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.
Chapter 31 France Begins to Live Again
JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be free.
The war called the Hundred Years’ War was very sick to-day. Sick
on its English side–for the very first time since its birth,
ninety-one years gone by.
Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought?
Or shall we not rather judge them by the results which flowed
from them? Any one will say that a battle is only truly great or
small according to its results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is
the truth.
Judged by results, Patay’s place is with the few supremely great
and imposing battles that have been fought since the peoples of the
world first resorted to arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So
judged, it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few
just mentioned, but stand alone, as the supremest of historic
conflicts. For when it began France lay gasping out the remnant of
an exhausted life, her case wholly hopeless in the view of all
political physicians; when it ended, three hours later, she was
convalescent. Convalescent, and nothing requisite but time and
ordinary nursing to bring her back to perfect health. The dullest
physician of them all could see this, and there was none to deny it.
Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a
series of battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting