The speed with which Joan of Arc relieved the siege of Orléans has impressed commentators from 1429 to the present. Even if one is reluctant to accept that she actually predicted the rapidity of this military task, as testified by Jean Pasquerel, who as her confessor seems also to have used his nullification trial testimony as a hagiographical platform,1 one cannot deny that Joan seemed to have believed that speed was an important tactic. Indeed, during her raising of the siege, on several occasions when other French leaders asked for time to rest and recuperate in between major, costly engagements, in each instance she used her confidence in the divinity of her mission and the loyalty of her soldiers to refuse what were quite reasonable requests. Why? The city of Orléans was not on the verge of falling to the English because of starvation; its walls were not about to be breached – in fact the English had shown little interest in taking Orléans in such a manner after the death of the earl of Salisbury; nor were the spirits of its citizens failing, especially after the arrival of Joan. So why did she feel an urgency to relieve this siege in such a short time?
The question becomes even more complicated when it is noted that Joan’s next military adventure, the conquest of Jargeau, was not undertaken until more than a month after she had been victorious at Orléans, despite the fact that Jargeau is less than twenty kilometers east of that relieved city. Yet, after she recaptured Jargeau, which occurred on 12 June, she proceeded to attack and capture Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency to the west of Orléans, and then to fight the battle of Patay, all before 18 June. Thus the question must be rephrased: why did speed lose its tactical importance to Joan after 8 May 1429, when she had relieved Orléans, only to reappear suddenly on 10 June when she set out to capture those other Loire-based English-held positions?
Most modern historians associate Joan’s speedy relief of Orléans with the urgency she felt in the completion of this phase of her mission, and there is some logic in this conclusion. After all, even before arriving at Orléans, Joan was constantly talking about the need to remove the English besiegers from that city swiftly, and when she was not able to hasten the process of her accreditation at Chinon and Poitiers, she became irritated with those whom she believed were to blame for the delay. But there could be other reasons for her desire to get to Orléans as soon as possible: a worry about the health, safety, and spirit of citizens who had suffered a siege of many months; a worry about the defeatist feelings of military leaders who seemed willing to allow the English to take the city without a strong defense of the site, especially after the defeat at the battle of the Herrings; and, finally, a worry about allowing the English to continue to build up their supply of weapons, artillery, and soldiers through reinforcements until their numbers had become so large that the loss of French life would be increased. (She would never have believed that the siege of Orléans could not have been relieved, as she believed that God had sent her to perform such a task, no matter how difficult it had become. But she always seemed to be genuinely concerned with lessening the suffering of those individuals with whom she fought and whom she was sent to assist.) Added to this is the fact that the relief of Orléans was only one aspect of her mission. Was there no similar urgency to the second task given her by her voices (the crowning of the king at Reims), a task that could only be accomplished if the English were removed from these Loire towns?
At best, then, the urgency of Joan’s mission can only partially explain her tactical speed at Orléans. In fact, there seem to have been two other reasons for Joan’s quickness there followed by her slowed pace the next month. The first is of French origin. The French army’s numbers had declined badly during their attacks on the English fortifications around Orléans. In choosing to dislodge the English from the boulevard of the Augustins and the Tourelles by direct assaults, the French had lost a number of men, although no contemporary tallies are recorded. A modern estimate, made by Ferdinand de Liocourt, places the total number of soldiers remaining in the Joan’s French army at no more than 2,000; if his calculations are to be trusted, this represents an incredibly small number to continue to defend Orléans as well as recapture Jargeau, Meungsur-Loire, and Beaugency.2 It was for this reason that in the days following the liberation of Orléans, Joan, the Bastard of Orléans, and other French leaders traveled to Loches Castle, to where the dauphin had moved. They hoped by this to gain extra troops for their continued military effort along the Loire. The Bastard later testified that: ‘[Joan] urged the king [the dauphin was Charles VII at the time of the Bastard’s nullification trial testimony] most incessantly and frequently concerning this matter that he might hasten and not delay further.’ In response, according to the always loyal Bastard, the dauphin ‘made all possible diligence’, quickly recruited more men, and ‘sent the duke of Alençon, [the Bastard], and other captains, with Joan, to recover [Meung, Beaugency, and Jargeau]’.3 The Chronique de la Pucelle alters the story by having Joan visit the dauphin at Tours and going there as she ‘could not maintain her army because of a lack of victuals and payment’ following the victory at Orléans. Still, the dauphin’s reaction was the same: ‘he commanded the nobles of all of his lands’ to provide men and arms for the army which was mustered ‘for the cleaning up of the Loire river’.4 Eventually, Joan’s army increased in number – although not by that many, reported Jean, the duke of Alençon, who claimed that Joan only had 1,200 men-at-arms (plus undoubtedly a number of infantry, archers, and cannoneers) when she sought to capture Jargeau5 – but the gathering of those extra troops took time and could have also accounted for her May to early June delay.
The second added reason for Joan’s delay is English in origin. It has to do with the fact that Sir John Fastolf’s reinforcement army, which had been rumored to be on its way from Paris to Orléans since 4 May, had not yet reached the Loire. Indeed, at the time of Joan’s raising of the siege of Orléans, Fastolf had not yet left Paris, and would not do so until 8 June. Thus one of the ostensible reasons for Joan’s speed at Orléans, at least one of the threats that she referred to in her rebuking of the Bastard’s inaction there, was never really a factor. But when did Joan learn that the rumor of Fastolf’s approach was false? Likewise, when did the English leaders on the Loire know that Fastolf was in no position to reinforce them? Is it possible that John Talbot surrendered Orléans to the French without making them attack all of the English-held boulevards because he knew by then that Fastolf had not yet left Paris? All of these questions can only be answered by conjecture, as no original sources report what was going on with the English in Paris during May 1429. At the same time, Fastolf’s own delay in attempting to aid the English troops facing Joan of Arc could add a reason for her own delay in moving against Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency.
In addition, once Fastolf did begin his march to the Loire, his pace was incredibly and inexplicably slow.6 There is no indication that his army was weighed down by an inordinately large gunpowder artillery train or number of supply wagons. Indeed, the only thing that seems to have hindered its progress was his and his soldiers’ defeatist attitude. Fastolf’s army was marching to face the Maid, and already, it seems, the English were beginning to fear her.
The last time that John Fastolf had faced a French army in this arena, at the battle of the Herrings, he had found success, a success that added to his already strong military reputation. But the celebration of Fastolf’s victory in Paris and the rest of English-occupied France had been short-lived, with French recovery after the battle quicker than almost anyone had thought possible. This, coupled with the rumors of a divinely-inspired Maid being sent to relieve Orléans which reached the English-held lands even before her victory there confirmed them,7 slowed the recruitment of soldiers, especially among their French subjects, and also presented the problem of sending troops that were hard to come by to reinforce a campaign which had brought few positive results and which most English leaders considered to have been ill-advised even at its initiation the year before.8 Fastolf, too, seems to have been reluctant to take on the duties of leading these reinforcements. He had fought as an English captain in the war in France since 1415, and his military experiences under Henry V and later were almost always successful and very profitable.9 Never, it seems, had this general shunned or been reluctant to assume a military duty, at least until 1429. However, in his journey south to the Loire in June of that year, and even though his army numbered at least 4,000, Fastolf appears to have been fatigued, demoralized, and defeated, even before he personally had faced Joan of Arc.10 More importantly, despite his army’s size, which when combined with the English forces already in the south seems to have greatly outnumbered its French counterpart, once Fastolf finally arrived on the Loire on 17 June, he was reluctant either to relieve the English troops under French attack at Beaugency or Meung (Jargeau had already been captured by Joan by this time) or to fight against the French in his own battle. Frequently, he made his opinion known that he preferred to fall back and reinforce the English holdings in the north, and, ultimately, he forced the English to withdraw from the Loire. When he was forced to do battle against the French, at Patay, it was only because the French had provoked it, attacking Fastolf during his withdrawal.
Joan, of course, was unaware of Fastolf’s feelings about his reinforcing task, even if she was aware of his slowness in marching towards the Loire. Thus her actions between 10 June, when she moved to attack Jargeau, and 18 June, when she assisted in the French victory at the battle of Patay, must be seen in the light of Fastolf’s approach. Speed seems again to have become an important tactic in the face of an approaching English army, much as it had done in her relief of the siege of Orléans the month previously.
Early in June 1429, the Journal du siège d’Orléans reports, there was a discussion among all the French military leaders in the presence of the dauphin to decide what next to target after Orléans, with many ‘diverse opinions, some counseling that they should go into Normandy and others that they should take the other principal places along the Loire river’. Invoking the name of God, Joan had no problem asserting that the next task given her by God was to crown the king at Reims. At this time, the road to Reims was entirely blocked by one English-held town after another, and so it was necessary to start clearing the path, not through Normandy, but through central France. The first places set for clearing would be Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency. To this, the dauphin, echoed by the others, answered: ‘Child, Go, go, go; I will give you aid. Go.’11 A short while later she set out towards Jargeau.
On 11 June, Joan arrived across the Loire from Jargeau. The Journal du siège d’Orléans reports that the Bastard of Orléans, the Marshal of Saint-Sévère, the lords of Graville, and Corraze, Ponton de Xantrailles, ‘and many other knights, squires, and men-at-arms . . . who had come from Bourges, Tours, Angers, Blois, and other good towns of the realm’ were with her.12 Jean Chartier also adds the names of the Lord of Boussac, who was the Marshal of France, Louis de Culan, the Admiral of France, Sir Ambrois de Loré, La Hire, and Gaultier de Brussac.13 But none of these had been given command over the army there. Nor, in fact, had Joan. That duty had fallen to Jean, the duke of Alençon.14 The dauphin’s decision to place his relative (Alençon was a distant cousin and half brother-inlaw of the dauphin) and friend in command at Jargeau may seem like an unusual one, especially as the duke had not been present during the relief of Orléans.15 But, if Charles knew of some of the disagreements between Joan and the Bastard at Orléans, he may have decided that Alençon would serve as a good man to settle similar arguments that might occur at Jargeau. He was, after all, a close friend to Joan and brother-in-law to the Bastard.
The appointment of Alençon was a positive one for Joan. The ‘gentle duke’, as she was fond of calling him, may have held the actual power at Jargeau, but by this time he was already devoted to Joan and always allowed her to make all of the military decisions there. This devotion had begun from the very moment that Alençon met the Maid. He recalled in his nullification trial testimony:
When Joan came to the king, he was at the town of Chinon, and [Alençon] at the town of Saint Florent lès Saumur. [Alençon] was out hunting quails . . . when one of his messengers came to him and notified him that a certain maid had come to the king, asserting that she had been sent from God to put the English to flight and to raise the siege placed by the English on Orléans. Because of this, [Alençon] came to the king at Chinon the next day, and he found Joan speaking with the king. And as he approached, Joan asked him who he was, and the king responded that this was the duke of Alençon. Then Joan said to him: ‘You have come at the right time. The more royal blood there is together the better.’ And the next day, Joan came to the king’s Mass, and when she saw the king, she bowed, and the king led Joan into a certain room, and [Alençon] and the Lord de la Trémoïlle, whom the king held back, were with him, with the others commanded that they should retire. Then Joan made many requests to the king, among others that he should give his kingdom to the King of Heaven. After making this gift, God would do to him just as he had his predecessors, and restore to him his original state. And many other things, which he did not remember, were spoken until the afternoon meal.16
From that time on, Joan and Alençon were close friends. He was with her at Poitiers, comforting her when she felt that she had been too harshly interrogated.17 And she stayed at his home at Saint-Laurent between 22 May and 2 June 1429, where he introduced her to his mother, Mary of Brittany, and his wife, Jeanne, the daughter of the imprisoned Duke Charles of Orléans, to whom Joan made a promise of returning the duke ‘safe and sound, and in the state he is in now or in a better one’ at the end of their campaigning.18 At Jargeau, she was forced to remind him of this promise, when she warned him of an oncoming attack that would soon cause his death. The duke later testified:
. . . during the attack on the town of Jargeau, Joan told me at one moment to retire from the place where I was at, for if I did not retire from that place, ‘that machine’ – and she pointed to a piece of artillery in the town – ‘will kill you’. I fell back, and a little later on that very spot where I had been standing someone by the name of my lord du Lude was killed. That made me very much afraid, and I wondered greatly at Joan’s sayings after all these events.19
Hereafter, the duke of Alençon would be with Joan as much as possible, and he would remain loyal to her long after her death.
Jargeau was not a large city, like Orléans, but in almost every other way it imitated its bigger and more westerly Loire neighbor. It was strongly fortified, with a wall and a ditch encompassing most of the town’s buildings and houses – although a suburb had been allowed to grow outside of these walls; five towers and three fortified gates on the walls added to the defense of the town. It also lay on the southern side of the Loire, with a single fortified bridge passing over the river. Finally, it was filled with gunpowder weapons and perhaps as many as 700 enemy troops led by the duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole, and two of his brothers.20 Thus Alençon and Joan were faced with the same problem that Thomas Montagu, the earl of Salisbury, had faced when first attacking Orléans the year before: how does one quickly capture a fortified town? The French leaders met to discuss their strategy. At Joan’s nullification trial, Alençon recalled:
There was a debate between the captains, because some were of the opinion that they should attack the town, and others asserted to the contrary that the English were very powerful and were there in a large multitude.
During this debate Joan stepped forward and spoke with the confidence that they had all become accustomed to:
Then Joan, seeing that there was this difficulty between them, said that they should not fear any multitude, nor have difficulty in attacking these English, because God was conducting their work. Joan said that unless she was sure that God was leading this work, she would have chosen to herd her sheep rather than expose herself to such dangers.21
Taking this as their inspiration, the French troops began to attack the suburbs around Jargeau, but the English were not willing to let them have even these, and they sallied out from behind the protection of the town walls to intercept the French. This tactic seems not to have been anticipated by the French and they began to fall back. But, as Alençon recalled, Joan, ‘picking up her standard, went into the attack, entreating her soldiers to be of good heart’. So encouraged, the French rallied and chased the English back into Jargeau. That night, they lodged in the suburbs of their targeted town.22
Emboldened by this victory, Joan asked the English to surrender to her. ‘Surrender this place to the King of Heaven and to the gentle King Charles, and you can go, otherwise you will be massacred,’ are the words she used, according to Perceval de Cagny. It was a speech she had given before at Orléans; the English at Jargeau responded exactly as their Orléans colleagues had – with refusal.23 (Although the mockery that Joan had to undergo on the earlier occasion seems to have disappeared.) This was followed by an intensive gunpowder bombardment from the French positions across the river and in the suburbs, echoed, to a lesser extent, by the English, who it seems had fewer of these weapons.24 The French guns began to batter the walls of Jargeau; in particular, writes the anonymous author of the Journal du siège d’Orléans, one bombard from Orléans, named Bergerie or Bergière, brought down one of the larger of the town’s towers.25 Eventually, these gunpowder weapons created enough of a problem for Suffolk and his English soldiers that he tried to negotiate a surrender. They promised to leave Jargeau without further incident should they not be relieved in fifteen days. But these negotiations were attempted not with Alençon or Joan, but with La Hire. More than twenty years later, this still upset Alençon as he testified in the nullification trial that ‘he and all who had leadership of any kind over the army were irritated by La Hire. And he commanded La Hire to come to them, and he came.’26 The English proposal was refused, although Joan recalled at her own trial that she had told the English leaders that they were welcome to leave then with their horses without suffering further loss of life; she also announced to the inhabitants of Jargeau that they too could leave safely at this time, but should they not do so, they also would suffer in the assault.27
With the English having revealed that they were weak and disheartened, Joan pushed for an assault on the town walls. The other French leaders agreed, although Alençon admitted that he for one had some desire to continue the bombardment of the walls for a while longer before undertaking such a potentially costly attack. But Joan urged him on:
Joan said to him: ‘Forward, gentle duke, to the assault!’ And since it seemed to him that it was premature for them to undertake an attack so quickly, Joan said to him: ‘Do not doubt! The time is right when it pleases God. And one ought to act when God wishes. Act and God will act.’
She then reminded him of the promise that she had made to his wife and mother: ‘Oh, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I promised your wife to bring you back safe and sound.’28 Reminded of his faith in the divinity of her mission, Alençon agreed to the assault and it went forward. Enguerrand de Monstrelet reports the violence of the onslaught: ‘And the French began in many places to attack very harshly, which attacks endured for a long time, terrible and very magnificent.’29 While the Journal du siège d’Orléans adds more details:
In the morning of Sunday 12 June French soldiers placed themselves in the ditch with ladders and other tools necessary to make an assault, and they attacked marvelously those who were inside, which defended themselves most virtuously for a long time.
One Englishman in particular, ‘large and powerful and armed with many weapons, carrying on his head a bascinet,’ defended the walls strongly, ‘splendidly throwing balls of iron and continually knocking over ladders and the men standing on them’. Only when Jean, the Master Couleuvrinier who had won fame in defending Orléans, purposely aimed his gun at this English warrior and killed him were the French attackers able to make progress against the Jargeau walls.30
In the midst of the attack was Joan. Carrying her standard, she charged forward with the rest of the army, both men-at-arms and common soldiers, according to Perceval de Cagny. For three or four hours they attacked the walls without breaking over or through them.31 Joan was constantly in danger, but it was not until the French came close to victory that her life was threatened. Alençon later testified:
And with the soldiers breaking in . . . Joan was on a ladder, holding her standard in her hands, when the standard was struck, and Joan also was struck on top of her head with a stone which broke on her helmet. She was knocked to the ground, and when she arose, she said to the soldiers: ‘Friends, friends, up! up! Our Lord has condemned the English. At this hour they are ours. Have courage!’32
This attack and Joan’s response to it did two things. First, it caused the French leadership to ignore a call from Suffolk to meet and discuss surrender terms.33 And, second, the French soldiers, concerned that Joan was wounded, took heart in what she said. They pressed on with even more vigor. Alençon continued: ‘and in a short time, the town of Jargeau was taken’.34
Those English soldiers who could, fled. But where could they go? The nearest allied troops were in Meung-sur-Loire, along the river past Orléans. Some did succeed in surrendering, but many more were killed. William de la Pole, with one brother, Alexander, killed and another, John, captured, surrendered himself. But in discovering that his would-be captor, Guillaume Regnault, was only a squire from Auvergne, he knighted him. As count of Suffolk, he did not wish to be made a prisoner of anyone other than a knight.35 Most of his underlings, however, were not so fortunate. English casualties were quite high, with many of the prisoners also being executed, according to Jean Chartier and the Chronique de la Pucelle;36 the death toll may have been as high as 1,100.37 (The execution of prisoners after the capture of Jargeau naturally poses a problem for those who believe that Joan would never have participated in anything so sinister. Of course, it is possible that this was done without her knowledge, or that some of her soldiers took her threats of an English massacre more seriously than she had intended, as neither of the sources reporting the incident mentions her presence at or knowledge of what had occurred.) French casualties may also have been high due to the means of capturing the town, but these are not given.38
That night celebrations were held in both Jargeau and Orléans.39 In Orléans, to where she and the other French leaders had retired, Joan heard Mass celebrated by one of her favorite preachers, Friar Robert Braignard.40 But she, Alençon, and the other leaders would not stay long in Orléans. Two more towns on the Loire River were still controlled by the English: Meung-sur-Loire and Beaugency. In addition, John Fastolf’s army was still somewhere to the north. (He had actually stopped at Janville at this time, only about twenty kilometers away, but it is uncertain whether Joan of Arc and her colleagues leaders knew this.41) That evening in Orléans, says Perceval de Cagny, Joan told the duke of Alençon that she wished to leave for Meung the following day.42 It would actually take three days for the army to organize and for the gunpowder weapons, so valuable at both Orléans and Jargeau, to be shipped down the Loire. Then, after ensuring that a garrison of soldiers remained in Jargeau, on 15 June, the French army marched the short distance from Orléans to Meung-sur-Loire.43
Meung-sur-Loire was surrounded by a strong wall, like the other Loire towns fought over by the French and English in 1429, and, again like those other towns, had a single fortified bridge crossing the river from the north to the town which lay on the Loire’s southern bank. Where Meung differed from Jargeau and Orléans, however, was the large castle which existed just outside of the town walls and in which the English leaders, John Talbot and Thomas Scales, were housed. This castle, once owned by the bishops of Orléans and dating from the thirteenth century, was surrounded by its own walls and thus provided an extra fortification that would require siege or assault before the town itself could be secured. That is, should Joan and the other French military leaders have followed their accustomed method of recapturing towns occupied by the English, they would have needed to attack and conquer the fortified bridge, the walled town, and then the castle. But Joan and the others did not follow their customary tactic at Meung-sur-Loire. Instead, they only attacked and occupied the fortified bridge there before moving on to Beaugency. It was a hard fight, but without strong bridge fortifications like the Tourelles – it appears that the English had hastily added some minor fortifications, but as there are no contemporary illustrations of the bridge, nor does it exist any longer, it is difficult to understand how strong these might have been – it quickly fell. The Journal du siège d’Orléans reports:
On 15 June 1429, [the French army] went to lay a siege on Beaugency, and on their way, they attacked the bridge of Meung-sur-Loire, which the English had fortified and garrisoned with brave men, who defended it well. But notwithstanding their defense, it was taken by simple assault, without hardly interrupting them.44
After this, the French left a large garrison of their own soldiers on the bridge.
What was the purpose of this limited action? Such a change in tactics actually had quite a simple objective, as Jean Chartier explains: ‘this was done . . . so that they would enclose them there and to always stand in the way of any English military activities’.45 By capturing the only easy access across the Loire for the English leaders and their troops, Joan, or whoever the author of this tactic was, had prevented a quick combination of Talbot and Scales’ army with that of Fastolf, whenever he should arrive; they would also be unable easily to come to the aid of the English troops in Beaugency. It was a rather intelligent strategy, which has not been given its weight in the study of Joan’s campaigns.
Among those who participated in the capture of the bridge at Meung were several nobles and soldiers who had not taken part in Joan’s relief of the siege of Orléans or capture of Jargeau. In mustering the army to travel to Meung and Beaugency, the Journal du siège d’Orléans reports that:
The duke of Alençon and the Maid . . . had six or seven thousand soldiers, who had come to reinforce the army, more lords, knights, squires, captains, and valiant men-at-arms, and, among the others, the lord of Laval and the lord of Lohéac, his brother, the lord of Chauvigny de Berry, the lord of La Tour d’Auvergne, and the vidame of Chartres.46
It seems that Joan’s victories at Orléans and at Jargeau had continued to inspire the recruitment of soldiers, both noble and common. But no one was more ‘noble’ than Arthur de Richemont, the Constable of France, who approached the French army outside Beaugency on 15 or 16 June 1429. At the same time, no problem faced by Joan’s army so far perhaps exceeded that created by Richemont’s approach. The reason for this is complicated, but does much to explain some of the background of the dauphin’s lack of military success before the arrival of Joan of Arc, as well as some of the reasons for her decline as a military leader after the crowning of the dauphin as King Charles VII.
Arthur de Richemont was born in Succinio Castle, Brittany, on 24 August 1393.47 As the third son of duke of Brittany, Jean IV, and Jeanne, the daughter of King Charles ‘the Bad’ of Navarre, Richemont was not expected to succeed to the ducal throne – although he would, for little more than a year at the end of his life, between 1457 and 1458 – but received the military training of every other noble son of war-torn late medieval western Europe. It was in this training that he found a particular affinity, and by the time he was seventeen, in 1410, he had taken up arms to involve himself in the Burgundian–Armagnac civil war. But on whose side would he fight? Because his father had died when Arthur was quite young, before he had turned ten, and his mother had gone to England as the new wife of Henry IV, he had been raised largely in the ducal courts of Philip the Bold of Burgundy and Jean II of Berry. Additionally, his eldest brother, then Duke Jean V of Brittany, had awarded him the county of Richmond in England, which had remained in the holdings of the dukes of Brittany since the first duke had fought with William the Conqueror at Hastings (which also meant that for most of his life Richemont fought against the king whose fealty he was technically obligated to). This, one might think, would lead him to support the Burgundian, and later the English, cause in France. But he was also the close friend of Louis of Guyenne, the dauphin to the throne of France in 1410. In the end, this friendship determined his allegiance. He fought against John the Fearless, and, when Henry V invaded England and fought the battle of Agincourt, Richemont was captured fighting on the French side. His imprisonment in England for five years after the battle was not a harsh one, because of his mother’s association with the English king’s father, and he was granted privileges and luxuries, and, in 1423, permission to take as wife Margaret of Burgundy, the widow of the dead dauphin, Louis. She was the daughter of John the Fearless and sister of Philip the Good and Anne of Burgundy – the wife of John of Bedford, regent of England and commander of all English forces in France.
Yet, more than anything, Richemont wanted to fight, and when Bedford refused him a command in 1424, he switched to the French side, urged to do so by Queen Yolanda, the mother-in-law of the dauphin Charles. In gratitude, Charles appointed him to the office of Constable, the general in charge of all of the dauphin’s forces. Richemont set out to reform the army, to recruit new soldiers, to arm them with more and better weapons, including gunpowder weapons, and to defend vigorously the lands of the dauphin, while regaining those that had been lost by him and his father. An assessment of how successful he was depends on which original and secondary sources one reads; Richemont, like every other wealthy military leader of the Hundred Years War, had his own chronicler, Guillaume Gruel – and his detractors had theirs.48 One thing is certain, it did not take long for the new Constable to come to be at odds with his one-time friend, the chief counselor of the dauphin, Georges de la Trémoïlle. By September 1427, Richemont and La Trémoïlle had quarreled, and, under the influence of this counselor, the dauphin had barred his chief military leader from his court by the time that Joan had arrived in Chinon in 1428. Thus Richemont had not participated in Joan’s military activities in Orléans, Jargeau, or Meung-sur-Loire, although he had undoubtedly heard of what occurred there.49 What was the cause of Richemont’s troubles with La Trémoïlle? Gruel indicates that it was the Constable’s desire to carry on an aggressive war against the Anglo-Burgundian forces, while the dauphin’s counselor was intent on an inactive military strategy, one that preferred diplomacy, patience, and submission to combat. As these would be the complaints that La Trémoïlle would also level at Joan, one suspects that Gruel’s biased opinion may be correct. Richemont had appeared with his forces outside of Beaugency because Joan had fought the war against the English in the same manner that he would have.
As he was still discredited and banned from the dauphin’s court, Richemont’s appearance was not welcomed by some of the more loyal of Charles’s adherents. Alençon, for one, later testified:
Being at Beaugency, they heard news that the Lord Constable was approaching with some troops. As such, he, Joan, and others from the army were irritated and wished to retire from the town, because they had been commanded not to receive the Lord Constable into their company. And he said to Joan that if the Constable came there, he would leave.50
Whether Joan actually felt this animosity for Richemont, as Alençon claimed, cannot be ascertained. Certainly her devotion to the dauphin would have given her reason enough to be suspicious of Richemont’s own loyalty. On the other hand, should she have heard that the Constable’s disfavor was caused by his holding similar military opinions to her own – and his appearance at Beaugency seemed to confirm that he approved of her military methods – she might have had some sympathy for her famous would-be companion. This certainly would explain Joan’s next actions in connection with Richemont.
However, the accuracy of Alençon’s testimony of Joan’s initial attitude towards the Constable can never be tested, for historical fate intervened. The fate in this case came in the form of Sir John Fastolf. That English leader, whose reinforcing march had been anticipated for more than a month, finally arrived outside of Beaugency on 17 June while Joan and her army were attacking the town.51 Jean de Waurin’s estimate of the size of Fastolf’s army, to which he belonged, is 5,000,52 although most historians reduce the tally by at least a thousand.53 At that point it did not matter whether Richemont was persona non grata at the French court or not. Joan needed his 1,000–1,200 soldiers. Thus, persuading Alençon also to stay and fight against Fastolf, and even going as far, according to the Chronique de la Pucelle, as making promises in writing which guaranteed the Constable’s loyalty to those who were offended by his presence,54 she approached Richemont with the following words, as remembered by Alençon: ‘Ah, good Constable, you have not come on my behalf, but because you have come, you are welcome.’55 Guillaume Gruel, writing from Richemont’s side, adds his perspective:
The Maid climbed down from her horse, and the lord [Constable] did also. And the Maid came to embrace the lord around his legs. And he spoke to her, saying, ‘Joan, it has been said that you wish to fight with me. I do not know if you are from God or not. If you are from God, I do not fear you, because God knows my good will. If you are from the Devil, I fear you even less.’56
Was Joan right to make peace with Richemont? Certainly it did not help her later position with Georges de la Trémoïlle, nor perhaps with Charles, who refused to allow the Constable to attend during his coronation at Reims, despite Richemont’s participation in the victories at Beaugency and Patay and also despite the requirement of his attendance as the holder of the constabulary office.57 (Charles VII would not make peace with Richemont until 1433.) But from a purely military position and in the face of the arrival of an enemy army, Joan had no choice. Even if she did not have any sympathy for Richemont himself or his status at the dauphinal court, she needed his numbers and perhaps his leadership skill to fight against Fastolf. Actually, she needed his numbers either to fight or to intimidate Fastolf so that he would choose not to fight; the latter choice was, of course, the preferable one for Joan, and it was the one chosen by the English reinforcer. Jean de Waurin reports:
You could have seen all those English riding in very good order at Beauce [the name of the location of Fastolf’s army] which is ample and large. Then, when they arrived thus about a league from Meung and very near to Beaugency, the French were alerted of their approach, with around 6,000 soldiers, of which the leaders were Joan the Maid, the duke of Alençon, the Bastard of Orléans, the Marshal of La Fayette, La Hire, Ponton [de Xantrailles], and other captains. They ordered their soldiers into battle formation on top of a small hill, to better see and verify the appearance of the English. Those, plainly perceiving that the French were ordered in battle formation, believing in the fact that they would come against them to fight, made an order especially given by King Henry of England that every man should dismount, and that the archers should have their stakes placed with their points towards the enemy, as they were accustomed to do when they expected to be attacked. Then they sent two heralds to the French, whom they saw had not moved from their places, saying that there were three knights who would fight them, if they had the courage to descend from the hill and come against them. Which response was made for the French by the Maid: ‘Go and camp for today, because it is quite late. But tomorrow, at the pleasure of God and Our Lady, we will look more closely at you.’ Then the English lords who were not going to fight departed from this place and rode to Meung where they lodged that night.58
They would not return.
According to Guillaume Gruel, the reason why Fastolf left Beaugency without fighting was that ‘when he saw that the Lord Constable had come there, he changed his mind and accepted the counsel of those to leave’.59 Whether Gruel is correct or not, the fact that Joan was able to accept Richemont’s assistance, while also persuading the rest of her offended leaders to stay, and that this was followed by Fastolf’s departure without combat, surely confirms the wisdom of her decision to approach the Constable against the dauphin’s wishes. It also affirms her increased status among the French military leadership. Only one who was perceived as the true leader of the French forces on the Loire river could have pulled off such a stunt, and while the dauphin and La Trémoïlle obviously remained unhappy about Richemont’s re-association with the army, they could not argue about it in the face of Joan’s success.
And Joan continued to be successful. For while the above encounter with Fastolf occurred on 17 June, she and the French army had been fighting for control of Beaugency. Joan had been at Beaugency since 15 June, and she had not stopped attacking the town since then, not even during the face-off with Fastolf.60 There was a wall around Beaugency and a single fortified bridge across the Loire leading into it, just as there was at the other Loire towns that Joan had fought over. Like Meung-sur-Loire, it also had a castle, although unlike its neighbor, this castle, a five-storey square keep built in the twelfth century, was located within the town walls, dominating the skyline and housing a garrison of 500–600 English soldiers, less a few troops stationed on the bridge, who had occupied the building since its capture the year before by the earl of Salisbury. The English captains in charge of this town were Richard Guestin and Matthew Gough.61
Fighting began almost as soon as the French army arrived, with, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans, a ‘very strong skirmish’ fought all day between Joan’s soldiers and the English troops occupying the bridge,62 followed by an intensive gunpowder weaponry bombardment from French positions across the Loire on to the town walls and castle. This would last all night and throughout the next day.63 The military action taken against Beaugency was very different to that used against Jargeau. But the tactical choice should not be questioned, for not only were Joan and the other French leaders concerned with the arrival of Richemont and then of Fastolf, but also the strength of the castle, evident even today, pretty well prohibited any assault.
Eventually, no assault was needed to capture Beaugency. The continual bombardment of the town’s fortifications – although there is an indication that Joan was running out of gunpowder64 – the disparity between English numbers and those of the attacking army, and the inability or unwillingness of Fastolf’s relief force to fight a battle against the French forces there, led Guestin and Gough to negotiate for peace. The English would surrender the town in exchange for the promise of safe-conduct for themselves, their horses and harness, and any moveable goods, ‘so long as they were not valued at more than one mark of silver’. They also promised not to fight against the French for the following ten days (which Joan must have estimated would take them out of the conflict for Meungsur-Loire; as it was, it also kept them from participating in the battle of Patay). Surrender terms were accepted, and Beaugency once again became French.65
On the night of 17/18 June, the English in Beaugency took their leave, marching north towards Paris. Because of their promise, there really was no reason to go towards Meung-sur-Loire and the remainder of the English troops on the Loire, including Fastolf’s ineffective reinforcements who had proved impotent since their arrival two days before. Even when Fastolf did resolve to take action on 18 June, by attempting to recapture the bridge at Meung-sur-Loire from the French, his attacks were poorly timed – French troops from Beaugency had just arrived in preparation to make an attack against the final English-controlled Loire location – and incredibly ineffective. Even though the Journal du siège d’Orléans claims that it was a ‘very harsh’ assault, it was badly organized and completely unsupported by archery or gunpowder weapons.66 Ultimately, it also proved to the English leadership that their efforts at Meung were destined for failure. They simply could not withstand French attacks like those that had meant the loss of Orléans, Jargeau, and Beaugency. The decision was made to retreat. Whose decision it was is not mentioned in the sources, but the Journal du siège de l’Orléans does say, ‘they retreated entirely from the town of Meung, and they made their path across the fields in good order, wishing to go to Janville’.67
The French leaders could see the retreat of the English army. They had won. In but a very short time they had cleared the Loire of its English occupiers. The celebrations could have begun. No one would have blamed them if they had simply allowed Talbot, Fastolf, Scales, and the others to retreat in peace to Janville, and from there probably to Paris, for none of those English generals had shown much desire to encounter the French. In the previous few years letting the English leave would probably have been the strategy. But this was not the old French army. For one thing, a woman who believed firmly that it was her mission to crown the dauphin king of France held very great influence over the other leaders, and, for another, that woman believed that she could only ensure that crowning if she pushed the English completely back to Paris, and perhaps even to England. She was not about to let a large English army, which had been defeated at every location, simply slip off to the north without attempting one more defeat, a battle in which not only could she whittle down their numbers, but also demoralize them to the extent that her journey to Reims would be made all that easier. It was a risky venture, but then, again, she felt that any of her soldiers who died during the fulfilment of this mission would gain heavenly rewards. Joan pushed for battle against the retreating English. The duke of Alençon later recalled her confident words spoken in a council of French leaders:
Joan said: ‘In the name of God, let us go to fight them! If they were hung in the clouds, we would get them, for God sent them to us that we might punish them!’ Asserting that she was certain of victory, she spoke these words in French: ‘The gentle king shall have the greatest victory today that he has ever had. And my Counsel says to me that they are ours!’68
But it was essential to overtake the retreating army before they reached the fortified town of Janville, as, it seems, Joan wished to fight a battle against them and not another siege. So speed again became an important tactic.69 Speed might also bring surprise, which would help the French cause, and surprise could be assured, especially if the pursuit of their army with the aim of provoking a battle had not been considered by Talbot, Fastolf, or any of the other English leaders. (And, judging from what occurred at the battle of Patay, none of the English leaders had considered this to be a possibility.)
No doubt the English retreated from Meung-sur-Loire in good order, as the Journal du siège d’Orléans insists. But they were a defeated army, most of whom, arriving with Fastolf only a few days before, had never even had the chance to fight the French before their leaders felt the need to turn around, surrender all that had been won the year before, and return to the north. They must have felt like cowards. The others, the minority who had survived the relief of Orléans, the capture of Jargeau and now of Beaugency and Meung, or perhaps more than one of those engagements, might have been relieved at the prospect of removing themselves from any further conflict with the Maid. Whether she was of God or of the Devil, they probably did not know; but what was becoming obvious to them and – if they could have known the thoughts of those leaders in Paris, Normandy, and England – to the English as a whole, was that she was someone to be feared. Jean de Waurin gives their order of march: the vanguard was commanded by a unnamed English knight carrying a white standard; between the vanguard and the main body wagons carried what little artillery, victuals, and non-combatants still remained with the army; in the main body were Fastolf, Talbot, the other English leaders, and the majority of troops, including soldiers recruited from the lands occupied by the English; and in the rearguard were a group of Englishmen.70 The whole army was perhaps 5,000 strong.71
The French army had a completely different attitude. It had been victorious in all of its most recent encounters with the English. Any of the troops involved in the defeat at the battle of the Herrings might not even remember that they lost there. More importantly, they believed in their living saint, Joan of Arc. The common soldiers had given her their faith and trust, while the noble leaders had given her virtual command over the entire army. Veteran military leaders such as the Constable of France, the duke of Alençon, the Bastard of Orléans, La Hire, Ponton de Xantrailles, and all the rest now listened to her military advice and heeded it, as if she were the most sage veteran in the French leadership corps. Their line of march, as recorded by Guillaume Gruel, was based mainly on the speed of their modes of transport: in the front rode a group of cavalry led by La Hire, Ponton de Xantrailles and ‘other men who rode the horse well’, with the main body, consisting of both cavalry and infantry, commanded by Richemont, Alençon, the Bastard of Orléans, Gilles de Rais, and others. Joan was in that body also.72 The French numbered around 6,000, according to the Journal du siège d’Orléans.73
The English army had marched for close to four hours and around midday reached a site known as Patay; then the rearguard spotted the pursuing French army pressing on them. According to Jean de Waurin, whose account is perhaps the best concerning what actually occurred on the battlefield because of his presence there, riders were sent forward to warn John Fastolf, who seems to have been in command at Patay, of the imminent arrival of their opponents.74 Rather than run, and perhaps recalling that the English had consistently found success on the battlefield, he chose to order his lines and meet the French army in battle.
Where this exactly was, however, is not known for certain. The battle was only called Patay because, as Monstrelet maintains, that is the village where the Constable and many of the other French captains spent the night after the fight, ‘from which village the battle carries the name forever’. In fact, the village of Patay lies more than a league from the site of the battle,75 which was said to be close to a place named Coinces.76 Other place names located on the battlefield include Saint-Sigismond, where the English archers were arrayed, and Saint-Péravy, where the French encountered the main body of the English troops. But since these two locations presently are quite far to the south of Coinces, they were not given much credibility by nineteenth-and early twentieth-century historians. Coupled with the lack of archaeological work done in this region, this left many of these historians struggling to determine where exactly the battle of Patay was fought.77 More modern historians have had somewhat more success locating the battlefield. Based on his study of Roman roads in the area and a chat with the local curé, Alfred H. Burne in 1956 described its location as where the old Lignerolles–Coinces road crosses the Roman road.78 This was corrected only slightly by Michel de Lombarès in 1966, when, using basically the same technique as Burne, he found that the Lignerolles–Coinces road was a more modern construction and relocated the battlefield slightly more to the south-east where the medieval Grand Chemin de Chartres à Orléans crosses the medieval Grand Chemin de Blois à Paris.79 Finally, in 1976, Colonel Ferdinand de Liocourt, basing his account on his discovery of a number of medieval English and Frenchhorseshoes which had been recovered over a number of years and the fact that a field to the west of Coinces was known traditionally as ‘la cimetière aux Anglais’ (the cemetery of the English), both widened the battlefield further to the west from Coinces and to the south beyond Saint Péravy and even Saint-Sigismond and shifted the main fighting to Saint-Sigismond, for the first part of the battle, and Lignerolles, for the latter part.80 Ultimately, what is described by all three of these battlefield detectives is a large, flat plain with relatively few trees and bushes, although quite a few are described in the contemporary sources.
Having discovered the French army’s approach, Fastolf set up his order of battle in preparation to receive the attack. Using what had now become a tradition in English tactics, this order of battle was a defensive formation. As at Crécy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Cravant, Verneuil, and the battle of the Herrings, the English were not to make their own initial charges, but were instead to receive those of the generally over-confident French. At those other battles, the French charges invariably became disordered and lost their impetus before they were able to reach the English defensive formation. But at Patay, this would not occur.
According to Jean de Waurin, Fastolf ordered the English vanguard, supplies, artillery, and non-combatants to hide in the woods along the side of where he planned to fight his battle. Lord Talbot then took 500 ‘élite’ mounted archers to a location towards the front of the battlefield, ‘between two strong hedges through which he felt that the French would pass’. This position is said to have been near Saint-Sigismond. These troops were to dismount and to try to keep the French from charging the English until after Fastolf had been able to order his main body and rearguard, also all dismounted, for battle some distance to the rear of the archers. Talbot hoped that once this was accomplished, he and his troops could sneak through the woods in front of Patay (the same woods that held the English vanguard and baggage train) and return to the main body without a large loss of life.81
On came the French cavalry, having ridden hard from Meung-sur-Loire in pursuit of the English. They had lost the element of surprise, and according to Waurin, they seemed not yet to have seen the English and did not know of the hidden archers. Indeed, it looked as if they would surely be ambushed by those archers. But then something unusual happened which foiled the English secrecy. Waurin writes:
With much excitement came the French after their enemy, whom they could not see nor knew the place where they were, when, during the front-riders’ approach, they saw a stag run out of the woods, which made its way towards Patay and crashed into the formation of the English [archers]. These made a very loud cry, not knowing that their enemy was so near to them. Hearing this cry, the French front-riders were certain that there were the English, and also they saw them afterwards very plainly. So they sent some of their companions to notify their captains what they had seen and discovered, and they made known to them that they should ride forward in good order and that it was time to press on. Those [the captains] promptly prepared themselves in all things and rode so that they saw the English very clearly.82
Frequently, it is the ‘unusual’, the unplanned, that turns the tide of a battle. At Patay, it was this stag. The archers, their hiding place uncovered and their planned ambush discovered, fled into the woods and ran directly into the hiding vanguard, supply wagons, and artillery. Fastolf, who had not yet been given enough time to order a defensive formation with the main body and rear-guard of his army,83 tried to rush to the aid of his archers and those hidden in the woods with reinforcements. But he was too late. Waurin continues:
However, the vanguard thought that all was lost and that [the archers] were in flight. Because of this the captain of the vanguard, thinking that it truly was so, took his white standard, and he and his men took flight and abandoned the hedges.84
Fastolf had little recourse but to turn and run in an attempt to save as many as he could from the main body of his army. He would escape. But his noble colleague, John Talbot, would not. Having placed himself with the hidden vanguard, he had become entangled in their disordered flight and was captured.85
By this time, the main body of the French army had ridden on to the field. The English forces were by then completely disordered as they all tried to flee. French infantry and cavalry charged on to these disordered troops and a slaughter ensued.86 At the end of the battle, which had taken less than an hour,87 English heralds reported a loss of 2,200 soldiers; the French had lost very few. Many more English had been captured, with not only Talbot taken, but Sir Thomas Scales and many other English leaders as well.88 If that was not enough, those English soldiers who were fortunate enough to escape from the field found that their nearest allied town, Janville, had closed its doors to them; the townspeople there had learned of the French victory and chose to surrender themselves to the victors at Patay rather than suffer what Jargeau and Beaugency had. Most English soldiers did not find refuge until they had reached Étampes or Corbeil, less than fifty kilometers from Paris.89
As mentioned, the Constable and several other French leaders stayed that night in Patay, where they celebrated their victory. Joan, the duke of Alençon, the Bastard of Orléans, and others returned to Orléans.90 But what was Joan’s role in the battle of Patay? Certainly she had encouraged the French army to chase after the English and to force them to do battle. But after that, her name seems to disappear from the contemporary records. This may be partly explained by the fact that the best accounts of the battle are written by Waurin and Monstrelet, two individuals who were writing from the English perspective and not the French one. Nor do either of the chronicles that highlight her military career during this period – the Journal du siège d’Orléans and the Chronique de la Pucelle – report much about the battle. But, more than likely, this is not the sole reason for her absence from the sources. Her role in the battle of Patay may have been limited because she was a member of the main body of the French troops, the force that found only a small amount of ‘moppingup’ action there. Only the soldiers in the French vanguard seem to have participated fully in the fighting, and even their role was limited to one of intimidation rather than actual combat because the English force essentially caused its own initial panic and final demise. La Hire and Ponton de Xantrailles were there, but they and the other French cavalry in the vanguard were veteran soldiers whose capability on horseback allowed them to reach the battlefield and, with the help of a frightened stag, win the battle before the rest of the army arrived. However, Joan was there early enough to see what her encouragement had effected. And her response? It was typical for Joan. She mourned for the lost lives and took pity on the wounded regardless of whether they were English or French. Her page, Louis de Coutes, later testified that when she encountered an English prisoner who had been ‘hit . . . on the head’ at Patay and left for dead by a Frenchman, ‘she dismounted and received the Englishman’s confession, holding his head and comforting him as much as she could’.91
The English army had been chased from the Loire. In but a short time, all of the numerous acquisitions made by the earl of Salisbury in 1428 south of Chartres were returned under French control. As Joan celebrated the victory at Patay with her by-now customary Mass,92 she was also preparing to undertake the next part of her journey. Even though she had won many great victories, she had still only fulfilled one of her mission’s goals – the relief of the siege of Orléans. Her next task was to crown Charles, the dauphin, as Charles VII, the king. The road to Reims lay open.