Queen Of Four Kingdoms, The (36 page)

Naturally, not everyone at court is as easily convinced by this country girl’s enthusiastic belief in her ability to save France. The Church is inundated with the claims of fortune-tellers, mystics and visionaries. And there is a well-known prophecy made by a certain Marie of Avignon that a virgin will save France.

The Archbishop of Rheims is particularly sceptical, and demands that Jeanne be examined to prove by her virginity that she is not in league with the devil.

‘Only a maiden can hear the voices of saints,’ he announces to the court.

This task falls to the Queen of Sicily. She can hear titters from the court and insists that a screen is erected around Jeanne; she examines her, and is able to pronounce her a maiden.

‘And how do you intend to raise the siege of Orléans?’ one of the sly young courtiers calls to her loudly across the room. Yolande sees the king turn to look at Jeanne, the same question in his eyes.

‘With my army,’ Jeanne answers simply. Smirks emanate from the younger courtiers.

‘What army is that, my dear?’ Charles asks kindly.

‘Why, sire, the Angevin army already on their way to meet with me at Bourges. I will ride at their head to Orléans,’ she replies plainly.

With that there is quiet in the audience chamber, and Yolande notices Charles searching the assembled courtiers for her until their eyes meet. Yes, he understands. She is behind this girl and trusts her enough to lend her an army that should be marching to Marseilles for departure to Naples. He recognizes at once the sacrifice she is making, the risk to Louis her son, and the huge additional expense involved. If she, his
bonne mère
, believes in Jeanne d’Arc enough to lend her army to her when he is aware how much it is needed by her treasured son, then there must be something to this strange girl.

Yolande meets with the king privately at the side of the room.

‘Sire, yes, it is true. I have offered to arrange the financing of Jeanne d’Arc’s Army, as it should now be called, to move on Orléans and save those ill-fated citizens.’

He takes her hand silently and nods. ‘So be it.’

What Yolande does not tell the king is that she must sell her wonderful gold and silver plate to finance her own army to divert from their road to Marseilles to march north to Bourges instead and to fight for the relief of Orléans – for Charles VII and
his
kingdom, and not for her son’s kingdom of Naples. And then march on further north to Rheims before returning to Marseilles, if they succeed . . . so many uncertainties, but that has never diverted her from her chosen path before.

Jeanne is ready to obey the commands of her voices, and the Queen of Sicily prepares her for the task ahead. To help with her daily needs, and especially with her armour, she appoints two pages who come highly recommended. René, now Duke of Bar, and Pierre de Brézé have arrived at Chinon. There is no time to waste; together with the Queen of Sicily and Jeanne d’Arc, accompanied by her pages, they set off with their guards to ride east to Bourges.

They arrive in Charles’s capital the following day and meet Yolande’s Angevins. These hardened men stand amazed and look with awe at Jeanne d’Arc sitting tall on a great white charger, a vision in white armour holding the huge, swirling white silk banner, boldly marked edge to edge with the red cross of Lorraine – all of which Yolande has provided for her. Good. They need a vision to follow. If even these tough, experienced soldiers stare, how much more will the Maid impress simpler minds?

Isabelle has arrived in Bourges from Lorraine to be with Yolande and Marie during the offensive. This is a comfort she needs, since René, for all his courage and bombast, is very inexperienced in warfare, and had a competent guardian on either side in the two battles in which he took part. Despite the confidence the Queen of Sicily has in her Angevins, raising the siege of Orléans will be far from simple. Yolande has instructed two of her most dependable soldiers to ride on either side of her son as his guardians – something which, naturally, he does not know.

The three ladies, with the little Dauphin Louis clutching his grandmother Yolande’s hand beside her, bid Pierre and especially René farewell. None of them can stop their tears.

As Jeanne d’Arc sits on her white charger, ready to ride to Orléans in the front rank of the Angevin army, the Queen of Sicily reaches up to give the girl her hand. They smile at one another without a word, while Yolande looks deep into Jeanne d’Arc’s eyes.
Yes, she will do well.

When the army has left, the three ladies, Yolande, Marie and Isabelle, go at once to the cathedral and spend the best part of the afternoon in silent prayer.

Couriers bring notes daily from René describing how, all along the route, local people come forward, tossing flowers in Jeanne’s path, clutching their rosaries and calling out blessings. Word has indeed spread quickly. Already a mystical aura has been attached to Jeanne d’Arc’s name and presence, no doubt enhanced by the people’s desperation.

In Bourges they wait, the days passing slowly, and then their messenger rides fast through the gates where the three ladies linger for news. The message is brief and to the point. ‘
Mesdames
, Jeanne d’Arc’s Army has arrived outside Orléans. Pray for us.’

And so it begins – the battle not only for Orléans, but for France. If they lose this city, then all hope for a French future has gone.

I
n Bourges, the citizens, like the Anjou family, wait for news. The days pass terribly slowly. When they are not in the cathedral praying, they sit and sew, mostly in silence.

Fifteen long days later, a muddied courier gallops hard into the city, bringing a large package from René. All three ladies rush to Marie’s quarters. It is Yolande who opens it and reads.

Dearest Maman, darling wife and beloved sister,

With her voices – yours no doubt the loudest – ringing in Jeanne d’Arc’s ears, we arrived outside the stricken city of Orléans. No matter how many horrors our soldiers have seen – severed limbs and heads, hideous wounds to men and horses, lakes of blood, burning houses with people shut inside, all the terrible abuses of warfare – I could see that these tough, hardened men of ours became lambs around Jeanne, as if they felt some grace emanating from her person.

She prayed with us before the first onslaught, and I heard from some of my fellow Angevins that they really felt the presence of God in their midst – ‘How can the army of Jeanne d’Arc fail?’ I heard them say.

The men fought hard, with our heroine sitting proudly on her great horse on a hill overlooking Orléans, surrounded by her guard of honour, too far for the musket balls or arrows to reach her, a beacon of white inspiration, the sun shining on her white armour and with that huge white silk banner swirling in the breeze – visible to everyone, Maman, exactly as you planned she should be!

It has taken us nine long days of hard fighting to relieve the city – just in time too, before the citizens began to die of starvation. All the dogs, cats, even the rats are eaten, and I heard later that the fighting men’s rations were down to two small spoons of tuna a day.

After the fighting was over, with joy I found our dear Jean Dunois, a skeleton who could barely walk. How I embraced him. While he gnawed at the provisions I brought with me, between mouthfuls he told me about the campaign from within the city, and how the people suffered. He really does look desperately thin, as do all the survivors of Orléans, and many starved to death.

Yolande wipes her eyes and gazes at her family around her, and all sigh with relief. ‘René is safe, Jean Dunois is safe, Jeanne d’Arc is safe, Pierre de Brézé is safe,’ the three of them keep repeating like a mantra. ‘Our Angevins triumphed,’ says a joyful Marie, again and again.

‘Now the army must head for Rheims, then at last Charles can be crowned – there where his ancestors have all been anointed and taken their vows,’ Yolande says, almost to herself. Neither she nor Isabelle, nor pregnant Marie, can possibly reach Rheims to be present at the coronation. That they accept. Rheims is in enemy territory and the army will have to fight all the way there. It never occurs to them that perhaps the council would much prefer to chase the fleeing English!

It was such a wild, impossible hope that an unknown slip of a girl could inspire an army and now a people. Orléans and its inhabitants are saved! Strangers kiss one another in the street, people form rings and dance around a lone piper; others hang out of windows shouting their joy. Hailed by the city’s grateful population as the Maid of Orléans, Jeanne d’Arc is rightly lauded by the troops and the people, and she visibly enjoys that. Why not? After years of indifference and ridicule, she has succeeded in fulfilling her unquenchable mission to help save France. The victor’s laurels are rightly hers. At just seventeen years of age, Jeanne d’Arc has inspired a tired nation and a dispirited king.

After the Angevin army raise the siege, the King’s Council could see how the slight figure in white armour bearing her huge banner from the top of her white horse terrorized the enemy, and is all in favour of pursuing the fleeing English, following them north to their Norman stronghold in Rouen. ‘She is said to be a maid – or is she a phantom?’ the enemy asked, ‘Or someone bewitched?’ The council feels, with some justification, that this is the moment to take advantage of the shocked English and follow them north to their stronghold of Rouen in Normandy, and many of their leaders agree. It is only Yolande’s insistence to Jeanne d’Arc that
her
army must turn towards Rheims, fighting all the way, in order to crown and anoint the king. With the council preferring to follow the fleeing English, the decision will have to await the king’s arrival in Loches.

Two days earlier, Marie and Yolande wave Charles off from Bourges, heading west for Loches to meet there with the victorious Angevin army coming south from Orléans. Yolande made it plain that the king must join them before starting the long, dangerous ride north again for Rheims. As Charles embraced them all before leaving, he knows how sad Yolande, Isabelle and especially his Marie must feel that they cannot go with him, but all three understand and accept that the journey to Rheims will not be safe for them. Sadly, that means no coronation yet for Marie; even if the road was safe, her pregnancy is too advanced to take the risk.

The king invites René, as his closest family member present, to sit within the council at the royal chateau of Loches, and René sends his mother this extraordinary note:

Maman, I arrived in Loches today with Charles, and witnessed a most unexpected scene: Jeanne d’Arc burst into his private chamber at the chateau in floods of tears! She begged him on her knees not to hold any more of these endless councils discussing war and following the English to Rouen. Kissing his feet, she beseeched him to come to Rheims to be consecrated, and receive the crown ‘of which you are worthy’.

Believe me, her dramatic approach to the king on her knees rather took him aback – as it did the rest of us. Can you imagine: here is this slender, almost fragile-looking girl who has done the impossible, albeit with your brilliant soldiers, in tears, on her knees, kissing the king’s feet and beseeching him to accept his crown! Charles was converted. Then and there, he decided that the significance of the consecration and coronation outweighed the need to pursue the fleeing English army. He turned to the assembled courtiers in the room and ordered: ‘To Rheims!’

From Loches, the king rides with Jeanne d’Arc, followed by René, Jean de Dunois and Pierre de Brézé at the head of the Angevin army, as they make their way through enemy territory northwards towards Rheims, knowing that battles must be fought before they can reach their objective.

On 18 June, they find the English at Patay, not far from Orléans. The enemy prepared for this confrontation in the same way as for other battles, with forward-pointing sharp stakes in the ground in front of their massed ranks to deter the French cavalry and allow their longbowmen to pick the French off as they mill about, unable to advance past the stakes. For once this tactic fails. The English give away their position when they put up a hunting cry for a deer that comes into their view. The mounted Frenchmen are then able to circle from both sides around the sharp stakes and a terrifying battle follows, with no quarter given. The longbowmen, with almost no protective covering, are no match for mounted armoured soldiers in close combat approaching from all sides.

René was in the thick of this battle, and wrote proudly to his mother afterwards:

‘Maman, imagine, I had
no time
to be afraid. When Dunois, riding next to me, shouted ‘
Charge!
’ I think my horse obeyed
him
as I was unaware of doing anything, and then I was in the midst of it, and exhilarated in some strange way too – I kept thinking
kill or be killed
. I believe my mind was blank throughout the battle.

‘My horse was badly wounded by a lance during the first charge and fell, but I quickly caught another running loose, mounted that and fought on. It seemed so natural. And then it was over, and we had won decisively.’ Yolande, Marie and Isabelle smile at one another with shared complicity.

But even then the danger is not past. The road to Rheims is long and hard, with skirmishes all along the way, unexpected sallies from the enemy as they ride through the woods, with traps laid along the paths, men in the trees shooting arrows, others behind hides waiting to attack at the narrower passes in the forests. But the glorious victory at Patay spurs them on.

Finally, on 16 July, the army arrives at Rheims, only to find that the citizens have barred the gates and are preparing for a siege. Suddenly the mounted vision of Jeanne d’Arc leaves the front ranks and advances alone, riding beneath and along the city’s walls, her great banner billowing gently in the light breeze. Behind her rides her bugler, blowing furiously and drawing every eye to the white apparition, defying the soldiers on the ramparts to shoot at her. They look down and see the now fabled Jeanne d’Arc, a pale knight on a white charger, her banner unfurling behind her, an obvious target disregarding the danger. A great cry goes up. ‘She’s here, the Maid of Orléans is here. Open the gates and God is with us!’