Retz, Florent d’Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles.
Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees–tough,
tougher, toughest–and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a
shade. They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party;
and by long habits of lawlessness they had lost all
acquaintanceship with obedience, if they had ever had any.
But what was the good of saying that? These independent birds
knew no law. They seldom obeyed the King; they never obeyed
him when it didn’t suit them to do it. Would they obey the Maid?
In the first place they wouldn’t know how to obey her or anybody
else, and in the second place it was of course not possible for them
to take her military character seriously–that country-girl of
seventeen who had been trained for the complex and terrible
business of war–how? By tending sheep.
They had no idea of obeying her except in cases where their
veteran military knowledge and experience showed them that the
thing she required was sound and right when gauged by the regular
military standards. Were they to blame for this attitude? I should
think not. Old war-worn captains are hard-headed, practical men.
They do not easily believe in the ability of ignorant children to
plan campaigns and command armies. No general that ever lived
could have taken Joan seriously (militarily) before she raised the
siege of Orleans and followed it with the great campaign of the
Loire.
Did they consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as
the fruitful earth values the sun–they fully believed she could
produce the crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers,
to take it off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her
as being endowed with a mysterious supernatural something that
was able to do a mighty thing which they were powerless to
do–blow the breath of life and valor into the dead corpses of
cowed armies and turn them into heroes.
To their minds they were everything with her, but nothing without
her. She could inspire the soldiers and fit them for battle–but fight
the battle herself? Oh, nonsense–that was their function. They, the
generals, would fight the battles, Joan would give the victory. That
was their idea–an unconscious paraphrase of Joan’s reply to the
Dominican.
So they began by playing a deception upon her. She had a clear
idea of how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march
boldly upon Orleans by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that
order to her generals. They said to themselves, “The idea is
insane–it is blunder No. 1; it is what might have been expected of
this child who is ignorant of war.” They privately sent the word to
the Bastard of Orleans. He also recognized the insanity of it–at
least he though he did–and privately advised the generals to get
around the order in some way.
They did it by deceiving Joan. She trusted those people, she was
not expecting this sort of treatment, and was not on the lookout for
it. It was a lesson to her; she saw to it that the game was not played
a second time.
Why was Joan’s idea insane, from the generals’ point of view, but
not from hers? Because her plan was to raise the siege
immediately, by fighting, while theirs was to besiege the besiegers
and starve them out by closing their communications–a plan
which would require months in the consummation.
The English had built a fence of strong fortresses called bastilles
around Orleans–fortresses which closed all the gates of the city
but one. To the French generals the idea of trying to fight their way
past those fortresses and lead the army into Orleans was
preposterous; they believed that the result would be the army’s
destruction. One may not doubt that their opinion was militarily
sound–no, would have been, but for one circumstance which they
overlooked. That was this: the English soldiers were in a
demoralized condition of superstitious terror; they had become
satisfied that the Maid was in league with Satan. By reason of this
a good deal of their courage had oozed out and vanished. On the