Charles VII disbands his army at Gien and sends the captains home

GIEN, France, September 21, 1429 AD — Charles VII dissolved his army at Gien today. The captains who had raised the siege of Orleans in May and broken the English field army at Patay in June were sent away, each to his own estate or his own garrison. Saint Joan of Arc, who is seventeen and who had ridden at the head of these men for five months, was left with nothing to command.

Dissolving the army meant that the companies went home with their captains, and there was no longer a body of troops in the field for anyone to lead. In late August, while the royal army was still advancing, the king’s ambassadors signed a four-month truce with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. It was drawn up expressly to stop that offensive. Several towns were to be handed over to him, and a peace conference was promised for the spring.

The Duke of Burgundy is allied to England. Knights he had sent stood with the Parisians at the gate of Saint-Honoré against St. Joan thirteen days ago, and brought four hundred fighting men with them.

The council around Charles VII wanted to break the Duke of Burgundy away from the English by making concessions to him rather than by beating him in the field. Georges de la Trémoille, the king’s grand chamberlain, had been working for a treaty with Burgundy all year. St. Joan wanted Paris, and after Paris the English out of France. For that she needed soldiers, and the soldiers were the king’s to keep or to send home.

Five months ago St. Joan had ridden out of Blois for Orleans, with the priests at the head of the column singing the Veni Creator Spiritus (Come, Creator Spirit). The siege was lifted in May, and in June the English field army was broken at Patay. At Loches, soon after Orleans, St. Joan walked into the king’s private room. She knelt in front of Charles VII and took hold of his knees: “Noble Dauphin! hold no longer these many and long councils, but come quickly to Reims to take the crown for which you are worthy!” Charles VII was anointed at Reims on July 17, with St. Joan standing beside him holding her standard.

On August 23 St. Joan and Jean, Duke of Alençon, who had commanded beside her at Jargeau and at Patay, left Compiègne with a body of troops and rode for Paris. The king had not ordered it, and Charles VII stayed behind.

They attacked the Porte Saint-Honoré on September 8, the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady. St. Joan went down into the deep dry outer ditch, climbed the bank under the city wall and sounded the water of the inner moat with her lance, under fire, trying to find a place her men could cross. An archer shot her through the thigh, and another arrow killed her standard-bearer. She could not walk after that, and she was put under cover beside the moat, where she went on calling her men to the charge long after dark. The Sieur de Gaucourt sent men who carried her out of the shooting.

She was up very early the next morning and begged the Duke of Alençon to sound the trumpets and mount. “For I will never retreat till I have the town,” she said. Alençon and several other captains were willing. Then the king’s order arrived: St. Joan was to go back to Saint-Denis. Charles VII spent the next three days in council, deciding to withdraw, and after dinner on September 13 he abandoned Saint-Denis.

Before she left, St. Joan laid a suit of armour and a sword on the altar of the abbey church at Saint-Denis. She had wanted to stay. The voice she had described to Charles VII and his council had told her to remain at Saint-Denis, she said afterwards, and the lords took her away against her will.

The march back to the Loire began that same day, and it was hurried and disorderly. Today it ended at Gien, the town the army had ridden out of in June going the other way, towards Reims. Charles VII dined there, and that same day he dissolved the army. The Duke of Alençon rode off to his wife and his viscounty of Beaumont, and the other captains went back, each to his own place of command. St. Joan stayed behind with the king. She took it hard when the captains rode away, and hardest of all when Alençon left, because he was the captain she loved best.

Perceval de Cagny, a squire in the Duke of Alençon’s household, has kept a chronicle of the war. He held that the king’s counsellors had thrown away the victories St. Joan won, and he blamed Georges de la Trémoille above all. Many of the men who had served in that army blamed him too. Cagny wrote one line about the day at Gien: “And thus was broken the will of the Maiden and the King’s army.”