And then, because none of her attendants would drag the bolt from her shoulder
for fear of hurting her, she herself pulled it out, and as the blood gushed out she swooned. Father Pasquerel, who was surgeon as well as priest, dressed the wound with a compress soaked in oil, and Jeanne, recovering from her faint, made her confession to him, then lay quiet.
Meantime the battle languished. Discouraged assailants were drawing back from
the boulevard out of bow-shot, and Dunois himself thought that there was no hope of victory, the day being nearly spent, and the men weary. So he had the recall sounded, and gave orders to retreat across the river. Brave work had been done, and the captains had not hoped to take the place in a month. The bugle notes of the retreat were welcome music to the English, and to the wearied French who had fought without cessation for thirteen hours. But when they sounded on the ears of the wounded Maid she heard them with amazement.
She rose in haste, and somehow managed to mount her horse, and so rode to Dunois.
“Doubt not,” she said. “They are ours. Rest a little. Eat something. Refresh yourselves, and wait for me a little.”
With that she withdrew into a little vineyard close by, and prayed for the half of a quarter of an hour. When she appeared again her eyes were shining, her whole
appearance that of one inspired.
“On,” she cried, “the place is ours.” And she spurred toward the fosse.
Now her standard had not been removed from the edge of the moat, for D’Aulon
had kept it there to be a terror to the English and an inspiration to the French.
When the trumpets had sounded the retreat he, being weary and outworn, had handed it to a Basque to be carried in the retirement. But after the order for the
recall had been countermanded by Dunois at the request of the Maid, D’Aulon, moved to do a feat of arms, said to the Basque:
“If I dismount and go forward to the foot of the wall, will you follow me?”
“I will,” said the Basque.
So D’Aulon leaped into the fosse, his shield up, defying the English, but the Basque did not follow; for Jeanne, seeing her standard in the hands of a man whom she did not know, thought that it was lost, and seized hold of the floating end.
“Ha! my standard! My standard!” she cried, and as she and the Basque struggled
for it, the banner waved wildly like a signal for an immediate onset. The men-at-arms conceived it to be such and gathered for the attack.
“Ha, Basque! Is this what you promised me?” cried D’Aulon, and the Basque tore the banner from the Maid, ran through the ditch and stood beside the emblem. By this time Jeanne’s company stood about her.
“Watch,” said she to the knight at her side. “Watch till the tail of the standard touches the wall.”
A few moments passed. The great standard fluttered with the movements of the
Maytime breeze. Presently the knight cried:
“Jeanne, it touches!”
“Then enter,” cried Jeanne her voice thrilling through the air. “In God’s name, enter! All is yours.”
The troops rose as one man, and flung themselves against the walls. Up they swarmed, “as thick as a cloud of birds lighting on a bush,” says the old chronicle. [10] “Never was assault so fierce and wonderful seen within the memory of living man.” The English, amazed at the new onset, defended themselves valiantly, but the French were irresistible. The defenders became panic-stricken as the French swarmed over the top of the earthwork. Panic-stricken, not by the enemy but by that white figure standing there beneath her standard, the rays of the setting sun striking a dazzling radiance from her shining armour. The witch was there. They had thought her dead, yet there she stood without sign of injury.
“A crowd of butterflies hangs about her,” a soldier cried in terror, throwing down his weapon and turning to flee into the Tourelles.
“No; it is a dove,” gasped another who followed him.
Arrows flew on every side of the maiden, but never touched her, and on the French sped, incited to superhuman effort by the bell-like voice:
“On, on! All is yours!”
And the boulevard was taken.
Showering down blasphemies Glasdale stood on the drawbridge making a
desperate effort to save his men by covering their retreat over the bridge into the Tourelles. Suddenly a foul smoke rolled up from the river, suffocating all who stood with him. The citizens had loaded a barque with sulphur and all manner of evil smelling things, and floated it under the drawbridge. Presently tongues of flames shot up from it, licking the rafters of the drawbridge, and darting through the planks, while all about them fell the stone bullets of the guns of Orléans, lighting on the roofs and walls of the Tourelles, and splashing in the waters of the Loire. Jeanne’s quick eye saw the men’s danger.
“Classidas! Classidas!” she cried. “Yield thee, yield thee to the King of Heaven.
I have great pity on thee and thy people.”
Before the compassionate voice died away the bridge bent under the rush of armoured men, and broke. Glasdale and his companions plunged downward into
the great river and were seen no more, for the weight of their armour, the fire and the water all conspired against them. And at the sight Jeanne broke down and wept, then kneeling began to pray for their souls.
Yet the greater part of the surviving English had succeeded in reaching the fortress, but here they found themselves assailed from another quarter––Orléans.
The gap whence the arches had been broken had been spanned by gutters and beams, and through the smoke and dusk came the knights from the city, assaulting the Tourelles from that side. The struggle was soon over. Of all the stout defenders of the fort not one escaped; all were slain, drowned, or taken and held to ransom. Talbot with his English in the forts before the city had heard the French trumpets sound the recall, and had believed that the battle was over. Now the flames of boulevard and bridge blazed out the story of a new defeat.
The bells of Orléans pealed forth joyously as Jeanne re-entered the town by the bridge, as she had said she would do. The streets were crowded with people so
that it was with difficulty that she could make her way through them. They pressed about her as closely as they could, to kiss her hand, her greaves, her mailed shoes, her charger, or the floating folds of her banner, while others went
