Yes, said DAlencon, we must follow him, and take care of that matter. What of Beaugency?
Leave Beaugency to me, gentle duke; I will have it in two hours, and at no cost of blood.
It is true, Excellency. You will but need to deliver this news there and receive the surrender.
Yes. And I will be with you at Meung with the dawn, fetching the Constable and his fifteen hundred; and when Talbot knows that Beaugency has fallen it will have an effect upon him.
By the mass, yes! cried La Hire. He will join his Meung garrison to his army and break for Paris. Then we shall have our bridge force with us again, along with our Beaugency watchers, and be stronger for our great days work by four-and-twenty hundred able soldiers, as was here promised within the hour. Verily this Englishman is doing our errands for us and saving us much blood and trouble. Orders, Excellency give us orders!
They are simple. Let the men rest three hours longer. At one oclock the advance-guard will march, under our command, with Pothon of Saintrailles as second; the second division will follow at two under the Lieutenant-General. Keep well in the rear of the enemy, and see to it that you avoid an engagement. I will ride under guard to Beaugency and make so quick work there that I and the Constable of France will join you before dawn with his men.
She kept her word. Her guard mounted and we rode off through the puttering rain, taking with us a captured English officer to confirm Joans news. We soon covered the journey and summoned the castle. Richard Guetin, Talbots lieutenant, being convinced that he and his five hundred men were left helpless, conceded that it would be useless to try to hold out. He could not expect easy terms, yet Joan granted them nevertheless. His garrison could keep their horses and arms, and carry away property to the value of a silver mark per man. They could go whither they pleased, but must not take arms against France again under ten days.
Before dawn we were with our army again, and with us the Constable and nearly all his men, for we left only a small garrison in Beaugency castle. We heard the dull booming of cannon to the front, and knew that Talbot was beginning his attack on the bridge. But some time before it was yet light the sound ceased and we heard it no more.
Guetin had sent a messenger through our lines under a safe-conduct given by Joan, to tell Talbot of the surrender. Of course this poursuivant had arrived ahead of us. Talbot had held it wisdom to turn now and retreat upon Paris. When daylight came he had disappeared; and with him Lord Scales and the garrison of Meung.
What a harvest of English strongholds we had reaped in those three days! strongholds which had defied France with quite cool confidence and plenty of it until we came.
30 The Red Field of Patay
WHEN THE morning broke at last on that forever memorable 18th of June, there was no enemy discoverable anywhere, as I have said. But that did not trouble me. I knew we should find him, and that we should strike him; strike him the promised blow the one from which the English power in France would not rise up in a thousand years, as Joan had said in her trance.
The enemy had plunged into the wide plains of La Beauce a roadless waste covered with bushes, with here and there bodies of forest trees a region where an army would be hidden from view in a very little while. We found the trail in the soft wet earth and followed it. It indicated an orderly march; no confusion, no panic.
But we had to be cautious. In such a piece of country we could walk into an ambush without any trouble. Therefore Joan sent bodies of cavalry ahead under La Hire, Pothon, and other captains, to feel the way. Some of the other officers began to show uneasiness; this sort of hide-and-go-seek business troubled them and made their confidence a little shaky. Joan divined their state of mind and cried out impetuously:
Name of God, what would you? We must smite these English, and we will. They shall not escape us. Though they were hung to the clouds we would get them!
By and by we were nearing Patay; it was about a league away. Now at this time our reconnaissance, feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer, and it went bounding away and was out of sight in a moment. Then hardly a minute later a dull great shout went up in the distance toward Patay. It was the English soldiery. They had been shut up in a garrison so long on moldy food that they could not keep their delight to themselves when this fine fresh meat came springing into their midst. Poor creature, it had wrought damage to a nation which loved it well. For the French knew where the English were now, whereas the English had no suspicion of where the French were.
La Hire halted where he was, and sent back the tidings. Joan was radiant with joy. The Duke dAlencon said to her:
Very well, we have found them; shall we fight them?
Have you good spurs, prince?
Why? Will they make us run away?
Nenni, en nom de Dieu! These English are ours they are lost. They will fly. Who overtakes them will need good spurs. Forward close up!
By the time we had come up with La Hire the English had discovered our presence. Talbots force was marching in three bodies. First his advance-guard; then his artillery; then his battle-corps a good way in the rear. He was now out of the bush and in a fair open country. He at once posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five hundred picked archers along some hedges where the French would be obliged to pass, and hoped to hold this position till his battle-corps could come up. Sir John Fastolfe urged the battle-corps into a gallop. Joan saw her opportunity and ordered La Hire to advance which La Hire promptly did, launching his wild riders like a storm-wind, his customary fashion.
The duke and the Bastard wanted to follow, but Joan said:
Not yet wait.
So they waited impatiently, and fidgeting in their saddles. But she was ready gazing straight before her, measuring, weighing, calculating by shades, minutes, fractions of minutes, seconds with all her great soul present, in eye, and set of head, and noble pose of body but patient, steady, master of herself master of herself and of the situation.
And yonder, receding, receding, plumes lifting and falling, lifting and falling, streamed the thundering charge of La Hires godless crew, La Hires great figure dominating it and his sword stretched aloft like a flagstaff.
Oh, Satan and his Hellions, see them go! Somebody muttered it in deep admiration.
And now he was closing up closing up on Fastolfes rushing corps.
And now he struck it struck it hard, and broke its order. It lifted the duke and the Bastard in their saddles to see it; and they turned, trembling with excitement, to Joan, saying:
Now!
But she put up her hand, still gazing, weighing, calculating, and said again:
Wait not yet.
Fastolfes hard-driven battle-corps raged on like an avalanche toward the waiting advance-guard. Suddenly these conceived the idea that it was flying in panic before Joan; and so in that instant it broke and swarmed away in a mad panic itself, with Talbot storming and cursing after it.
Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs home and waved the advance with her sword. Follow me! she cried, and bent her head to her horses neck and sped away like the wind!
Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs home and waved the advance with her sword. Follow me! she cried, and bent her head to her horses neck and sped away like the wind!
We went down into the confusion of that flying rout, and for three long hours we cut and hacked and stabbed. At last the bugles sang Halt!
The Battle of Patay was won.
Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying that awful field, lost in thought. Presently she said:
The praise is to God. He has smitten with a heavy hand this day. After a little she lifted her face, and looking afar off, said, with the manner of one who is thinking aloud, In a thousand years a thousand years the English power in France will not rise up from this blow. She stood again a time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped generals, and there was a glory in her face and a noble light in her eye; and she said:
Oh, friends, friends, do you know? do you comprehend? France is on the way to be free!
And had never been, but for Joan of Arc! said La Hire, passing before her and bowing low, the other following and doing likewise; he muttering as he went, I will say it though I be damned for it. Then battalion after battalion of our victorious army swung by, wildly cheering. And they shouted, Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live forever! while Joan, smiling, stood at the salute with her sword.
This was not the last time I saw the Maid of Orleans on the red field of Patay. Toward the end of the day I came upon her where the dead and dying lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows; our men had mortally wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her dying enemy in her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears running down her face all the time. (1)
(1) Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: Michelet discovered this story in the deposition of Joan of Arcs page, Louis de Conte, who was probably an eye-witness of the scene. This is true. It was a part of the testimony of the author of these Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, given by him in the Rehabilitation proceedings of 1456. TRANSLATOR.
31 France Begins to Live Again
JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be freeThe war called the Hundred Years War was very sick to-day. Sick on its English side for the very first time since its birth, ninety-one years gone by.
Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought? Or shall we not rather judge them by the results which flowed from them? Any one will say that a battle is only truly great or small according to its results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is the truth.
Judged by results, Patays place is with the few supremely great and imposing battles that have been fought since the peoples of the world first resorted to arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So judged, it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few just mentioned, but stand alone, as the supremest of historic conflicts. For when it began France lay gasping out the remnant of an exhausted life, her case wholly hopeless in the view of all political physicians; when it ended, three hours later, she was convalescent. Convalescent, and nothing requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring her back to perfect health. The dullest physician of them all could see this, and there was none to deny it.
Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series of battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts stretching over years, but only one has reached it in a single day and by a single battle. That nation is France, and that battle Patay.
Remember it and be proud of it; for you are French, and it is the stateliest fact in the long annals of your country. There it stands, with its head in the clouds! And when you grow up you will go on pilgrimage to the field of Patay, and stand uncovered in the presence of what? A monument with its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations in all times have built monuments on their battle-fields to keep green the memory of the perishable deed that was wrought there and of the perishable name of him who wrought it; and will France neglect Patay and Joan of Arc? Not for long. And will she build a monument scaled to their rank as compared with the worlds other fields and heroes? Perhaps if there be room for it under the arch of the sky.
But let us look back a little, and consider certain strange and impressive facts. The Hundred Years War began in 1337. It raged on and on, year after year and year after year; and at last England stretched France prone with that fearful blow at Crecy. But she rose and struggled on, year after year, and at last again she went down under another devastating blow Poitiers. She gathered her crippled strength once more, and the war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year, decade after decade. Children were born, grew up, married, died the war raged on; their children in turn grew up, married, died the war raged on; their children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time under the incredible disaster of Agincourt and still the war raged on, year after year, and in time these children married in their turn.
France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The half of it belonged to England, with none to dispute or deny the truth; the other half belonged to nobody in three months would be flying the English flag; the French King was making ready to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas.
Now came the ignorant country-maid out of her remote village and confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had swept the land for three generations. Then began the briefest and most amazing campaign that is recorded in history. In seven weeks it was finished. In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that was ninety-one years old. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow; on the field of Patay she broke its back.
Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but understand it? Ah, that is another matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying marvel.
Seven weeks with her and there a little bloodshed. Perhaps the most of it, in any single fight, at Patay, where the English began six thousand strong and left two thousand dead upon the field. It is said and believed that in three battles alone Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt near a hundred thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting the thousand other fights of that long war. The dead of that war make a mournful long list an interminable list. Of men slain in the field the count goes by tens of thousands; of innocent women and children slain by bitter hardship and hunger it goes by that appalling term, millions.
It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about for near a hundred years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. And with her little hand that child of seventeen struck him down; and yonder he lies stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this old world lasts.
32 The Joyous News Flies Fast
THE GREAT news of Patay was carried over the whole of France in twenty hours, people said. I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure, anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting and glorifying God and told his neighbor; and that neighbor flew with it to the next homestead; and so on and so on without resting the word traveled; and when a man got it in the night, at what hour soever, he jumped out of his bed and bore the blessed message along. And the joy that went with it was like the light that flows across the land when an eclipse is receding from the face of the sun; and, indeed, you may say that France had lain in an eclipse this long time; yes, buried in a black gloom which these beneficent tidings were sweeping away now before the onrush of their white splendor.