In the afternoon of the day of his arrival Jeanne and the captains started toward the city walls to make the usual demonstration. The King rode with them.
Now at Blois, at Orléans, on the march to Reims the army of men was orderly, clean confessed and of holy life; but it was no longer what it had been. It is idleness that demoralizes and disorganizes men on the march or in camp. Action keeps them in trim, and in a righteous way of living. The personnel of the troops was no longer what it had been before Orléans. After the coronation men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, rude, foul, and disorderly. They 300 revered the Maid for her saintly manner of life, but continued to practice their own vices, greatly to her distress.
So now as the King and the Maid rode from the town toward the walls of the city one of the vile women who followed the camp thrust herself forward boldly from the crowd of people who had gathered to watch the passing of the monarch and the girl, and leered insolently at them. At this, all of Jeanne’s youthful purity was roused to a blaze of indignation, and she brought up her sword quickly, and smote the creature a smart blow with the flat side of the weapon.
“Get you gone,” she cried sharply.
Instantly at the touch of the unclean thing the blade parted in two. One piece fell to the ground, and Jeanne, stricken by the happening, sat gazing silently at what remained in her hand.
“’Tis the holy sword,” exclaimed Charles, aghast. “Are there no cudgels to be had that you should use the sacred weapon? I like not the omen.”
Jeanne made no reply. She could not. All about her ran whispers and outcries as news of the incident flew from lip to lip. Soon the story was spread through the army. The Maid had broken the miraculous sword. It was a bad portent, and men shook their heads, saying that it boded ill for future enterprise. The King sent the sword to his own armourers to be mended, “but they could not do it, nor put the pieces together again; which is great proof that the sword came to her divinely.”[22]
At a Council held later it was determined that an attack on 301 Paris should be made the next day, and thereupon the troops withdrew to La Chapelle, a village midway between St. Denys and Paris, and encamped there for the night. But the King remained at St. Denys.
“I like not the day, gentle duke,” said Jeanne protestingly to Alençon. “To-morrow is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Mother of God. It is not meet to fight on such a day.”
“We must, Jeanne. We have been insistent that the assault should be made; and if we decline now La Trémouille will persuade the King that we are the cause of the delay.”