Joan of Arc by Mary Gordon

the trumpets and mount his horse. She told him, “It is time to go to the gentle king Charles to put him on his road to his coronation at Rheims.” 3 She wrote a letter to the citizens of the town of Tournai, taking credit for all the military successes the army had achieved and telling them, “I pray and require you to be ready to come to the anointing of the gentle King Charles at Rheims where we shall be soon, and to come into our presence when you know that we approach. ” 4 Charles, however, had given her no specific promise or specific date.
    But even his pusillanimous temperament was not unmoved by Joan’s great popular success. Great numbers of men joined her ranks, swelling the army to proportions that were unknown before her arrival. This worried Charles, since he knew he didn’t have the resources to pay all these soldiers (later on these men would suffer greatly from being improperly provisioned), but, by the end of June, he was prepared to move on to Rheims.
    The cities on the way to Rheims were Burgundian in sympathy, and they did not willingly open their doors to Charles. Part of their reluctance was that they didn’t want the notoriously ill-disciplined French troops within their walls. The city of Troyes greeted Joan and Charles with cannon shots from the garrison, but the French forces outnumbered them. The bishop of Troyes came out to see Charles, urging him to wait while he negotiated with the townspeople.
    The army was nearly starving, and it was only a fortuitous coincidence that saved them. Living in Troyes at the time was Joan’s old friend the apocalyptic preacher Brother Richard, who was staunchly loyal to the French. The army was saved from starvation because of the townspeople’s misunderstanding of one of his sermons the previous year. He had said, “Sow, good people, sow plenty of beans, for he who should come will come very soon.” 5 What he meant was the Antichrist, but the people understood that “he who should come” as Charles. The soldiers ate the beans and survived.
    Even after the army was fed, there was the problem of persuading the people of Troyes to open their doors to Charles. Neither Brother Richard nor the bishop was succeeding. Joan was allowed to present her case. She knelt to the king and the bishop of Rheims and said, “Noble Dauphin, command young people to come and besiege the city of Troyes and drag out your debates no longer for in God’s name, within three days I will lead you into the city of Troyes, by love, force, or courage, and that false Burgundy will be quite thunderstruck.” 6
    Once again, Joan’s certainty and strength of tone prevailed, and the bishop allowed her to start a siege if she could guarantee that she would be successful in six days. She guaranteed it, and made such good strategic decisions about the placement of artillery that the military men were astonished.
    When she began her attack, the citizens of Troyes panicked, and within a day they were bargaining with the king, agreeing to terms that were favorable to him. Joan entered the city to prepare for the king’s ceremonial entry, placing archers to line the streets. She rode beside the king, carrying the standard, accompanied by the principal captains in all their finery. In addition to planning and taking part in the procession, Joan agreed to act as godmother to a baby who was born that day.
    There are two conflicting reports on Joan at Troyes. An Anglo-Burgundian soldier said she was “the simplest thing he ever saw, and in what she did there was neither rhyme nor reason, any more than the stupidest thing he ever saw. He thought that she was not to be compared with Madame d’Or, the female jester of the duke of Burgundy, who was famous for her long blonde hair.” 7
    Responding to Joan very differently, other eyewitnesses claimed that they had seen thousands of white butterflies flying around her standard. The