In one week the martial Maid, inspired by the love for her people and country, vanquished the English, triumphant since the battle of Poitiers, more than seventy years before, when John II and the coward nobility of France took to their heels. In one week the brave daughter of the people accomplished what for over seventy years had proved beyond the strength of the most illustrious captains. The week has been called The Week of Joan Darc.
Night had set in, but it was a balmy night of spring, and anyone on the evening of April 29, 1429, who stood on the street leading to the Banier Gate, one of the gates of the town of Orleans, would have thought it was bright day. All the windows, at which the inhabitants crowded, were illuminated with lamps. To the light of these was joined that of torches with which a large number of armed bourgeois and artisans had furnished themselves and were ranged in a double row along the full length of the thoroughfare for the purpose of keeping back the crowd. The courage of these town soldiers had been severely tested by the perils of the siege which they had long sustained single handed, having at first refused to admit into the city the companies of soldiers that consisted of insolent, thievish and ferocious mercenaries. However, after many a brave attempt, and seeing their numbers reduced from day to day under the shot and fire of the besiegers, the townsmen of Orleans had found themselves compelled to accept and support the mercenary bands of Lahire, of Dunois, of Xaintrailles and of other professional captains, who hired themselves and their men for cash to whomsoever paid for their services. They were dangerous auxiliaries, ever drawing in their train a mob of dissolute women who were themselves no less thievish than the English.
Accordingly, often had the councilmen of Orleans—resolute citizens, who bravely led their militia to the ramparts when these were assailed, or outside of the city when they made a sally—had lively disputes with the captains on the score of the misconduct of their men, or of their timidity in battle. These men, to whom arms was a trade, not having as the inhabitants themselves, families, property, their own hearths, to defend, were not particularly anxious about the speedy raising of the siege, well quartered and paid as they were by the town. It was, accordingly, with inexpressible impatience that the people of Orleans awaited the arrival of Joan Darc. They relied upon her help to drive the English from their redoubts, and to free themselves from the heavy burden of the French captains.
A compact crowd of men, women and children, held back by a military cordon, filled the two sides of the thoroughfare, at the end of which the residence of Master James Boucher, the treasurer, was situated, and was even more brilliantly illuminated than any other. Presently the hum of the multitude was silenced by the loud and rapid peals from the belfry of the town hall, together with the roar of artillery, announcing the arrival of the Maid. The faces of the citizens, until recently sad and somber, now breathed joy and hope. All shared and expressed the opinion that the virgin girl of Lorraine, prophesied by Merlin, was coming to deliver Orleans. She was announced to be of divinely dazzling beauty, brave and instinct with a military genius that struck even Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, all of them renowned captains at the time defending the city for pay, when on the previous day they met her at Blois. Two of their equerries, who had ridden ahead into Orleans during the day, reported the marvel, which spread from mouth to mouth, and they announced the entry of Joan Darc for that evening.
Everywhere on her passage from Chinon to Blois, the equerries added, her march had been a continuous ovation, in which she was greeted by the joyful cries of the peasants, who for so long a time had been exposed to the ravages of the enemy, and was acclaimed by them as their redeeming angel sent by God. These, and similar accounts that were rife, revived the confidence of the townsmen. The crowd was especially dense in the neighborhood of the residence of Master James Boucher, where the heroine was to lodge.
Nine o'clock struck from the tower of the Church of St. Croix. Almost at the same instant the sound of trumpets was heard at a distance. The music approached slowly, and presently the brilliant light of the torches revealed a cavalcade riding in. The little page Imerguet and the equerry Daulon marched ahead, the one carrying the pennon, the other the white standard of the warrior maid, on which two azure-winged angels were painted holding in their hand a stalk of lilies in blossom. Behind them followed Joan Darc, mounted on her white charger, caparisoned in blue, while she herself was cased in a light plate armor of iron that resembled pale silver—a complete suit, leg-pieces, thigh-pieces, and coat of mail, arm-pieces and a rounded breast-plate that protected her virginal bosom. The visor of her casque, wholly raised, exposed her sweet and handsome face, set off by her black hair cut round at the neck. Profoundly moved by the acclamations that the good people of Orleans greeted her with, and which she received as a homage to her saints, a tear was seen to roll down from her large black eyes, adding to their brilliancy. Already familiarized with the handling of a horse, she elegantly guided her mount with one hand, while with the other she held a little white baton, the only weapon that, in her horror of blood, she wished to use in leading the soldiers to battle. Behind her rode Dunois, accoutered in a brilliant suit of armor, ornamented in gold; behind these came, mixed among the councilmen of Orleans, Marshal Retz, Lahire, Xaintrailles and other captains. Among the latter was the Sire of Gaucourt, leading a reinforcement of royal troops to Orleans and invested with the command of the town. With a sinister look, and hatred in his heart, the sire meditated dark schemes. Equerries and bourgeois deputations from the town brought up the rear of the train, which soon was pressed upon from all sides by so compact a mass that for a moment Joan Darc's steed could not move a step. Enraptured at her beauty and at her carriage at once so modest and yet so martial, men, women and children contemplated her with delirious joy and covered her with blessings. Some were even carried to the point of wishing to kiss her spurred boots half covered with the scales of her leg-pieces. As much touched as confused, she said naïvely to Dunois, turning towards him:
"Indeed, I will not have the courage to protect myself against these demonstrations, if God does not himself protect me."[57]
At that moment one of the militiamen who held a torch approached the Maid so closely in order to obtain a better view of her that he involuntarily set fire to the fringe of the standard borne by Daulon. Fearing the flag was in danger, Joan uttered a cry of fright, clapped the spurs to her horse before which the crowd rolled back, and approaching the equerry at a bound seized the burning banner, smothered the flames between her gauntlets and then gracefully waved it over her casque,[58] as if to reassure the people of Orleans, who might construe the accident into an evil omen. Such was the presence of mind and the horsemanship displayed by Joan on the occasion that the enraptured crowd broke out into redoubled acclamations. Even the mercenaries, who, not being on guard that night upon the ramparts, had been able to join the crowd, saw in the Maid an angel of war and felt stronger; like the archer of Vaucouleurs, it seemed to them that, led to battle by such a charming captain, they were bound to vanquish the enemy and avenge their previous defeats. Dunois, Lahire, Xaintrailles, Marshal Retz, all of them experienced captains, noticed the exaltation of their mercenaries, who but the day before seemed wholly discouraged; while the Sire of Gaucourt, perceiving the to him unexpected influence that the Maid exercised, not upon the Orleans militiamen merely, but upon the rough soldiers themselves, grew ever somberer and more secretly enraged.
Joan was slowly advancing through a surging mass of admiring humanity towards the house of James Boucher, when the cavalcade was arrested for a moment by a detachment of armed men that issued from one of the side streets. They were leading two English prisoners, and were headed by a large-sized man of jovial and resolute mien. The leader of the squad was a Lorrainian by birth, who had long lived in Orleans and was called Master John. He had well earned the reputation of being the best culverin-cannonier of the town. His two enormous bomb-throwers, which he had christened "Riflard" and "Montargis," and which, planted on the near side of the bridge on the redoubt of Belle-Croix, ejected unerring shot, caused great damage to the English. He was feared and abhorred by them. Our merry cannonier was not ignorant of their hatred, his cannons seemed to be the objective point for the best aimed bolts of the enemy's archers. He, accordingly, at times amused himself by feigning to be shot dead, suddenly dropping down beside one of his culverins. On such occasions his fellow townsmen engaged at the cannons would raise him and carry him away with demonstrations of great sorrow, that were echoed by the English with counter-demonstrations of joy. But regularly on the morrow they saw again Master John, in happier trim than ever,[59] and ever more accurate and telling with the shot from Riflard and Montargis. A few days later he would again repeat the comedy of death and the miracle of resurrection. It was this jolly customer who headed the squad that was leading the two prisoners to jail. At the sight of the warrior maid, he drew near her, contemplated her for a moment in rapt admiration, and reaching to her his heavy gloved hand said with considerable pride:
"Brave Maid, here is a countryman of yours, born like yourself in Lorraine; and he is at your service, together with Riflard and Montargis, his two heavy cannons."