Free Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon Page A

entire boulevard.
    The French had now gained control of the north and south banks of the river and of the bridge, and the English, seeing the handwriting on the wall, lifted the siege on May 8. They collected their army to the north of the town, expectingthe French to follow up their victory. Joan gathered her army and went out to confront them. The two armies looked at each other over the field, and then Joan ordered that mass should be said in the field, in fact two masses. Told that the English were marching off, she ordered her troops not to attack, because it was Sunday.
    But the English had left Orléans for good, without a major battle, if we understand battle to mean a full-scale confrontation of armies. Their passivity after Joan’s arrival is inexplicable; their forces were greater, and they probably could have prevailed. It is precisely this passivity that led people to believe Joan did what she did because of witchcraft, and to accuse her of it at her trial. In a week, Joan had accomplished what well-trained and well-organized captains had not been able to do in six months.
    In their joy over the liberation of their city, the bourgeois and the soldiers came together to give thanks in the city’s churches. This itself was a major victory: The bourgeois had so feared the undisciplined behavior of the men-at-arms that they were reluctant to have them in the city. But with Joan at their head, all the citizens of Orléans, from the oldest to the youngest, prayed and gave thanks for the Maid who had saved their city. From then on she would be known as the Maid of Orléans.
    What are we to make of the Battle of Orléans, and what does it tell us about Joan? Certainly it doesn’t suggest that she was a great tactician, as none of the important military decisions were made by her. Some of what she did seems naïve, as when she was duped by the soldiers dressing as priests, and some of the events happened without her bidding, as when Le Basque took her standard and she followed it. What the battle does indicate, indisputably, is her extraordinary physical courage and stamina, her genius for recovery. And it tells us that, both for the French and for the English, she was a presence whose importance and power stemmed not from any traceable action or behavior but from an atmosphere that preceded and surrounded her. So it was not necessary for her to do one thing rather than another; it was necessary only that she be there. And it was necessary that she win. The French needed someone like Joan, someone to break through their paralysis. She broke through and handed them victory. If she had not been victorious, the story would have ended there.
    To say that the victory at Orléans was not a victory of Joan’s tactics is not to say that if she hadn’t behaved with heroic daring the outcome of the battle would have been the same. It is simply to say that the victory, and the reverberations and interpretations that followed it, can be traced to a combination of her hypervisible action and incandescent spirit. This is the point at which myth, symbol, and act collide and create a new essence, when a power is born that is greater than, and different from, any of its separate components. Gift, chance, accident, coincidence. The theological term, of course, is grace.
    People who met Joan felt transformed, able to do things they would not have done. This is because they saw her doing things that they had never seen anyone do. And, for a while, their faith seemed justified because she was remarkably successful.

From Strength to Strength: Jargeau, Meung, Beauregency, and Patay
    In order to consolidate her victory at Orléans, Joan had to rout the English from the surrounding towns, particularly Jargeau. On June 10, she approached the town, where the French army had up to this point experienced little success. A supply train was about to reach the English. Once again, Joan’s appearance on the scene