CHAPTER V THE VOICES
Et eussiez-vous, Dangier, cent yeulx
Assis et derrerière et devant,
Ja n'yrez si près regardant
Que vostre propos en soit mieulx.
—Charles d'Orléans.
In 1425, when Joan was in her fourteenth year, Domrémy had its first taste of actual war. Henry of Orly, a robber captain of the neighborhood, pounced upon the village with his band, so suddenly and swiftly that the people could not reach their island refuge. The robbers, more greedy than bloodthirsty, did not wait to slay, merely stripped the houses of everything worth carrying off, and "lifted" the cattle, as the Scots say, driving them some fifty miles to Orly's castle of Doulevant. The distressed villagers appealed to the lady of Bourlemont, who in turn called upon her kinsman Anthony of Vaudemont, a powerful noble of Lorraine. Cousin Anthony promptly sent men to recover the stolen cattle. Orly, resisting, was beaten off, and the beasts were brought back in safety to Domrémy, where the happy villagers received them with shouts of joy.
The English were not directly responsible for this raid. Orly was a free-lance, robbing and harrying on his own account; Vaudemont was Anglo-Burgundian at heart. None the less, people, here as everywhere, were beginning to feel that war and trouble had come with the English, and that there could be no lasting peace or quiet while they trod the soil of France.