It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up onto the walls, and
from there I saw much that happened, the rest was told me long
afterward by our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan crossed
the bridge, and soon left the boulevard behind her and went
skimming away over the raised road with her horsemen clattering
at her heels. She had on a brilliant silver-gilt cape over her armor,
and I could see it flap and flare and rise and fall like a little patch
of white flame.
It was a bright day, and one could see far and wide over that plain.
Soon we saw the English force advancing, swiftly and in
handsome order, the sunlight flashing from its arms.
Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and was repulsed.
Then she saw the other Burgundians moving down from Clairoix.
Joan rallied her men and charged again, and was again rolled back.
Two assaults occupy a good deal of time–and time was precious
here. The English were approaching the road now from Venette,
but the boulevard opened fire on them and they were checked.
Joan heartened her men with inspiring words and led them to the
charge again in great style. This time she carried Marguy with a
hurrah. Then she turned at once to the right and plunged into the
plan and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving; then
there was heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each
other backward turn about and about, and victory inclining first to
the one, then to the other. Now all of a sudden thee was a panic on
our side. Some say one thing caused it, some another. Some say
the cannonade made our front ranks think retreat was being cut off
by the English, some say the rear ranks got the idea that Joan was
killed. Anyway our men broke, and went flying in a wild rout for
the causeway. Joan tried to rally them and face them around,
crying to them that victory was sure, but it did no good, they
divided and swept by her like a wave. Old D’Aulon begged her to
retreat while there was yet a chance for safety, but she refused; so
he seized her horse’s bridle and bore her along with the wreck and
ruin in spite of herself. And so along the causeway they came
swarming, that wild confusion of frenzied men and horses–and the
artillery had to stop firing, of course; consequently the English and
Burgundians closed in in safety, the former in front, the latter
behind their prey. Clear to the boulevard the French were washed
in this enveloping inundation; and there, cornered in an angle
formed by the flank of the boulevard and the slope of the
causeway, they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank down one
by one.
Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the gate to be closed
and the drawbridge raised. This shut Joan out.
The little personal guard around her thinned swiftly. Both of our
good knights went down disabled; Joan’s two brothers fell
wounded; then No‰l Rainguesson–all wounded while loyally
sheltering Joan from blows aimed at her. When only the Dwarf
and the Paladin were left, they would not give up, but stood their
ground stoutly, a pair of steel towers streaked and splashed with
blood; and where the ax of one fell, and the sword of the other, an
enemy gasped and died.
And so fighting, and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple
souls, they came to their honorable end. Peace to their memories!
they were very dear to me.
Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still defiant, still
laying about her with her sword, was seized by her cape and
dragged from her horse. She was borne away a prisoner to the
Duke of Burgundy’s camp, and after her followed the victorious
army roaring its joy.
The awful news started instantly on its round; from lip to lip it
flew; and wherever it came it struck the people as with a sort of
paralysis; and they murmured over and over again, as if they were
talking to themselves, or in their sleep, “The Maid of Orleans