Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc and the Siege of Orléans

The English, under Talbot, were approaching Meung, joined by Fastolf’s 1,000 mercenaries. On June 18, the opposing armies formed up in a pageant of arms. The French nobility asked Joan what to do. ‘Have all good spurs,’ she answered. Uncertain, her listeners asked if she meant they should flee. ‘Rather the opposite,’ she answered, predicting an English rout. Charging with a force of 6,000, including 1,000 mounted knights, the French inflicted 4,000 casualties on their foes.

At Patay, the French pursued an English convoy. At a narrow pass through hedges and woods, the English set up an ambush of 500 archers and awaited their own rear guard. French scouts unwittingly flushed a stag from the forest, which raced through the English lines, prompting shouts that the scouts overheard and alerting them to the English ambush. As the English rear guard retreated on the run, the main English force, with Fastolf riding ahead to summon the vanguard to their aid, wrongly presumed there had been a rout and panicked as the French charged pell-mell. By the time Joan arrived, the English had lost some 2,000 men, the French only three. Talbot was unhorsed and captured, but Fastolf had escaped.

Joan returned to Orléans to urge that Dauphin Charles be crowned at Reims, the traditional scene for such ceremonies. The town was in Burgundian hands. With a cavalcade of nobles and infantry, the dauphin journeyed to Reims. En route, they approached Troyes, held by a Burgundian garrison of 600. Letters sent to the town promised that all would be forgiven if the dauphin was welcomed. The town sent a friar to sprinkle the Maid with holy water. ‘Approach boldly, I shall not fly away,’ she told him. With her army on the edge of starvation from campaigning in the ravaged countryside, she commenced a siege, assuring her men that within three days they would take the town ‘by love or by force or by courage.’ Upon seeing the French ready for an assault at dawn, the town yielded.

At Reims, Joan had no artillery or siege equipment, but advised, ‘advance boldly and fear nothing.’ The city yielded without a fight, and on July 16, 1429, the dauphin was officially crowned Charles VII, king of France. Joan knelt before the king and said that she had accomplished what God had ordered of her. The only favor she asked was that her village of Domrémy be exempt from taxes. Visited by her brothers, she told them she was homesick. She wished to return home ‘and serve my father and mother by keeping sheep with my sister and brothers who will rejoice so greatly to see me again.’

It was never to be.

The king allowed the Burgundians a two-week truce prior to further negotiations, the Burgundians agreeing to yield in Paris. Their agreement was insincere, however, as they were stalling for time to reinforce Paris with a newly landed force from England. Joan was shut out of the negotiations. The French monarch was thinking only in diplomatic terms and ignoring the military situation.

Joan no longer heard her voices, but she decided to attack Paris nonetheless. With a force of 12,000, she led an assault on the Porte Ste.-Honoré on September 8, but was hit in the leg by a crossbow bolt. Her standard-bearer, hit in the foot, opened his helmet visor to remove the arrow and was shot between the eyes. The wounded Maid was carried away by her comrades in arms, still insisting that the attack continue.

The king undermined Joan’s efforts. He withdrew from Paris to Glen, and on September 21 disbanded his army. Joan resumed campaigning in early 1430, though her force was reduced to little more than her own battle. She was aware that she was losing her grip on events. At Chinon, she remarked that her voices had warned her, ‘I shall last a year, hardly longer.’ A siege of Charité-sur-Loire ended in impasse — Joan’s audacity was no longer compensation enough for her inadequate forces.

Later, during her trial, Joan claimed that upon the moat in a successful assault at Melun, her saints had warned her that she would be captured before St. John’s Day, the summer solstice.