Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Vols. I-II) Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau
by Mark Twain
We made a gallant show next day when we filed out through the
frowning gates of Orleans, with banners flying and Joan and the
Grand Staff in the van of the long column. Those two young De
Lavals were come now, and were joined to the Grand Staff. Which
was well; war being their proper trade, for they were grandsons of
that illustrious fighter Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France
in earlier days. Louis de Bourbon, the Marshal de Rais, and the
Vidame de Chartres were added also. We had a right to feel a little
uneasy, for we knew that a force of five thousand men was on its
way under Sir John Fastolfe to reinforce Jargeau, but I think we
were not uneasy, nevertheless. In truth, that force was not yet in
our neighborhood. Sir John was loitering; for some reason or other
he was not hurrying. He was losing precious time--four days at
Étampes, and four more at Janville.
We reached Jargeau and began business at once. Joan sent forward
a heavy force which hurled itself against the outworks in
handsome style, and gained a footing and fought hard to keep it;
but it presently began to fall back before a sortie from the city.
Seeing this, Joan raised her battle-cry and led a new assault herself
under a furious artillery fire. The Paladin was struck down at her
side wounded, but she snatched her standard from his failing hand
and plunged on through the ruck of flying missiles, cheering her
men with encouraging cries; and then for a good time one had
turmoil, and clash of steel, and collision and confusion of
struggling multitudes, and the hoarse bellowing of the guns; and
then the hiding of it all under a rolling firmament of smoke--a
firmament through which veiled vacancies appeared for a moment
now and then, giving fitful dim glimpses of the wild tragedy
enacting beyond; and always at these times one caught sight of that
slight figure in white mail which was the center and soul of our
hope and trust, and whenever we saw that, with its back to us and
its face to the fight, we knew that all was well. At last a great shout
went up--a joyous roar of shoutings, in fact--and that was sign
sufficient that the faubourgs were ours.
Yes, they were ours; the enemy had been driven back within the
walls. On the ground which Joan had won we camped; for night
was coming on.
Joan sent a summons to the English, promising that if they
surrendered she would allow them to go in peace and take their
horses with them. Nobody knew that she could take that strong
place, but she knew it--knew it well; yet she offered that
grace--offered it in a time when such a thing was unknown in war;
in a time when it was custom and usage to massacre the garrison
and the inhabitants of captured cities without pity or
compunctin--yes, even to the harmless women and children
sometimes. There are neighbors all about you who well remember
the unspeakable atrocities which Charles the Bold inflicted upon
the men and women and children of Dinant when he took that
place some years ago. It was a unique and kindly grace which Joan
offered that garrison; but that was her way, that was her loving and
merciful nature--she always did her best to save her enemy's life
and his soldierly pride when she had the mastery of him.
The English asked fifteen days' armistice to consider the proposal
in. And Fastolfe coming with five thousand men! Joan said no. But
she offered another grace: they might take both their horses and
their side-arms--but they must go within the hour.
Well, those bronzed English veterans were pretty hard-headed
folk. They declined again. Then Joan gave command that her army
be made ready to move to the assault at nine in the morning.
Considering the deal of marching and fighting which the men had
done that day, D'Alençon thought the hour rather early; but Joan
said it was best so, and so must be obeyed. Then she burst out with
one of those enthusiasms which were always burning in her when
battle was imminent, and said:
Work! work! and God will work with us!"
Yes, one might say that her motto was "Work! stick to it; keep on
working!" for in war she never knew what indolence was. And
whoever will take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed.
There's many a way to win in this world, but none of them is worth
much without good hard work back out of it.
I think we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our
bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the mêlée
when he was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been
trampled to death by our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly
rescued him and haled him to the rear and safety. He recovered,
and was himself again after two or three hours; and then he was
happy and proud, and made the most of his wound, and went
swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an innocent
big-child--which was just what he was. He was prouder of being
wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But
there was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he
was hit by a stone from a catapult--a stone the size of a man's head.
But the stone grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was
claiming that the enemy had flung a building at him.
"Let him alone," said Noël Rainguesson. "Don't interrupt his
processes. To-morrow it will be a cathedral."
He said that privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a
cathedral. I never saw anybody with such an abandoned
imagination.
Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and
yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she
considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with
such accurate judgment did she place her guns that her
Lieutenant-General's admiration of it still survived in his memory
when his testimony was taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a
century later.
In this testimony the Duke d'Alençon said that at Jargeau that
morning of the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a
novice, but "with the sure and clear judgment of a trained general
of twenty or thirty years' experience."
The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in
war in all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and
handling artillery.
Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels--she who could
not read, and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of
war? I do not know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that,
there being no precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it
with and examine it by. For in history there is no great general,
however gifted, who arrived at success otherwise than through able
teaching and hard study and some experience. It is a riddle which
will never be guessed. I think these vast powers and capacities
were born in her, and that she applied them by an intuition which
could not err.
At eight o'clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all
noise. A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something
awful--because it meant so much. There was no air stirring. The
flags on the towers and ramparts hung straight down like tassels.
Wherever one saw a person, that person had stopped what he was
doing, and was in a waiting attitude, a listening attitude. We were
on a commanding spot, clustered around Joan. Not far from us, on
every hand, were the lanes and humble dwellings of these outlying
suburbs. Many people were visible--all were listening, not one was
moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about to fasten
something with it to the door-post of his shop--but he had stopped.
There was his hand reaching up holding the nail; and there was his
other hand n the act of striking with the hammer; but he had
forgotten everything--his head was turned aside listening. Even
children unconsciously stopped in their play; I saw a little boy with
his hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the ground in the act of
steering the hoop around the corner; and so he had stopped and
was listening--the hoop was rolling away, doing its own steering. I
saw a young girl prettily framed in an open window, a
watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of red flowers under
its spout--but the water had ceased to flow; the girl was listening.
Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and
everywhere was suspended movement and that awful stillness.
Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence
was torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke
and delivered its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues
of fire dart from the towers and walls of the city, accompanied by
answering deep thunders, and in a minute the walls and the towers
disappeared, and in their place stood vast banks and pyramids of
snowy smoke, motionless in the dead air. The startled girl dropped
her watering-pot and clasped her hands together, and at that
moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair body.
The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with
all its might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most
exalting to one's spirits. The poor little town around about us
suffered cruelly. The cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings,
wrecking them as if they had been built of cards; and every
moment or two one would see a huge rock come curving through
the upper air above the smoke-clouds and go plunging down
through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame and smoke
rose toward the sky.
Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky
became overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke
that hid the English fortresses.
Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and
streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white
smoke in long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against
the deep leaden background of the sky; and then the whizzing
missiles began to knock up the dirt all around us, and I felt no
more interest in the scenery. There was one English gun that was
getting our position down finer and finer all the time. Presently
Joan pointed to it and said:
"Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you."
The Duke d'Alençon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude
rashly took his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a
moment.
Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault.
At last, about nine o'clock, she cried out:
"Now--to the assault!" and the buglers blew the charge.
Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this
service move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire
of our guns had crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall
to ruins; we saw this force descend into the ditch and begin to
plant the scaling-ladders. We were soon with them. The
Lieutenant-General thought the assault premature. But Joan said:
"Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have
promised to send you home safe?"
It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with
men, and they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There
was one gigantic Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen
of his brethren. He always dominated the places easiest of assault,
and flung down exceedingly troublesome big stones which
smashed men and ladders both--then he would near burst himself
with laughing over what he had done. But the duke settled
accounts with him. He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean
le Lorrain, and said:
"Train your gun--kill me this demon."
He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the
breast and knocked him backward into the city.
The enemy's resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our
people began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan
raised her inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself,
the Dwarf helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side
with the standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone
flung from above came crashing down upon her helmet and
stretched her, wounded and stunned, upon the ground. But only for
a moment. The Dwarf stood her upon her feet, and straightway she
started up the ladder again, crying:
"To the assault, friends, to the assault--the English are ours! It is
the appointed hour!"
There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we
swarmed over the ramparts like ants. The garrison fled, we
pursued; Jargeau was ours!
The Earl of Suffolk was hemmed in and surrounded, and the Duke
d'Alençon and the Bastard of Orleans demanded that he surrender
himself. But he was a proud nobleman and came of a proud race.
He refused to yield his sword to subordinates, saying:
"I will die rather. I will surrender to the Maid of Orleans alone,
and to no other."
And so he did; and was courteously and honorably used by her.
His two brothers retreated, fighting step by step, toward the bridge,
we pressing their despairing forces and cutting them down by
scores. Arrived on the bridge, the slaughter still continued.
Alexander de la Pole was pushed overboard or fell over, and was
drowned. Eleven hundred men had fallen; John de la Pole decided
to give up the struggle. But he was nearly as proud and particular
as his brother of Suffolk as to whom he would surrender to. The
French officer nearest at hand was Guillaume Renault, who was
pressing him closely. Sir John said to him:
"Are you a gentleman?"
"Yes."
"And a knight?"
"No."
Then Sir John knighted him himself there on the bridge, giving
him the accolade with English coolness and tranquillity in the
midst of that storm of slaughter and mutilation; and then bowing
with high courtesy took the sword by the blade and laid the hilt of
it in the man's hand in token of surrender. Ah, yes, a proud tribe,
those De la Poles.
It was a grand day, a memorable day, a most splendid victory. We
had a crowd of prisoners, but Joan would not allow them to be
hurt. We took them with us and marched into Orleans next day
through the usual tempest of welcome and joy.
And this time there was a new tribute to our leader. From
everywhere in the packed streets the new recruits squeezed their
way to her side to touch the sword of Joan of Arc and draw from it
somewhat of that mysterious quality which made it invincible.