while they intoned the ‘ Veni Creator spiritus ’ (‘Come Holy Spirit, Creator, come’). Joan could be practical, and so after two nights most of the priests returned to Blois. She had brought with her some of the most influential military men in France, the Marshal of Boussac, the Admiral of France, the Duke of Alençon and Gilles de Rais, the notorious bluebeard of popular legend, and the gruff La Hire. And yet, after the priests had gone, she still meant to impress on her army that her task was God-given and royally sanctioned; as proof, she had a standard, said to have been made of white canvas fringed with silk on a field of fleur-de-lis, on which was painted a Christ in Majesty flanked by two angels and inscribed at the side with the words ‘Jhesus Maria’. She was clad in armour the Dauphin had ordered for her. She carried a sword that she had sent for from the monastery of Ste-Catherine-de-Fierbois. Much to the monks’ surprise this had been retrieved from under an altar – a weapon located by a miracle indicated a holy cause. On the First Crusade, for example, when the crusaders wilted in Antioch, the lance that had pierced the side of Christ had been divined in a vision; and after its discovery the crusaders’ fortunes had changed dramatically. Joan’s sword, decorated with five crosses, may have belonged to a crusader; the weapon gave her campaigning the quality of a holy war; she carried the weapon until she was beaten for the first time at St-Denis, outside Paris. What the banner, the armour and the sword indicated for all to see was that she was no common soldier, but a knight.
Chivalry was the code of behaviour that had come to be seen as appropriate to the upper classes. Its prestige was bolstered by a military assumption, that the chevalier , the mounted knight, was the most effective arm in any army. Around 1100, when crusaders had just scaled the walls of Jerusalem, it was a reasonable assumption, for nothing had equalled the effectiveness of the charge of Christians clad in their chain mail. By about 1400, ways of winning wars had been transformed. At Nicopolis in 1396 mobile Turkish mounted archers routed the Latin cavalry under John of Burgundy. At Agincourt in 1415 longbow men sheltering behind stakes and English men-at-arms on foot slaughtered the French cavalry trapped in the mud. By then armour was so weighty that any knight needed a squire to help him mount, and if he fell over, he needed a squire to help him get up. Simultaneously a new weapon had been devised, the cannon that could blast a knight off his horse. And yet, socially, there was never a time when there was more cachet in being a knight. If a man joined a military order, he sported its stars and ribbons; in quarterings on his coat of arms and shield he displayed his ancient lineage; if he were captured, etiquette demanded that he should be ransomed at any cost; while in flamboyant pinnacled castles ladies and gentlemen, arrayed in the fantastic, graceful costumes, listened to improbable tales of chivalry about Arthur, Charlemagne and Alexander – and so a future King of England was named Arthur, Kings of France Charles, Kings of Scotland Alexander. Joan took for granted this aristocratic view of contemporary warfare. And for some months reality corresponded to dreams, as a maid in armour led men to victory.
Joan did not forget the practicalities of a siege. Even with the help of some 1,500 Burgundians, the English had lacked the men and the artillery to force Orléans to surrender, so they now hoped to persuade the citizens to give up the struggle by undermining their morale. They had surrounded as much of the city as they could, putting up earthworks or boulevards manned by small numbers of troops, four to the west, one to the north, one on an island in the river to the west and one (the boulevard de St-Loup), that was meant to block the road into the Orléans from the east. Most of the east and north of the city was not
Chivalry was the code of behaviour that had come to be seen as appropriate to the upper classes. Its prestige was bolstered by a military assumption, that the chevalier , the mounted knight, was the most effective arm in any army. Around 1100, when crusaders had just scaled the walls of Jerusalem, it was a reasonable assumption, for nothing had equalled the effectiveness of the charge of Christians clad in their chain mail. By about 1400, ways of winning wars had been transformed. At Nicopolis in 1396 mobile Turkish mounted archers routed the Latin cavalry under John of Burgundy. At Agincourt in 1415 longbow men sheltering behind stakes and English men-at-arms on foot slaughtered the French cavalry trapped in the mud. By then armour was so weighty that any knight needed a squire to help him mount, and if he fell over, he needed a squire to help him get up. Simultaneously a new weapon had been devised, the cannon that could blast a knight off his horse. And yet, socially, there was never a time when there was more cachet in being a knight. If a man joined a military order, he sported its stars and ribbons; in quarterings on his coat of arms and shield he displayed his ancient lineage; if he were captured, etiquette demanded that he should be ransomed at any cost; while in flamboyant pinnacled castles ladies and gentlemen, arrayed in the fantastic, graceful costumes, listened to improbable tales of chivalry about Arthur, Charlemagne and Alexander – and so a future King of England was named Arthur, Kings of France Charles, Kings of Scotland Alexander. Joan took for granted this aristocratic view of contemporary warfare. And for some months reality corresponded to dreams, as a maid in armour led men to victory.
Joan did not forget the practicalities of a siege. Even with the help of some 1,500 Burgundians, the English had lacked the men and the artillery to force Orléans to surrender, so they now hoped to persuade the citizens to give up the struggle by undermining their morale. They had surrounded as much of the city as they could, putting up earthworks or boulevards manned by small numbers of troops, four to the west, one to the north, one on an island in the river to the west and one (the boulevard de St-Loup), that was meant to block the road into the Orléans from the east. Most of the east and north of the city was not
Similar Books
