JOAN OF ARC AND THE SIEGE OF ORLÉANS
by Don O’Reilly
Military History (April 1998)
In the marketplace within the gray walls of Rouen, Normandy, on May 30, 1431, in
the shadows of the cathedral and guild shops, a harsh spectacle held the attention of the
populace. A 19-year-old peasant girl was to be burned at the stake. A sign declared her
‘Jehanne, called la Pucelle, liar, pernicious, seducer of the people, diviner, superstitious,
blasphemer of God, presumptuous, misbelieving the faith of Jesus Christ, braggart,
idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic.’
To many in the crowd, however, she was the innocent would-be rescuer of France
from a century of English invaders. Unwittingly, the English were bestowing upon her a
martyrdom that would haunt them for the rest of their numbered days on French soil.
However surprisingly successful her gallant but brief career in war had been, Joan would
be far more dangerous to England after her death, transforming a century-long clash of
avaricious and vacillating feuding lords into a holy war for national liberation.
The Hundred Years’ War raged amid what was arguably the worst century in the
history of Western civilization. In France, crop failures, civil wars, invasion, horrendous
epidemics and marauding mercenary armies turned to banditry reduced the population by
two-thirds.
The war began in earnest in 1346, when Edward III, King of England, invaded
Brittany and marched on Paris. At Crécy, his army of 10,000 utterly routed twice their
number of Frenchmen as English longbowmen annihilated squadrons of heavily armed
French knights.
In 1348 the bubonic plague, the Black Death, devastated Western Europe, killing
millions within 24 hours of infection. In England, a third of the population perished. The
plague ravaged crowded, polluted castles and towns more than it did isolated villages.
The Roman Catholic Church decreed that anyone confronted with persons sneezing or
coughing, symptoms of the disease, should bless them and quickly decide to either flee or
stay to assist. The best of the clergy stayed—and many died. While papal decree
condemned the idea that the source of the illness was Jews poisoning well water,
common folk killed them anyway, as well as blaming other scapegoats—witches, heretics
and, if one was French, ‘les goddams Anglais’ (a nickname referring to the English
tendency to use profanity more readily than did the French).
Heavily taxed in order to pay the English ransom for their king and lords captured at
Poitiers in 1356, the already oppressed French peasantry erupted into a revolt, known as
the Jacquerie. The rebels torched castles, churches and towns. Meanwhile, unpaid
foreign soldiers of fortune spread their own waves of terror as they pillaged the land.
Because they slaughtered farmers’ cattle, the English soldiers earned another nickname—
‘boeuf-manges,’ or ‘beef-eaters.’
In 1378, the struggle wracked the church with rival claimants to the papacy at
Avignon and Rome, the former backed by France and the latter by England. Religious
and political authority alike were in confusion.
By 1415, England’s young King Henry V had demanded the crown of France and then
had offered to settle for less, an offer few trusted. Henry V then invaded France, in
violation of a previously signed treaty, and seized the port of Harfleur. His army reduced
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by disease, he retreated toward Calais. Attacked en route by the French at Agincourt,
Henry’s archers again annihilated the French knights, inflicting 7,000 casualties to
England’s 500. The English occupied all northwestern France, from the Atlantic to the
Loire River, including Paris. When Henry V visited one of his prisoners, the Duke of
Orléans, in the Tower of London, he told him, ‘You deserve to lose.’ The Frenchman
agreed, as did a great many of his countrymen. Continued defeat and economic
deterioration had left France in a state of passive denial that bordered upon political and
military despair.
The most powerful duchy in France at the time was that of Burgundy, occupying most
of the eastern region. When the dauphin, son of the mentally ill King Charles VI, had
met with John of Burgundy to plan an alliance against the English, the dauphin rashly
accused the Burgundian of treason because of his earlier inaction against the invaders.
One of the dauphin’s entourage then stabbed and killed the duke. That treacherous act
only drove the Burgundians to ally with England. The dauphin, a brooding, irresolute
man like his father, was reluctant to act any further; his attempt at diplomacy had failed,
and his military strategy was threatened by the new enemy alliance. Besides, he was
afraid of horses. France was reduced to the area south of the Loire, then called Armagnac.
On August 31, 1422, Henry V died of dysentery—depriving the English of their most
charismatic leader of the war—and John, the Duke of Bedford, became regent for the 7month-old King Henry VI. On October 22, Charles VI also died. None of his relatives
appeared at his funeral, but the Duke of Bedford did. No sooner was the king’s tomb
closed than Bedford proclaimed his infant ward ‘Henry, by the Grace of God, King of
England and of France.’
Although the dauphin made a counterclaim to the French throne, he was paralyzed by
his unwillingness to assert real leadership and his jealousy of any noble who did. Soon
all France north of the Loire River was controlled by the English or Burgundians except
for a few holdouts: Mont St. Michel, Tornai, Vaucouleurs in Lorraine, and Orléans.
What remained of France was saved by the Loire River. The English could not cross
it without first reducing all French strongholds on its low, sandy shores. By autumn of
1428, the siege of the Loire citadel of Orléans had begun. The English fortified the
southern access to the city’s bridge, ignoring the need to complete their siege lines on the
northern side of the river around the walled town.
Of all nations, France was first to give rise to a popular image apart from the king. In
the 1300s, folk literature and ballads spoke of Mre France—Mother France, beloved,
merciful and long-suffering. But that was hardly preparation for the extraordinary
resurgence in morale that would be set in motion by a teenage girl.
Lorraine, watered by the Meuse flowing to the Rhine in northeastern France, remained
loyal to the dauphin though separated from his sovereignty by some 200 miles of
Burgundian territory. The garrison at Vaucouleurs defended the region. The
Burgundians, preoccupied in the southwest, had left Lorraine relatively undisturbed by
war. Its Ardennes hills and forest were of minor value, but they provided an advantage to
its defenders. In the village of Domrémy, in Lorraine, lived the d’Arc family, who
owned a farm and sheep pasture, but they were not serfs to the local lord, Robert de
Baudricourt. Their home boasted a glass window. There were five children, two boys
and three girls. One of the girls, Jeanette—known in English as Joan—was born on
January 6, 1412.
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At the age of 13, this illiterate shepherdess and ‘excellent seamstress’ first heard the
voices that would address her throughout her life. Usually they were preceded, she said,
by a great light. She claimed they were the voices of Saints Margaret and Catherine,
queens of France, and Archangel Michael, commander of the heavenly host. They
convinced her to swear to remain a virgin ‘as long as it shall please God.’ When Joan
was about 17, the voices told her to leave Domrémy without her father’s knowledge and
rescue Orléans. They promised nothing more.
In many respects, though, she seemed a rather ordinary girl—the tomboy next door,
the always-adoring younger sister one had to defend, the neighborhood girl never
unfriendly but preoccupied, whose glance one sought to catch. She was called by the
French la Pucelle—literally, the virgin. The English would call her ‘the Maid’ on rare
occasions when they spoke of her courteously. The title ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ would not be
used in reference to her until the 16th century. Her call to ‘Follow me,’ even when
headed into certain danger, would be heeded willingly by men who would not have
followed a grizzled veteran on such occasions.
Approaching her uncle, an ex-sergeant named Durand Laxhart, as her voices directed
her, she told him that he should bring her to the commander of Vaucouleurs, de
Baudricourt. She must have expected that her uncle, whose war stories she had heard,
would aid her. How much she explained to him is unclear, but she was taken to de
Baudricourt and told him of the voices she had not dared to mention to her parents. She
asked for horses and an escort to go across Burgundian territory to aid the dauphin, whom
she wished to see crowned king of France. Although she told de Baudricourt that her
voices had assured her that he would aid her, the flabbergasted commander at first told
Joan to go home. She did so, narrowly escaping an unsuccessful Burgundian raid on the
walled town. When she returned to Vaucouleurs toward the end of Lent in 1429, de
Baudricourt changed his mind and granted her wish. Perhaps he reasoned that the rewards
would be great if she was somehow successful, but her loss would be of small concern.
Dressed in male attire—because, as she would explain, she feared rape—the Maid,
accompanied by a knight, his squire and her two brothers, crossed Burgundy. Traveling
on horseback only at night, in 11 days they arrived at Chinon, the dauphin’s residence, in
February 1429. The dauphin had already received a letter dictated by Joan. Questioned,
she replied, ‘Have you not heard that France would be lost by a woman and restored by a
virgin from the Lorraine borderlands?’ The woman who had lost France was generally
considered to be Isabeau of Bavaria, the dauphin’s mother, whose discouraging lack of
faith in France and the men of her family, and whose readiness to accept English
demands, had made her quite unpopular.
The dauphin refused to see Joan immediately, but had her quizzed for almost a month
by officials and churchmen. Impatient and eager to get to Orléans, she gave terse,
practical and intelligent answers—albeit in uneducated fashion. Once she was accepted
by her interviewers, she was sent to the dauphin, who, changing clothes with one of his
officials and hiding in a crowd, waited to see if the Maid would be aware of the trick.
She immediately walked directly to him, respectful but annoyed at such games.
Perceval de Boulainvilliers, a knight who would be in Joan’s company, described her:
‘This maid has a certain elegance. She has a virile bearing, speaks little, shows an
admirable prudence in all her words. She has a pretty woman’s voice, eats little, drinks
very little wine. She enjoys riding a horse and takes pleasure in fine arms, greatly likes
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the company of noble fighting men, detests numerous assemblies and meetings, readily
sheds copious tears, has a cheerful face. She bears the weight and burden of armor
incredibly well to such a point that she has remained fully armed during six days and
nights.’
The testimony of well over 600 people who knew her would be recorded in court. Not
even in the trial, which was rigged illegally by her prosecutors, would any witness speak
a word against her. Yet we have no description of her facial features, nor do we know the
color of her hair.
Outfitted in a suit of white enameled armor specially made for her, and carrying a
banner of white and blue with two angels and the single word ‘Jesus,’ she proceeded with
a gathering army from Chinon to Tours, to Blois and then to Orléans. On the way, she
ordered the clergy at Saint Catherine’s Church in Ferbois to dig under the stone floor near
the altar to find a sword. She had never visited the town, but a sword was produced,
somewhat rusty, its origins a mystery. She would never use it in battle, but carried it
nevertheless.
La Pucelle startled many witnesses by using the flat of the sword to beat a prostitute
following the army, one of a host of such professionals driven out of the camp. Even the
most puritanical chaplain would not have dared to take the same actions. Furthermore,
she forbade swearing. To the astonishment of their officers, soldiers accepted her
strictures with little complaint. If she was sent by the saints, it was natural that she would
make such demands, the soldiers reasoned, hoping against all cynicism that she was
genuine. If she could not save Orléans, the English would cross the Loire and, in all
probability, conquer France.
The key to the siege was the wood-and-stone bridge over the Loire between the town
and the towers, Les Tourelles, on the south shore. For four hours on Thursday, October
21, 1428, the English had attacked a rampart of earth and stakes guarding the approach to
Les Tourelles, losing 240 men. Townswomen hauled buckets of boiling water, fat, lime
and ashes to the defenders, who then poured them down on the English scaling ladders.
On October 23, the French abandoned the rampart, which had been undermined by
English tunneling. The next day, the English took Les Tourelles, undefended and ruined
by cannon shot. Thomas Montague, Earl of Salisbury, inspected the site and was
mortally injured by a French cannon on October 24. He was succeeded as commander by
the Earl of Suffolk, who in turn was replaced in December by the more aggressive John
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
Talbot arrived with 300 reinforcements and heavier cannons. He based his army west
of the city. The French also received reinforcements led by John Dunois, comte de
Longueville (the ‘Bastard of Orléans,’ son of the imprisoned duke) and the Gascon
mercenary Etienne de Vignoles, better known as La Hire.
On Christmas Day 1428, a truce was honored from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. The English
requested that the French musicians in Orléans play for them, and they did. Supplies in
the town were dwindling—on January 3, 1429, a covey of 154 pigs and 400 sheep
entered Orléans through the eastern gate, evidence of the laxity of English patrols. The
French sortied against the English camp at St. Laurent on an isle near the town on
January 15, but the alerted foe threw them back into the river’s shallow waters.
On February 12, a crucial fight occurred. The English, with 1,500 men, including
French allies from Picardy and Normandy, and a convoy of 300 carts loaded with barrels
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of salted herring for Lent, were attacked by a sortie in strength from Orléans. Having
been warned, the English circled their carts into a defensive laager. The French and their
Scottish mercenaries, surprised by that maneuver, could not agree upon their next move.
Their orders were to fight on horseback and not dismount, thus ensuring a quick
withdrawal to Orléans. Sir John Stewart, the Constable of Scotland, disobeying that
command, ordering 400 men to attack the wagon ring on foot. The French stayed on
their mounts at a distance, uncooperative, at which point the English, led by Sir John
Fastolf, charged out of their defensive circle and sent the Scots reeling in retreat until 60
to 80 mounted men from the French main body, led by the Count of Clermont, charged
the scattered English. In the process of aiding the Scots, Clermont was unhorsed, hit in
the foot by an arrow and narrowly escaped being killed or captured before two of his
archers placed him on another mount. Sir John Stewart was killed.
The Battle of the Herrings, as it came to be called, was the last sortie the French would
make until Joan’s arrival. Even as the siege tightened, however, a break for the French
emerged on the political front. The town council of Orléans had appealed to Philip the
Good, Duke of Burgundy, to aid his fellow Frenchmen diplomatically. In response,
Philip asked Bedford to remove the English forces before Orléans and leave it a
neutralized city under Burgundian control, adding that he would be ‘very angered to have
beaten the bushes that others take the bird.’ Bedford refused. The Burgundian troops in
his command thereupon left the siege.
The first formal news of the Maid’s arrival among the English was a letter from her to
their commander, asking them to leave Orléans and France. In it she was titled the
French chef de guerre. This was undoubtedly a clerk’s entry. Joan was illiterate and not
the French chief of staff, although she did have a ‘battle,’ as it was called in the era—a
battalion of several hundred men. The English ignored the letter, but they were alerted to
the approach of the new French force.
The only free access to Orléans was by its eastern Burgundy Gate. The English camp
of St. Loup was on the western side of the town. The English held the towers on the
south shore of the Loire, and the French the gates of Orléans at its other end. The
wooden bridge itself was a no man’s land in easy range of missiles from either side.
The French were wary of reinforcing the town. A major effort required a fleet of
riverboats and rafts poled or sailing against the strong current of the river in spring flood.
The winds were weak and against the river armada, but Joan, as always, remained
positive and eager to proceed. Abruptly, the winds became stronger and changed
direction, speeding the boats upstream past English archers and cannoneers, few of whom
fired a shot. The contrary wind shortened the range, weakened the impact and
handicapped the accuracy of arrows. The cannons of the era were inaccurate against a
moving target.
To distract the English, a sortie was made from Orléans against St. Loup, with heavy
casualties on both sides. The river fleet passed St. Loup and disembarked most of its
passengers and cargo on the south shore as the Maid landed on the north, entering
Orléans unopposed by its eastern gate.
It was April 29, 1429, and Orléans held a celebration and a parade. At 8 p.m., Dunois
and many nobles who had met the relief expedition outside the walls entered the
Burgundy Gate amid torches, banners and a cavalcade of armored men surrounding la
Pucelle in her white armor.
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Joan soon discovered that the Orléanists, while happy to see her, were reluctant to
launch a major attack against their besiegers. The day following her arrival, she and the
English commander shouted to one another from opposite ends of the bridge. Talbot
declared her a whore and the French captains pimps, warning that if he captured the
‘cowgirl,’ she would be burned at the stake.
On Sunday, May 1, a truce was observed. Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans, sortied and
brought back reinforcements from Blois. The English offered no opposition, knowing
that they would soon be reinforced by freebooters led by Sir John Fastolf. Although the
Frenchmen were alarmed at that information, the Maid was elated, saying jokingly that if
they failed to tell her when Fastolf was near, she would chop off the head of the Bastard
of Orléans.
Joan had been napping when she suddenly arose and announced that her ‘counsel’ told
her to attack immediately. But she didn’t know whether the assault was supposed to be
against the English defenses or against Fastolf’s approaching column. She galloped out
the eastern gate and joined a French assault that was already in progress westward against
St. Loup.
The French were taking many casualties, and Joan was saddened at the sight of the
wounded stumbling back to the town. She raced on as the French cheered and rallied,
storming St. Loup. The nearby English bastions, alarmed by the size and fury of the
French attack, made no move to intervene. All English defenders within St. Loup were
killed, whereas the French lost only two men.
The aftermath was revealing. The Maid burst into tears at the sight of the English
dead. When an English prisoner was struck with a sword by one of his guards, she held
the captive’s head as he died. She declared that all the French should thank God for
victory and confess their sins, or she would leave them. All prostitutes were to leave the
army. The next day, the Feast of the Ascension, she would make no war. Within five
days, she announced, the English would withdraw—then she sent her foes her third and
last decree.
The note was wrapped about an arrow shot across the bridge into Les Tourelles. It
included a request that her herald, seized by the English, should be exchanged for a
prisoner of the French. The English reply was shouted insults against the ‘Armagnac
whore.’ Joan wept, as she often did when involved in angry confrontations.
Joan asked that the gate toward Les Augustins—the English-held, fortified monastery
on the south shore—be opened for a sortie, but the captain in charge of it refused, fearing
an English attack through the open gate. La Pucelle demanded the doors be unlocked,
and many soldiers and civilians agreed with her. The captain finally relented. Since the
English had built a barrier spanning the bridge’s width, the Maid led a sortie across a
shallow inlet of the Loire to the island of Aux Toiles southeast of the town’s walls. From
there, using two boats as a floating bridge, the French landed on the south shore and
attacked and seized the fort of St. Jean le Blanc, whose English defenders fled to the
larger and stronger Les Augustins, near Les Tourelles. There, resistance was so
formidable that the weary French withdrew. St. Jean le Blanc was subsequently
abandoned by both sides.
Arriving by boat with La Hire and other mounted knights, Joan quickly saw that the
English in Les Augustins were about to sortie against the retiring French. Lowering her
lance, she led a charge that rallied the French, who now pressed hard upon the English as
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they attempted to re-enter Les Augustins by an open gate. Fighting their way into the
fortress, the French pushed on until their banners replaced England’s on its walls, and the
English fell back to Les Tourelles. All night, the civilians in Orléans brought food and
supplies across the river.
The French captains told the Maid that they should not attack immediately, but inform
the dauphin of their progress thus far and then await his decision. She scorned their
advice, knowing that her soldiers were eager and the dauphin habitually indecisive. She
ordered an early sortie, stating that her ‘counsel’ had warned her that she would be
wounded that day above her breast.
From morning to night on May 6, the French assaulted Les Tourelles, held by the
English commander Talbot. Soon after joining the attack, Joan was struck in the shoulder
by an arrow, just as she had predicted, and wept as she was carried from the field while
English archers jubilantly shouted, ‘The witch is dead!’ Angrily refusing magic amulets
offered by men-at-arms, she had her wound—which turned out to be no more than a flesh
wound, the arrow having barely penetrated her armor—treated with olive oil and lard.
She confessed to her priest in a highly emotional state.
Since it was late in the day and the troops were exhausted, Dunois was about to call
off the attack when Joan returned from Orléans on horseback. She had removed herself
for some 10 minutes to pray, then returned, carrying her banner. The English, who had
just sortied outside the walls of Les Tourelles, rushed back inside, shaken by the
unexpected French resurgence.
Although he expected a French retreat amid the confusion and lack of prompt
communications in the battle, a French knight, Jean d’Aulon, courageously resolved to
advance against the next English sortie on May 7. Joan’s standard-bearer, exhausted, had
handed her banner to a soldier known as le Basque. D’Aulon asked le Basque to join him.
Together, they went into the moat and struggled to climb out of it to the timber walkway
of the bridge. Joan demanded that le Basque give her back the banner—she gripped the
end of the cloth, but le Basque, at d’Aulon’s insistence, refused to part with it. Instead, he
raised it. The French men-at-arms, seeing the banner advancing to the edge of the bridge,
rushed to it and stormed the bridge, Joan climbing the first scaling ladder raised. Four
hundred to five hundred English attempted to flee Les Tourelles, but the bridge,
meanwhile, had been set afire and it collapsed. Most of the English were killed or
drowned. The French who had hoped to take their foes captive for ransom were shocked
and dismayed. The Maid wept and shrieked at the English deaths.
On the following day, Talbot lifted the siege and the French re-entered Orléans by the
bridge gate. That day, all the English south of the Loire were captured or killed. The
next day, a Sunday, as the town celebrated a Te Deum of thanksgiving, the English forces
north of the river demolished their camps and withdrew. Joan’s men were ready to attack
the retreating column, but she forbade it, saying that on a Sunday they should fight only
in self-defense. The column was harassed the next day, and cannons and other weapons
were seized.
The dauphin sent news of the victory to all French towns friendly to him, scarcely
mentioning the Maid. Bedford wrote the king, explaining that the English had lost ‘by
the hand of God as it seems,’ because of la Pucelle, ‘a fiend with enchantments and
sorcery.’ Clearly, the leaders on both sides used Joan for their own purposes.
The Maid’s victory at Orléans had a snowball effect as volunteers gathered to the
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fleur-de-lis banners. Marching onward, the French took Jargeau on June 20, 1429, killing
1,200 English after their offer to parley went unheard amid the melee. The town of
Meung surrendered. At Beaugency, the English retreated under an agreement of safe
conduct.
The Constable Arthur de Richemont, a Breton on the outs with King Charles, brought
his 1,000-man battle to join Joan’s army. Other French had refused him alliance and
even threatened him, considering him self-serving. ‘Joan, I have been told you want to
fight me,’ Richemont said to her. ‘I do not know if you are from God or not. If you are
from God I fear nothing from you, for God knows my goodwill. If you are the Devil, I
fear you even less.’ She replied, ‘Ah, handsome constable, you are not come for my sake
but because you are come you will be welcome.’
The English, under Talbot, were approaching Meung, joined by Fastolf’s 1,000
mercenaries. On June 18, the opposing armies formed up in a pageant of arms. The
French nobility asked Joan what to do. ‘Have all good spurs,’ she answered. Uncertain,
her listeners asked if she meant they should flee. ‘Rather the opposite,’ she answered,
predicting an English rout. Charging with a force of 6,000, including 1,000 mounted
knights, the French inflicted 4,000 casualties on their foes.
At Patay, the French pursued an English convoy. At a narrow pass through hedges
and woods, the English set up an ambush of 500 archers and awaited their own rear guard.
French scouts unwittingly flushed a stag from the forest, which raced through the English
lines, prompting shouts that the scouts overheard and alerting them to the English ambush.
As the English rear guard retreated on the run, the main English force, with Fastolf riding
ahead to summon the vanguard to their aid, wrongly presumed there had been a rout and
panicked as the French charged pell-mell. By the time Joan arrived, the English had lost
some 2,000 men, the French only three. Talbot was unhorsed and captured, but Fastolf
had escaped.
Joan returned to Orléans to urge that Dauphin Charles be crowned at Reims, the
traditional scene for such ceremonies. The town was in Burgundian hands. With a
cavalcade of nobles and infantry, the dauphin journeyed to Reims. En route, they
approached Troyes, held by a Burgundian garrison of 600. Letters sent to the town
promised that all would be forgiven if the dauphin was welcomed. The town sent a friar
to sprinkle the Maid with holy water. ‘Approach boldly, I shall not fly away,’ she told
him. With her army on the edge of starvation from campaigning in the ravaged
countryside, she commenced a siege, assuring her men that within three days they would
take the town ‘by love or by force or by courage. ’ Upon seeing the French ready for an
assault at dawn, the town yielded.
At Reims, Joan had no artillery or siege equipment, but advised, ‘advance boldly and
fear nothing.’ The city yielded without a fight, and on July 16, 1429, the dauphin was
officially crowned Charles VII, king of France. Joan knelt before the king and said that
she had accomplished what God had ordered of her. The only favor she asked was that
her village of Domrémy be exempt from taxes. Visited by her brothers, she told them she
was homesick. She wished to return home ‘and serve my father and mother by keeping
sheep with my sister and brothers who will rejoice so greatly to see me again.’
It was never to be.
The king allowed the Burgundians a two-week truce prior to further negotiations, the
Burgundians agreeing to yield in Paris. Their agreement was insincere, however, as they
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were stalling for time to reinforce Paris with a newly landed force from England. Joan
was shut out of the negotiations. The French monarch was thinking only in diplomatic
terms and ignoring the military situation.
Joan no longer heard her voices, but she decided to attack Paris nonetheless. With a
force of 12,000, she led an assault on the Porte Ste.-Honoré on September 8, but was hit
in the leg by a crossbow bolt. Her standard-bearer, hit in the foot, opened his helmet
visor to remove the arrow and was shot between the eyes. The wounded Maid was
carried away by her comrades in arms, still insisting that the attack continue.
The king undermined Joan’s efforts. He withdrew from Paris to Glen, and on
September 21 disbanded his army. Joan resumed campaigning in early 1430, though her
force was reduced to little more than her own battle. She was aware that she was losing
her grip on events. At Chinon, she remarked that her voices had warned her, ‘I shall last
a year, hardly longer.’ A siege of Charité-sur-Loire ended in impasse—Joan’s audacity
was no longer compensation enough for her inadequate forces.
Later, during her trial, Joan claimed that upon the moat in a successful assault at
Melun, her saints had warned her that she would be captured before St. John’s Day, the
summer solstice.
Philip the Good of Burgundy, who had taken on much of the burden of fighting for the
English, dispatched his vassal, John of Luxembourg, to seize the town of Compiègne. On
May 13, 1430, however, Joan moved first and entered Compiègne by surprise. In the
early morning of May 23, she sallied against the Burgundians outside the town. Unaware
that an English unit had moved between the town and her attacking force, she pressed on.
The French within the town closed its gates, keeping out both friend and foe. Joan,
fighting wildly, was pulled from the saddle by a Burgundian soldier. Her brother, Pierre,
was also captured, and some 400 of her men were killed. The Burgundians sold the Maid
to the English for 10,000 gold coins.
Tried as a heretic and witch in a procedure flagrantly violating the legal process of the
era, she was offered women’s clothes in prison and then raped. Thereafter, male attire
was the only clothing allowed her. Her male attire was then taken as ‘proof’ that she
refused a church command that she dress as a woman, and in spite of the weakness of all
other evidence against her, she was burned at the stake by the English at Rouen on May
30, 1431. Of the 42 lawyers at her trial, 39 had asked for leniency and an appeal to a
higher church court not under the thumb of the English. Of scores of witnesses who
claimed to know her personally, not one maligned her—and those witnesses were chosen
by the prosecution, the Maid being denied a defense council.
Was la Pucelle neurologically handicapped, part of a royal plot, a fantasist, crazy, a
saint or a con artist? Her trial revealed her to be uncommonly bright, forthright,
courageous, without bitterness, yet aware that she had been abandoned by the king whom
she had saved. Nevertheless, she had saved her nation, with an innate charisma matching
that of England’s King Henry V. And in 1920, Joan of Arc was recognized as saint by
the Roman Catholic Church.
Every year on May 8 at Orléans, a pageant re-enacts Joan’s entry into the city, today a
prosperous and attractive blend of old and new architecture. On the plaza her memory is
commemorated in the statue known to American troops stationed there after World War
II as ‘Joanie on the Pony.’
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