At last the men-at-arms who were to accompany Joan were ready. She rode
at their head, as Andre de Laval and Guy de Laval saw her, and described
her in a letter to their mother. She was armed in white armour, but
unhelmeted, a little axe in her hand, riding a great black charger, that
reared at the door of her lodging and would not let her mount.
[Illustration: 'Lead him to the Cross!' cried she]
'"Lead him to the Cross!" cried she, for a Cross stood on the roadside,
by the church. There he stood as if he had been stone, and she mounted.
Then she turned to the church, and said, in her girlish voice, "You
priests and churchmen, make prayers and processions to God." Then she
cried, "Forwards, Forwards!" and on she rode, a pretty page carrying her
banner, and with her little axe in her hand.' And so Joan went to
war.[11] She led, she says, ten or twelve thousand soldiers.[12] Among the
other generals were Xaintrailles and La Hire. Joan made her soldiers
confess themselves; as for La Hire, a brave rough soldier, she forbade
him to swear, as he used to do, but, for his weakness, she permitted him
to say, _By my baton!_ This army was to defend a great convoy of
provisions, of which the people of Orleans stood in sore need. Since
November they had been besieged, and now it was late April. The people
in Orleans were not yet starving, but food came in slowly, and in small
quantities. From the first the citizens had behaved well; a Scottish
priest describes their noble conduct. They had burned all the outlying
suburbs, beyond the wall, that they might not give shelter to the
English. They had plenty of cannon, which carried large rough stone
balls, and usually did little harm. But a gun was fired, it is said by a
small boy, which killed Salisbury, the English general, as he looked out
of an arrow-slit in a fort that the English had taken.
The French general-in-chief was the famous Dunois, then called the
Bastard of Orleans. On the English side was the brave Talbot, who fought
under arms for sixty years, and died fighting when he was over eighty.
There were also Suffolk, Pole, and Glasdale, whom the French called
'Classidas.' The English had not soldiers enough to surround and take so
large a town, of 30,000 people, in ordinary war. But as Dunois said,
'two hundred English could then beat a thousand French'--that is, as the
French were before the coming of the Maid.
The position of Orleans was this; it may be most easily understood from
the map.
Looking _down_ the river Loire, Orleans lies on your right hand. It had
strong walls in an irregular square; it had towers on the wall, and a
bridge of many arches crossing to the left side of the river. At the
further end of this bridge were a fort and rampart called Les Tourelles,
and this fort had already been taken by the English, so that no French
army could cross the bridge to help Orleans. Indeed, the bridge was
broken. The rampart and the fort of Les Tourelles were guarded by
another strong work, called Les Augustins. All round the outside of the
town, on the right bank, the English had built strong redoubts, which
they called _bastilles_. 'Paris' was the bastille which blocked the road
from Paris, 'London' and 'Rouen' were bastilles on the western side, but
on the east, above the town, and on the Orleans bank of the Loire, the
English had only one bastille, St. Loup. Now, as Joan's army mustered at
Blois, south of Orleans, further down the river, she might march on the
_left_ side of the river, cross it by boats above Orleans, and enter the
town where the English were weakest and had only one fort, St. Loup. Or
she might march up the _right_ bank, and attack the English where they
were strongest, and had many bastilles. The Voices bade the Maid act on
the boldest plan, and enter Orleans where the English were strongest, on
the right bank of the river. The English would not move, said the
Voices. She was certain that they would not even sally out against her.
But Dunois in Orleans, and the generals with the Maid, thought this plan
very perilous, as, indeed, it was. They therefore deceived her, caused
her to think that Orleans was on the _left_ bank of the Loire, and led
her thither. When she arrived, she saw that they had not played her
fair, that the river lay between her and the town, and the strongest
force of the enemy.
The most astonishing thing about Joan is that, though she had never yet
seen a sword-stroke dealt in anger, she understood the great operations
of war better than seasoned generals. It was not only that she, like old
Bluecher, always cried _Forwards!_ Audacity, to fight on every chance,
carries men far in battle. Prince Charlie, who was no great general, saw
that, and while his flag went forward he never lost a fight. But Joan
'was most expert in war,' said the Duc d'Alencon, 'both with the lance
and in massing an army, and arraying battle, and in the management of
artillery. For all men marvelled how far-sighted and prudent she was in
war, as if she had been a captain of thirty years' standing, and, above
all, in the service of the artillery, for in that she was right well
skilled.'[13]
This girl of seventeen saw that, if a large convoy of provisions was to
be thrown into a besieged town, the worst way was to try to ferry the
supplies across a river under the enemy's fire. But Dunois and the other
generals had brought her to this pass, and the Maid was sore
ill-pleased. Now we shall see what happened, as it is reported in the
very words of Dunois, the French general in Orleans. Joan had been
brought, as we said, to the wrong bank of the Loire; it ran between her
and the town where she would be. The wind was blowing in her teeth;
boats could not cross with the troops and provisions. There she sat her
horse and chafed till Dunois came out and crossed the Loire to meet her.
This is what he says about Joan and her conduct.