“By my staff, we are enough,” she cried. “I will go to see my good friends at Compiègne.”[25]
At midnight of the twenty-second, therefore, she set forth from Crépy, and by hard riding arrived at Compiègne in the early dawn, to the great joy and surprise of the Governor, Guillaume de Flavy, and the people who set the bells to ringing and the trumpets to sounding a glad welcome.
The men-at-arms were weary with the night’s ride, but Jeanne, after going to mass, met with the Governor to arrange a plan of action.
Now Compiègne in situation was very like to Orléans, in that it lay on a river, but it was on the south instead of the north bank. Behind the city to the southward stretched the great forest of Pierrefonds, and at its feet was the River Oise. In front of the city across the river a broad meadow extended to the low hills of Picardy. It was low land, subject to floods, so that there was a raised road or causeway from the bridge of Compiègne to the foot of the hills, a mile distant. Three villages lay on this bank: at the end of the causeway was the tower and village of Margny, where was a camp of Burgundians; on the left, a mile and a half below the causeway, was Venette, where the English lay encamped; and to the right, a league distant above the causeway, stood Clairoix, where the Burgundians had another camp. The first defence of the city, facing the enemy, was a bridge fortified with a tower and boulevard, which were in turn guarded by a deep fosse.
It was Jeanne’s plan to make a sally in the late afternoon when an attack would not be expected, against Margny, which lay at the other end of the raised road. Margny taken, she would turn to the right and strike at Clairoix, the second Burgundian camp, and so cut off the Burgundians from their English allies at Venette. De Flavy agreed to the sortie, and proposed to line the ramparts of the boulevard with culverins, men, archers, and cross-bowmen to keep the English troops from coming up from below and seizing the causeway and cutting off retreat should Jeanne have to make one; and to station a number of small boats filled with archers along the further bank of the river to shoot at the enemy if the troops should be driven back, and for the rescue of such as could not win back to the boulevard.
“FORWARD! THEY ARE OURS!”