Maid, then wherever we find you we will strike you there, and make a great uproar greater than any made in France for a thousand years, if you do not come to terms. And believe firmly that the King of Heaven will send the Maid more force than you will ever know how to achieve with all of your assaults on her and on her good men-at-arms; and in the exchange of blows we shall see who has better right from the King of Heaven. You, duke of Bedford, the Maid prays you and requests that you cause no more destruction. If you will settle your account, you can join her company, in which the French will achieve the finest feat ever accomplished in Christendom. And give answer, if you wish to make peace in the city of Orléans; and if indeed you do not do so, be mindful soon of your great damages.45
Why did Joan dictate and send this letter? It is clear that she believed her mission to relieve the siege of Orléans had come from God, and that she felt it was only fair to give the English the opportunity of withdrawing from the city without the loss of life. She may also have known or been told of the ecclesiastical tradition of ‘declaring war’ against your adversary as a requirement to ensure that the war fought was a ‘just’ one (although the fact that the French were attacking the English in order to regain territory that had been earlier lost to them would have made moot this requirement for justice).46
Yet, no doubt the English in receiving this epistle simply discarded it; the fact that they did not immediately remove themselves from outside of Orléans indicates that they did not adhere to its contents. Joan of Arc could not have thought that they would. Nor could her purpose in having this letter written have been only to fulfill the requirements of medieval military justification, or to remove the deaths of so many opponents from her conscience. Because this letter was so well known among those on her own side,47 unlike her earlier letters – Pernoud and Clin refer to three previous letters sent by Joan since she had left Vaucouleurs, none of which were known to anyone but Joan and the recipients of the letters, and all of which were known only through her own testimony48 – Joan may have written her ‘Letter to the English’ more for the French than for the English. Evidence for this can be seen in a citizen of Orléans, Jean Lullier’s, nullification trial testimony:
She summoned the English in a letter containing in substance that they must retreat from the siege and go to the kingdom of England, otherwise they would be compelled to retreat by strength or violence . . . from that hour the English were terrified, and no longer had the power of resistance as previously. Only a few men of the town would often fight against a great number of English, and each time they so overwhelmed those besieging them that the English no longer dared to come out of their forts.49
Through her ‘Letter to the English’ Joan of Arc made official what had been rumored throughout France since she had first visited Robert de Baudricourt: the Maid who would come forth to save France, as had been prophesied, had arrived, and her first target was the siege of Orléans. But that was not all. She would not stop her attacks on the English until they had been removed, until ‘the true heir’, King Charles VII, would ‘enter Paris with a goodly company’. This would be the ‘uproar’ that was ‘greater than any made in France for a thousand years’. It would start at Orléans.
Some time after 21 April Joan joined the royal army at Blois in final preparation for her journey to Orléans. She was met there by the Bastard, who, according to Jean d’Aulon, had traveled to Blois especially to meet the Maid and to lead her safely to Orléans.50 Later, at her nullification trial, the Bastard did not recall his feelings in first meeting with Joan, which may have been an omission meaning little, but may also give an impression that the man in charge of relieving the siege of Orléans was not overly impressed with her.51 Others, for example, the duke of Alençon, gave long discourses at her nullification trial on their positive first impressions in meeting Joan.52 The Bastard of Orléans, however, did recall the large numbers of soldiers – Enguerrand de Monstrelet estimates a number of 400–500 soldiers, while Joan’s testimony enlarged this number to 10,000–12,00053 – and the huge convoy of provisions – ‘many wagons and carts of grain and a large number of oxen, sheep, cattle, pigs, and other foodstuffs’, according to Jean Chartier – that were at Blois,54 the latter having been collected with much success by the dauphin’s mother-in-law, the Queen of Sicily, and paid for by the dauphin.55 It seems that Joan’s prominence had not only led to the recruitment of many soldiers for the relief of the siege, but also to the gathering of an impressive amount of supplies for the relief of the citizens’ suffering as well. Additionally, Joan seems to have brought together a sizeable force of ecclesiastics for the journey. These, Jean Pasquerel reports, she had brought together twice a day to sing hymns to St Mary; they were there to hear the soldiers’ confessions. She also had a banner made for these priests, on which was painted the ‘image of our Lord crucified’.56 Finally, there was also an impressive number of French military leaders who had come forward to fight. Many of these, including Jean, the duke of Alençon, Gilles de Laval, Baron de Rais, Ambroise de Loré, the later Provost of Paris, Jean de Brosse, the Marshal of Boussac, and Louis de Culan, the Admiral of France, had remained suspiciously absent from combat at or around Orléans to this time, but would stay with Joan throughout most if not all of her military endeavors after the Orléans engagement. Also joining with Joan and the royal army at Blois was La Hire, who had traveled with the Bastard from Orléans.57
On 26 April,58 after all of the soldiers had arrived and all of the foodstuffs and military provisions had been collected, Joan of Arc and the royal army left Blois for Orléans. Jean Pasquerel testified that initially she marched her priests, with their newly made banner and ‘singing the Veni creator Spiritus and many other anthems’, before the rest of the army, but that these remained with them only for two nights, returning to Blois as they neared Orléans.59
Joan’s desire was to enter Orléans, but on the Blois side of the city there were countless obstacles. Not only were two major Loire towns lying between Blois and Orléans – Beaugency and Meung, both controlled by the English – but on that side (the west side) of Orléans itself was the largest number of English boulevards, all positioned along the routes that Joan and her army would have to use to enter the besieged city. However, the approach to Orléans from the east was guarded only by the English-controlled town of Jargeau and by the boulevard of Saint Loup. So, this was the logical direction to travel. Furthermore, Jargeau posed little problem as there seems to have been a ford or crossing of the Loire between that town and Orléans. Positioned near Checy, the crossing was unknown to or at least unprotected by the English, which allowed Joan’s party to cross the river with her relief convoy. That left only the English in the boulevard of Saint Loup to worry about. The journey from Blois to Orléans was uneventful; indeed, the French army may have traveled fairly far south to avoid any conflict. But once they approached the ford at Checy, and then later at the boulevard of Saint Loup on 29 April, problems arose for Joan and her companions. Witnesses testified later, however, that at both locations Joan solved these problems with miracles.
At the crossing to Checy, the Bastard later recalled, the wind was blowing away from Orléans, which prevented the boats that were to carry the relief provisions into the city from traveling. But once Joan became determined to go across the river herself and enter Orléans, ‘in a moment, the wind . . . changed and became favorable; accordingly, sails were immediately raised, and she, the boats and ships, entered the city’.60 Jean Pasquerel’s version of this miracle story is slightly different. Joan’s confessor, by his own admission not being present at the time, testified that when the party reached the crossing at Checy, they found that ‘the river was so low that ships could not travel up it nor come to the shore on the side of the English’, but again when Joan arrived, ‘immediately the water rose so that ships were able to land on their side, on which boats Joan and some of her soldiers boarded and crossed over to the city of Orléans’.61
The boulevard at Saint Loup posed an even greater problem. How would Joan, several soldiers (it is clear from the original sources that most of the army stayed on the south side of the Loire, so that they might have a better approach against the English62), and a large supply train cross virtually next to this boulevard without arousing the English besiegers within? Even if their numbers were not large, the Saint Loup soldiers were probably sufficient in strength to keep the small French force, with its slow-moving supply train from entering the city until reinforcements could arrive. Again, the nullification trial witnesses claim, a miracle occurred. Joan and her company passed the boulevard of Saint Loup seemingly without any incident at all. ‘They crossed outside the church of Saint Loup, occupied by the English,’ recounted the Bastard, and ‘from then he had great hope in her, more than before.’63 Joan then entered the city of Orléans by the Burgundian Gate.
What is to be made of these two miracles? Obviously they continued to impress the memories of those testifying on Joan’s sanctity more than a generation after the events themselves. Yet, there are some problems with what was being remembered. With the first miracle, not only is there the problem of two different versions of what happened, but the Bastard’s version, despite his being present while Pasquerel was not, plays the most with logic. If the provisions taken by Joan from Blois to Orléans were carried by boat from Blois to Orléans, as many contemporary sources suggest,64 such a flotilla would have had to pass the English-held Loire towns of Beaugency and Meung-sur-Loire, as well as floating between the English troops and the Orléans walls, before it reached the French army at the Checy crossing. Therefore, it seems doubtful that such a means of transporting these goods would have been used. Moreover, if these were the same boats and they had passed such impediments as those just mentioned, why would they have traveled further up the river to Checy and not simply have stopped outside a closer entrance to Orléans? Of course, these could have been other vessels found by the French to carry the provisions to Orléans, or sent by the Orléanais, as the author of the Chronique de la Pucelle claims,65 but such a number as would have been needed to take the supplies to the city would also undoubtedly have been too many to have been found outside of the English-controlled towns and been previously undetected by them. Or, they could have simply been a few vessels meant to ferry the goods to the other side of the Loire, with the Bastard of Orléans’ testimony in error or incomplete on the matter. Pasquerel’s testimony is more logical, if he is talking about a ferry unable to travel from one side of the Loire to the other because of its low water, but it must be remembered that Joan’s confessor was not present with the troops there and that he omits the chief characteristic used to retell this miracle story for many years after – the wind. His testimony is also somewhat confused in its description of the side of the river that Joan was to travel to as ‘the English side’, so that at least one nullification trial manuscript transcriber has replaced those words with ‘the French side’.66 Still, it must be agreed, Joan did cross the river safely and made her way past the boulevard of Saint Loup.
What about Joan’s failure to disturb the English troops in the Saint Loup boulevard? There is no question about besieger laxity on that side of Orléans. After all, it seems that the Bastard of Orléans himself had passed that way several times in entering and exiting his besieged city. Also, on frequent occasions, supplies, victuals and gunpowder weapons, had been delivered to the Orléanais through the very Burgundian Gate that Joan would use to enter the city on 29 April. So why was the Bastard so impressed by Joan’s achievement? Was it simply because of the size of the party in which Joan traveled and the fact that it aroused no attention? This may be the reason for his praise. But was it a miracle, or simply a daring but tactically well-run military operation? For this, one must turn to the Journal du siège d’Orléans. In it we can gain a better understanding of exactly what occurred at the boulevard of Saint Loup on 29 April 1429:
On the twenty-ninth of the month [of April], certain news was delivered to Orléans that the King was sending by the [eastern way] victuals, powder, cannon, and other weapons of war under the leadership of the Maid, who came from our Lord to re-provision and comfort the town, and to raise the siege, by which many of those of Orléans were much comforted. And because it was said that the English would take pains to prevent these supplies, it was ordered that everyone should be armed and well prepared throughout the city; which was done . . . On this same day there was a great skirmish because the French wished to give place and time for the victuals to enter, which were brought to them. And to keep the English busy elsewhere, they sallied out in great strength, and went charging and skirmishing before Saint Loup d’Orléans. And they engaged those there so closely that there were many dead, wounded, and captured on both sides, so much so that the French carried into their city one of the English standards. While this skirmish was being fought, there entered into the city the victuals and the artillery which the Maid had brought all the way from Checy.67
Perhaps this diversionary attack on the boulevard of Saint Loup by the Orléanais was not Joan’s strategem, but she was tactically capable enough to recognize an advantage when she saw one. While the citizens of Orléans attacked the boulevard of Saint Loup and kept the English occupied, Joan of Arc, together with her soldiers and supply train, entered the besieged city of Orléans without conflict.
The Orléanais were elated and celebrated Joan’s arrival, not only because she had brought badly needed supplies, but also because, again in the words of the Journal du siège d’Orléans, she brought ‘divine virtue which was said to be in this simple maid. All regarded her with much affection, even men, women, and small children. And there was a very extraordinary rush to touch her, or even to touch the horse on which she sat.’68 One of the citizens of Orléans, Jacques l’Esbahy, later recalled that she asked first to be taken to the cathedral to ‘show her reverence for God her Creator’ and undoubtedly to offer thanks for her safe and successful journey.69 But, Louis de Coutes, Joan’s page, claimed that she was so exhausted after her tiresome travels and the tumultuous adventures of the day that she simply retired to the home appointed for her stay, the house of Jacques Boucher, the city’s treasurer general, and there took the Eucharist and went to bed.70
The Bastard of Orléans remembered it differently. He testified that Joan was not pleased with the events of the day. At Checy, she became angry that he was leading her into the city and not into immediate action against the English troops. He testified:
Then said she to him: ‘Did you give counsel that I should come here, to this side of the river, and that I should go not straight there where Talbot and the English are?’ He answered that he and others, wiser on this matter, had given this counsel, believing that they were doing the best and surest. Then Joan said to him, ‘In the name of God, the counsel of our Lord God is surer and wiser than yours. You thought to deceive me but it is you who are deceived, for I am bringing you better help than ever came from any soldier or any city, because it is the help of the King of Heaven. It does not come through love for me, but from God himself who, on the petition of Saint Louis and Saint Charlemagne, has had pity on the town of Orléans, and has refused to suffer the enemy to have both the body of the lord of Orléans and his city.’71
(It was after this reprimand, the Bastard remembered, that the miracle of the winds and then the passing of Saint Loup took place.)
The Bastard of Orléans was not used to such an affront to his authority. Nor was he prepared at that time to attack the English, no matter what Joan might have intended or threatened. Joan, on the other hand, did not wish to sit idly by waiting for the action of military leaders who had not shown any previous ability to encounter the English successfully. Louis de Coutes recalled that she was again incensed on the following morning, 30 April, when she discovered that there was to be no attack on that day either: ‘on the next day, after they had entered the town of Orléans, Joan came to the Lord, the Bastard of Orléans, and spoke with him. And, in returning, she was very angry because, as she said, it had been decided that on this day there would be no attack.’72 To Joan this anger was justified. She had a mission to fulfill, one given her by God, and that mission began with the relief of the siege of Orléans. She could not relieve the city living comfortably within its walls. But she was not the general in charge of the French army, and she had to wait for others, individuals who felt that they were ‘wiser’ on military matters, to attack the English positions before her mission could be completed. She was, naturally, impatient. (There was an attack made that day, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans: La Hire, ‘with some citizens’, made a charge against the English in their boulevard of Saint Pouër to the north of the city. Nevertheless, despite the fight being long and very hard, with much exchange of gunfire between the two forces, it was little more than an ineffective skirmish. Joan seems also not to have known about it.73)
While she may have been restrained from active military conflict by the inaction of the Bastard of Orléans, she did not have to like it, and Louis de Coutes testified that following her rebuff by the Bastard,
Joan went to a certain boulevard that the King’s armed men held against the boulevard of the English, and there [she] spoke with the English in the other boulevard, saying to them that they should retreat in the name of Christ, otherwise she would expel them. A certain man named the Bastard of Granville spoke many insults to Joan, asking her if she wished them to surrender to a woman, and calling the French with her ‘unbelieving pimps’.74
The Journal du siège d’Orléans confirms this nullification trial testimony, giving it also a time, the evening, and a place, the Belle Croix stronghold on the end of the Orléanais-controlled side of the bridge:
When evening came, [Joan] went to the boulevard of Belle Croix, on the bridge, and spoke to Glasdale and other Englishmen who were in the Tourelles. And she told them that if they surrendered themselves to God, that their lives would be saved. But Glasdale and those on his side responded evilly, insulting her and calling her ‘cow-herd’ . . . crying very loudly that they would burn her, if they were to capture her. From which she was very angry and answered them that they had lied. And this being said, she withdrew into the city.75
The Journal du siège d’Orléans also reports that on that same day, but preceding this exchange, Joan had sent two heralds to the English:
demanding that they release the herald who had carried her letter from Blois [evidently the herald who had delivered Joan’s ‘Letter to the English’ was being held by them]. And if not, she said that those heralds who had come to the Bastard of Orléans would not be returned, that she would kill with a brutal death all the English who were prisoners in Orléans, and also those among the lords of English who were being held as ransom for others.
Such an ultimatum seemed to work. The Journal du siège d’Orléans continues: ‘The leaders of the English returned all the messengers and heralds to the Maid,’ but they also sent back a message to her, ‘that they would torture and burn her, and that she was nothing but a rustic, and that she should return to herding her cattle’.76
It is clear what Joan was doing here: she was provoking a fight. If the French military leadership was not going to attack the English, perhaps she could get the English to attack the French. The result would be the same: she would have the opportunity to raise the siege of Orléans. Her plan worked, at least indirectly. Although the English remained behind their protective barricades, the Bastard of Orléans was forced into action. While he continued to refuse to attack the English, on 1 May, the day after Joan’s provocations, the Bastard, believing that he needed more men to undertake what Joan desired, left Orléans for Blois to confer with the Count of Clermont and to collect other troops who were waiting there.77 He would be away until 4 May.
During the days when the Bastard of Orléans was away, as she had been kept from leading the French army against the English, Joan spent her time reconnoitering their positions and endearing herself to the people of the besieged city. On Sunday, 1 May, she rode around Orléans with some of her companions, and met with the citizens, who crowded around her making her passage through the streets nearly impossible.78 On 2 May, she rode outside the walls of the city and visited all of the English boulevards surrounding it.79 Staying beyond the range of the besiegers’ weapons, she was able to evaluate her opponents’ fortified positions and troop strength. Was the raising of the siege feasible? Or, was the inaction of the Bastard of Orléans warranted? The duke of Alençon would later testify that the English fortifications were so strong ‘that if he had been in them with a few soldiers, he would have expected to hold out for six or seven days against the entire power of the army, and it seemed to him that they would not have captured him’.80 Obviously, Joan did not hold the same opinion; she never doubted that this part of her mission, which she knew to have come from God, would be completed. Later that evening she retired to the Church of Sainte-Croix in Orléans and offered prayers for the fulfillment of this task.81 And on 3 May, the Orléanais held a procession throughout the city in Joan’s honor. They presented money and gifts to the Maid and her companions and asked them to deliver their town from its siege.82
Leading reinforcements he had found at Blois, the Bastard of Orléans returned to his besieged city on 4 May. Joan was so anxious for his return that Jean d’Aulon remembered her mounting a horse and riding out to meet him. She was, it seems, excited to report her observations on the weaknesses of the enemy’s fortifications to the Bastard of Orléans and the other French military leaders. Almost to prove her point, Aulon, who was with the party from Blois, recounted that she, the Bastard, La Hire, and himself, ‘in the view and with the knowledge of the enemy entered . . . with their men, into that city without any opposition’.83 But was Joan finally to get her desired combat? Apparently not, for the Bastard remained hesitant to attack the English,84 unnecessarily hesitant in the Maid’s view, especially after she heard the rumors of an approaching English army led by John Fastolf that was coming from the north to reinforce the besiegers of Orléans. The Bastard confirmed these rumors ‘which he knew for certain from a good source’, and caused Joan’s anger at her commander’s inaction to surface again; Jean d’Aulon later recalled her words: ‘Bastard, Bastard, in the name of God I command you that as soon as you hear of Fastolf’s coming you will let me know. For, if he gets through without my knowing it, I swear to you that I will have your head cut off.’ To this, the count ‘answered that he did not doubt that, and that he would certainly let her know’.85
Dismayed at the French military leaders’ unwillingness to believe that the English at Orléans were vulnerable, as she did, but having expressed her views forcefully, Joan retired to her lodgings to rest. However, before long, as attested to by several nullification trial witnesses, she awoke with a start, claiming that her voices had told her that she must attack the English, although she was not clear which boulevard she should target, or even whether she was to attack the approaching Fastolf. (This is Jean d’Aulon’s testimony. Louis de Coutes and Jean Pasquerel both claimed that her voices told her that ‘the blood of France was being spilled’, meaning that a French attack was already in progress, without her attendance, although Pasquerel, who was then present, having arrived with the reinforcements from Blois, insisted that such an attack was because of ‘Joan’s appeal’ delivered earlier to the Bastard of Orléans.86)
The French attack on 4 May was against the English boulevard of Saint Loup. The boulevard having proved more of an irritant than a threat to any movement in or out of Orléans, the attack on Saint Loup was to be a show of French determination to raise the siege of the city. Were it to fail, however, the attack would deflate the French exuberance, especially in the presence of their virgin savior, Joan of Arc. French failure would also have increased the English resolve to conquer Orléans, or at least to hold on until the arrival of Fastolf. Thus it was, writes the author of the Journal du siège d’Orléans, that the English in the Saint Loup boulevard put up a ‘very strong resistance, because the English, who were very well fortified, defended it very valiantly for the space of three hours’.87 Most fought until they were killed. In the end, however, the French did succeed in conquering the isolated English stronghold, despite an attempted relief expedition from the boulevard of Saint Pouër; 140 English soldiers were killed, with 40 more taken as prisoners.88 (The Chronique de la Pucelle and Enguerrand de Monstrelet also insist that the French then destroyed the boulevard.89) The French capture of Saint Loup was greeted enthusiastically by all on their side. For Joan, whose first military encounter this was, the feeling of victory strengthened her confidence. Jean Pasquerel testified that even though she wept for the slain English soldiers, as they had died without confession, she also promised boldly ‘that within five days the siege being waged before Orléans would be raised and no English would remain in front of the city’.90 She would better her promise by more than a full day.
On 5 May, Ascension Day, Pasquerel insisted that Joan did not participate in active warfare, in view of the holiness of the day. Instead, she chose to write another letter to the English which her confessor remembered read as follows:
You, Englishmen, who have no right to this kingdom of France, the King of Heaven orders and commands you through me, Joan the Maid, to leave your fortresses and return to your country, or I shall make such an uproar that will be in constant memory. And these things I write to you for the third and last time; I will write no further. Thus signed: Jhesus-Maria, Joan the Maid.
She then added:
I have sent to you my letters honestly, but you have detained my messengers, in French, my heralds, for you have kept my herald named Guyenne. Would you send him to me, and I will send to you some of your men captured in the fortress of Saint Loup, because all of them were not killed.
Joan then delivered the letter to the English in the Tourelles tied to the tip of an arrow, and she shouted at them to ‘Read, this is news!’ But the English derided her, as they shouted back: ‘This is news from the whore of the Armagnacs!’ Such mockery, Pasquerel concludes, made Joan ‘sigh and weep with abundant tears’.91 Perhaps Joan was upset that the English had not yet recognized her mission. But she had made her point. She and her army would not be stopped before they had raised the siege of Orléans. The victory over the troops in Saint Loup was but the first step towards that goal.
However, Jean Pasquerel is alone in his assertion that Joan of Arc did not fight on 5 May. Jean d’Aulon, her squire, and Louis de Coutes, her page, both tell a different story. They claim that:
the Maid and her people, seeing the large victory obtained the preceding day by them over their enemies, marched out of the city in good order to attack a certain other boulevard in front of their city called the boulevard of Saint Jean le Blanc.
As that boulevard was on the opposite shore of the Loire River from the city, she and her troops were forced to cross over to one of the islands in the river – the name of the island is not given by either Aulon or Coutes but was probably the Ile aux Boeufs or the Ile aux Toiles – and there commandeer two boats to use as a bridge to the English-held shore. Once this maneuver had been completed, they discovered that their target, the boulevard of Saint Jean le Blanc, was deserted, the English troops there having retreated into the boulevard of the Augustins or the Tourelles.92 Bloodless, it was a French victory nonetheless.93
At this point in the relief of the siege of Orléans, there were two potential targets. The French could seek to attack the more lightly manned northern and western boulevards, or they could choose to move against the imposing bridgehead fortifications, the Augustins boulevard and then the Tourelles. Should the relief force have moved against the northern and western boulevards, there might have been fewer French casualties, if the attack on Saint Loup was any indication – but only if this forced the English to retreat from their Augustins and Torelles positions. Otherwise, those two fortifications would have to be attacked eventually. In addition, there was the question of the time that attacks on the other English boulevards would require, and this may have been the most influential factor in the decision of which boulevards to target. Undoubtedly, the French wished to raise the English siege before the arrival of Fastolf’s reinforcements. Again, there was a dispute among the French military leaders – once more, it seems, principally between the Bastard of Orléans, although he is not named, and Joan of Arc. The President of the Chamber of Accounts, Simon Charles, who by his own witness was with the dauphin in Chinon and not at Orléans, but heard of the event from Raoul de Gaucourt, testified that:
On [6 May] the day that the boulevard of the Augustins was captured, it had been concluded through the leaders who had command of the king’s army that it did not seem beneficial to make any attack or charge against it. And the Lord Gaucourt was ordered to guard the gates so that no one would leave the town. However, Joan was not content with this. She was of the opinion that the soldiers ought to leave with the people of the town and make a charge against that boulevard and many of the soldiers and men of the town were of the same opinion. Joan said to the Lord de Gaucourt that he was an evil man, saying to him: ‘Like it or not, the soldiers will come, and they will obtain what they have obtained elsewhere.’ And against the will of the Lord de Gaucourt, the soldiers who were in the town charged out to attack the boulevard of the Augustins, which they captured with strength and violence.94
Although this event is confirmed by no other source, including Gaucourt himself, who says nothing of it in his nullification trial testimony, it is quite likely to have happened. Joan’s anger at the inaction of the French leaders had erupted almost daily, and, as was witnessed in the attack on the boulevard of Saint Loup, her desire to lift the siege by whatever means possible, even if it meant a high casualty total among the Orléanais and the French soldiers, was echoed by those very individuals who were being called on to make that sacrifice. As mentioned, she believed that her mission had come directly from God, and although she preferred that no Frenchman lose his life in the undertaking of this mission, any who did, she was confident, would go directly to heaven like the martyrs of old. It is clear from Simon Charles’s testimony, that those who were to fight for and with her shared this confidence. The Bastard of Orléans and the other French leaders who appeared to want to follow a more cautious tactical approach to the remaining English positions were simply overwhelmed by the Maid and her cause. A dangerous and potentially very costly direct assault on the boulevard of the Augustins, followed undoubtedly by a similar attack on the Tourelles, was to be made, whether they liked it or not.95
According to Jean Pasquerel, on the morning of the French attack on the boulevard of the Augustins, Joan prepared herself for the most difficult undertaking of her young military career. Pasquerel himself heard her confession and sang mass to her and her soldiers. Then, he later testified, ‘she left for the attack, which lasted from morning to evening. And on that day, the fortress of the Augustins was captured by a great attack.’ Pasquerel’s testimony left out the details of what was clearly a brutal and rigorous undertaking, although his addition of ‘and Joan, who was accustomed to fast on Fridays, was not able to fast on that day, because she was very exhausted’ gives an impression that she for one had acquitted herself quite well in this military engagement.96 So also did her troops, who pressed on and on, suffering large numbers of casualties in capturing this boulevard in the only manner possible, by force in a frontal assault.
From other sources this becomes clear. The author of the Journal du siège d’Orléans reports:
[The Maid] sallied out of Orléans in the company of the Bastard of Orléans, the marshals of Sainte-Sévère and de Rais, the lord of Graville, Sir Florent d’Illiers, La Hire, and many other knights and squires, and around four thousand soldiers. And they crossed the Loire river between Saint Loup and the Tour Neuve . . . And then the English sallied out of the Tourelles in great strength, shouting loudly, and they made a charge against them which was very strong and harsh. But the Maid and La Hire, and all of their army, joined together and attacked the English with such great force and courage that they caused them to recoil all the way to their boulevard and the Tourelles. And then they delivered such an assault against the boulevard and bastille there which had earlier been fortified by the English in the place where the Church of the Augustins had once been, that they took it by force, freeing a large number of French who were held there as prisoners, and killing a large number of English who were inside and who had defended it most harshly, such that there had been many wonderful feats of arms, on one side and the other.97
Some of those feats of arms are described by Jean d’Aulon in his nullification trial deposition:
He [Aulon] was guarding one of the passes with certain others who had been picked and ordered to do so, among whom was a very brave man-at-arms from Spain named Alfonso de Partada. They saw a certain man pass in front of their company, a handsome man, large and well armed, who, because he passed in front of them, was asked to remain a little while with the others to put up a defense against the enemy, in case it was needed. But he responded without restraint that he would not do so. And then Alfonso said to him that he also should remain with them and that there were others as brave as he who waited there. He responded to Alfonso that he would not do so. After which there were certain arrogant words said between them, such that they would go together at the same time against the enemy, and that through this they would know who was the more courageous and the better of the two in doing what was before them. And they, running side by side at the fastest speed that they were able, charged against the enemy’s boulevard and came all the way to the foot of the palisade.
He [Aulon] said that when they were seen at the palisade of the boulevard, he saw within the palisade a large, strong, and powerful Englishman, well equipped and armed, who resisted them there such that they were unable to enter the palisade. And then he showed the Englishman to one named Master Jean le Cannonier, saying to him that he should fire at that Englishman, because he was causing such grief and doing much damage to those who wished to approach the boulevard. This was done by Master Jean, because as soon as he sited him, he sent his shot against him such that he struck him dead to the ground. And then the two men-atarms made an entry through which all of their company passed and entered the boulevard. This they attacked very harshly and in great diligence from all sides with such success that in a short time they had overrun and captured it by assault. And the majority of the enemy were killed or captured. And those who were able to escape retreated into the Tourelles at the foot of the bridge. And thus the Maid and those with her obtained victory over her enemy on that day. And the large boulevard was won, and the lords and their men, with the Maid, remained all night beside it.98
The victory against the boulevard of the Augustins was an important one, but it had been fatiguing and costly. Pinned between the broken bridge into Orléans, with the feisty inhabitants of the city beyond it, and the French troops of Joan of Arc, there was little chance for the English to break out from the Tourelles. Nor does it seem that the English troops in the other boulevards, or in the nearby towns of Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency, had the confidence to try to relieve the Tourelles. Thus the Bastard of Orléans and other French leaders might be excused for their desire to rest and recuperate for a time to consider their recently won victories and perhaps to gain reinforcements for their even more difficult assault on the Tourelles. But Joan would not have it. Jean Pasquerel reported that during the evening after the capture of the boulevard of the Augustins a ‘valiant and noble knight’, whose name was not remembered by Pasquerel during his testimony, came to speak with her. He told Joan that she had again been excluded from a council of war during which the French leaders had decided that they were still fewer in number than the English, and that it had only been because ‘God had given them His great grace’ that they had defeated the fortifications already captured. Their answer was to wait until reinforcements arrived: ‘Considering that the city was full of foodstuffs, we ought to be able to hold on to the city well until the king’s aid arrives; the council does not see it as expedient that soldiers attack tomorrow.’ Joan, now seemingly more accustomed to the determined inaction of the French military leadership, responded to the knight simply: ‘You were in your council, and I was in mine; and you ought to believe that the counsel of my Lord will be done and will endure, and any other counsel will perish.’ She then summoned Pasquerel and asked him to wake early, earlier than he had on this day, and to remain close to her, for ‘tomorrow blood will flow from my body above my breast’.99
The convenience of Joan’s wound the following day and the positive nature of her nullification trial perhaps allowed Pasquerel a little hagiographical embellishment in remembering her prophecy. But what can be certain from his testimony is the confidence which Joan had that she would be supported by her troops in an undertaking for which she felt some urgency, whether because of the threat of the approaching English troops or as a result of the enthusiasm for the completion of her mission’s first charge. She was used to the Bastard’s and others’ desire to slow the pace of the relief effort, which in fact might have been a more safe and more sane strategy. But she also knew that her cause had gained a legitimacy by the victories in which she had participated. The troops would follow her leadership. She sent word to them to prepare for an attack on the Tourelles the following day.100 So, too, would the citizens of Orléans follow her, and, as evidence of this, the Journal du siège d’Orléans recounts, ‘those of Orléans were most diligent throughout the night in carrying bread, wine, and other victuals to the men of war carrying on the siege [of the Tourelles]’.101
On the morning of 7 May, Joan arose early and prepared for battle as she had every other day during her sojourn in Orléans: she confessed to Jean Pasquerel and heard mass.102 She then roused her troops for the attack. There is no report that she said anything special to her men about the difficulty of their assault on the Tourelles. She does not appear to have been as eloquent as so many medieval commanders are reported to be.103 Of course, many of her soldiers would die in the engagement, but she and, it seems, the soldiers themselves believed that such a death would gain them salvation, for they were fulfilling the mission of the Maid, which had been determined for her by God. It also appears that all of the other French military leaders were present as well – their absence is not recorded in any of the original sources – despite what they had concluded in their council the night before.
Perceval de Cagny wrote: ‘the place seemed impregnable against assault by soldiers and was filled with all kinds of military equipment . . . it seemed impossible that such a place would not be captured for a month or more.’ He also estimates that Glasdale had between 700 and 800 men inside. But ‘the Maid said to those who were with her, “By Saint Martin, I will take this today and return to the city over this bridge”’.104 The following account of the bloodiest military engagement of the Hundred Years War since the battle of Agincourt comes from the Journal du siège d’Orléans:
Early in the morning on the day after, which was Saturday, the seventh day of May, the French attacked the Tourelles and the boulevard while the English were attempting to fortify it. And there was a spectacular assault during which there were performed many great feats of arms, both in the attack and in the defense, because the English had a large number of strong soldiers and had strengthened skillfully all of the defensible places. And also they fought well, notwithstanding that the French scaled the different places adeptly and attacked the angles at the highest of the strong and sturdy fortifications so that they seemed by this to be immortal. But the English repulsed them from many places and attacked with artillery both high and low, both with cannon and other weapons, such as axes, lances, pole-arms, lead hammers, and other personal arms, so that they killed and wounded many Frenchmen.105
In the midst of the battle, Joan was wounded, precisely, if we are to believe Jean Pasquerel, as she had predicted. Yet, this did not stop her from carrying on the battle. The Bastard of Orléans recalled the event as follows:
On 7 May, early in the morning, when the attack was beginning against the enemy who were within the boulevard of the bridge [the Tourelles], Joan was wounded by an arrow which penetrated her flesh between her neck and her shoulder, for a depth of half a foot. Nevertheless, her wound not restraining her, she did not retreat from the conflict, nor did she take medication for her wound.106
While Pasquerel added these details:
In that attack and after lunch, Joan, just as she had predicted, was struck by an arrow above her breast, and when she felt that she was wounded, she was frightened and wept, and she was consoled, as she said. And some of her soldiers, seeing that she was wounded, wished to charm her . . . but she refused it, saying: ‘I prefer to die rather than do what I know to be a sin, or to be against will of God.’ And well she knew that she would die sometime, however she did not know when, where, or how, nor at what hour, but if a salve could be put on her wound without sin, she would be cured fully. And they placed olive oil with lard on her wound, and after the placing of this, Joan confessed to me with words, tears, and lamentations.107
Her wound did not stop Joan. Nor did she stop pushing the attack forward when other leaders, including the Bastard of Orléans, became fatigued and wished to retreat from the fight to rest until the following day. The Bastard continued his testimony:
The attack lasted from early morning until the eighth hour of vespers [eight o’clock in the evening], so that there was almost no hope of victory on this day. On account of this, this lord [the Bastard of Orléans] chose to break it off and wanted the army to retreat to the city. And then the Maid came to him and requested that he wait for a little while, and at that time she mounted her horse, and retired alone into a vineyard at a distance from the crowd of men. In this vineyard she was in prayer for a space of seven minutes. She returned from that place, immediately took her standard in her hands, and placed it on the side of the ditch. And instantly, once she was there, the English became afraid and trembled. The soldiers of the king regained their courage and began to climb [up the ramparts], making an attack on those against the boulevard, not finding any resistance. And then the boulevard was taken, and the English in it were put to flight.108
Joan corroborated this nullification trial testimony when she testified herself that she ‘was the first to put her ladder on the boulevard of the Tourelles’.109 Sometime during the attack the Orléanais also set fire to one of the city barges and drove it under the Tourelles to weaken the resolve of the English defenders if not the structure itself.110
Feats of arms, inspired by the Maid’s own courage, were remembered long after the siege of Orléans was raised. Jean d’Aulon repeated one such instance which occurred as the French began the retreat initiated by the Bastard of Orléans:
In making their retreat, the soldier who then carried the standard of the Maid and who had held it since the beginning of the attack of the boulevard, being weak and fatigued, gave this standard to one named the Basque, who was a soldier of the lord of Villar. And because he who testified knew that this Basque was a brave man, and knew that only evil would follow a retreat on this occasion, and that this bastille and boulevard would remain in the hands of the enemy, he imagined that if this standard were advanced, because of the great affection that he knew was still held by those soldiers who were there, they might yet capture the boulevard. And he asked the Basque, that if he [Aulon] were to turn and go towards the foot of the boulevard, would he [the Basque] follow, which he promised that he would do. And then the testifier went into the ditch and all the way to the foot of the wall of the boulevard, covering himself with his target for fear of the stones and leaving this companion on the other side of the ditch, whom he thought would follow him close behind. But, when the Maid saw her standard in the hands of the Basque, she had thought that it had been lost, as he who was carrying it was now in the ditch, the Maid came and grabbed the standard in such a manner that he was no longer able to hold on to it, crying ‘Oh, my standard! my standard!’ and she shook this standard in a way that he who was testifying thought that others might think that she was making a sign to them. So he shouted, ‘Oh, Basque, is this what you promised me?’ And then the Basque pulled at the standard with such strength that he ripped it from the hands of the Maid, and this done, ran to him, carrying the standard. At this time, all of the army gathered by the Maid rallied together and assailed the boulevard so sharply that, a short while afterwards, both the boulevard and the bastille were captured by them, abandoned by the enemy.111
Thus, well into the evening of 7 May the English were defeated. Some fled, but many fought until they were slain. One of these was William Glasdale, the commander of the Tourelles. He who had so often mocked Joan was defeated by her. Jean Pasquerel testified to the following exchange between the two of them shortly before his death:
And then she . . . shouted, saying, ‘Glasdale, Glasdale, give in, give in to the King of Heaven! You called me a whore. I have great pity for your and your men’s souls.’ Then Glasdale, armed from head to foot, fell into the Loire river and drowned.112
But this and the deaths of so many other Englishmen, enemies though they were, saddened Joan, who seems sincerely to have wanted them to believe in her mission and to retreat from Orléans without attempting to stop her relief of the siege. After all, had she not warned them several times to do this? As they had not retreated, many had been killed. Pasquerel testified that after she saw Glasdale die, ‘Joan, moved to pity, began to cry for the souls of Glasdale and others, a great number of whom had drowned. And that day, all of the English who were on the far side of the bridge were captured or killed.’113
There was great rejoicing at Joan’s victory over the Tourelles. For although the English around Orléans had not been completely defeated – troops were still garrisoned in the boulevards to the west of the city – the fall of the Tourelles was central to the relief of Orléans. In essence, the siege had been raised. The Orléanais placed wood over the destroyed portion of the bridge, and Joan of Arc and her soldiers crossed the bridge into the city. It was the first time that any Frenchman (or French woman for that matter) had done so since the earl of Salisbury’s capture of the Tourelles the October before. The Journal du siège d’Orléans describes the jubilant scene:
Everyone was filled with a great joy and praised Our Lord for the great victory which he had given them. And well they should have done so, for it is said that this assault, which lasted from the morning all the way to sunset was so grandly fought and defended. It was one of the most beautiful feats of arms which had been done for a very long time . . . All of the clergy and the people of Orléans sang devoutly Te Deum laudamus, and all of the bells of the city were rung, very humbly thanking Our Lord . . . for his glorious divine relief. And there was great joy in all parts, giving wondrous praise to their brave defenders, and especially above all to Joan the Maid, who spent the night, with her lords, captains, and men-at-arms, on the battlefield, to guard the Tourelles which they had bravely conquered, so that they might know whether the English on the side of Saint-Laurent wished to aid or avenge their companions. But they had no wish to do so.114
(There is a small disagreement here between the Journal du siège d’Orléans and Jean d’Aulon, the latter claiming that, instead of remaining in the field, after the fall of the Tourelles, ‘Joan and her soldiers went into the city of Orléans, where . . . she had her wounds tended.’115)
On 8 May, the English soldiers who remained around Orléans marched out of their boulevards and ordered themselves in preparation to do battle. The French responded with their own battle-ready formation. But no combat was to be fought that day. The Bastard of Orléans, Jean d’Aulon, Louis de Coutes, Jean Pasquerel, and Jean Lullier all later testified as to what happened. These are Lullier’s words:
On the following day, early in the morning, the English left their tents and ordered themselves as an army ready to do battle, so it appeared. Having heard of this, the Maid rose from her bed and armed herself. But she did not want anyone to attack the English nor anything sought from them. She ordered that they be permitted to leave. And, in fact, they did leave, with no one following after them. And from that hour the town was freed from the enemy.116
The Journal du siège d’Orléans adds some details and emphases to Lullier’s testimony:
The following morning, Sunday 8 May 1429, The English dismantled their boulevards of Saint Pouër and elsewhere, and leaving their siege they ordered themselves for battle. Because of this, the Maid, the marshals of Saint-Sévère and de Rais, the lord of Graville, the baron of Coulonces, Sir Florent d’Illiers, the lord of Corraze, the lord of Xantrailles, La Hire, Alain Giron, Jamet du Tilloy, and many other brave soldiers and citizens sallied out of Orléans in great strength and lined themselves before them in an ordered formation. And in such a position they were very close one to the other for a space of an hour without touching each other. For this the French suffered great anger in obeying the will of the Maid, who had commanded them and forbade them from the beginning that, for the love and honor of this holy Sunday, that they not begin the battle nor attack the English. But if the English should attack them, they should defend themselves strongly and boldly, they should not fear, and they would be the masters. The hour passed, and the English turned and marched off well in good formation and order to Meung-sur-Loire. And they raised and totally left the siege, which they had conducted at Orléans from 12 October 1428 to this day. However, they did not go away nor did they get all of their baggage away safely, because some of the garrison of the city followed them and attacked the rear of their army with many assaults, so that they captured for themselves large numbers of bombards and cannon, bows, crossbows, and other artillery.117
Without waiting for Fastolf’s troops or any other reinforcements, the English commanders retreated from a city which perhaps they should never have tried to capture by siege. Why they left when they still held a number of boulevards and knew that Fastolf was approaching with reinforcements and supplies is a difficult question to answer without more evidence, especially as Perceval de Cagny insists that the English still had large numbers of men and gunpowder weapons in their remaining boulevards.118 Perhaps the English leaders felt that it would be better for them to give up these earth-and-wood fortifications which had already proven too weak to hold off the determined frontal assaults of Joan and her soldiers. Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency – the three Loire towns that were still occupied by the English – were fortified by stone walls and, at least at Meung and Beaugency, also with stone castles. These would undoubtedly provide stronger defenses against the French. Perhaps the English leaders had also seen too many of their soldiers perish in what had proven to them to be a futile struggle. Continuing a fruitless siege, especially after the fall of the Tourelles, could only have added to this casualty total.119 Finally, by withdrawing from Orléans then, they could build up strength and, with Fastolf’s arrival, perhaps do battle with the French, for their recent battles had all been successful. But all of these reasons for English retreat are just guesses. The only fact that is known for sure is that on 8 May 1429, only ten days after her arrival, Joan of Arc had done what no one but herself thought she could do: she had raised the siege of Orléans.
More celebrations followed the final retreat of the English from the siege fortifications outside of the city. The Journal du siège d’Orléans records that for two days processions were made throughout the city with the Maid, the other French leaders, and their soldiers parading up and down all of the streets. Ecclesiastical ceremonies were held in every church throughout this time, with everyone present praising God and thanking Him for their deliverance.120
But Orléans was not the only location rejoicing in Joan’s victory. News of the successful raising of the siege reached Chinon and the dauphin on 9 May, and the response there was also one of celebration. Charles expressed his own joy in a letter penned to his subjects which he began before hearing of the French victory, but completed after learning of it:
Dear and well beloved, we believe that you have been well aware of the continuous diligence made by us to give all possible relief to the city of Orléans, for a long time besieged by the English, the ancient enemies of our realm, and the endeavors into which we have placed ourselves on many occasions, having always good hope in Our Lord that finally he would extend His grace and would not permit that such a notable city and such a loyal people perish or fall into subjection and tyranny of these enemies. [Charles then writes about the capture of the boulevard of Saint Loup, is interrupted with the news of the capture of the boulevard of the Augustins, which he includes, is again interrupted, and then continues] . . . Before the completion of these letters, have arrived to us two gentlemen who were at this work, who certify and confirm all . . . and from there have brought letters from the hands of the sire of Gaucourt . . . Our men had last Saturday taken and demolished the bastion at the end of the bridge, on the morrow at dawn, the English who were in it, decamped and tried to save themselves so hastily that they left their bombards, cannon, artillery, and the best part of their provisions and baggage.121
In this letter Charles does not mention Joan’s part in the relief of the siege, which has caused some modern historians to wonder if Charles was ‘being discreet’ about her role in an effort to minimize it.122 (Later Charles does, however, buy her a suit of fine clothes to thank her for the Orléans victory.123) But if this was his purpose, it did not succeed, for throughout the kingdom, in fact, throughout Europe, Joan of Arc was recognized as the savior of Orléans. Alain Chartier, writing to an unnamed prince at the end of July 1429, could not help but extol her virtues in raising the siege. After telling of her initial meeting with the dauphin, he writes:
This Maid, whom divine precept burns to satisfy, immediately asked him to give her an army to succor the Orléanais who were then in danger. He, to whom she showed no fear, at first denied her request, but finally conceded to it. This having been accepted, she took a huge amount of foodstuffs to Orléans. Crossing under the enemy camps, they perceived nothing hostile . . . Leaving the victuals in the city, and attacking these camps, which in a way was a miracle, in a short space of time she captured them, especially that which was erected almost in the middle of the bridge. It was so strong, so well armed with all types of weapons, and so fortified, that, if all people, if all nations fought against it, they could not capture it.
He then compares Joan to Hector, Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar and ends:
Here is she who seems not to come from anywhere on earth, who seems to be sent from the heaven to sustain with her neck and shoulders a fallen France. She raised the king out of the vast abyss on to the harbor and shore by laboring in storms and tempests, and she lifted up the spirits of the French to a greater hope. By restraining the ferocity of the English, she excited the bravery of the French, she prohibited the ruin of France, and she extinguished the fires of France. O singular virgin, worthy of all glory, worthy of all praise, worthy of divine honors! You are the honor of the reign, you are the light of the lily, you are the beauty, the glory, not only of France, but of all Christendom.124
Such sentiments were echoed everywhere within France.125 But they also found their way into the Holy Roman Empire, the southern Low Countries, and the Italian states.126
As can be expected, the English and Burgundians were not so laudatory in their comments about Joan’s role in the lifting of the siege of Orléans. They only report the facts of the French victory, while downplaying her leadership, if they report it at all. An example of this is Clément de Fauquembergue, who records the event in his parliamentary register (as well as drawing the now famous marginal portrait of her):
On Tuesday, the tenth day of May, it was reported and publicly said in Paris that on the previous Sunday, the men of the dauphin in great number, after many skirmishes continually undertaken by force of arms, entered the boulevard that William Glasdale and other captains with English men-at-arms held on behalf of the king, along with the tower at the end of the bridge of Orléans [the Tourelles], from the other side of the Loire. And on that day, the other captains and menat-arms holding the siege and the boulevards along the Loire around the city of Orléans, left from these boulevards and raised their siege in order to go to the aid of Glasdale and his companions and to combat the enemy, who had in their companies a maid all alone holding a banner between the two enemy forces, so it was said.127
Or the English and Burgundian reports continue to see her action as something evil; such a view can be seen in this letter of John, the duke of Bedford and Regent of England, written to his nephew, King Henry VI:
And all things prospered for you until the time that the siege of Orléans was undertaken, God knows by what advice. At which time, after the adventure had fallen to my cousin of Salisbury, whom God assoiled, there fell, by the hand of God, as it seemed, a great offense upon your soldiers who were assembled there in great number, caused to a large party of them . . . by a disciple and follower of the Fiend, called the Pucelle, who used false enchantments and sorcery. This offense and destruction not only lowered by great party the number of your soldiers there, but as well removed the courage of the remnant in a marvelous way, and encouraged your opponents and enemies to assemble themselves afterwards in great number.128
But it was at Orléans that this victory was won, and it was Orléans that continued to praise Joan of Arc during her life and to honor her once she was dead. It is true that all of the civic and military leaders were heralded for their role in the fight, but no one was so praised by the Orléanais as Joan. She was singled out among all of the others because everyone knew that she was pivotal in determining that this city would not fall to the English. She fought for command from the lack-luster French military leaders, and she received it. She fought for the allegiance of the French soldiers, and she earned it. She fought for the love of the city’s inhabitants, and she gained it. The people would always remember what she had done there early in May 1429. After she was burned, they would grant land and pensions to her family.129 They would continue to hold festivals and processions in her honor. They would hold an annual ‘mystery’ recounting her deeds.130 And for centuries, until it was achieved in 1920, they would push for her sainthood, for what she did for them was a miracle.131 Perhaps one of the citizens of that city, Jean Lullier, expressed it best in his nullification trial testimony:
He and likewise all the people of the city believed that, if the Maid had not come from God to aid them, all of the inhabitants and citizens in a short time would have been under the domination and power of the enemy who was carrying on the siege. Nor did he think that the inhabitants or soldiers who were there would have been able to resist for a long time against the power of the enemy who up to then had prevailed against them.132
After she raised the siege of Orléans, Joan no longer simply was ‘the Maid’, la Pucelle. She had become la Pucelle d’Orléans, the ‘Maid of Orléans’.