Whether or not Joan felt that some Divine assistance would enable her to surmount the barriers that lay between her and the town she was so determined to win back for her King, we cannot say. She fought below the walls with a courage which, if the others had equalled, might have made Paris their own. The attacking force was divided into two parts—one, commanded by Joan, Rais, and De Gaucourt, was to attack the city at the Gate of Saint Honoré; the other, led by Alençon and Clermont, was to cover the assailants, and prevent any sorties being made by the garrison.
Joan's impetuous onslaught successfully carried the first barriers and the boulevard in front of the gate; but here she met with a check—the heavy gates were barred, nor could she prevail on the enemy to make a sortie.
Joan of Arc, carrying her flag, dashed, under a heavy fire, into the ditch, followed by a few of the most courageous of the soldiers. The ditch was a deep but a dry one; and rising on the further side, close beneath the town walls, was a second and a wider moat, full of water. Here, unable to advance, but unwilling to retire, Joan of Arc and her followers were exposed to a murderous hail of shot, arrows, and other missiles. Sending for fagots and fascines to be cast into the moat, in order to enable a kind of bridge to be thrown across, while probing with the staff of her banner the depth of the water, Joan was struck by a cross-bow bolt, which made a deep wound in her thigh. Refusing to leave the spot, she urged on the soldiers to fill the ditch. The day was waxing late, and the men, who had been fighting since noon, were nearly exhausted. The news of Joan having been wounded caused a kind of panic among the French. There came a lull in the fighting, and the recall was sounded. Joan had almost to be forced back from before the walls by the Duke of Alençon and other of the officers. Placed upon her horse, she was led back to the camp, Joan protesting the whole time that if the attack had only been continued it would have been crowned with success. The spot where the heroine is supposed to have been wounded is near where now stands Fremiet's spirited statue of the Maid of Orleans, between the Rue Saint Honoré—named in later days after the gate she had so gallantly attacked—and the Gardens of the Tuileries.
Within the town a great fear had fallen on the citizens, divided as they were between the hope of their countrymen forcing their way into the city and fear as to how they would be treated by Charles should he be victorious. Perhaps, had Joan of Arc's urgent entreaties of continuing the attack been more vigorously responded to by the other French commanders, she might have been in the end successful. At any rate Joan herself was of that opinion.
The following day she was, in spite of the previous evening's failure and her wound, as urgent as ever for further fighting; and again and again implored Alençon to renew the attack. It seems the Duke was on the point of complying, when there appeared on the scene René d'Anjou and Clermont, sent by the King with the order for the Maid's immediate return to Saint Denis. There was nothing to do but to obey, but it must have been a bitter disappointment to the brave maiden when she turned her back on Paris. Alençon did his best to encourage her in the hope that it might yet fall. He gave orders for a bridge to be thrown across the Seine at Saint Denis, in order to make a fresh attack on the city from that quarter. However, on the next night this bridge was ordered by Charles to be removed, and with its destruction fell any hopes Joan might still have entertained of being able to take Paris.
All the blame of the want of success of the army before Paris was now laid at the door of Joan of Arc; and the creatures of the Court, who had long waited for an opportunity of this kind to show their bitter jealousy of the heroine, now made no secret of their enmity. Foremost of these was the Archbishop of Rheims, who now, in spite of Joan of Arc's entreaties, was allowed by the King to make a truce with the enemy. Another powerful foe was La Tremoïlle, who (as has been pointed out by Captain Marin in his work on Joan of Arc) thought it to be against his personal influence that the French should take Paris. La Tremoïlle had shown, from Joan's first appearance at Court, his entire want of confidence in her mission. He had unwillingly, after the examination of the Maid by the doctors and lawyers at Poitiers, conformed to the King's wish that a command should be given her in the army. He had done all in his power to induce the King not to undertake the expedition to Rheims. He had told the King, when nothing else could be urged against the journey, that there was no money in the royal coffers, and that consequently the soldiers would not receive their pay. As it turned out, volunteers offered their services gratuitously to escort Charles to his crowning. At Auxerre, La Tremoïlle concluded a treaty with the citizens, which prevented Joan from taking that town. At Troyes he tried to create a like impediment; but here he was foiled, for Troyes capitulated. After the coronation, he persuaded Charles not to go to Paris, but to go instead to linger in his castle on the Loire; and thereby prevented what might then have proved a successful attack on the capital. And he again succeeded in thwarting the Maid of Orleans when he resisted her wish to make a second attack upon Paris. Later on it was La Tremoïlle who tried to make Joan of Arc fail at the siege of Saint Pierre-le-Moutier. When she was unsuccessful before La Charité-sur-Loire, and when the blame of that failure was laid at Joan's door, La Tremoïlle for very shame was obliged publicly to acknowledge the heroic zeal with which she had carried out the operations of that siege. The higher Joan's popularity rose among the people and in the army, the more her two bitter enemies, La Tremoïlle and the Archbishop of Rheims, shared between them their jealous dislike.
XV CENTURY HOUSE—COMPIÈGNE.[ToList]
Thus, even before her capture and trial, Joan of Arc met with some of her worst foes among those whose duty it was to have been her staunchest friends and helpers; and, deplorable to say, among her own countrymen.