Free Joan of Arc by Timothy Wilson-Smith

her page, Louis de Coutes, tells how she held a dying Englishman’s head in her hands while hearing his confession. Thanks to this action, the Loire was once again a French river. Joan prepared to go to Reims.
    Joan, who had seen off the English, now had to contend with the Burgundians too, for Reims, her destination, was under Burgundian control. The route there was not as difficult to follow as might appear, for neither the English nor their French allies had the men to garrison all the intervening villages and towns. Many in territory held by the Burgundians were sympathetic to the Anglo-French monarchy of Henry VI only because they preferred being on the winning side; and as this was no longer the case, feelings of loyalty to Henry evaporated. After Patay, the people of Janville closed their gates to the fleeing English and opened them to the pursuing French; and this pattern of behaviour became common as Joan and the Dauphin’s large army made their way first east and then north into the heart of Champagne. Besides, Joan had promised to save Orléans and had done so. As she had said that Charles would be crowned in Reims, people assumed that that too would happen.
    In mid-June Charles moved to Gien, east of Orléans, from where it was relatively easy to set off for Champagne. At court, however, La Trémoïlle was all for temporising. The way ahead was not safe; it would be wiser to wait till relations with Philip of Burgundy had improved; the king should go to Bourges. On 25 June Joan sent a letter to the citizens of Tournai in which, after outlining the recent triumphs of French arms, she invited the citizens to the anointing of the king at Reims, ‘where we shall soon be’. This must have been one of several such letters. Clearly she had every intention of setting out in the near future. But as so often, she was frustrated that others, in this case Charles, did not share her sense of urgency. For two days she camped with the soldiers outside the city, which showed Charles how devoted his troops were to her. He could not afford to pay them; they knew they could get him safely to Reims; he gave way.
    On 30 June Charles’s troops came to Auxerre, which for ten years had been pro-Burgundian and had even been ruled by Burgundians. The sight of a huge French army, numbering perhaps 10,000, encouraged the town council to make terms. After three days of negotiation, Charles magnanimously pardoned anyone who had sided with his enemies. No one was killed, the gates were opened and the army was reprovisioned. The army next passed through a succession of villages until it came to Troyes. A town long famous as a market town on important trade routes, to Charles Troyes was infamous as the place where nine years earlier his father had denied his right to the French throne, with the added humiliating condition that his sister Catherine, who was to marry Henry V of England, would be wife and mother to future kings of France – in fact she never became queen but was mother to Henry VI and II. With this past in mind, the people of Troyes had reason to reflect. To direct their thoughts to the future, on 4 July Joan wrote yet another letter instructing the citizens to recognise the true King of France, her master, ‘who will soon be at the city of Reims and at Paris . . . And with the aid of the King Jesus he will be in all good cities in his holy kingdom.’ 6 To this Charles added a practical incentive to make them submit: if they did so, he would grant them an amnesty.
    At first the drawbridges were raised, the gates shut and soldiers from the garrison made a show of a sortie, with one beneficial effect: it made the defenders realise they were far outnumbered by the force beyond the walls. Once again days passed while heralds and envoys went from town to camp and from camp to town. The citizens sent their own holy person, Friar Richard, a Franciscan with a line in prophesying the end of the world, to see Joan. When he had made the