SHE WAS ready, but must sit down and wait until there was an army to
work with.
Next morning, Saturday, April 30, 1429, she set about inquiring after
the messenger who carried her proclamation to the English from Blois—the
one which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is
a remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact
directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive
confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had
laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her—which you please. All
through it you seem to see the pomps of war and hear the rumbling of
the drums. In it Joan’s warrior soul is revealed, and for the moment the
soft little shepherdess has disappeared from your view. This untaught
country-damsel, unused to dictating anything at all to anybody,
much less documents of state to kings and generals, poured out this
procession of vigorous sentences as fluently as if this sort of work had
been her trade from childhood:
JESUS MARIA King of England and you Duke of Bedford who call yourself
Regent of France; William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and you Thomas
Lord Scales, who style yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford—do
right to the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid who is sent by God the
keys of all the good towns you have taken and violated in France. She
is sent hither by God, to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to
make peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying
for what you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and
otherwise, who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own
land in God’s name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to
see you to your very great hurt. King of England, if you do not so, I
am chief of war, and whenever I shall find your people in France, I will
drive them out, willing or not willing; and if they do not obey I will
slay them all, but if they obey, I will have them to mercy. I am come
hither by God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to put you out of
France, in spite of those who would work treason and mischief against
the kingdom. Think not you shall ever hold the kingdom from the King of
Heaven, the Son of the Blessed Mary; King Charles shall hold it, for God
wills it so, and has revealed it to him by the Maid. If you believe not
the news sent by God through the Maid, wherever we shall meet you we
will strike boldly and make such a noise as has not been in France these
thousand years. Be sure that God can send more strength to the Maid than
you can bring to any assault against her and her good men-at-arms; and
then we shall see who has the better right, the King of Heaven, or
you. Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays you not to bring about your own
destruction. If you do her right, you may yet go in her company where
the French shall do the finest deed that has been done in Christendom,
and if you do not, you shall be reminded shortly of your great wrongs.
In that closing sentence she invites them to go on crusade with her
to rescue the Holy Sepulcher. No answer had been returned to this
proclamation, and the messenger himself had not come back.
So now she sent her two heralds with a new letter warning the English
to raise the siege and requiring them to restore that missing messenger.
The heralds came back without him. All they brought was notice from the
English to Joan that they would presently catch her and burn her if she
did not clear out now while she had a chance, and “go back to her proper
trade of minding cows.”
She held her peace, only saying it was a pity that the English would
persist in inviting present disaster and eventual destruction when she
was “doing all she could to get them out of the country with their lives
still in their bodies.”
Presently she thought of an arrangement that might be acceptable, and
said to the heralds, “Go back and say to Lord Talbot this, from me:
‘Come out of your bastilles with your host, and I will come with mine;
if I beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me, burn me,
according to your desire.’”
I did not hear this, but Dunois did, and spoke of it. The challenge was
refused.
Sunday morning her Voices or some instinct gave her a warning, and
she sent Dunois to Blois to take command of the army and hurry it to
Orleans. It was a wise move, for he found Regnault de Chartres and some
more of the King’s pet rascals there trying their best to disperse the
army, and crippling all the efforts of Joan’s generals to head it for
Orleans. They were a fine lot, those miscreants. They turned their
attention to Dunois now, but he had balked Joan once, with unpleasant
results to himself, and was not minded to meddle in that way again. He
soon had the army moving.