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Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Chapter 30
WHEN THE morning broke at last on that forever memorable 18th of June,
thee 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 d'Alencon 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. Talbot's 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 Hire's godless crew, La
Hire's 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 Fastolfe's 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."
Fastolfe's 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 horse's
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 Arc's 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.
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