Free Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon Page B

inspired the troops; they rallied and began a bombardment, bringing down one of the fortified towers. It was at Jargeau that one of Joan’s minor miracles took place. She told the duke of Alençon to move, foreseeing that a cannonball was going to hit the spot where he was standing. He obeyed her, moved, and another knight was killed when the cannonball hit. Was this miraculous or just good foresight? If she knew that the ball would hit, why didn’t she tell both knights to move? Or did she feel she should use her powers only sparingly, in this case to keep the promise to Alençon’s wife that she would keep him safe? A domestic tone enters the scene: a friend’s promise to the wife of a friend.
    After a battle of three or four hours, the English retreated. During the battle, Joan was knocked off a ladder by a stone, but the helmet she wore protected her from serious injury. Once again, she rose up quickly and went back to work.
    When the French succeeded in taking the towns of Meung and Beauregency, the English realized that the Loire campaign was over. So they quit and began to march back toward Paris. The French pursued them. One of the French captains, La Hire, had with him a crack troop, a group of clever scouts and skirmishers (the marines of their day). He decided that the moment to strike was at hand. He didn’t wait for the main French army to support him, and he attacked boldly, achieving a quick and complete victory. Talbot (the great English commander idealized by Shakespeare in Henry VI ) was taken, and the French murdered two thousand soldiers. Only two hundred were taken prisoner—those who were rich enough to afford the possibility of ransom.
    Joan arrived only at this point, in the midst of the slaughter. She was shocked by the reality of the human cost of war. She saw a French soldier strike an English prisoner on the head, leaving him bleeding on the ground, close to death. She dismounted and cradled the Englishman’s head, hearing his dying confession. This is, to say the least, unusual behavior for a victorious commander.
    Joan was given credit for the surrender of the English, though in fact she had taken no part in the fighting.

After Orléans, on to Rheims
    It is somewhat surprising that after the victory at Orléans and the small but related victories at Meung, Patay, and Jargeau, she chose not to seize the military moment and press forward on the energetic tide she’d raised but to quit the field for the purpose of anointing the king at Rheims. The explanation for this is Joan’s consummate understanding of the power of symbols. Until there was a coronation at Rheims, Charles would be not a king but a dauphin, the son of a dead father, the boy in waiting. The imposition of the mystical oils of Clovis would, she understood, undo the stigma of doubt that had been cast upon him by his mother’s suggestion of his illegitimacy. It would also be a vivifying blast through the malaise that had gripped the people and prevented them from moving forward, or moving at all.
    But natures do not change quickly, and Charles, whose dominant characteristics included ambivalent vacillation, resisted Joan’s attempts to get him crowned. When she went to de la Trémoille’s castle at Sully to see him, he told her to calm down and not trouble herself so much for him. She wept and told him, “Have no doubt you will gain your whole kingdom and soon be crowned.” 2 Part of his hesitation might have come from the fact that he was living as de la Trémoille’s guest, and the party of de la Trémoille was never on Joan’s side; it is likely that he would have warned Charles that he had created a monster who would end up devouring him.
    Joan was sulky and impatient at the king’s delay, and her frustration led her to arrogate certain powers to herself that were not properly hers. She had the duke of Alençon, her favorite noble companion, sound