In the meantime the English retook some of the French towns that Joan had given to the King, and seized her sacred armour in the Church of Saint Denis, and punished and plundered the people, who were worse off than before, while the Maid was only allowed now and then to attack the English, and defeat them in the old way.
CHAPTER XII. HOW THE MAID TOOK CERTAIN TOWNS
|THE wise King had arranged with the Duke of Burgundy that they two should be at peace till Easter, 1430; while he might fight the English as much as he liked, which was, not at all.
Now the English let the Duke of Burgundy be Governor of Paris. It was always Paris that the Maid wished to take for her King, as it was the greatest city and the capital of France. But the King said she must not attack Paris, for it was now under the Duke of Burgundy, not under the English. All this was mere pretence, to avoid fighting. Jean's aim was to turn the English and their child King, Henry VI., out of her country; and the English were not likely to go out till they were driven out.
The English still held towns on the river Loire, such as St. Pierre-le-Moustier and La Charité. Joan went to Bourges and gathered an army, with a gentleman named d'Elbret to help her, and besieged the town of St. Pierre-le-Moustier. When they had battered the walls for some time with their guns, and made a breach, the French tried to rash through it; but the English were too strong and too many, and drove them out At this time Joan's Master cf the Household, d'Aulon, who had been with her at Orleans, was wounded in the heel by an arrow, and he could not walk without crutches. He saw that while the rest of the French had retired out of shot from the breach, Joan was there almost alone, with a very small company. D'Aulon therefore got a horse, and rode to her to ask her to come out of danger. "What are you doing here alone?" he asked her. She took off her helmet and said, "I am not alone; here I have with me fifty thousand of my own" (by which she seems to have meant an invisible army of Angels); "and will not leave this place till I take the town." D'Aulon told her that she had but four or five men with her, to which she only answered by bidding him make her army bring faggots of wood to fill up the ditch with, that they might cross to the town. Then she shouted in a loud voice:--