Ses deux maréchales de camp,
Suiverent sa royale altesse
Dont on faisait un grand cancan.
Fiésque, cette bonne comtesse!
Allait baisant les bateliers;
Et Frontenac (quelle detresse!)
Y perdit un de ses souliers.
On the way to the Hôtel de Ville the procession met the city authorities, who stood speechless before them. Mademoiselle feigned to believe that they had started to open the gates. She greeted them blandly, listened to their addresses, returned their greetings, and closed a very successful day by sending a triumphant message to her father. One by one her staff had entered by the broken gate, and the generals saluted her with heads low; they were abashed; they had taken no part in the capture of Orleans.
The Orleanists were firm in their refusal to let the army enter the city, and the young general, accepting the situation, ordered her troops to encamp where they were, outside of the chief gates of the city. The following day at seven o'clock in the morning, Mademoiselle, enthroned upon the summit of one of the city's towers, looked down scornfully upon "a quantity of people of the Court" who had hurried after her hoping to share her victory. The people of Orleans were quick to catch the spirit of their Princess; they climbed upon the city walls and jeered at the wornout laggards, and Mademoiselle's cup of joy was full. She looked with delight upon the discomfiture of the belated courtiers and upon the envious tears of the travel-stained ladies.
That day she made her first appearance as an orator. Her memoirs tell us that at first she was "as timid as a girl"; then, regaining her self-possession, she expounded the theories of the Fronde and told the people why the nobles had arisen to deliver the country from the foreigner. When she had said all that she had to say she returned to her quarters. In her absence the Duc de Beaufort had sallied out, attacked a city, and been repulsed. Mademoiselle was indignant; she had not given de Beaufort orders to leave the camp. She called a court-martial to try him for insubordination and breach of discipline. Court was convened very early in the morning, in a wine-shop outside of the city. Despite the long skirts of the field marshals, it was a stormy meeting. Messieurs de Beaufort and de Nemours came to words, and from words to blows. They tore off each other's wigs; they drew their swords. Mademoiselle's hands were full. She passed that day and the night which followed it in strenuous efforts to calm the tumult. All the people within hearing of the mêlée had hastened to the field of action, and being on the spot and in fighting trim, every man had seized his occasion and settled his difficulty with his neighbour, and all, civil and military, had fought equally well.