The Executioner's Knife; Or, Joan of Arc

by Eugène Sue

"Forward!" cried Joan. "We needed beams to beat in the doors. The English now furnish us with them. Take up the heaviest of them. Ram the door. It will give. We shall have those Englishmen even if they are hidden in the clouds."[78]

Again reanimated by her words, the soldiers obeyed the orders of the Maid. Despite his wound, Master John directed the operation. An enormous beam was taken from the debris, raised by twenty men, and plied like a ram against the door of the church. Suddenly, the French soldiers, who, standing on the brow of the parapet, overlooked the plain, cried out:

"We are lost! The enemy is coming in large numbers out of the bastille of St. Pouaire!"

"They are going to take us in the rear!"

"We shall be between these fresh troops and the English entrenched in the church!"

This move, skilfully foreseen and prepared for by Joan, who had issued the necessary orders to meet it, was in fact made by the enemy.

"Fear not!" said the martial maid to those near her, who were petrified by the news, "a reserve troop will sally from the town and cut off the English. Look not behind, but before you! Fall to bravely! Take the church!"

Hardly had Joan uttered these words when the precipitate ringing of the town hall bell was heard, and it was immediately followed by a sally headed by a cavalry corps. The infantry marched out of the town at the double quick and in good order, and planted itself in battle array across the road that led from the bastille of St. Pouaire to that of St. Loup. Intimidated by the resolute attitude of the reserve corps, which was commanded by Marshal St. Sever, the English halted, and, giving up their plan of marching to the assistance of their fellows at St. Loup, returned to their own entrenchments. Seeing Joan's words thus verified, her soldiers placed implicit faith in her divine prescience. Feeling perfectly safe in their rear and fired by their own success, they turned upon the church with redoubled determination to carry it. Two enormous beams were now plied by twenty men apiece shattering the iron-studded door, despite all the arrows of the enemy. The dying and the wounded were quickly replaced by fresh forces. Joan, intrepid, ever near the combatants and her banner on high, encouraged them with voice and gesture while escaping a thousand deaths, thanks to the excellent temper of her armor. The door finally broke down under the unceasing blows of the beams, and fell inside the church, but at the same moment, a cannon, placed within and opposite the door, ready for action, vomited with a terrible detonation a discharge of stones and scraps of iron upon the assailants at the gap. Many fell mortally wounded, the rest rushed into the vast and dark basilica where a new hand-to-hand encounter, stubborn and murderous, took place. The struggle continued from step to step up the staircase of the tower to the platform, now stripped of its roof, and from the summit of which the English were finally hurled into space. Just as the sun was tinting with its westering rays the placid waters of the Loire, the standard of Joan was seen floating from the summit of the church, and the cry of the vanquishers echoed and re-echoed a thousand times:

"Good luck! Good luck to the Maid!"

The victory won and the intoxication of battle dissipated, the heroine became again a girl, full of tenderness for the vanquished. Descending from the belfry of the church whither her bravery had carried her, the Maid wept[79] at the sight of the steps red with blood and almost concealed under the corpses. She implored her men to desist from carnage and to spare the prisoners. Among these were three captains. Hoping thereby to escape death they had put on some friars' robes that had been left in a corner of the sacristy and had there lain unnoticed since the English had taken possession of the Church of St. Loup. The three false prelates were found hidden in a dark chapel. The vanquishers wished to massacre them. Joan saved them[80] and, together with others, they were taken prisoners. The frame barracks and lodgings were put to the flame, and the vast conflagration, struggling against the first shadows of the thickening night, threw consternation into the other redoubts of the English, while it lighted the departure of the French.