|THE French should have followed the Maid straight to Paris, as she bade
them do. But they went here and went there, and one day their army and
that of the Duke of Bedford met, but did not fight; and another day
there were skirmishes between the English and the Scots, “who fought
very bravely,” says the Burgundian knight, Enguerrand de Manstrelet, who
wrote a history of those times. The strong town of Compiègne, which
had often been taken and retaken, yielded to Joan’s army, and the King
stayed there, doing nothing, which was what he liked, and the Duke of
Burgundy gave him excuses for loitering by sending ambassadors, and
pretending that he would give up Paris, for at this time there was no
English garrison there. The poor people of the town were on the side of
Joan and the King, and now, when the English were out of the great city,
was the time to take it. But the King kept hoping to make peace with the
Duke of Burgundy, so Joan, with her friend the Duke of Alençon, went to
Saint Denis, quite close to Paris, where the Kings of France used to
be buried: Saint Denis was the Saint of France, as Saint George was the
Saint of England, and Saint Andrew of Scotland. There fought the Duke
and the Maid, but the King came on very slowly, while Joan was in the
front of battle every day, at one gate of Paris or another. At last, by
often going to him, and urging him to come, Alençon brought the King to
Saint Denis, but not before a strong new English army had arrived in the
town, of which the walls and towers were very high and thick, and the
fosses broad and deep, and full of water.
Then Joan led on her men and the Duke’s, with her banner in her hand,
and cried them on to break down a gate called the Porte St. Honoré.
Percival de Cagny, who rode under the standard of Alençon, was in
the battle, and he says, “The fight was long: and fierce, and it was
wonderful to hear the noise of guns and culverins from the walls, and to
see the arrows fly like clouds. Few of those who went down into the
dry ditch with the Maid were hurt, though many others were wounded
with arrows and stone cannon balls, but, by God’s grace and the Maid’s
favour, there were none but could return without help. We fought from
noon till darkness began. After the sun set, the Maid was wounded by a
bolt from a cross-how in the thigh, but she only shouted louder to ‘come
on and the place was ours.’ But when it was dark and all were weary,
men came from the King and brought her up out of the ditch against her
will.”
[Illustration: 0093]
Next day the Maid rose early, and went to the Duke of Alençon, who
never failed her. The trumpets blew, and a new ally came, the Baron de
Montmorency, with sixty gentlemen and their men-at-arms, and they were
riding to attack Paris again when the King sent messengers to forbid
them to do as their hearts desired. So they had to go to see him at
Saint Denis. But the Duke of Alencon was having a bridge of wood thrown
across the river Seine, at a new place, and they meant to cross by that
bridge next day, and attack Paris again.
Shameful to say, the King had that bridge taken to pieces during the
night, and when Joan and the Duke led their men there next day, they
found only the river, which they could not ford. So the King of France
saved Paris from d’Alençon and the Maid.
Richard I. of England would have battered down the Paris gate with his
own battle-axe; Henry V. or James IV. of Scotland, or Prince Charlie,
would have been, foremost in the fight; but this King of France, Charies
VII., unworthy of his country and his ancestors, sneaked off to his
pretty little town of Gien, on the Loire.
“And thus was the will of the Maid broken, and the army of the King,”
says Percival de Cagny.
The Duke of Alencon kept his men together, and told the King that, if
he would let the Maid ride with him, they would march into Normandy,
and attack the English where they were strongest. But the King would not
hear of it, and the Maid, with almost a broken heart, hung up her armour
at the altar of Saint Denis, in his Cathedral. Half of her year was
spent, and the King made her stay with him in the towns on the Loire,
when he might have been in Paris, his capital, if he had only trusted
Joan.
In the meantime the English retook some of the French towns that Joan
had given to the King, and seized her sacred armour in the Church of
Saint Denis, and punished and plundered the people, who were worse off
than before, while the Maid was only allowed now and then to attack the
English, and defeat them in the old way.