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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 27
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 Etampes, 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 compunction--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'Alencon 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 melee 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 Noel 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'Alencon 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'Alencon 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'Alencon
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.
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