St. Pierre le Moustier stood high on its steep bluff over the river Allier: a strong little town, well placed, well fortified, well garrisoned. Albret and Joan invested it in regular form, and after a week of bombardment, having made a practicable breach, orders were given for an assault. The French advanced gallantly, but could make no head against the fire of the defenders. They wavered, began to fall back. But they had to reckon with the Maid, unwounded this time, and feeling her power come upon her. Standing on the edge of the fosse, as she had stood at Paris, she called upon her men to come forward to the assault. They hesitated; for a few moments she stood there almost alone, with only two or three lances about her, among them probably her two brothers, who never deserted her.[64]
D'Aulon, her faithful squire, had been wounded, and stood at a little distance, leaning on his crutches and looking on. Seeing, as he thought, all lost for the time being, he managed to get on his horse, and riding up to the Maid, asked why she stood there in peril of her life, instead of retreating with the others.
Raising the visor of her helmet, Joan looked him full in the face. "I am not alone!" she said quietly. "With me are fifty thousand of my own, and I will not leave this spot till the town is taken."
A strange answer; d'Aulon was a literal-minded youth. He looked about him, bewildered. "Whatever she might say," he says in telling the story, "she had only four or five men with her, I know it for certain, and so do several others who looked on; so I urged her to go back with the rest. Then she bade me tell them to bring fagots and fascines to bridge the moat, and she herself in a clear voice gave the same order."
Was it the sight of her? When they failed at Paris, was it because the white-clad figure lay unseen in the fosse, though the brave piteous voice still rang like a trumpet through that twilight of despair? D'Aulon thought it a miracle, as would most people of his time. All in a moment, it seemed, the thing was done; the moat bridged, the troops over it, the town stormed and taken "with no great resistance."
Yet once more, Joan, before your year is over, before your bright day darkens into night! St. John's Day is near.
At La Charité there were no shining deeds; no victory of any sort. For a month the French army lay before the place, and once an assault was attempted; but the weather was bad, the men weary, hungry, dispirited; briefly, it was November instead of October. Charles, though he had given Joan money for the poor of Bourges, had none for feeding and clothing his army. The town must have yielded soon, men thought, since no one came to succor it; but the French could neither besiege nor assault on empty stomachs, and the siege was abandoned. Charles, as a sugarplum to console the heartsick Maid, conferred a patent of nobility on her and all her family; "that the memory of the divine glory and of so many favors may endure and increase forever."
It was a pretty stone, to take the place of bread. A shining quartz pebble, shall we say? Or that curious thing called iron pyrite, which has been taken for gold before now, in a good light and by the right kind of person. Joan paid little heed to it; would never change her sacred devices, the Annunciation, the Crucifixion, the Creator on his throne, for any other; but her brothers set up a shield, with two lilies on it, and between these a sword supporting a crown. Yes, and they called themselves "Du Lys" instead of "D'Arc." This was all they got; I have not heard that the king so much as offered to pay for painting the new shield. The city of Orleans took a different view of matters, and endowed the mother of its own Maid with a pension which made her comfortable for life.
We know little of this winter of sorrow, the last in which Joan of Arc was to breathe free air. She spent part of it in Orleans, where the faithful people made much of her as usual; part at Mehun on the Yevre, where Charles kept his winter court. The truce with Burgundy had been extended to Easter 1430. John of Bedford had been kindly invited to share it, but declined, and kept up a lively guerilla warfare in Normandy. There was more or less fighting around Paris, too; but with that we have no special concern.
At Mehun there was nothing for Joan to do. She was no courtier; she was not wanted at the Councils over which the fatuous King and his fat favorite presided. Since Paris and La Charité, the crowd did not flock so eagerly to see her. Indeed, people began to talk about other wonderful women who appeared about this time. Catherine of La Rochelle, for example, had been visited by a lady in white and gold, who bade her ask the king for heralds and trumpeters and go about the country raising money. She had, it appeared, the secret of finding hidden treasure. How, people asked, if here were a new revelation? The Maid's was an old story by this time. Moreover, there were rumors of other Pucelles here and there; and at Monlieu, as was well known, lived a real saint, St. Colette, who could make the sun rise three hours late, and play—in a saintly way—the mischief with the laws of Nature generally.